Everything Was Beautiful and No Highwaymen Hurt

It was night, wind a gusty torrent, ghostly galleon sailing and so forth.

Cold as fuck. Frost and ice clung on to every single surface, forks frozen, pipe frozen, booger froze in my nosen.

Some asshole had dumped over eight bunks of PVC sched 80 conduit into the back lot, a random act of stupidity, not an evidence of an over-all stupidity on the part of the dumper. Pipe of all sizes, ten foot sticks, dumped over and left over night for two nights, tied themselves in a dark gray love-knot. I had been equipped with only the shittiest of supplies, gloves a-shitty. And so on. Beautiful.

I built a new bunk of pipe, drug it from asunder, melded it in wonder. Motherfucker is six feet tall and eight feet deep. I hope I'm not, and somehow know I will end up, being the guy in a week or two who has to drag that PVC megalith inside and try to work it into the pipe corral.

At one point, the forklift, having found the drainage from a faucet left on for weeks, went spinning in the moonlight, careening in the moonlight, skidding in the moonlight and totally fucking knocked over a stack of iron 2 inch pipe.

I pulled in to the rollcage, barely saving my hand. The black pipe loosened in its casement and my face would have possibly burnt like a brand had not it been frozen. The black waves fell all around the forklift's breast in the moonlight. (Goddamn it, I wish I could see better in the moonlight). Fuck working in the moonlight. I'm pretty sure I shouted obscenities at the moonlight.

I stacked all that bullshit back up over the course of three hours, my hands freezing on the pipes. I lited the stack to a shabby former form and went to work on the PVC again. After a couple hours of wading through the , plaited, gray bramblefuck, I had another bunk built. I scooped it up onto the forklift after I used my truck to jump the battery that the cold had claimed. After rolling into the cage and lifting the bunk about two feet of the required ten, the forklift, victim of circumstance was dead from the blast of a broken propane regulator.

And so on. Beautiful.

Anyway, twelve hours and minor frostbite later, I would be home. But I will know that next time the wind blows a gusty torrent and the moon sails a ghostly galleon, and so forth, the rest of the broken bunks will wait with love knot tied in gray, woven plaits of bullshit.

11.9 hours (don't go into overtime!) of that shit last night. Fuck.

More Anthropomorphic Geology

Twice today, two diametrically disparate individuals have asked me the same question.

"Do you miss her?"

Interesting.

To understand the question, and the askers cannot, you have to understand the tumult of me and her. We were explosive and beautiful together. We were partners, team mates, lovers of passion and soul. I don't miss her.

I am not callous or heartless. If anything, though few would ever guess, I am excessively sensitive to a select few. Friends and lovers can attest to a softie of unmatched proportion lurking inside the shit talker, pool shark, beer guzzler, and guitar strangler.

Have you ever loved and missed? I move drunkenly that, with notable exception, you have not. As the puppy eyes and coy smiles are not love and neither the comfortable proximity, neither is the slight ache from a business weekend or a week of tittering argument "missing". I ask have you loved and missed the way I ask have lived and breathed the scent of the being and their absence?

I stood away from the world, chevalier defending a weak hearted damsel never out of distress. We loved as I drink this Stella here, thousands of miles from where we started and where we ended, habitually and with every fermion and quark of my being aching for more than can be taken in. The gushing emotion of a thousand parishioners exulting in their perceived divine truth could never match the trickle of her hand on my cheek. The slowest, weightiest glacier could never match the sheer force of our fights. She found a wellspring of passion I never knew I had. She found the fire that I repressed after it landed me in the cooler or in a heap of beaten flesh a few too many times. She loved me. She did, and though I still judge the validity of that particular catch-all word on the merits of her lacking, when I'm honest, I can admit that she loved me more than any other ever has.

Her eyes. Have you ever stood in a canyon and watched the rain fall on a sunny day? The azure sky, filled with falling diamonds, the golden grass, used to hold me transfixed in her eyes. She had beautiful eyes.

I don't miss her, nor do I love her. Let me explain.

When a man loses a limb, for reasons of nervous continuity, he still hurts in that limb. They are referred to as ghost pains, pains of limbs long incinerated in a heap of other removed human paraphernalia. Have you ever skinned a knee and felt the wind bite into it if it was exposed to the air? Imagine feeling the swirling wind, full of salt and wonder, smarting an open wound along your side and under your loving arm where a person had been amputated. She used to stand next to me, always cold, huddled against my thick side. When the conditions of war and so on tore us two apart, the ghost pains shot through that part of me, in my meaty side, where we had grown together and been torn asunder. I missed her as I would miss an aching and amputated leg, wishing she was there, or had never been there in the first place, but always stinging along the torn side.

So, though I have feelings that many who have never endured that life-losing love and love-losing life of her and I would mistake for loving and missing, I don't miss her or love her.

I feel emotions that those who live their life in shallow bobbing flotation on the surface of the puddle of feeling would mistake for love. I sometimes grow wistful for her arms in a manner that those who have never been mired in mercury waters and sand drifts far from home would mistake for missing her.

It's all just sad. I wish she had never been torn away or she had never been there in the first place. She is a ragged stump, rolled in salt and cauterized with hot iron. On the other hand, I think I got away more clean from our union than she did. I'm lucky, I guess. It could have been worse. I could have been her. I don't even know how she makes it through a single day.

I guess I should wrap this up. Sorry for the downer, just thoughts you have under a prairie sky thinking a thousand lives dead and gone back from the grave. Where will she turn back into dust and sand? I don't know. I have a feeling she already has. God save her.

IM Quotable quote

L. Gilmore, who has no intentions on my privates or on those of any physicist, has been a good friend for years.

Casey: "Don't you think caution is needed when using ordinary language to ascribe attributes to God?"
Casey: -Niels Bohr
MsL: "Fuck Niels Bohr"
MsL: -L. Gilmore
MsL: Make THAT a quote for your stupid website.
Casey: That's lame
MsL: It is not lame
Casey: Wait, you want to fuck Niels Bohr?
MsL: I would fuck Niels Bohr if he was hung like you
Casey: Now THAT'S a quote.

Pilgrimage and So Forth

The last installment of the Pilgrimage series is done. I decided to offer parts I, II, III, and IV in one file. It's broken up into four parts, clearly marked. Anyway, there, that's done.

That was a pain in the ass.

Here is the link: Pilgrimage

I figured I'd answer a few questions I anticipate now that that's all over.

Q. You were 12?

A. Yes, I was, I also wrote it down, or rather typed it in WP 5.1 on a Tandy 1000. I've always kept journals of memorable dreams. Obviously, I didn't write it so well at 12 as I can now.

Q. So, are there more?

A. Maybe, these things are long and I think they lose readership, but that may just be my kneejerk reaction to any of my posts over three paragraphs. Also, I have many of them written in journals, but they're very dark and sometimes a little too intimate for me to share with all of you.

Q. Are you crazy?

A. No, but sometimes my writing takes that direction, usually in relation to music I'm listening to. The entirety of the writing of the Pilgrimage series was done listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s, Yanqui U.X.O.

Q. Do you think you are/Are you Jesus?

A. No.

Q. Then why the dreams?

A. My life has a spiritual back story that you can't possibly imagine. I try not to write about it because there is no way for me to do that without your prejudices attacking a great and truly original people because their beliefs are not your own. Though my status within that group is sketchy, I love them too much to ever do that.

Q. So about that other thing...

A. February 17 or so, I'll be on my way to southern Iraq via Norfolk, Virginia, reactivated into the active duty US Navy. The best job description I can give for my new duty is either "Pirate" or "Coast Guard sans ROE". No, I'm not scared. Yes, I'll miss home. No, nothing can make me stay. Yes, I'll stay in touch as much as I can.

Pilgrimage III

The first impression I had was of blood.

Crimson stalks of satin drapes, shimmering with oily iridescence, fell from the incredibly high ceiling and extended out into the floor, billowing in the breeze of our entry. The light shining through the gauzy body of the drapes gave the impression of a pool filled with swirling, red liquid on the marble floor. The walls were of heavy granite and slate; men in black, ornate uniforms stood guard lined shoulder to shoulder along the wall opposite our entry. The motionless rank extended down the hall into eternity. They held a gaze above our heads and did not move. They were dead.

We walked forward slowly, every step a ringing gunshot in the large hall. The cacophony of the circling helicopters outside pummeled the air and quenched as the doors slid shut. The agency of authority had not detected our entry into the building, though they knew we were coming. The courthouse of the damned had no windows save small squares immediately below the towering ceiling. We began to walk toward the brass-framed directory hanging on the far wall.

The directory was in some odd, glyphic language. There was no map. Down the hall to our right, the normal bustle of border crossing was audible. We had not come through the correct door. We were not supposed to be here, and anyone who saw us would know it.

The air was shattered by clacking footsteps of high heels on marble tile. We had no escape. It would be a fight. And I was the only one of our group capable of the fight. I stuffed the boy behind the solid line of corpse guards and directed the girl behind him. I feigned confidence and told them to remain silent, no matter what. The steps were reporting closer and closer. I crouched in front of the directory and waited to strike. I had no rocks this time. White heels and a sensible, though glaring, white suit walked in front of me and stopped. She turned towards me. I remained in a crouch, though I did not pounce as I had planned. She walked up to me and squatted down. She was a beautifully appointed woman of commerce and business. Her flowing, golden hair fell around her face and her eyes were pale blue.

She smiled.

"Are you lost?"

"Yes."

"Let me help you."

Her pale hand, manicured and thin, reached out for mine. Her smile ripened and showed her perfect, white teeth. I took her hand and she pulled me up out of the crouch as she stood. Her voice was without regional locution and her face betrayed no heritage. She was refinement and salesmanship made manifest. She was a business woman, like they had in movies, and she wanted to help me, a poor and country boy from the beans and the rich, brown Earth. Her hand was smooth, without callous or blemish and her suit showed no stains from working deep in the soil or caring for the sick, the dying, and the children. Her hair was not knotted or streaked with the gray of a hard life in a hard climate living the hard faith of the Brethren. She was like no woman I had ever seen with my own eyes, though she was alive and well in the iris of a dozen projectors in the Cortez Magnificente Theatre.

I couldn't take my eyes off of her. "I have friends."

"I know."

I called the two, and they came out from behind the displayed death. The girl's face was troubled and she looked suspiciously at the woman. The boy, without question, comment, or even recognition grabbed my hand. The girl followed with arms folded.

"We need to get to the North."

"Yes."

We walked toward the bustle of the crossing, her heels reverberating odd the slate walls and dead guards, the drapes billowing after her swaying walk.