For the road is most certainly life...

"To rule the state, have a known plan

To win a battle, have an unknown plan

To gain the universe, have no plan at all

Let the universe reveal its splendour."

The life of the city beckons me home, wherever that may be. We draw flowers in the dust on your old Subaru and pack up ou lives with the company of only each other and and a few old cassette tapes, and set sail on our relentless journey from California to Arizona, through New Mexico to Texas, to Louisiana through Mississippi to Tennessee, to Kentucky, to Illinois, through couches and friendships and floors and kittens and kindnesses and the trunks of cars and endless freeways through the sky to London and then finally to back to my family and to Sunderland, the beginning of it all.

One dollar tacos, sangria, plastic flags and plants and strings of coloured lights hang from the ceiling of a corrugated iron shed in the Silver Lake neighbourhood of Los Angeles. Leathery grilled cactus and a Fleetwood Mac tribute band. Disco balls and photo booths, you are so excited in your wedges at the prospect of anonymity and it is fresh and thrilling and beautiful. Bearded boys in hats strum guitars and remind me of whence i came from, as long velvet kimonos and purple lipstick glisten from the shadows. Red, red wine and i am so very excited and so very scared to be back in my own dirty city once again. We trip across Sunset Boulevard and into a gaudy techno club come brothel, where an inflatable octopus looms glowing colours in the PBR light. We scream Blink 182 down the highway an sleep in an Irvine mansion upon a pile of soft mattresses, every inch the Princess and the Pea. You buy us breakfast and we bid yet another salty goodbye. No goodbyes, only see-you-laters? I grow more doubtful with each bittersweet parting.

Laguna Beach, Orange County, his parent's beach opens onto the turquoise ocean and life is no longer real. Venice Beach again in the jelly-infused sunlight, graffiti and feathers in my hair, an American flag bikini faded by a myriad of days of sunshine and a pair of John Lennon sunglasses. The cop pulls us over in your rabbit ears. Sushi on Santa Monica Boulevard, karaoke in a hot and heavy bar, we dance to David Bowie in an English-themed pub. We run barefoot on the beach in the darkness, burning white sage to ward off evil spirits. It is bad luck to light it without a candle, yet even Laguna Beach has a river of urine running through it. We wake to the sound of the waves crashing upon the shore and i feel safe, cocooned in this mad-love world, as the water gently nibbles at the toes of the edge of the earth.

Heat. Hot and sticky, dripping. Dirt-streaked legs and my blackened foot prints pressed against the car windscreen. Deep yellow heat, singed brown bodies, sickly green pounding sun. Rivulets of sweat catch in the crease of my belly button and the backs of my knees. Tiny delicious pearls. Our air conditioning is broken so we play pop punk speed metal and wind the windows down, letting the wild desert air ravage our delicate California skin. We pluck flowers and feathers from parking lots and adorn ourselves with stars and stripes to fake patriotism and citizenship to the notorious Mexico border patrol.

Tempe, Arizona is a flaming ball of dirty guitars in grimy bars. We feverishly drink gin and pineapple juice as a saxaphone plays and cold water is sprayed in a rainbow haze from jets strung among the coloured lights above our heads. The crowd sways by the outdoor stage as torches of fire flame by the door. We twist our souls to blistering funk and return home to sleep on the floor of our friend Nat in a house full of lutiers.

We couch surf a night in El Paso with a man named Gio who lives alone in his mother's house. Old lady frills and flounces are adorned with star wars memorabilia, as a tiny white dog with blue bows in her hair licks my face and chews up my makeup brushes. He takes us for breakfast and we give him a false hula girl tattoo, which he excitedly pastes across his skin and leaves for the sauna.

Austin, Texas. Mimosas to start the day, floating down the river in rubber rings. Four Loco and sunflower seeds. Old leathery man wizened from a thousand days in his weather-bleached garden, wind chimes and worn tyres, wooden toys and broken flowers in his front yard. Kind eyes, a pair of bright yellow tape-measure braces. Barefoot in the dirty old school bus, falling from our seats as we clatter drunkenly over the ramshackle road. Cold water, one thousand tiny flies skim the surface and tickle my feet. Blue dragonflies the colour of the forget-me-nots on my shorts land on my ankle and knee bones. Music drifts from further down the river as we hazily float along with the current, no agency, no urgency. Simply letting things be, arching our bodies like cats under the hot sun as light dances like chimes and bells on the water and fronds sparkle in the evening calm like ladies with long hair weeping. The sky is translucent beneath my mirrored sunglasses and i'm sure i can see into heaven (it is here). The whole world is reduced to sky and water, water and sky. Are we floating on the surface of the river or are we caught in the clouds? Which way is the right way up? Right or wrong, up or down, left or right. Is there even such thing any more?

California-hippy-car leaking oil. Dried Jerusalem Artichokes that match the one imprinted on my skin are strung across the dashboard. We stop for gas in the warm Texan night air and a man with one eye tells us slowly and deliberately to 'Watch out for the............deer'. Sparks are strewn behind us like fireworks as we speed through the dusky air, fearing for our lives. The skies here are furious and full of blood, left behind are the gentle lilac hues of the West coast. Dreaming dreams in a dreamlike life. Images and people and lives and lessons all caught like flesh beneath my fingernails. How am i to immortalise the absolute freedom and beauty i have learned across this lotus-eating country?

Lou Reed, Jonny Hobo, The Runaways. We meow like kittens and shake our hair across the interstate, stopping only to fill up our water bottles and marvel at the tiny fragments of life lived in those moments at the edges of the road in semi-abandoned gas stations.

Austin is a smouldering cocktail of tattoos and heeled boots, of nose rings and cowboy hats and grimy terraces filled with loud music and sun caught drinks and filmy sweaty living breathing writhing bodies. We spend the night baking in the car in suburbia and wake up in a faint. We get asked to leave the bathrooms of the 'war building' where we crept to cool our clammy faces and brush our teeth. We peruse South Congress vintage shops and antique stores. You buy a red polkadot dress and become a perfect Mary-Lou. Nighttime brings Pimms and slam poetry about Ginsberg and vaginas in the Spider House. We sit in an empty bathtub and dance to a band in Hawaiian shirts called Purple Grape and everyone is beautiful. We swim with salamander in the fresh spring water of Barton Springs. Leopard print bikini, butterfly bench. We sit under cold jets and drink jalapeno cocktails, letting our lives grow rich and abundant in spice. We don ankle-length dresses and learn to Texas two-step with old men and smoky cowboys named Corey before falling asleep on kind stranger's sofas. We drink coffee by the bucketload and soak the midnight heat in dark and drug-fuelled saloons, watching girls vomit in all night diners. We fall onto the floor of more warm hearts and curl up with kittens and cockroaches. Bloody Marys in the afternoon, wearing red lipstick, forgetting about time and money and remembering how to be free, free of all constraints. The punks are flying across someone elses living room now as we meet strangers on steps and swim naked in the pool as coloured waves are projected in technicolor across the living room walls, dancing wildly in the hot summer rain. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

New Orleans. Rambling, ramshackle, swashbuckling streets. Plants spill from rickety balconies, hungry for water. Paintwork is cracked and chipped, sides of houses are crumbling. Gnarled wooden shutters that have seen it all sag under the weight of the heat. Curtains hang heavy as windows are flung open and strings of white lights and flickering lanterns make fireflies and glow worms in the balmy air, like a slice of melon in your mouth. Danger and beauty lurk around every corner. Hot and desperate jazz leaks onto the street, combining to create a raucous cacophony, made bearable by the dead weight of the bruised sky. Thunderstorm in a graveyard. Lightning illuminating the mausoleum. Ornate iron gates are creaking. When hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused New Orleans to flood, decomposing bodies rose to the surface of the graves, making it harder to identify those who were killed in the disaster. 

Jazz at the Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street, hot sticky wild saxophone, a stranger in a hat teaches me to swing dance, we sit on the pavement and skip through the dirty-bright electric darkness, illuminated occasionally by neon lights. There is a piano in the bathroom and a white cat sleeping under the star-spangled banner. Corona on the porch and another airless sleep. Sprawling, spicy, blood and salt rum wonderful hurricane-drunk. We sleep on a piece of foam in an airless, lifeless room and awake to heat induced hallucinations, to sweat crawling across our skin like spiders. Then up, up and on, on and on to the next thing.

Fourth of July. God bless America. In Louisiana sex education is illegal and so is buying liquor on Sundays. The land of the free, indeed. 

Memphis: unlike any city i have ever been in. Very poor, beautiful old factories lie abandoned as street trollies rattle by old warehouse, lettering peeling and fading. Blue flashing lights and relentless sirens patrol the streets as revellers failed by their country stumble around, numbing their sadness with liquor wearing star spangled Jeffrey Campbell shoes in an act of forced patriotism. Streets are closed, megaphones boom. We visit the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated yet the museum facade is sponsored by Bank of America. We look into the window where the assassinator took fire and watch the lights of the bridge in the water and smell july fourth firework smoke in the air. We drink beer from dusty bottle and listen to the jukebox as an old man cooks soul burgers in a fryer behind the bar and a Tennessee drawl plays pool in the back. You tell us that this place used to be a brothel, it is certainly grimy delicious. The upstairs is closed today, the owner tells us, but when we visit the bathroom we spy through the holes in the ceiling up at the gilded wallpaper and wonder at those past angels of the night. We wander through the midnight heat and stop outside the huge abandoned Hotel Chisco, were Elvis made his first radio broadcast. So much edge in this dangerous and chaotic city, a real burning sense of people feeling and fucking and failing and crying but living and breathing and working together and simply trying in this madcap world, because that's all any of us can really do, isn't it?

You keep watch on the corner as we mount the railings and fall into the bushes below. We crawl through an abandoned parking lot and slice open our thighs squeezing through a gap in the wrought iron fence. Two weary old men pianos lie waiting for us in the darkness. You play an eerie tune with trembling fingers and it echoes in the full silence. I am scared.We make our way through the hotel, keeping the tiny glimmer of our flashlight away from the telling glow of the windows overlooking the street below. We carefully step around water damage, broken glass, musty ballrooms, old kitchens, marveling at scrawled notes still stuck to the walls. We can only see what is immediately in front of us, and there is no way of knowing what lurks in the huge darkness around us. It is wonderfully terrifying; every inch of my body is trembling, alert. 'Always be prepared to run', you tell us. We climb spiraling staircases until we reach the roof. Iron ladder after iron ladder, we cling to the rust with all of our strength until we reach the highest point; the metal rigging upon which the neon hotel name once hung. We climb. The metal shakes as the wind tugs my hair across my face. My long purple skirt is tucked into my knickers. The power of having my life placed literally in my own sweating palms is tantalising and electric, heavy. One wrong foot, one missed hand hold, one rung too weather worn and i will tumble to my death from one of the tallest buildings in the city. Who will think to look for us in the sky of Memphis, Tennessee? We reach the top and i am alight with anticipation and fear and it is so incredibly beautiful up here with the birds. The whole city stretches around us. Lights twinkle everywhere, a giant premature Christmas display, just for us. It is so quiet up here we can here voices calling from the street and the callous call of every blue siren rings in our ears. The whole world, the whole night, ours for the taking. Independence day fireworks shatter around us, one thousand tiny falling stars. Police megaphones crackle at our feet. It is as though there is no one real left on earth.

Crooked, wicked, brilliant demon-angels marveling at life.You point out the old brewery, the phoenix hotel. We descend to the foot of the sign and drink beer and talk revolution. The world is falling apart but you are fiercely optimistic. I drink the night with my eyes. This dirty, dangerous, ghetto fuelled spicy city is intoxicating. That golden allure of the danger of possibility. Or is it possible danger?
Briefly we are lost in the old hotel, until we return to our beds in another co-op full of beautiful souls to curl up with kittens. A place where people cleanse negative energy with electric scientology probes and a boy lives in a bathroom, sleeping in the tub and keeping his books on the disused toilet. We burn the flag, lighting sparklers or cigarettes as cicadas laugh in the hot early morning air. Little birds setting the stars alight in an identically emblazoned bikini, wearing cow ears and kissing boys on the steps as we leave and giggle and shriek our way up the interstate to Kentucky,



TO BE CONTINUED..............................