tract movement update

they're on the move again. 

this weekend the tracts were dropped in Florida and Texas.

but who knows where they are by now...

Answers from Portugal by way of New Orleans

I've been traveling between Chicago and New Orleans, taking my time in Memphis, Clarksdale and Natchez too. My name is J. F., I was born in Portugal, and that's where I live.

It was on my way back from New Orleans to Chicago that I was given this book. I wondered what the purpose was and I still do, but I'm glad someone did it, as it made me think of what's this trip all about and what's the purpose of traveling. 

What first moved me into this trip, like the character in this chapter, was the need to find something, the need to find who's left and what's left of the landscape that created the Blues, those raw feelings put into words and music.

Mostly, it's not there anymore. You won't find any wise old man delivering himself in words and music, but I believe that when you search for something, even if you don't find it, you find something that has a lasting effect on you. 

You find how to enjoy your freedom in a way that really suits you, which is not as easy as it seems. You define yourself in the path you choose and in the moment you decide it's time to leave. 

I could fly from New Orleans to Chicago, but that feels more like time traveling. I need to feel the gap between places and there's something about long distance trips aboard a train. It's not comfort, as your body struggles to find it in an ice cold environment. It's a soothing effect, to know that among all the decisions you need to make, you are now on rails, there's no way you can get lost. You also won't have a flat tire.

August 28th, 2008

-J.F.

The First Mystery

This tract was mailed back from Seattle. The train-riding author covered her tract in poetry, thoughts, and snippets of conversation, including this:

"friends are like stars, although they aren't every day visible, they are still there"

and

"she said to me that she is crying almost every day... not because she is depressive or sick and tired of life, but she loves every single day and is afraid of dying too quickly"

I opened the tract with Davina Pallone, the artist who designed this tract (there are five editions-- she used paper that she made from actual plants as part of the design.) We were totally giddy looking over the comments. Marissa Bell Toffoli is the author of the poems in this tract, but lives in San Francisco, and hasn't gotten to see the finished tract yet. 

stuffed full of mysteries

I was so nervous to go to the P.O Box and look. I put it off for a couple weeks after the deadline-- because, what if no one sent their tract back?

But when I got there, the box was stuffed full of them.

-Amie

Mostly brief encounters in Seattle

I'd checked the schedule online and knew that several trains were leaving the Seattle terminal that afternoon, so I took the bus there at 3:00 pm, and there was a line for the next train. I took in the scene, maybe 80 people waiting in line- plenty of people to choose from. Who would be my first targets?
I pulled out the train tracts from my backpack and the line started to move. No time to waste, I walked up to two people who seemed like they'd be interested- backpackers. Travellers with stories to tell. I introduced myself and gave a brief introduction to the project. The guy was from Spain and didn't speak English very well, and his friend was from here so she helped to explain. In the couple minutes of our interaction, the guy decided this was interesting and the girl wasn't sure it was. I pointed out the return address and that the postage was paid one moment before they received their seating assignment, and they were off. It occurred to me that the American may have been wary that there was some catch, something to pay, some ulterior motive. In future interactions I made sure to spell out that no donations were being asked for or fees being charged.
Results of my interactions on the whole were mixed. Different aspects of the project appealed to different people- some were excited about being part of this artsy creative project while others were afraid they wouldn't be able to contribute anything creative enough. With several people who were interested in the project I found myself encouraging them to write whatever they felt like writing, without regard for deep poetic lyricism or some other such nonsense- just write whatever, wherever. Interestingly, I find myself at this moment giving myself the same encouragement. I don't necessarily consider myself a writer, and neither did most people to whom I handed these beautiful creations; such beautiful products were worthy of lofty, or gritty, or raw well-relayed human experience, with each different design seeming to ask for a different kind of story from their new temporary owners.
The two tracts I'd be most interested in reading are the ones I handed to the train conductor and to the 65-year old woman who had never before been on a train. I hadn't thought about giving a tract to the conductor until after everyone was on board and his train was in fact the next to arrive, and we started talking. He was immediately interested and said his parents had encouraged him to write a book about his experiences as a train conductor, a post he'd held for some 30 years. He thoroughly enjoyed his job, and made it more fun by making up stories from time to time. One of his favorites was of an elderly woman who had a habit of taking her canoe down the white water river the train went next to, usually at the same time the train went by. This story he would broadcast to everyone on the train over the speakers, with obvious gusto- he relayed the white-water blow-by-blow of Little Miss So-and-So (he had a name for her) to me the same way he would on the train. You had to look quickly or you'd miss it!...which in fact everyone did, because the story was completely fabricated by this conductor. He just loved the story and getting people to crane their necks in awe and curiosity toward the river. I'd expect some good material from him.
Then, secondly, the woman who'd never been on a train. She was nervous about the trip, she said, but she liked writing, and was really excited to have something to do to take her mind off her fear. I think this project meant the most to her of all the people I met.
Most people were interested in seeing the different designs when there was a minute to look through them. If I remember correctly, the tract with the light pink lacey material housing a plastic cockroach was the last to be disseminated, and to someone who actually appreciated the juxtaposition.
Giving away beautiful gifts is always fun. Thank you for providing!
Sander

ridin' 'long the City of New Olreans...

I didn't realize how crazy the train schedules are until I "missed" the first train.

So, armed with my oddly cryptic Amtrack schedule book I made it early the next afternoon to a pleasantly full station of folks in New Orleans. I went in to the waiting area with a friend, who soon ducked out of the building to take a call, leaving shy little me to do my muling.

In an attempt to feel somewhat "normal", I approached the counter and talked with the attendant about the project, giving her the first tract. She was pleasantly surprised, thanking me for brightening her day with the colorful little book (my own design- "The Neon Crisis"). After that...with my confidence up....and my "teacher mode" switched on...I made my way towards the rows of waiting passengers (there were about 18 people there). Most of the folks on the side near the counter had been eyeing my exchange with the counter attendant...

I fanned out the tracks in my hands, offering the passengers to "take their pick" and participate in a nation-wide art project. The first man (an elderly fellow) wasn't sure what to do with me, or my offerings...and refused because it was his daughter that was getting ready to board, not him. So, I made my way to the next eager looking, guitar-carrying red-head, who told me that he was "on his way to see his ex-wife and would love to get his mind off of the anxiety he was feeling about it".

The next couple of tracts were taken pretty much without question...I offered each person their choice of tract and a breif explanation of the project. I was met with lots of smiles and noticed people quickly diving into their selection as I made my way through.

So....one of my personal favorites was the roach model...which turned out to be the last one left in my hands when I made my way to the "last party"....a gaggle of middle-aged women,all with big bleached-blond hair, mom-jeans, painted visors, and tourist t-shirts...loaded down with bags and bags of store-bought something-or-anothers. I walked into their little fortress of plunder as they were excitedly showing off their purchases and talking about getting back to Texas. I offered them my same smile and excited description of the art project...before presenting them with the final tract. They seemed pleased with the project idea...so I handed the pretty pink book to the nearest representative...who SCREAMED and threw the book on the floor!! (Which lifted me to a crazy degree of giddiness) I assured them that the roach was not real, and that it was part of the art...so the next lady in the pack reached down, picked up the book, glanced at it, shoved it in her shopping bag and said a quick thank you... complete with a fake smile.


I loooooved this project and I really loved muling the tracts!
Can't wait to hear about everyone's adventures!

Toy Cockroach

When I was handing out tracts sometimes I'd kind of try and intuit which story the person I was talking to might like, then I'd choose a tract for them, others I would present a little spread of tracts, and let them choose based on the design and title. No one would pick the cockroach tract.

I designed that one, so I didn't want to, like, push anyone or guilt them into it.

I didn't think, as I was making it, about being under the buzzing thousand-island colored soda lamps at midnight on a dark train platform, trying to get someone to accept a very real-looking plastic cockroach under a thin layer of silk organza.

It made sense, with Chantal O'Keeffe's story. She writes about the nature of roaches: "– they like good food, like her chocolate chip cake, and they like comfort, like her 300+ thread count sheets. She learned the last part when she pulled back her comforter and found not one, but two roaches in the dent of her pillow."

None of the cockroach tracts have come back yet.

Midnight Guerrillas-- Salt Lake City

Drop attempt #1:
My first guerrilla tract drop attempt was thwarted. I don't know. I thought the Amtrak station would be like the airport, trains coming and going every hour. The big shiny concrete and glass building in downtown Salt Lake that I thought was the Amtrak station is actually the Greyhound station. "This is the Greyhound terminal," the man behind the counter says. "Amtrak's over there," he says, pointing down the way at a seedy little shack, "but they're only open from 10pm to 6am."

Drop attempt #2:
I check the train schedule when I get home and discover that the California Zephyr comes through Salt Lake around midnight headed westbound, and around 4am headed eastbound. (Oh.) I call up one of the local tract designers, Lisa Bella, and ask if she's down for some mischief. Later, around 11pm, when I pull up in front of her house she's waiting for me on the dark curb. She jumps in and we squeal off, giggling and singing the Mission Impossible theme song.

As we walk from the fancy Greyhound parking lot toward the little Amtrak shed we're quiet and suddenly shy. A security guard passes us by under one of the streetlamps and we smile and walk naturally. There are people sitting on benches by the tracks, and people sitting in the station under fluorescent lights, reading and sleepy-looking. Lisa and I look around, steel our resolve (friendliness of steel!) and go up to a family sitting outside and explain the project, then ask if they'd like to take a tract with them on their travels.

"Is it free?" the mom asks. The 8-year-old daughter is half hiding behind the mom, half leaning toward us.

"Yes!" Lisa says. "It's an art project!" I say. "You don't keep it, though," Lisa says, "you take it with you on your journey, then send it back." "Or pass it on to someone else," I say.

"Ok," the mom says. I choose a tract I think the daughter will like and hand it to her.

We smile at them and we are this a strange happy anomaly on the somber platform-- the other four or five passengers sitting on the benches are looking at us but trying to avoid catching our eye, maybe, like the daughter, curious but not quite wanting to be implicated in whatever we're up to. Lisa and I divide the remaining tracts and head inside.

Inside it is more of the same: everyone seems aware that Lisa and I are up to something (missionaries? Hare Krishnas?) but pretend not to notice us. But then, once we start talking to people, asking them questions about where they're headed, telling them about the project, they open up and really want to talk. I work the room and Lisa ends up talking to a woman who looks like she might be a librarian and who is traveling alone for nearly the whole time we’re in there. Outside again, we talk to an enthusiastic young poet headed to San Francisco, and then a kind-eyed man who tells us he is headed home.

"Where's home?" we ask. "Little town in California. You probably haven't heard of it. It's called Orland." Which is not far from my hometown. "I'm from Chico!" I tell him. "I can't believe you're from Chico!" he says. And then, since I am from Chico, and because, we find out, he hasn’t had a friendly conversation in weeks, he tells us about how he moved to Salt Lake a month or two earlier with his wife and kids. Everything went wrong. They were staying at his wife’s brother’s house, and that relationship started going sour. He worked in home health care, and his client was a large developmentally disabled man who was physically violent and would beat him up. His wife hated living with her brother, hated Utah too and so she took the kids and went back to Orland. He was saving up enough money to get home, but couldn’t handle being beat up every day, so he quit his job. The relationship with his brother-in-law got worse (“He’d call up my wife and tell her I was in jail!” he told us) and then his brother-in-law hit him, so he left the house, and with no money went to the homeless shelter. “But there was a month waiting list,” he said. So for the three nights prior to our meeting him, he’d been sleeping in the park. “And I’m finally going home!” he said. He clutched the tract we gave him while he was talking, and his eyes were sparkling and happy. He looked so grateful to have it, and so grateful to be talking with us.

“Wow,” I said, as Lisa and I walked back to the car.

“He was so dear,” she said.

"I didn't expect that," I said.

Driving back we were grinning and giddy again, swapping stories and re-capping.

"Did you see the woman I was talking to?" Lisa asked, "I looked back when we were leaving and she was already writing in her tract."

I really didn't expect this part-- handing artwork to strangers-- to be so much fun or so moving.

it all began with the burning hell

It all started years ago in the Sacramento Amtrak station. I think I may have been crying-- I'd just missed my train.

It was my fault, I was dumb. I was sitting quietly reading in the raucous "South" line, while the more sober "West" line boarded and left. By the time I realized my destination was actually on the "West" line, my train had been gone for a good fifteen minutes. It was getting late and I was alone, and now feeling stupid and sorry for myself in Sacramento. I went into the bathroom to be alone, splash my face, and figure out where I was going to sleep... and that's when I found The Burning Hell.

It was a small two color printed gospel tract with a threatening message aimed at my eternal soul. It was strangely delightful. I was touched by the 50s printing quality and the bold statements with whimsical grammar. I was not so much touched by the menacing passages from Revelations that the author intended to knock a punch, like: "and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire," but by the contrast of the helpful voice in between them that asked me, "How about it Friend, is HELL the place where you want to spend eternity?"

There was a weariness and resolve to the whole thing. It was almost as if you could see the author talking himself into all this degrading soul-saving.

"One day in HELL," he writes, "you will not have to be bothered by some Christian trying to give you a gospel tract. Neither will you have to worry about a soul winner knocking on your door and inviting you to go to church. No sir, but you will be remembering every gospel sermon you ever heard, every gospel tract you turned down and tore up..."

Even the devil on the front of the pamphlet looks weary and resigned.

It was all so odd and touching. Right there and then I had my own little conversion. Suddenly missing the train became an adventure. My internal narrator kicked in and instead of feeling sorry for myself, I started almost hoping the night would get weirder, or worse, so that I'd have a good story to tell when and if I ever made it to my destination.