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This, my friends, is where the real adventure starts. One minute I’m on a bus looking around and the next I’m walking around downtown Liverpool at 6AM, dropped off on the side of the road. No map and nothing is open. Irish money in my pocket. Boy oh boy am I lost!

Everything is really BIG and serious, like the biggest, oldest inner-city university you can think of, only bigger and, for all I know, it stretches forever.

Now I have to wait for a cop and ask him what’s going on. It’s so cool. And chilly, too.

OK, Toto, I’m not in Kansas anymore. While looking at a beautiful Jaguar, an even better Lotus drives by.

Walking the streets and whatever Captain’s Walk walking mall type deal looking for tourist info center, whose signs just stop passersby look at me once in shock, twice in fear that I am maybe a mugger, and third in shock again.

The sky grows bluer and lighter and I have already seen a couple of things I want to do. But as it gets lighter, the temperature gets colder.

Imagine falling into the back of a twenty dollar bill with the people walking the streets in front of the White House. Imagine that happening and the colors stayed the same fake green and “white”. That is Liverpool with statues on top of pillar 300 feet up. It seems that their only two claims to fame are Pirates and The Beatles.

Oh my god, only thirty minutes ‘til nine! Then the tourist place and the money exchangers will be open. For now, tho, I’ll sit in this mall on this bench enjoying the warmth for as long as the security guard will allow me. In this waking period, I have done a lot and there will be more as I plan on being in Manchester tonight. I am so tired and hungry and there is a little dive coffee place with cheap breakfasts not 50 yards away, but I’m sure they don’t take Irish pounds or US dollars.

English pounds suck even worse than Irish ones. $100 = £62.25. Ten of this went straightaway to a “hotel”’s B&B plan. This should prove to be real nice.

I’ve been dying for pancakes or waffles so I went into Mickey Dee’s for some hot cakes and sausage – but they don’t have them! What kindda place…

In Ireland, you have to pay for a book of matches at a bar. In England, you have to pay for a packet of ketchup! What kindda place…

A seven hour “nap” and my first hot, powerful shower since leaving the US! Amazing how a hot shower can make you feel so great and alive. Some how I keep falling into La-de-da places, this a pizza place but unlike any pizza place I have ever been in before. Dimly lit, really nice décor, etc. (Rich, Grolsch is the only good beer.) Woman next to me ordered a half-rack of ribs and could not believe the size, and neither could I, with corn cob and salad and enough food for three people on one plate. The radio or whathaveyou plays a bit too loud and every song is by an American band! Let’s hear some English or even European or maybe Australian bands!

The best part of traveling alone is alcohol. How do I know when I am drunk if I can’t bounce it off of someone? How do I know that I’m not just wrapped up in thought because no one talks to a lonely traveler who looks as I do, with crazy just combed with a towel hair and a big, black army coat and a devil beard. That’s why on the second night of The Cure at Great Woods I did so much of even harder if you will drugs pot and shrooms just without end for the whole lonely amazing show. Because I was alone and did not realize how gone I was until I got with friends again.

Finally! A song by The Police! But after they were big.

Space capsule church high on a hill looms in front of me walking night university streets of Liverpool Dump Beatle-home. Pound coin as good to me as penny spent given to young artistic-looking beggar who knew Boston and the Truth of heartache. Yound black-haired girl leather jacketed tells me all of “Nutin’” when asked what to do in this Northern Hole.

Oh, sleepless night, leave me to myself. Lead me to my friends in dreams and Truths.

I can’t believe that I am in England, alone, posing as Post Warrior and suffering from all kinds of withdrawals. Liverpool is such a lovely town when you’re the only one in it at 6 in the morning.

I believe that if you search hard enough, Truth can be found in England. They are very critical and tell exactly bluntly what they think of a subject. An ad for a recently opened art gallery asks just Joe Fuck Shopper to come by and criticize! It is a confusing place, tho. Four, count them, four different types of stamps! I don’t even want to know about pay phones yet.

Older women walking in and shopping on streets model themselves after the Queen or Thatcher. Older men are very serious and stern faced with backs so straight that they almost lean backwards. After their generation, no one gives a shit and is just living life or going thru the motions of it.

The Irish and the English are, obviously of course, two different gene pools, but that comes as a shock when you see how different they are. Irish older men have very definite signs of alcohol abuse in their worn out faces , which sag and hang and look like they’ve been thru years of worry. English older men have plump faces with very few wrinkles. In general, English women are ugly. But occasionally you see a beauty. And there is nothing in between. Of course, tho, the beauties are probably Irish. Facial structure is opposite. That is where the Irish have concave noses, the English have convex. Very strange.

This picture is roughly the veins and walls of my Liverpool room. It is actually much smaller than this, with yellow walls and flesh-colored pipes, which really do look like veins staring at me from the other wall. This is the view from laying in bed. The whole room is about 10’ by 6’ and actually has the classic view of brick wall outside the little window next to (but not shown in the picture as I ran out of paper but really did want people to see it) the sink. I guess I have to work on my 3D!

The night’s dream: The whole Board, plus people from my past, all traveling around metropolitain Groton/New London in a huge van/cube van/camper van thing, drinking, doing drugs, having sex, and fighting cops.

My god! On the train to Dublin after flooding night morning rain sitting reading thinking lonling the Sun Almighty Sun busts out and the clouds grow white and blue sky and to my right is an Irish pot o’gold rainbow. I have seen the sun! I know that the world still lives on but the further north I roll the darker and greyer and uglier it gets. But that few scant moments of light sky blue sun rainbow lift me up up up and beyond these storm clouds from Hell!

(Letter to Megen, 1:40PM)
M-
God fucking damn I’m lonely and bored on this train to Dublin. I’m bored of reading and logging my thoughts and writing and the batteries in my piece of shit Walkman just died, like my soul. She’s lost controooolll. Before I slip into obliv-Ian, I would kill to give you one more long, deep kiss. I miss you and see you everywhere.
I just left my relatives in this tiny backwards pissant backroad not even on the map town. One of my “cousins” owns a pub and they got me hammered. I look like shit and feel it, too, so no one will even ever talk to me unless it is travel questions, like the latest “Is this the Dublin train?” because I guess I look like a traveler.
I wrote this poem, if you will, in a pub in Galway, alone. {Reader, see Quays poem on 11/17/1989, if you want. I am not writing it here again.} Murphy’s is another kind of stout.
Everything is so green here and I finally caught glimpse of blue sky and sun, as it is always grey.
When my relatives started getting drunk, they talked much faster and it did not sound like English and I could not understand them, so they stopped talking.
I dream of home and can see everyone. I am about three days ahead of where I should be because I have to see my friend Maura in London real soon or I’ll go fuckin’ to pieces.
Rich gave me some crazy stone and his crystal neck-hanger-holder-whammyshamalammy to hold it in and it keeps me relatively sane. I am 5 hours ahead of you guys so I have to wait to figure out where people are and then I grab the stone thru my shirts and layers and just hold on a picture them and I can actually see them, like I saw Relics in the basement last night.
Come get me.
In Galway, I hooked up with some potheads and they got me baked on hash. I thought it was resin at the time. They roll jibbers that are like three papers long and pretty thick because the shit is so shitty it takes that much to get you high.
I eat once a day, dinner, and that usually is not much.
By the time this reaches you, I should be in Manchester, England.
See you soon.
PS…Dublin sucks. I’m already waiting for a bus to a ferry to Liverpool, putting me six days ahead of schedule.

Dublin could not be any lamer if it tried. Changed cheque into cash and straightaway to the ferry people. Two pints in The Harp and small talk with some normal-type young guy. I actually saw a mirror. Oh man, I’m looking pretty sick.

Into the ferry bus train station and a pumped up postcard to Dolph. In walks a 19 year old girl with a white kindda bridal wedding type hat on. Not a veil, but, a strangely formal hat. Compliment the hat and we are instant friends, sharing smokes and complaints about the Republic. Crystal blue perfectly rounds eyes and short hair, overalls and Doc Martins. She lives in Belfast and compares the two cities. No comparison. Smokers cough of Hell passed off as pneumonia, she reads poetry and listens to Cocteau Twins and Pink Floyd. Smoke head? I don’t dare ask. Brown leather jacket, beat to shit and old is all she has to keep her warm and she reads poetry and buys my last stamps from e to mail postcards to her friends back home, where she is bound.

What seems like days and weeks and years is only two and a half hours and I am on the top layer of 2x layer bus, front left seat and the adventure continues. Man and son sit very rear. Son is having a lesson on money. “90 and a half.” But soon Pops grows bored and asks if the kid wants to go to sleep but like all kids, no.

This is so sick! 40’ in the air on roads of city design! Every bump is exaggerated. I hope the boat isn’t like this.

All the crazy professional traveling youngsters are here. They search kicks and I search Truth. The difference.

From what I have seen, these boats are no Cross Island Sound Cape Henlopen toys. These things mean business. Aircraft carrier size!

Trendy fuckers. “Daddy, send more cash. We make friends everywhere”, said with dizzy smile and eyes slightly out of focus and head swaying back and forth.

Luxury Liner comfort barge. Not Love, but Stranger Boat. This thing is incredible and for only £20! Large safety zone buffer areas surround each person or clique. Walkmen breakout and books amongst the singles and I am the only one writing. Pub rug, comfortable seats and couches around the walls and tables and a pleasant lighting, and warm! Hanging like loop-de-loop curtains mark the outside wall and pleasant voiced lady calling “Tommy Such and So, telephone call. Please report to the information desk.” Shiny like mirror metal stainless on ceiling for décor.

Holy shit! Jack just walked by! I am getting closer by the day to finding it, smoking butt like JK on way to just opened ship bar.

Irish women come in three flavors: Beautiful, cute, and stone ugly.

Meeting older people is easier than meeting the Youth because age brings Truth.

Watching the Irish-French 4-year old cute little spoiled girl go nuts on sugar and the already tired parents drinking pints grow even more tired but by god they keep giving her more sugar and wonder why they can’t control her.

The Youth safety margins filled in with older folks as time passed and we are under way.

Mother daughter and her son speak of dead relatives and eldest goes off when she hears I’m from CT. Long drawn out story of other daughter in Fairfield County w/ husband landscaping for Paul Newman and the Irish mother of the young sugar daughter visited Uncasville. All from spreading joy in the form of 20 free smokes to the daughter of the elder mother and even as far as matches to a cigar smoking horny father groping the mother while the son tries to remain blind to it. Oh, what that must be doing to his young head. Elder mother just gave me a sandwich and, joy! Truth and all comes full circle.

The boat begins to reel and I can’t wait to see the drunk’s reaction!

Bitter. What is this bitter feeling I have for people involved in living their own lives? Where did it come from and why? Loneliness? Spend spend spend on beer and things they can’t afford and video games even worse and more violent than those in America and drawn to the telly and food if it is available but why? £2.50 on a cheeseburger for a stuffed 10 year old, who, by the way, took two bites and threw it out! He told me he’s been smoking since he was 5 but changed his story and said that he had a cigarette which he showed me and said it was for a 17 year old friend who was stowed away upstairs. Bad, bad kids.

3:40AM and JK and party just got fresh pints of lager. I, eating a sandwich, realize that I do not need sleep. Christ, if Kerouac was Irish I would swear that this guy in front of me was him! Slumped over on couch and you would swear Ginsberg was sitting next to him, but isn’t.

In Wales, en route to Liverpool! 4AM. Bus driver is very skinny youngerish guy drinking tea. How did I with drug helmet get thru customs without a glance and innocent old man gets stopped? Kerouac and Ginsbergette are on this bus. All other backpacker trendies are going to London. Fuckers. Lame-os.

The Moon! I can see stars!! My god, am I happy.

Holyhead is the same as Ireland.

Up with a jump after 12 hours sleep, as that is the cheapest way to do things, and into the station for an hour’s wait for a train to Mallow. I’m starting to look and feel like real road scum, but I’ve never felt better.

Old bum knows Truth. Not bottled Truth, but spiritual. And he also knows on this Sunday morning that Truth cannot be found in the church but is out in the street with the people. And that Truth is found within himself.

As I entered the station, I saw a pigeon walking around eating up bits of whatever. Enter the Railway Man, with his mop to clean up bits of whatever from under the roost that the pigeons keep.

Two girls sit to my left. I brush my teeth in the railway bathroom. Soon but not soon enough the ticket window has a figure behind it. Ticket to Mallow via Limerick Junction by bus to train. Outside now, near bus slots, a bus pulls in. “I will miss no more buses! “, the Post Warrior vows. And he asks the driver. “No.” Back to the outside station wall and the girls come up behind me, saying “We are following you.” I must really look like a traveler! Pride and I am happy. They are from South Shore Long Island en route to London to meet friends.

Limerick Junction Station is small and cold and blue. This is one hell of an adventure. I looked at my black & white photo of Megen and I miss her. But I cannot bring myself to listen to her Death tape, as I must keep my spirits high.

My god! Some how, I got on the nutty weirdo circus car express to some crazy hell or worse. A fat, queer in the American sense strange-o sits to my front right, listening to a radio bigger than his already very large head, or gets up and runs up and down the aisle. The nut in back of me sits listening to the songs playing in his head and rocks his head back and forth as if to say “No”, but to a beat. Every time the conductor comes by he asks for a ticket “if you don’t mind” to someplace else and upon hearing the cost says “What if I said I know Pat?” and the conductor says “That is the same price I would pay. That’s fair (fare?).”

Fat tourist American executive and his wife sit three seats up and to the right. I think of my own parents traveling Europe and laugh. A crazy nut and his wife sit right in front of me. Testament to Irish inbreeding. What great fun! All look at me with drug helmet concealing three or two day old unwashed hair and terrorist jacket and crazy beard and all think that I am the nut!

The countryside is beautiful green hilly with cows and small trees growing against oldoldold walls of fence and farm. Late November and the grass and trees are still green! Thousands of millions of hundreds of cows everywhere in every plot and field, but where is the sun? Even the crows have a brogue and the black and white Heckle and Jeckle birds tell me that what I am doing is right. Soon to Castletownroche and the crazy John Seamus Pat cousins and Mum.

The walk into Mallow was escorted by a swearing mad Londoner who was roped into moving to this “primitive country, more primitive than the Wild West ever was” by his wife. Man, was he pissed.

Walking the back road to Castletownroche with a car every 5 minutes and no one stopping no matter what I did, save one crazy young 30ish man in a bomb like my ‘Bird back home. He was going to Castletownroche anyway, so no biggy and off we went at 50MPH around this skinny turny curvy back road, balling it up and down hill until we were in the town.

Into the pub straight away, greeted by John who looked at me and my big rucksack mess and I guess they don’t get much road suck Post Warriors in this tiny town. He failed to recognize me even when I told him I was here two years ago, but Pat knew me after he removed my beard in his head and I gave them the picture of their “Auntie Eilly” (my father’s mother) and the rest of the family, thus ending my Irish quest. But they still didn’t seem too hospitable until I ate some chicken and potatoes in three flavors and went for a five mile walk at a blistering pace with Max the Dog chasing sticks and Anne the nurse who travels the world and now I shall have a shower and feel much better as the sweat rolls down my sweat stained back, and I will feel better.

Cold, cold, colder the shower of ice washes over me slowly.

(Letter to Rich)
10:30 pub in Castletownroche. Band playing slow, mellow jams of Eagles and other American bands, and Irish covers, and their own. The drummer is playing some pretty good riffs. You bastards should be practicing, as the stone you gave me tells me that you are in the “studio rehearsal hall”. Pints run free, stouts of Guinness and a Cork Murphy’s, which is good and should go international intercontinental. “You guys suck” is all I can think, knowing the opposite. Sadness comes into my head via the speakers and a crowd grows.

Drunk and back only two drinks, one full pint I have paid and tomorrow I leave Castletownroche, rain or shine, and probably rain. The last 15 minutes of some old Laurence Olivier movie plays in the house parlor, after the pub closed. All I can think is that it is an American training film for greed, sex and cocktails.

In bed, under seven layers, SEVEN, of sheets, blankets, comforters, lays the cold Knight Post for a cold Post night!