BRANSON
again it is very late, i am in high hill, missouri, i left publius/3 several hours ago in saint louis. i have no plans to regroup with him and i wish him the best. i sincerely hope that we can put all of this behind us for the greater good.
this was the last of my journalistic writings until i had reached a new point upon which to fix my life to.
it did not take me long after my rupture with publius/3 to get back my solitary stride. i resolved to continue on to the republic of los angeles county as we had planned. from what i learned in my last days with publius/3, clive had been a dissatisfied himself with the lifestyle publius/3 lived and had come to me only out of a loyal obligation at the time of his own departure. it also appeared that he had made his way west to seek a vocation similar to the one he had come to disenchant me with.
i made my way southwest to branson, missouri, our next intended destination, to seek out some contacts that i had jotted down while investigating publius/3's notebooks.
there was a tangible emptiness in branson. it was like many other similar towns of the time, pigeon forge, kissimmee, or las vegas, which had been small towns inflated with the manufactured tourism of male vocalists and policy-enabled distractions and had later found themselves left with the population they deserved after hordes of employees from the service industry evaporated into the countryside. there had not been many more hauntingly representative scenes in my travels than abandoned amusements and great halls who had not the benefit of reclaimed use found in the more geographically responsible locales. from a vast roofless hall, with a marquis reading mic y gil y, that was in turn filled with small manufactured homes (although i could see no apparent way for them to have been brought in), i was taken by a motorcade of go-karts to a remote end of the main stretch of road where i was able to contact clive. as i feel a great sense of gratitude and respect for publius/3, i will now, as i did with clive, maintain my silence about the events which finally distanced me from him. they are as unimportant to his history as they are to my memories of the time. it was thus established that i would join clive who had only been in the republic of los angeles county for three weeks and had yet to settle into any fulfilling vocation.
