#interstate travel

[jwood718]

A little bit of the old prairie's scene, still extant on the new prairie.

Views along I-65 northbound, early on a Sunday morning.

The land of corn and wind turbines.

And of course:

Contemporary America: the Billboard Edition

R. Jake Wood, 2024

[emaadsidiki]

Joshua Tree 🥬 (Yucca Palm)

[unbfacts]

[annapolisrose]

Crossing the Columbia River into Washington state. Goodbye Oregon.

[williammarksommer]

Continental Divide

The Continental Divide series

Graphic View 4x5

Ilford FP4

[humming-fly]

This 4th of July I’m stealing the patriotism euphoria that’s usually associated with assholes idolizing the worst attributes of this country because fuck ‘em I live here too and remembering the things this country actually got Right is an important exercise when trying to rally anyone to want to defend it in November SO putting my money where my mouth is I’ll start easy and say I really like National Parks!! It’s rad how many of them there are and how they’re actual set up to preserve some of the most beautiful wild areas in our country while still letting people visit to enjoy and experience nature!! (Less important but I love how they put national parks on the quarters I think that’s real fun)

Feel free to add on if something speaks to ya!

[godsweakestsoldier]

Ava picking up an old academic journal from one of the second hand stores in Switzerland. Its spine slightly warped, cracked, with blue ink in the margins. Reading it in the most inconvenient places. Getting a few pages in when the bar slows. Ava who devours it, beginning to scour shelves, looking for anything.

Bea who comes home one day with a handful of journals. Stacks them neatly on the nightstand among the chaos that is Ava. Relishing in the way that Ava smiles when she sees them. Listening as she recaps articles ranging from biochemistry to sociology. Allowing her to talk about molecules during their sessions. Continually encouraging her to explore.

I just feel like Ava would enjoy academic journals.

[200kmealworms]

Girl you cannot disappear, not respond to my messages for like a week and then expect me to scramble to make space to have you over literally less than 24 hours later, regardless of whether or not we will have awesome gay sex during.

[pphoto]

Nevada, April 2024

[pynkhues]

https://www.tumblr.com/pynkhues/769329551222472704/im-a-canon-vers-loustat-believer-but-sometimes

This is a great point you make. In Paris Louis really is in a similar position to Lestat when he came to New Orleans. Louis is grieving Lestat, Lestat grieving Nicki. Both are protecting secrets about their pasts and looking for a way to keep living. I would even say that both are putting forth a bit of a performance with their new partners, though for different reasons. To some extent I even think Claudia has some parallels to Lestat in that way too. In trying to leave and escape her restrictive family life she ends up finding a companion that she gets to choose for herself. The cyclical themes are so fascinating

Thank you, and yeah, it's a really interesting parallel to think about. This feels a bit of a tangent, so please bear with me, haha, but I remember going to a lit event many years ago that had selected readings based around the theme of home, and in the introductory speech, the curator had said that they'd expected a lot of variation from the submissions to the theme, and there was in a lot of ways, and yet a central throughline appeared that home is a place you leave. It's something I've thought about so much over the years, especially as I live in a different state from the one I grew up in now, and it was one I thought about a bit while watching s2.

It's really interesting to look at in that context of the unholy family because as you said, there is this drive to escape home for both Lestat and Claudia (and Gabrielle) that Louis just doesn't really have. I think you feel that in what they do to escape these places that they're from, but I think the show also underscores that really in what a homecoming means for the three of them.

Claudia experiences her home in Rue Royale as a place of powerlessness and volatilty that can lead to violence, and returning to it steps her straight back into that ten-fold, just as Lestat experiences his home in France as a place of abuse, loss, and violations of his agency and autonomy, which he experiences again, ten-fold, at the trial in Paris, and for Louis, New Orleans has always been, despite everything else, the place where he had a family who he loved, and so of course he goes back and finds the only family he has left - his husband and the ghost of his daughter - there waiting for him.

It's tragic in a lot of ways, because I think there's this sense thematically in the show that the place you're from can change, but it probably won't change for you, no matter how many years you're gone, or the circumstances in which you return to it. Home is a place you leave, and how it held you when it had you will always be the arms you find yourself in when you're back in reaching distance, for better or for worse.

[hardlyaplumber]

Chicago feels like an inland port city.

Inland, because the sprawl of its streets reflect the vast plane of land one might need to cross to leave its sphere.

and a port, because the streets will turn to roads, which turn to dust, terminating in places far away, in distance as they are in time to me today.

in Slab City, just outside of Niland, California, the paved roads that make up its grid have long degraded to a point of uselessness. it is no longer worth to walk their sun-bleached asphalt, instead one has to walk alongside them, finding a path beneath the dust. I hope one day i will follow the streets of chicago, or the roads of this terrible country just the same. When the torrent of steel ceases to run, i will walk its dried riverbed unto a newer, older, place.

[emaadsidiki]

Mohave County, Arizona.

[crochetrica]

i fall deeply in love with everyone who gets in my car

four paintings by carl rakeman // everywhere, everything; noah kahan // on the road again; willie nelson // the relationship proving ground; terrence raftery // leonard cohen; boygenius // life is a highway; rascal flatts