We talked of all things artsy and of escape from places that suck. The whole time I felt weird and hollow, unsafe as though at any second Corvallis or my evil stepmother or worse might pierce the paper-thin skin of my back and fill me with some unspecified horror, namely that beast we call REALITY, such that Ruthann and my spanikopita and the blue and divine St. Paul sky were just a good dream from which I might at any moment awake.

Such is the space one sometimes inhabits when rising from an unsettling late afternoon nap. I survived it. But perhaps it was this very episode that convinced me that the time had come to chuck the anti-depressant drugs and reclaim my sanity as my own. The notion had for some time haunted me that my new-found confidence owed itself entirely to THE DRUGS and that quitting them would be disastrous. But quit I must.

Ruthann walked me back to my dorm and I bid her goodnight. It wasn't even dark, but I knew I was done for. Besides, I hoped that sleep would dispel the freakiness from my head. I hadn't slept more than ten hours in 3 days. It is no small wonder I was gonzo.

Friday morning I awoke and wrote my speech. Having no paper for my printer, I printed it out on the back of a Macalester map from our info packet, got together with Ruthann at the lecture hall and practiced it on her there. She loved it. Hooray. It was the first speech I'd written since college, and probably the first speech I ever wrote about something I really gave a shit about.

That evening the cars began to roll in. My best recollection of that feeling of "being back amongst family" was sharing a hug with Sheila. Sheila gives great hugs. Though her art car, Planet Karmann, had to stay home, she had flown in to speak at the symposium and join her boyfriend Ned in the parade.

At this point, I left the fold to join a couple of cars for a media gig of some sort and quite quickly began to wish I hadn't. It turned out the shoot was a live one, and that in order to be on TV we had to drive to the studio and await our scheduled slot in the programming. The whole thing was a bust, with Intermedia Arts representative Rachel doing the whole schpeel herself, attempting and failing to correctly introduce each artist, car, and theme in a 60 second live blip. If it helped lend local awareness to Intermedia Arts, then it was worth it. But for the sake of the artists, it was almost comical it was so bad.

But I wasn't laughing as we rushed back to Macalester, now late for the symposium and my speech. Luckily, I arrived with just enough time to calm myself down, have a drink of water and get Seven in his wheelchair inside the building. He alone of the Houston caravan bunch had arrived that afternoon. And already, thanks to some negative aspects of his trip thus far, he seemed to need the boost of confidence that I hoped my speech would give everyone. I wanted him to hear my speech, and was glad when he made it inside in time.

My speech for the 1998 Wheels As Art, Art Car Symposium, Macalester College, St. Paul:

HELLO MINNESOTA! Wow. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be here. Like all of us who travel far to do Houston or anyplace, just getting here was an incredible feat for me. It was 1827 miles of "I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN" with an engine pulling one and a half times its factory weight, and this twisted arm thing of driving and waving for 40 hours, but most importantly for me it was stepping out of a winter of severe depression in the Oregon rain. It was a gamble.

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Last update April 1, 2004