Applesauce

By DSK

This is DSK's second book with Page Publishing. The title of this work with Page is Applesauce. It is a continuation and explanation of his first work, Lemonade, and follows in the same mode of aphoristic storytelling. Lemonade and Applesauce are in the same set. There are many stories, or books--as DSK calls them, in both Lemonade and Applesauce. In Applesauce, there is a book about a transcontinental motorcyclist; a book concerning the preparation for a sea voyage; a book about some of the author's few accoutrements; there is a book about a journey by sea to the Azores. There is a book about German and American factories, and a book about more common transportation. There is a book on the economy; a book on a carnival festivity; and a book on actual American utopias--from cohousing to Earthships. There is a book about a major Tennessee branch of the Manhattan Project; a book about a lightning and thunder resort; a book about two veterans; a book about a youthful community; and finally, a book that represents a return to the existential experience of street life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887939674

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Applesauce

DSK

Copyright © 2023 DSK

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88793-959-9 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88793-967-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Author's Note

Book 11

Motor Head

Freeways

A Motel Court

Two More Motorcyclists

Morning

Book 12

Awakenings

The Pineal Gland

Bataille and Deleuze: The Anti-Nazi Nietzsche of the French Left

The Futurists and the USA

A Trawler

Eve

Let's Go

Provisions

Captain

Emerge

Book 13

The Author's Pipe

I have smoked all my adult life. I have smoked for over thirty years now. Today, smokers have been singled out for pariah status. At some point in the past, the majority smoked. When I started smoking, each restaurant had a smoking section and smokers could comfortably visit bars and coffee emporiums. Cigarettes and coffee are a dynamite combination for the workday, and alcohol and cigarettes are a truly contemplative, if mellow and nightshade alkaloid replete, combination.

The Author's Vaporizers

The Author's Wagon of the Folk

The Author's Sten

The Author's Green Papaya

The Author's Heritage

Book 14

Scrimshaw Sunrise

Ice

Morning

Zaahid and Zaba

A Close Call

Fish

Book 15

A German Factory

A USA Factory's Reification

Book 16

Transportation

Sub-Proletarian

Horror

The Frankfurt School

Literary Quest Knight

Book 17

Quiddity

Good Books

Physical Books

Electronic Books

Hyperlinks

Book 18

Carnival

Love

The Threshold

Birth

The Rhythm of the Mountain

Two Womyn

Different Strokes

The Festival

Growth

Book 19

Permaculture

Earthships20

Cohousing

Book 20

Tennessee

Book 21

Camp Lightning Rod

Book 22

Chet and I

Book 23

Sewing

Home

Book 24

Street Life

Alone with Penelope

In the Park

Skid Row

Damaged Buddha—Celibate Charismatic Itinerant

Penelope

Lust

Fame and Cocaine

Overnight Outside the Library

Spirits

A False Alarm

About the Author

Author's Note

When you read this text, you may come across words that leave you puzzled. I am uncompromising. While this is literary fiction, given the choice between coded, figurative, or ironic language, and an uncoded word that has a more precise definition, or more particular etymology, I will often choose the latter. I strive for concision and the well-turned phrase. I hope my work cuts deeper than coded banter—though I write in that mode too. I am always in search of the perfect word as I proceed from revision to revision in a process of accretion before the winnowing-down process of the final edits in which I pursue simplicity of expression and the significance and relativity of meaning. Ideally, the selected word is both precise and appropriate in rhyme and rhythm, literary, allusive, ironic, and even coded.

If you come across a word that you don't know, look it up on your smartphone. With the right smartphone application, you can look up a word's definition in a few seconds and sift through the permutations of the term through multiple research smartphone applications until your curiosity is assuaged. You will have learned something new about the text, and you will have expanded your personal word bank. To look up definitions, I recommend that all readers have a good dictionary on their smartphone. My publishing house, Page Publishing, recommends the free, with advertisements, Merriam-Webster Dictionary because it provides definitions, antonyms, synonyms, and etymologies. In addition, I recommend the free application Etymonline for further support on etymologies. Finally, you should have the Wikipedia encyclopedia application on your smartphone too for on-the-fly research. I use these applications frequently when I read and write. Your mental life will be enriched if you use these three applications regularly. Never stop learning!

Book 11

Motor Head

His lowrider was strictly for the solo operator. It only had one seat. He didn't want anybody on a rear seat to lean to and fro. This would disrupt his balance and the equilibrium of his ride. Crowding could be a danger and an impediment to safety. Ride your own, was his motto.

The solo bobber seat was contoured for comfortable hours of riding. Behind his seat, he had positioned a pair of saddlebags over the soft tail. One saddlebag contained his camping equipment and some freeze-dried food; the other held his layers of insulation, his rain gear, and a pair of swim trunks he would wear when he washed the entire mess of weathered outerwear at a laundromat or in a motel bathtub. At a motel, he would sometimes get into the shower, after a lengthy day's ride, with all his layers on, and then soap and rinse his road-worn garments as he peeled them away from his body.

Today, he was drifting south and west with the weather. The air felt chilly this morning, as he warmed porridge, and then instant coffee, on his portable MSR camp stove. He had added another layer, a windproof fleece beneath his coveralls. He began to pack up his gear.

First, he rolled up his self-inflating insulating sleeping mattress, inflatable pillow, and his down sleeping bag. He had been as dry as a bone when he awoke. The outside of the breathable bivouac bag was covered with dew until he gave it a good shake. For a few moments, all packed, he sat at his campsite's picnic table, listening to the birds' early calls and trills. The sun slowly crested the horizon with flat bands of azure light.

Sloth, as he introduced himself to others when riding, selected a campground, approximately 250 miles away, on the bike's navigation screen. Several winding two-lane highways would take him there. The highways were full of curves and elevation changes, so it was going to be a fun ride.

He tried to avoid off-road riding. He stuck to the paved roads where, at least, there was some semblance of law. He liked the campgrounds where there was sometimes a detective with whom to jaw. Out there in the empty regions, where you could camp for free, it was every person for themselves.

He straddled the seat, turned the key, and flicked on the ignition. The bike turned over, and then began to burble at idle. He waited for the temperature of the engine to come up to specifications, before he depressed the clutch lever, shifted the bike into gear with a boot, and then sleepily and clumsily released the hand clutch so that the motorcycle jerked forward.

Freeways

He travelled at a bouncy crawl through a puddle, and then on through the quiet unpaved campground. He passed through the campground's gate and on to the highway.

The reward of the road was in the intense process of riding itself. He had to be hyperaware as he carved through the curves. On a motorcycle, you leaned into every curve. Attention to detail left little room for error. The more you rode, the more natural this process became.

It was true that a motorcycle simply took up less space in a highway's lane than a car, so they could be said to be maneuvered through traffic with more safety. Passing between two vehicles, on the white lane line that separated them, was known as white lining where it was legal like in Southern California—and where it wasn't. He believed that the superior agility of a motorcycle made it safer than an automobile if used with caution. He avoided white lining except in case of emergency.

The power-to-weight ratio of a motorcycle made most of them quicker than an automobile. They were a fraction of the weight of a car, but they could be equipped with car-like powerful engines—inline fours and 1.8-liter horizontally opposed behemoths—in the touring models. This could lead to trouble, but he had the settings of his powerful bike's dampening software adjusted so that the smart bike's computer would eliminate both rear wheel spin and wheelies. The motorcycle could travel with more speed than he cared to risk. The powerful bike delivered a smooth power curve and artificially managed acceleration.

When he was on an adventure, time began to distort for him. Weeks became months. Months became years. Time became a flowing experience of his subjectivity passing into the objective reality of the natural world—now streaming by at speed—now at rest and in repose.

Today was more about drifting with the weather, with proper habituated mindfulness, than about distance. It was not a distant destination, the campground, but easily reachable within a day's ride.

As he had aged, Sloth had become slower, but more precise. He began to refer to himself as Sloth. The goal of his day was less quantitative and more qualitative. The play of his hands on the controls, and his boots on the floorboards, had become second nature to him. His motorcycle had become a precise extension of his restless mind.

He rode against a wind from the west, which drove him from one side of the seat to the other in the curves. He experienced a surge, as he accelerated out of every corner. He was reeling in the miles, unconsciously driving quickly on the dawn-empty rural roads, when his radar/laser detector went off as he drifted through a corner adjacent to a wide lake. He decelerated sharply, and rode past a police cruiser at a sedate pace. He had never been busted on his motorcycle. A ticket would disturb the quality of his ride. Sloth rode moderately. Their image came to him in a flash as he arced past the cruiser—giving them plenty of room. There were two police in the front seat of the cruiser—a man and a woman. They were eating doughnut holes and drinking coffee. One of them had a radar gun fixed on the road.

The police cruiser later pulled in behind him, and then passed him on a straightaway. He resolved to slow down and enjoy the rest of the ride. He set the cruise control to 55 mph for the long straight away.

The sun was up now, to the east behind him, and he felt it warm his back. Sloth stretched—arcing his back like a cat while gripping the handlebars. He drifted southwest, into the wind, as he followed the prompts on his navigation computer's screen.

It began to drizzle. This was one of the most dangerous times to ride on a motorcycle. The first light rain brought up the oil from the pavement. It was visible, as a light iridescent sheen, on the road itself—undulating in flowing moirés there. This was a slippery situation for cars and it was especially dangerous for motorcycles.

It began to rain in sheets and torrents. There was no weather software in the bike's navigation computer. The weather was tough to predict. A smartphone might have been handy, but he had left it at home because he preferred the isolation of the road and its requisite minimalism. It was one less thing to worry about. He flicked up the traction control rocker button, and tested his ABS brakes. They pulsated and gripped readily enough. Sloth slowed down even further, and then stopped beneath a concrete highway overpass to wait for the fury of the storm to abate.

He changed into his rain gear under the overpass. He