Election Day

To the English observer there is a romance to American political campaigns that is almost electric. Like British elections, but on Keroac. They conjure images of unlikely podiums erected in cornfields of oceanic proportions. Of improbable political outsiders gripping clipboards on turbulent January flights in New Hampshire. Of incessant polling data delivered by blackberries and punctuated only by hasty campaign sex in roadside hotels. My job as a campaign manager in England involved coercing old ladies into stuffing envelopes. It was a world of desiccated office furniture that leaked pale stuffing onto the carpet. When it came time for an election in Massachusetts, it was something I had to witness.

On election day the weather oscillated lazily from snow flurries to sheets of rain and everything both in and outside stank of stale ice. Puddles of half melted slush lined the roads, streaked with motor oil. My friend H and I had arrived in Charlestown to campaign for Martha Coakley, an underwhelming technocrat who was running on the democratic ticket to replace Ted Kennedy. A run of misguided comments about the Red Socks (the Massachusetts electoral equivalent of beheading a kitten on prime time television) had left her tumbling into electoral oblivion. The Coakley crew were camped out in the plush headquarters of a local chocolate manufacturing company in Charlestown. Wrapped snugly in spirals of freeway and surrounded by a moat of gangrenous snow, it was almost impossible to make our way there. Inside were self-contained pockets of frantic activity, separated by gulfs of empty, green-carpeted corridors and vacant reception desks. Men in shirts with laminated passes hanging from their necks were simultaneously doings things and looking like they were doing things.

We were hastily plugged into a machine that automatically dialed the numbers of registered democrats across the state. All we had to do was read from a doodle covered pre-prepared script encouraging them to vote. After a while I had the curious sense that I was using one of those “teach yourself French” computer programs, so great was the detachment between myself and the prospective voter and so robotic was the experience of listening and repeating.

As the polls closed we followed the flow of activists to the after-party in The Sheraton in downtown Boston. A sparse gathering of glum supporters and campaign workers walked in figures of eight talking on cell phones in front of a vacant podium. Defeat hummed in the air. So empty was the ballroom that I could have walked up to the front of the stage unimpeded and lain down in a star shape on the carpet. A TV the size of detached house kept cutting to footage of the Brown campaign HQ, where a wholesome dead-eyed guitar band milled around before a blanket of tiny American flags jittering epilectically with excitement. When the election was called for Brown people hardly seemed to notice.

This week the state resembled a shy and inarticulate man who had just experienced some exotic yet harmless trauma; a carjacking, say, or a narrow escape from a rabid dog and suddenly found himself the center of attention at a dinner party. Not quite knowing how to handle the curious gaze of an entire nation the citizens of Massachusetts went to the ballot with half a mind of on the solemn duty of casting judgment on Obama and the other half struggling to keep from breaking out in a rash of grins.

I won’t go into detail about why an almost unheard of state senator notable for driving a pick-up truck and fathering an American Idol finalist went on to beat a respected Attorney General who, only a few weeks ago, enjoyed a 31 point lead in the polls. Or why, in what many say is the most liberal state in America, during a period of national democratic supremacy, a Republican found himself elected to the US senate for the first since 1979. It was a complex, mystifying election, whose result eschews any single explanation. But I think a cry for global attention from a small state that no one can spell has something to do with it. The Boston Globe touched on this here.

We left before the concession speech. Unsurprisingly we had seen little of the Travelodges, war-busses and cornfields (particularly the former which, in the Boston metropolitan area, are few are far between anyway) of American campaign lore. Rather, I left with the nagging sense that politics all across the western world is the same. Merely a bleak pendulum swinging meaninglessly from center left to center right for decade after decade.

Some thoughts on Amtrak

"And the sons of poor man porters, and the sons of engineers, ride their father's magic carpets made of steel." - Arlo Guthrie: 'The City of New Orleans'

A ten minute stop in the tiny mountain town of Alpine, Texas (above).

Some facts about about American rail travel:

- Amtrak is owned by the Federal Government.

- In the 2007-2008 financial year Amtrak had only 28 million passengers. Even if one assumes that each of those 28 million was an American citizen, and that each only travelled once, this is still only 9% of the total population of the United States traveling by train (unthinkable in Europe).

- Due to high fuel prices 2007-2008 was a record year for Amtrak.

- Five of the fifty biggest cities in America have no rail connection (Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; and Louisville, Kentucky). All five of those cities have populations of more than 1.2 million.

For this reason Americans are at their best on trains. Leaving Los Angeles on the train bound for New Orleans there was a carnival atmosphere aboard. As soon as the train started moving someone shouted "Are we there yet?" to guffaws up and down the carriage. The announcement about where the restrooms are located and when the buffet car opens were greeted with woos and rounds of applause. I spoke to one woman who was roughly my age and had never been on a train before. Not knowing anything about the motions involved in rail travel she had taken a sea sickness pill.

Unable to compete with cheap aviation and an entrenched automobile culture Amtrak has become a weird sideshow that few people talk about. Outside of the northeast corridor train travel unites a broad coalition of Amish vagrants, homeless drifters, plane-phobics, environmental activists, retired railroad engineers and people who are too fat to fly on planes. So strange is the mix of travelers that riding the rails feels like being a participant in a low budget reality TV special.

At some point on the train from Albuquerque to LA a gang of stocky Mexican teenagers joined the train and began to wreak havoc, terrorizing passengers and smoking by the luggage racks and generally being a pain. Meanwhile an elderly woman sporting a Russian hat and wearing what could only be described as a purple bath robe wandered up and down the isles talking on a mobile phone about demons. A few hours later I went down to the deserted buffet car to find the same woman standing at the front of the car lecturing passionately about demon mind control to the gang of Mexicans, who were sitting staring up at her in rapt, wide-eyed wonder.

"I woke up in seven different cities/With the same stain of ketchup on my kakis" - Herman Dune 'Seven Cities'

Although he has probably forgotten this now, my friend Jeremy told me to take photos of all the different places and spaces that I slept in and on during my trip. The record below is sadly incomplete. Partly because I lost my camera after the first ten days, and party because in some places I simply forgot.

Mircea's guest bedroom: Torrance, California.

I spent six nights "sleeping" in chairs such as this in different parts of the country on Amtrak trains. Sometimes next to strangers, sometimes with both seats to myself. In all I have spent 150 hours on trains in the last five weeks.

Extremely creepy deserted hostel in a shady part of New Orleans.

The squat/drug den in New Orleans (more on that later). Observe the passed out stranger on the chair. My bed was the cold hard bit of wood behind the bike. I slept there between the hours of 9am and 12 on New Year's Day.

The outside of the drug den/squat. This is a shotgun house in the Bywaters of New Orleans. The X outside is "Katrina graffiti", sprayed on by rescue squads when they searched each house. The house, which is usually left unlocked, had been robbed three times in the last six weeks.

Couchsurfing in Atlanta. The couch was usually draped with cats.

Couchsurfing with Stephanie and Swetha in Capital Hill, Washington DC. The apartment was above a restaurant where lobbyists went to lunch with Congressmen and women.

Row of houses in Capital Hill, DC.

Couchsurfing with Courtney in Colombia Heights, DC.

Couchsurfing in Bolton Hill, Baltimore with Gerry and Travis. A drafty ramshackle four story house which was a labyrinthe of cats and flat screen TVs.

Bedroom in Baltimore. It looked the setting for a nineteenth century ghost story.

Dropping the H bomb

So I stopped writing this for a bit. While traveling I found myself hemorrhaging imagination and sustained access to the internet. My plan now is to work backwards, writing a little about the places I went to. Both my followers must be thrilled.

After five weeks of traveling I arrived back in Harvard yesterday evening. The campus is currently a sprawl of sedate right angles, graying snow and not much else. Few people are back yet and there is not much to do other than wander around bored and dazed and feeling deprived of adventure and chaos. It felt strange leaving my room this morning without a camera, passport and a map of the local area.

It is eleven AM on a Saturday morning and I am sitting in the law faculty café. It is monied, marble and immaculately lit. The wireless connection is so good you can almost see it filling the air like dry ice. Someone is playing a grand piano in the lobby downstairs. Those who have just emerged from bed are wearing maroon Harvard pyjamas. Those who have been up for a while are wearing checkered shirts and are huddled earnestly over macbooks. The café is an eerie orchard of glowing white apples.

Sitting opposite me is a pallid slightly chubby man about my age who, despite wearing blue and black Harvard pyjamas, is still looking effortlessly preppy. He is pontificating about health care reform to a woman sitting just out of sight:

Twat in pyjamas: “Its turned into a conversation about socialism ya know? I mean there’s so much moral mandate there right?”

Girl out of sight: “That’s interesting ye-“

Twat: “And he is NEVER going to get the nomination for 2012. He’s just too divisive ya know?”

Girl: “Hmmm y-“

Twat: “I mean the Republicans are not even a party any more.”

I am gripped with the familiar feeling of being an undercover agent posted deep in foreign territory, and that I am only one poorly articulated anecdote away from being found out. I have a sudden overwhelming urge to ask the man sitting to my left, who is wearing a sleek, blazing orange, sweater pulled over a collared shirt, if I could borrow a pen. I don’t need a pen. I have cheap pens coming out of my ears. It is an urge to interact, if only for a few seconds, on equal terms with someone in the room.

I remember time after time on the road squirming my way through countless conversations like the following:

Grizzled old man/attractive girl/railway conductor/fellow English tourists in/on shop/train/bar/: “So are you just traveling?”

Me: “No I’m actually studying here for a year.”

Them: “In New Orleans/Altanta/Baltimore?”

Me: “No. Up north.”

Them: “Where are you studying?”

Me: “Up in Boston.”

Them: “No I meant which school.”

Me: (more often than not) “Boston University...”

Sitting in the law school cafe the instincts displayed above make logical sense. Telling people from the outside world that you go to Harvard is affectionately known as ‘dropping the H bomb.’