Tips for Successful Hitchhiking

Posted on April 25, 2013 by marcbeaudin

I’ve been working on a book that digs up my old tales of being on the road, and as a consequence, I started listing tips for hitching rides that I’ve learned over the years. Here’s what I have so far:

  1. Don’t wear sunglasses. As Polly, the manager at the Winter Park hostel, told me the first time I hitched, “people need to see your eyes or they won’t pick you up.”
  2. Smile, though not like a lunatic, drunk or psychopath (a tricky feat after several weeks on the road).
  3. A small pack helps: too big a pack and people will think it’ll be a pain in the ass to stow it somewhere, and no pack seems like you are completely itinerant or a recent escapee from somewhere.
  4. Signs help. A sign with a town on it makes them feel that you have a destination, a purpose, rather than just being an aimless wanderer (which you are, knowing that “not all who wander are lost.”)
  5. Sometimes, a sign that simply says, “Please” works well.
  6. Make your signs neat, so you don’t seem like a lost village idiot. Use fat markers for thick, even letters. Bring several colors and a spiral bound sketch pad to make new signs for each leg of the trip. Get artistic. A fun and creative (but still readable) sign tells the driver you will be a fun and creative person to have with them for a while.
  7. Your thoughts are easily read by the people in passing cars. If you’re thinking, “Come on, you fucking prick, give me a dog-damn ride!” they never will. “If you’re thinking, “Hi! It sure would be nice to get a ride with you” they just might agree.
  8. When they do pick you up, your first job is to assure them that they didn’t make a mistake: you’re not a psycho or wack-a-do. Smile. Thank them. Try not to be too stinky; if you are, crack the window.
  9. Most people pick you up because a) they used to hitchhike and want to relive the adventure, b) they’re bored and either want to talk or want to listen. Pick up on the clues and either be a good listener, or be a good storyteller. People crave vicarious adventure; don’t let them down. But just as importantly, learn when to just shut up and enjoy the ride.
  10. If no one’s picking you up, sing. “Crossroads,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Big Joe & Phantom 309” are obvious choices, but don’t forget “Get Together” by the Youngbloods. If you belt out, “Come on people now, smile on your brother” with enough sincerity, they will.
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Old Poems, Tucked Away in Dusty Corners of the Internet

Posted on April 18, 2013 by marcbeaudin

Having work published online still feels very strange to me. The poems flash like a blip on a radar screen, then disappear into the dark ocean of too much information flooding our brains, eyeballs and computer screens. However, the poems are still out there, floating in minuscule life rafts, surviving on emergency rations and albatross meat. Here’s a map to the coordinates of some of mine that haven’t sunk yet. Give them a visit, they must be lonely.

Fragile Arts Quarterly

GlassFire Magazine
http://www.peglegpublishing.com/glassfire12/grandpascarecrow.htm

Pirene’s Fountain
http://www.pirenesfountain.com/archives/issue_03/current_issue/beaudin_marc.html

(Okay, this search surprised me by just how many have sunk. It used to be a much longer list. If you come across any others, let me know. Thanks.)

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Birthday Poems, pre-2013

Posted on April 16, 2013 by marcbeaudin

For the past several years, I’ve written a poem on my birthday that serves as sort of a barometer of my state of mind-soul, a winter count in spring. I just finished this year’s poem, composed while freezing my ass off in my tent up in Yellowstone Park. Before I post it, I figured I should post all the previous ones.

          Birthday Poem, 2009

A night filled with dreams of grizzlies
and waking to the sound of redwings
The landscape hushed under a fresh whisper of snow
Entire mountains
and the voices of sandhills
lost in cloud
Pancakes kept warm on the wood stove
eggs and bacon, strong black coffee:
Doug’s “Lumberjack Breakfast”
and I eat enough to fell trees all day,
instead huddling w/ a book and a mug
by the fire as the cats make their rounds
and the snow stops

Another dream: my father this time,
no bears, just something left unfinished

Magpies rouse me
so I open a beer move out to the woodshed
split logs till I’m sweating
and the big ax shines with the new flesh of wood
and the air is heavy with pine
and my beer is gone

I’m forty-one.
I have sixteen dollars in the bank and,
in my pocket, enough quarters for one more game
of Eight-Ball at the Owl
but I’m seventy-seven pages into my second novel
and another poem closer to writing the next one.
I have good friends and great family.
I have the mountains and the birds
and the bears and the deer
and the trees and the snow and the sunshine.
I have a good pen
and Brahms and Mingus and Mozart and Blakey
and another cold beer waiting inside

All in all,
I’m the richest man I know
and the only reason that it’s true to say,
“Today is a good day to die”
is because it’s also true
that today is a great day
to be alive.

                             –Marc Beaudin, April 14, 2009

Birthday Poem, 2010

Morning
and every window in the house
sings about the wind
as fragments of strange dreams
scatter for the shadowed corners of the room

Later, Beethoven’s Third
pounds ripples in my bathwater
contending with the wind
losing, thank gods, in the end

If the heights of human-made beauty
ever could best the earth’s power
then the depths of human weakness could too,
and the wind and all its music would cease

But now the Eroica has ended,
leaving a more beautiful silence
which is, of course, the composer’s greatest work
so I dress and step outside
to feel the air of another year
on my face and in my lungs

Juncos and magpies remind me
that we are all creatures of flight,
passing from earth to sky and back again
with every heartbeat and blast of wind and
turn of the seasons which move

with the perfect pitch and tempo
of the symphony of silence
which sustains us all

–Marc Beaudin, 14 April 2010

Birthday Poem, 2011

A night of rain gives way
to a morning of snow
falling reluctantly from hawk-filled skies

with a bad back I hobble,
slower than my grandfather ever did,
out to the barn to feed the horses
and break the pane of ice
that seals the water trough
I don’t pause to see my reflection
I don’t ponder the possible symbolism
I don’t touch or smell or taste the metaphor
offered by windows of ice
revealing the depths of life

I simply stab with my fingertips,
shake off the water and replace my glove
realizing that the last twenty years or so are a blur,
though every memory before that
is as clear as the icicle hanging
from a strand of the mane on the white mare

(the years now
pass faster and faster)

a single magpie
blossoms in an apple tree
a new year begins

–Marc Beaudin; April 14, 2011

Birthday Poem, 2012

Dreams of the Bomb over D.C.
but all we can find on TV are sit-coms
& action movies

A trio of swans at the lagoon
disappointed in me for not thinking
to bring them some bread crumbs

This picnic table says, “I Heart U”
but I don’t believe it

Fresh snow on the Sleeping Giant
glimmers like a new pair of shoes
as shadows are peeled from his face
w/ the plodding round-dance of the sun

This is another of those years
where I can’t quite remember how old I am –
it’s somewhere between 43 and Surrealism
but I don’t feel a day over Armageddon

Two days from now,
at the Boiling River,
an elk and an eagle will leave calling cards for my soul
& I’ll fair slightly well at being a gracious host,
but then,
there’s that pawn shop bike
I’d like to buy & ride all over town
to get my blood flowing
once again

-Marc Beaudin, April 14, 2012

“Birthday Poem, 2013” coming soon …

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