Grayson Ozias's travel diary

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Contents

Grayson Ozias's Travel Diary

Grayson Ozias kept wax cylinder records of his adventure across America. For the clues contained in the wax cylinders, see Wax Cylinders.

Intro video

I left my home and all I knew because I feared the complacency that was growing in me. I feared that I would be content to never experience anything of America beyond the city in which I was born. But after hearing Whitman, this complacency became unthinkable, and my comfort became my greatest burden.

This great man's portrait of our land emboldened me to conquer fear and go forth, and I have never regretted it, even now. Which is why it is my hope that these words may in turn inspire another to conquer fear, and abandon comfort, and seek their unknown.

Therefore, I commit the fortune I have made in my travels back to the earth from whence it came. I leave all I have to America, so that America might set out and find it.

Yours most sincerely,

Grayzon Ozias IV


"In September of 2009, Levi's verified the existence of $100,000 that Grayson Ozias IV buried.

He left it there for you.
And so did we.

Go Forth."


Cylinder 1

It all starts with the memory of lights on the Hudson and a wild cacophony of voices all around me. The sing-song banter of a thousand dialects hovered about my ear, calling to me. I'd departed the day's work at my father's offices hours before, having that day learned I was set to inherit the business. The effect of the news had brought about such impatient wandering that I could hardly remember how I'd come to be at that green door by the river.

Inside Brown's Tavern, I huddled alone. Two men at the next table, one Irish, one Dutch, spoke low to each other about old gold fields played out and new finds to their south, about the Panamanian passage and malaria's fallen. About places in America that might as well have been Siam, for all I knew of them. My mind drifted to the future I'd soon be tied to. Of endless ledgers and contracts, papers and responsibilities that would turn my city into a prison that might never release me. I saw that accepting this destiny would mean never knowing or seeing anything that the wild American voices around me spoke of. I realized that this, to me, would be a kind of death.

I looked over and the two men had left without my noticing, and under the table by the Irish man's chair was a postcard he'd dropped there. I reached over and picked up the card. On it were words that, though written to another, spoke directly to me: "It is all here for us, brother, if we go forth and seek it. Tarry not a second longer."


Cylinder 2

I remember my father's reaction to the news of my leaving. He looked like he'd been informed of my death, with me standing there before him. It was impossible to make him understand it. I'd wager he never did, and I guess I'm sorry for that.

But Nathan Strauss, my closest friend, understood immediately. He nodded and smiled like he'd been expecting it for years without ever saying so. Nathan was the last of my old friends that I saw before leaving. We met near the steamer on which I'd soon depart, in front of the place his forbearers had once arrived in America. He told me that the name of it had sounded to them like "Castle Garden", a place of noise and confusion, in their native tongue, and it certainly was that.

Nathan told me that he would look forward to my correspondence, and that his letters would be with his uncle Levi in San Francisco when I arrived there. Then he handed me that book, a book I'm holding right now as I speak these words to you. We said goodbye, and I turned towards the sea.


Cylinder 3

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