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.

Pilgrimage II

The car kicked up no dust. Thick bedding of gravel groaned under the accelerating vehicle plowing towards the gate. Despite my efforts to keep up, the car was escaping. My legs ground into the gravel and my lungs sucked hungrily at my throat. My sides were on fire. The girl and the boy stood still and white against the rich chocolate clay of the fields. They could not move without me. The car could not avoid them. The men would get out of the car and murder or torture my charges. I had abandoned them to the forces of the authorities intent on killing us three. The gate opened for the car and slammed shut behind it.

I ran up to the gate, climbed it, and cut myself open on the cyclone wire and jumped over. The boy and the girl were occulted behind the white car that was now parked. The doors were hanging open with well appointed, but entirely gray men exiting the vehicle. The well dressed and manicured set of ghouls were moving around to the front of the car. I picked up a fist sized boulder and ran up to the first suit. He turned his face, or where his face should have been, pale and gray, toward me. I leapt on to him and choked him with one hand and battered the side of his head with the rock. Without any resistance or fighting back, he fell in a heap, clear blood running from his crushed head.

The commotion had drawn the attention of the other employee. The ghoul pulled out his pistol and began firing into me. Pain seared my resolve into a solid ball in my stomach. I threw the rock into his face and he fell. My momentum brought me to his body and I fell on to him. My fists beat his face of their own volition while he struggled to get up. As his face became soft under my hands, he struggled less and less until he finally lay still. I stood.

The boy took my left hand, and the girl took the boy's right. We began walking to the North. I apologized to them for the abandonment and endangering. They were silent and following. The brown dust rose around our feet while the sky, azure and pristine, shuffled the clouds away, the Indian paintbrush exalted in our survival along the road in minute explosions of red and yellow. My fists hurt, but I never bled from the wounds in my chest.

The laboratory faded behind us into the hills. The walk was long, but we were almost to the river. Beyond the river was the North. Unfortunately, my foray into the parking lot of the lab had alerted the authorities to our escape. The North clouded over and the beat of helicopters reached us from the darkened sky. Under the clouds, forboding and cold, sat an enormous brick building.

As we walked closer to the border, we saw brick stretch away from the building on both sides into eternity. On top of the wall was concertina wire and men with guns out and dogs with red eyes. The wall was impassable. The North had only one way in and one way out: through the building festooned with potlights and sporting an enormous seal above the door. Two lions ripping a man in two underneath a haughty perched eagle were painted in gold on the noble red crest.

Our little troop walked up to the doors, massive steel plates the size of a house. With a friendly ding, the doors slid open for us.

Pilgrimage I

This is a dream I had years and years ago.

I was somewhere in the range of twelve years old.

The sparse landscape of Montezuma County stretched away on all sides. On all sides of the rolling fields of dark brown earth furrowed for the spring's beans, the mountains framed the surreality of the fertile valley. The La Platas, the San Juans, the Sleeping Ute, the sheer cliffs of ancestral sea mud to the South showed the gateway to the Great Monument Valley. We stood n a small swell along one of the nameless county roads that belted the emptiness of Southwestern Colorado. If I had to guess, I would say were were around Cahone.

There were two others with me, one girl a little older than I and one boy too young to have been in school. They were my charge. I had to keep them safe and get them north. We had to get to the North where we would be safe.

I walked along the rich, dark road and the way was paved with miniature explosions of Indian paintbrush and sunflowers. They weaved and bowed in the wind as we passed, worshipping the movement of the warm air. The sun was high and hot. Our shadows fell under us and the only shade was from the scrubs of pinon, cedar, and sage. I lead, but not from the front. I was on the right side of the road walking with my left hand taken by the small boy's right. To the far left, the girl held his other hand. They deferred to me, but I don't0 know why.

After an interminable distance over the swells and hollers of the stretching land, we came upon man. Not man himself, but one of his temples. Towering into to the sky with the imposing lack of any aesthetic value was a laboratory. The concrete building was a square but shapeless mass secreted into the open and wild land of my youth by greedy and hungry men. The structure reached into the cobalt sky and drilled into the ionosphere with smokestacks. The parking lot was full of cars. All manner of vehicle was sequestered in the lot surrounded by the high chain link and cyclone wire so in contrast to the simple cedar post and barbed wire that lined the rest of the road.

The wind stood still. The dust that gritted in our teeth settled down, but did not mar the shining perfection of the rows of cars.

Cars have always fascinated me. I had to get closer. I had to touch one and look inside, roll under it, feel the cool, steel skin. I found a gate and realized that the other two, for reasons that are more profound than a simple rule of existence can define, could not go in. They were blocked from the entrance guarded by an empty shack and concrete pylons by something sinister, spiritual. I told them to wait and I would return. I had to see the cars. The gate opened for me.

The cars sheened in the harsh sunlight of high altitude. They were so beautiful. a 1970 Bronco, a '68 GTO, some European contraption with the shape of a woman and the eyes of a dragon, a '63 Ford Unibody F-100. I rolled in the field, bliss found in the spotless chrome and glinting paint. I inspected each vehicle closely. While I ran my hand over the hood of an International Scout 80, the light changed. The sun had went behind a cloud. My reverie faded as I looked up and saw that the midday sun had become a late afternoon. This had all been a trap. There was an ugly, white, shapeless bureaucratic car prowling towards me down the lane of cars. The faceless car was dusty and heartless, owned by the laboratory. The drivers stared ahead, thoughtless. I ran towards the gate.

In the still air, I heard the engine rev and the crunch of earth under tires become steady. They were coming up behind me fast. I wasn't going to make it. They were going to run me down in the parking lot, my blood staining the gray gravel. Then the car passed me. I had not known terror until that instant. My life was not at stake. I ran faster, my lungs burned and my legs protested. Dread realization tore my gut in two. They weren't coming after me.

They wanted the girl and the boy.

Why the Next Few Posts Will Make No Damn Sense

My whole life, I have been plagued by dreams. Not really dreams, but semiconscious and semi lucid scenarios. In the dreams, I'm running from other people. I don't mean running on foot through a crowded mall, but packing up and running off to the mountains or the deserts because the entire force of civilization decides that I am no longer a worthy inhabitant. Often, I have to drag various people, the vast majority women, off with me. Often the dreamscapes are recognizable topography, though sensationalized by whatever mind games I'm running on myself. The mountains will be spired and vertical, the deserts will be scratched open aeolian sandstones and infested with snakes and poisonous lizards.

Even the dreams that are so benign as to escape my memory the next day leave me bruised and scraped from some battle I had to fight that manifested itself in thrashing or waking up with starts. I have been told that I often talk in my sleep. Always directing some nameless group or arguing some passionate point.

There are only two constants in these dreams. One is that they involve, in detail, a vehicle that actually exists in my real life. The other is that I always have to lead, an activity much like The Holy Cross Trail in that it terrifies me until I get my ass out there and do it.

I bring this up because over the next week or so, I'm going to write down the dreams I can remember before they go away forever. With someone there, laying out next to me, I never have those dreams. Someday, I might not have the luxury of these dreams. A warm body next to me takes away all those crazy missions and chases. That is why they are mine and mine alone. As much as I enjoy every sacred, dreamless night I have spent with a good woman, somewhere inside me, I know it won't last. It brings to mind the celibacy vows of Gandhi. He never wanted the love of an individual to override the love of all men that gave him his mission and life's work. Not that I'm pretentious enough to compare myself to Gandhi.

When I see life spreading around the canvas of events, I wonder if I can ever have anyone here without losing my sense of priority, my sense of responsibility to the bulk of humanity. My dreams may be taken away for a while.

Sometimes You Need A Quickie

I know I said I was going to be gone. I lied. I feel terrible about it, but when you look as good as I do in a red microfiber shirt, self-flagellation exudes a pretentious and simulated humility.

Microfiber has a purpose in this correspondence, though a small one.

I needed some pants suitable for physical training. The shorts just don't cut it here in my neck of the woods after September, and my knees are battered enough that cold can be a problem. All Sports Turbo Seven eXtreme Warehouse, or whatever ridiculous name they go by, had the best selection of jogging suits. I needed something simple and, above all, inexpensive. As it turned out, I had no real shopping to do, as my size is always the first one to be snatched away by greedy hordes of terribly ordinary men.

All preamble aside, if you see a man with no hair, striking features framed by the slanting evening sun of the high desert, sweat dripping and sheening in ways that awake parts of female neuro-centers and hormonal distributaries laid dormant by a generation of men who prefer tanning salons and designer jeans, you should not laugh at the fact that he is dressed as if the Bolshevik Revolution vomited upon him.

More to the point, don't laugh at his huffing and puffing from a year of lazy, civilian living.

Honestly, I usually write these correspondences for strangers and acquaintances and friends as a warm up to more productive writing, and as I enjoy outlandish goals I have no intention of keeping, I have a book to write before January.

That last sentence was very complicated. I might just need to go pour myself a glass of something cold, brown, and toxic. On that note, I'll start being productive.

Weekend Update

That post about staying or going was a saved draft from October, thus the angst I think. The reason for all that questioning was the opportunity to voluntarily mobilize for a year. Then I settled on staying, happy and in love with another winter of snow and warm blankets, even if there won't be anyone sharing those blankets.

Long story short, any person ever part of the military knows that they only give you the option of volunteering for so long before you're just voluntold.

Of course, this is all assuming that the way is made straight and the path lit through all the screenings and so forth. I'd give my odds of missing another Christmas around 85/15.

If I'm still healthy when the MED screen goes down, come January I'll be on the East Coast for a couple months and tentatively accepting offers for beer on that strip of salt wash. Hopefully, I'll finally get to see a couple places over there that I missed during my on again/off again relationship with the chowder states. Namely, I will see Philadelphia, goddamit. I'm a little bit of a history nerd, and a little bit of an understater, so Philly has always been on my A list. So was New York, and then I took care of that. Virginia, but I got that out of the way ad nauseum. The Spanish Colonial towns of the gulf coast bear my foot prints. It sure is nice that I'm a history nerd because a couple months after I arrive in Virginia (again), I'll be in the "Cradle of Civilization."

With a rifle.

Instead of the simple, and exponentially safer, detention facility duty that I could have volunteered for, it's looking like I'll be working interdiction in the Gulf. That's where we board vessels and search the ships for contraband arms and so forth. Boarding parties are historically a good way to get your shit dead. All of this begs the question, "How do I feel about all this?"

I wish I had some sophisticated and high-minded word to impart. I thought and prayed, if that's what you want to call it, and the best response I can come up with in regards to this news is pretty much, "Fuck yeah."

Maybe that's why a life of roving and fighting draws me like it does. I'm not saying I want to do it, but I can do it, and very well. That's motivating.

Honky Tonk

The throttle is twisted back to the stop. Screaming demons are at work under me, and a strung out angel is doing her best to hang on. Life is a commodity I do not appreciate fully, and Vulcan, angry angels of death are breathing chemicals in my blood. The four horseman of the apocalypse spin at thousands of revolutions in one of our earth minutes, propelling me at speeds beyond unsafe and beyond unreasonable. Suicidal and stupid would be more accurate. I'm 18.

Back then I had a few good timing friends who were pretty much worthless human beings. Andrew was one of them. The only reason I think we were such friends is that we had a tendency to get expelled from school together. We attended, to horribly abuse that word, a local alternative high school. They didn't like us, and we didn't like them. Eventually, I got in enough trouble that there was no use going back. Andrew met me in the parking lot and we drove off.

We shared several dead end jobs and untold cases of PBR. Our lives were simple and pointless. In retrospect, I don't even understand why we even hung out together in the first place. On the other hand, when you're going nowhere in life, you don't expect your friends to be beneficial to you. We worked the odd construction and landscaping jobs and threw away our paychecks in the bars and pool halls that didn't bother carding us. What was left over of our wrecked economies, I wasted on books and he wasted on swords and knives and other crap.

One summer, we discovered speed. Our lives changed drastically.

I was working a few nights a week throwing freight in a disreputable warehouse and he was selling wire work and bullshit little crafts at renaissance fairs. We were still partying out in the deserts outside of town, souping up our old Ford trucks, and swapping the kinds of girls that go for old Fords and desert parties. One night, we ran into a bonfire party with a warm keg of beer and some seriously interested women. The strung out angel was there, fucked up and dancing to Lyrnrd Skynrd's Simple Man in front of the diesel and pallet holocaust. Our beers were spiked with the strange new stuff and we enjoyed the effects immensely. I have always been told the dangers of drugs, but no one bothered calling the little pills speed, so I didn't know what I was getting into.

Besides blueberries and auburn women, I have no addictions. I never developed an addiction that summer, either. I just used the pills to stay awake or make the party last longer. When I got tired of them and figured out what they were, I quit. Andrew didn't make it out as clean.

The summer ended when Andrew had his picture on the news and a reward for information leading to his arrest. He borrowed my tent and some of my gear and stayed out in the desert with his girlfriend. I would bring him out some hamburger and bread and canned stuff and he would ask if they were still looking for him. We would sit out in the cold desert nights and drink cheap beer and Ten-High whiskey until the sun came up and I had to go to work. That summer, we had found ourselves wrapped up in the cash economy of drugs and parties, and he had went too far and got caught. I had bought a motorcycle. We were just kids, but that winter got cold and hard.

Later, I would memorize those constellations we were staring at and learn many more as I saw a greater selection of the Earth's available view of the universe from the world ocean, the cathedral of father time. But that night, the last I ever saw him or his slack-jawed girlfriend, all I knew is that the stars were beautiful. The strung out angel I had brought with me was inside the tent girl talking with Andrew's slack-jawed girlfriend.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," he said over the top of his can of beer. His face was softly lit by the portable propane grill I had lent him.

"Where you headed?"

"Nevada. I got a friend works the mines out there said he could get me on."

"Think you'll ever be back?"

"I don't know, dude, depends what they'll (he gestured to the glowing city in the distance) want me to do."

I was leaving town, too, but I didn't know when. I didn't know how or even why, but I knew. I predestined myself to leaving. Selah.

I stood and brushed off my pants and smiled, "Well, alright buddy, been fun."

He smiled back, "Sure has."

The strung-out came up out of the tent and shivered.

It ain't something you control. I waved to his girlfriend and jumped on to the red demon. My temporary life-guest crawled on behind me and put on the helmet. I put the bike in neutral and pressed the starter. The four horseman leaped up into a whine.

Stratocaster hearts and hard wired souls. On the interstate now, going home from that desert, I have the throttle twisted back until it wrenches my wrist. De Beque canyon screams by and I'm going way too fast. The speedometer goes up to 140 and it has been buried for six miles. The foot pegs leave a valkrye train of sparks behind me when I cut into the corners. Her head is nestled into my back out of the wind, she's too fucked up and in love to be scared. I won't ever hear from Andrew again, because he wouldn't make it through the next five years.

It's live and die rock and roll.

_________________________________________________

Ray Wylie Hubbard, Live and Die Rock And Roll

Debating

Stay or go?

Stay.

Why?

It's safer.

I hate safer. Safer is the whole problem I've been having.

You hate it there.

No I don't. I liked it. It was a nice place, just sort of hot and dusty. But gun oil, desert skies, men and women who live life, the way the derricks lit up the sky at night, that was beautiful.

It will be another year of school postponed.

True. I don't want to be in school till I'm thirty.

Another year of your life gone.

What life? The life where I scrape and scramble for every little two cent income I can grab and spend every night in my house watching PBS? Is that really something that shouldn't be interrupted?

You could die there.

I could die here.

Why do you even want to go?

I don't. But I have this part of me that needs to go. Besides, they want me. No one else does. They could give me some people who think like me and walk like me. What would that be called, a yearning?

Insanity?

The pay is good. I could really use the money.

Do you remember the ache of being away from all of it?

Away from all of what? I had something to come home to. I had a wife, a dog, a house. I had a life. I had something that drew me home. All that's gone, now. I have no reason to live here and do this anymore. I hate it. I hate the day in, day out bullshit and the Home Depot orange. I hate school and I hate that the really cool people I know are all so far away. I would be able to see Jim, and VA again. I could reclaim that place from Her, and make it mine. I could erase everything and just lose myself in the sand. Again.

This is a terrible idea.

I know. It's only a year. It's only one year.

So, stay or go?

Bravo Sierra Delta

Yes, it is one of those days. BSD Day. Everyone has them.

That term, BSD, goes back to a former life I had. It was a crazy life where rigorous physical activity was combined with bat-shit crazy and rolled around in booze and disreputable women in exotic locales. Bake for eight months at 140. Serve hot in Perth.

I come up the ladder with an eighty pound rack on one shoulder and carrying a fifty pound maintenence box in the other. "We got it, burned relay. Changed it with 3r from 104, knocked down the 138, and jett checked it. It's up and ready."

'We got a warbird, son!"

"Yeah we do, jefe."

"Goddamn, Natural, you havin' a BSD today!"

Side note: every person I have ever known in my old line of work had a nickname. Mine, inspired by the fact that I would buzz my hair down to fuzz every time we went anywhere, was Natural Born Killer.

Sorry for the departure. Ah yes, BSD Day.

Say you nabbed a girl that everyone would be talking about, in a good way, for months. BSD Day. Say you jumped through hoops of fire and managed to get a go up and gone with all manner of challenges to face. You're having a BSD Day.

BSD is about ego, but the kind of ego that doesn't whimper for attention, it merely sits in place staring at the world with one appreciative eye and revels in the world's appreciation of it. BSD Day is the day you walk across the green fields of conquest without stopping for self-criticism.
When you have one of those days where you just feel like running a marathon in your jeans and work boots to show those pansies with the band-aids on their nipples (runners are weird) who the fuck they're dealing with. On a BSD Day you walk a little taller, talk a little louder, and neglect not the oppurtunity to pursue the opposite sex.

There is something aiding and abetting your success on BSD Days. Confidence lights up your eyes and screams out your approach to the rest of the huddled mortals. It's Big, and it's Swinging.

The onset of a BSD Day is usually something that seems a little benign. A friendly game of flag football at Thanksgiving that ends in bloodshed and half hearted laughing apology. Realization of a newly found single status. Realization of a newly found attatched status. Killing something big. Working a composite function the size of Rhode Island with pencil and paper algebra. Concussive detonations and mass conflagration (this one might just be me). The day after you invite the girl over for a three course meal, a little too much good wine and things end predictably. All causes of BSD Days, at least in my own life.

Today, I have:

A) Set the curve in anthropology (paranthropus boisei, bitch!).
B) Rewrote the damn 113 test.
C) Correctly identified the piezoelectric response of tourmaline and indentified correctly willemite, zincite, franklinite, and calcite matrix.
D) Moved over twelve thousand pounds of freight. Over three tons by hand.

Sure, nothing blew up and no one died, or even got all that bloody, but it's all I got right now. And I have to tell you, BSD is in effect. At least today. This might also be the fault of some girl, who knows.

Or maybe I'm just being egotistical. It can be difficult maintaining humility when you are me, but you are not and probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

No title for you

Thanks for putting up with me this month. Octobers are rough and I normally feel like dying by the time it gets going good. This month was made ten times worse by a catalyzing spark of a miserable anomoly. Obviously, this involves a woman.

Things are picking up.

They aren't perfect, but they've come around. I don't have much to offer as far as writing at the moment. Sooner or later, I'll find myself inspired and on the Internet at the same time, but I've been burning up some creative resources on a side project.

I'm considering whether or not to undertake a huge endeavor next month. It would fall on the run up to finals and I don't plan on having any time off any time soon, so it may be a doomed proposition. The heavy handed palm-slap of this month has yielded some writing ore that may not be gold, but possible mid-grade native Cu.

While the terrible crash of October is over, I have to warn you that April may not be a happy field of poseys, either. Obviously, a woman is invloved.

Fuck October

October is drawing down, at least a little. Everything is still halfway dead, but at least it snowed this morning. I hope this whole fucking place is socked in this winter.

Went down Cortez way this weekend. Besides weddings, I can't think of anything that turns my frown upside down like a good anniversary party. Especially when it's for some ridiculous number like seventy years together. I made it one thirty-fifth of the way as far as my grandparents have. I suck. Then they had to hug on each other and kiss and smile all the time. I didn't punch them, but only because they are old.

I walk down the street, no gloves again, snow finding its way into my collar, and see all the people who are huddled close with someone special against the cold. I don't punch them, but only because my knuckles get real sore in the cold.

My brother wants me over for dinner. It's not that I don't like him or his wife or his kids, but I hate seeing his perfect little happy family. He has four beautiful children and a wife that's worth keeping. They sit around the dinner table and offer thanks for the food. They talk about work and school and my brother teaches them in the ways of the world. After dinner, he goes downstairs and builds a fire while the kids sit and watch. He tells them stories from when we were little. They soak them up and turn us into something we are not, but something good for them to believe in. Last time I was over, the oldest daughter asked me if I had a girlfriend. I chuckled and told her that I didn't. She informed me that her parents would not allow her to have a boy friend stay over at night. I told her that was probably a good thing, as boys and girls do not have sleep-overs. She asked me why I had girls sleep over at my house. I had no idea what she was talking about, of course. Then she described my "friend" who had slept over once, long ago. The tall, blonde girl that smoked. I didn't punch her, but only because I was too sad.

I lost my driver's license, the physical card, not the priviledge of driving. I lose things when I've just got too damn much on my mind. The lady at the liquor store carded me, of course. It makes sense, I shaved my beard off, so she probably thought I was buying the twelver for my eagle scout troop. When I walked out empty handed, I was pretty upset. I didn't punch her, but only because I was too sober for it to seem like a bad idea.

So, if you wonder why this post sucks, it's because I'm sitting here, with snow down my back and knuckles that the cold causes to hurt from a life that was a little rough, dead sober.

Fuck October.

*****************************
Update: MP3 Player broke, this is bullshit.

A departure from the grimy depression

Buddy Guy just started playing The Devil In Her and I just killed that last glass. On top of that, I remember someone, somewhere trying to define men, but more importantly find out what they want in women. A nice turn of narcissistic speculative metaphysics, there.

Therefore, I'm drinking and Buddy Guy just fired off a swampy, black-hearted song about a lascivous woman. I'm no longer angry or depressed, though I know it's right there, crawling under the door, sniffing for the first sign of fear and weakness. Let it come. I have memories and appetites requiring attention.

What do I want in women?

Teeth on collar bones and hands under the strap of her thong concealed by tasteful clothing, for one. I'm a carnivore with a sweet tooth when it comes to women. Meaty and true and substantial in the soul, I love that, but they have to have some syrupy quality I know will drag me into states of nausea later with sickening sweetness. But goddamn if that clingy and shy smile brings me down. Or up. Depends how I feel about life just then.

Me and this girl were pinned by our own weight into the door of a cheap hotel in a cross town Cortez casino with no one to control us but self-control itself. I had my mouth on her neck and she had her hands under my belt. She was mostly dressed just enough to ruin a guys morals. I'd spent the afternoon and evening at an old fashioned singing, four part harmony and sacred thoughts and feelings shared between me and God and congregation of archaic religion. I sang my part, a little baritone and a little bass, but always low, always in a state of predation after the belief, the mystic that I yearn for in this cold world. After that yearning is gone, there's a girl with some rum in her glass at the blackjack table and her own conscience to kill. We cajoled ourselves into a state of high humanity, me being convincingly the heavy handed hunter and her the rabbit losing all will to run. She shoved me on to my back and followed me down to the floor.

She got the Devil in her, I guess.

I don't want any more meaning in life, I don't want a mission, I don't want no Goddamned home made vegetable soup, unless any of that shit's got a metaphorical meaning that needs my attention. Don't get me wrong, I love long conversations and the way a phone makes my ear feel after a few too many hours on it, but right now, right here in the Fall sun with my blood full of brackish rocket fuel, I want something less worthy of philosophical talk, but more profound. Fuck a conversation that stoops to the stodgy level of breath blowing past a box full of muscular fiber in our throats. I want to hear breath so ragged it misses any mechanism for intelligent communication.

I met a girl at the airport, once. Some crazy airline bullshit had lost my guitar and my clothes, but I left the nice lady at the counter telling me she was going to find it when this girl, this apparition, walked into the terminal. Without a care that I own very little and most of it was lost, me and her turned into annoying mall teenagers right there, in front of God, the Devil and everybody. Mouths and hands were exploring new and unknown galaxies. The clothes became a non-issue shortly after walking into her home after the long, painful drive from the terminal. Our bodies were unearthed mysteries and salvation for grinding carnality.

She got the Devil in her, I guess.

It's a beautiful day. I have a phone number and some spare time before work. It may be a beautiful night, but if all goes well, I won't see it to care.

God may still live in Lewis, Colorado, there to stay with four part harmony and dinner on the ground, but right now I hope like hell there's a devil. I just may need his assistance tonight.

My phone just rang. It must be the cold, Autumn sun.

She got the Devil in her, I guess. And she says, with the way she won't take no for an answer and with the catch in her voice, but not in her words, she feels like doing something wrong.

A letter

Friend,

You picked a tough row to hoe, and I'm sorry that this is what you have to go through. Today's going to be tough, but then again, so is the rest of the year. Know that I care about you and that I'm here to talk to. We may have been growing apart for a while, but that doesn't mean we've speciated that far away from who we used to be. The people we were when we could talk for hours on the phone about pretty much nothing. Obviously, some of our old subject matter is off limits.

I'm not jealous of what you're going through now, but those couple of months of domesticated bliss must have been great, and I felt a twinge of envy. I remember playing house with you, and you make a fine living companion.

You should know that when he comes back, and there's no reason to suspect he won't, he'll have a hard time. The adjustment to living with a woman is not easy for a guy returning from an environment such as that. He'll still love you, even when he wants to be alone, and even when he just wants to hang out with somebody, anybody who knows where he's been and it won't be you. You'll catch him leaving your room and your continent in middle of a conversation and you'll know he's off, away from you, away from TV and Denny's and the predatory used car lots (E1 and up financing!) and used, stripjoint harlots that sit right outside the gate. After an initial rush of joy, he'll hate the country he went to serve for a while.

It doesn't happen to all of them, but understand when he has to hide his eyes from you or pretend something's in them when the colors are paraded or a filmaker utilizes pandering, patriotic bullshit that catches him in places he has reserved for deep and personal tears.

You'll both be changed. If you stick to your goals, and enslave yourself to the treadmill the way you plan, you'll be frighteningly independent. On the other hand, that slavery will lead to your unearthed "sexiest mama." Your wording of those goals is adorable by the way. You'll be the kind of woman makes a man stop, throw back his head and howl; smooth, red lips and liquid hips, seems more than the law would allow, in the words of the Ray Wylie Hubbard song you liked so well.

Be true to him. If you are not, you may not lose him, but you will lose me as a friend. I would never talk to you again. I know you're not Her, but to me, when I'm being honest, all of the women with a man somewhere else, fighting, are Her, at least a little. You're stronger and don't have the same habits, but temptation will be there. Never from me. Never, ever, till this Earth is swallowed by the forces of an exploding sun, will I ever be a threat to that virtue. You already know that, but you might let him know when the twinges of jealousy that turn into pangs of fear grab him while he's so far away.

He's doing his job and his duty. And when he comes home hating October, just let it go.

I'm holding a little piece of myself here, away from the hate and the depression and the alcohol, for you. For what you need me to be. My phone's always open, and I'm strong enough for you to weigh me down. Come to me, tell me your anguish, lay your burden on me, I can take it. I'm a pretty stout individual.

I will be praying to a guy I don't believe in much for you. For you, I'll pretend to have faith.

I miss you, and when I'm drunk on cider at sunrise and don't need a teleological definition of the word, I love you. I'm here for you. And him. Tell him I'm buying the next round when he gets home. Dawg.

More joy

Alright, so I decided to make some concerted effort to take down the specific gravity of my little site here for a few days, but it isn't working. Any effort I have ever made with that goal in mind came off as pretty lame, anyway. So, for reasons that might be clear later, let's just assume anything I write in October will be hateful and crazy. That's just the way it is.

I hate October. I hate it with a passion I usually reserve for hating commercial radio and Toyotas. The sense of impending doom and gloom drags me down into a deep seated fear of another year going away. October is the month of loss without hope of renewal. October is when the niceties of summer give way to the cold and dark nights of winter. I didn't used to mind winter, but I usually had some form of accompaniment to keep the chill out. I shouldn't say usually, since that has been a singular unlikelihood in my adult life. Whether it was the nasty Chicago winter when I was twenty or the long, cold winter down RimPac way, I knew they were going to be miserable by the fact that they kicked off in the godforsaken month of stupid people dressing up as morons.

A quick tour of the bad things I have dealt with during the winter over the last few years:

10/05. Transitioning out. Go ahead and think it's easy.

10/04. Going somewhere for the Holidays? Sure you are. CVN 72, bitch. Merry Christmas! How about Happy New Year '05 down in the death smelling waters of Indonesia littered with corpses!

10/03. Have fun being assigned duty as a prison guard, try not to get attatched to a bunch of guys who are getting their lives fucked by a bunch of elitist prick officers. Make sure someone you love comes down with an incomprehensible disease. Then have your Toyota have a design flaw blow chunks of expensive, foreign parts out of the engine block. Make sure the cost of repair is five months pay.

10/02. Goodbye, wifey. Hello Connie. USS Constellation, that is. While you're at it, throw in a war. And your best friend dying.

10/01. OK, this one was alright. Except the part where they told us we were deploying two weeks after we got home. Fucking Osama.

10/00. Bootcamp.

10/99. Broncos go 6-10.

Octobers have held particular angst for me over the last four years for obvious reasons.

Some nights I can't sleep and I don't know why. I've lost twenty pounds since the first of the month and I don't carry that much extra. I blame it all on the cold and on women and on money, but it comes down to the simple fact that I'm in the wrong place. I miss my guys. Milf, Coleburg, Frank, Bart, Little Bart, Crispy, Flower, Gunner, Chief, all of them. They're not doing any better than I am, I know it. I can feel it. The old friends I stay in touch with are having the same problems. We all feel like part of us missing and we need to find it. A call has went out through the haze of oil fire and jet noise.

I know where it is. It's sitting out there in the sand and fire. My body came home from that fucking bullshit, but my soul still belongs there, in the action.

She sat on the porch to our small home with tears running down her pretty face and cried through the cigarette smoke and the California haze, "You changed. All you fuckers changed. It's like you never came home from...that shit."

I didn't accuse, but asked, "Are you sure it was us who left a part of us out in the Gulf? What did you go through while I was gone?"

It was terrible on her. She never answered, but the tracks and hollowed eyes told me what I needed to know.

Years later, we were supposed to be preserving life for a change. The aftermath of the Connie had run its course and I had no one to go home to this time. I looked over the rail into the prairie fire sunset. When I first saw the families float by, bloated and devoid of the golden shine that they would have had, down there by Thailand, it reminded me that some people are lucky enough to leave everything in the waters of the world ocean to be consumed by the engines of life. Some of us only leave half of ourselves out in the blue.

Proofreading saves a lot of trouble

Yeah...uh...sorry about that.

See, every six months or so, I have a one man holiday called "Crazy Veteran's Day."

I should have seen it coming. I've spent a lot of time out hiking and dammit if my camo field jacket isn't pretty damn comfy. Oh, and my hair has been getting shorter and shorter. Sorry to subject you all to such a rant. I'm better now, I just had to get all of that out of me.

I better news, I found my old stash of pictures from the last couple of years. I enjoy photography when I can afford it, so some of them are decent. Sharing photos is the only real marketable value of the medium. Therefore, expect a few to be popping up shortly.

Once again, sorry.

I meant this to be short and happy

This might be a little too long or a little too short. I'm not working off an outline, here, just being honest. At the moment, I'm thinking it likely there won't be too many more posts here.

I have never in my life, which has hardly been a gilded path, had so many bad days in a row. I don't know what's going on with all this. I keep having a string of disappointments gang up on me and beat me down. The challenges may seem minor to all of you, but I don't deal well with interpersonal drama. You need me to run three miles on a broken toe, no big deal. You need me to kill a bunch of conscripts and civilians and sleep at night, I can do it, mostly. You need me to beat the holy living fuck out of someone or have the holy living fuck beat out of me, I been there before. What I can't do is deal with ordinary people in an ordinary disappointment for more than a day at a time. I hate it.

I can blame it on a lot, this little inability of mine, but I place it mostly on the last six years. What I did for the last six years was different from a terrorist in manner and sponsorship only. I still have dreams where we're all just glowing white hot spots against cold black sand in a FLIR pod, give it a flash of what I was very fucking good at, and then we're just white blobs of moist heat, draining a stream of white into that same sand. I gave my life over to it, the job, but what I didn't realize is that I was giving over was my conscience. I hate it. I respect human life more than anything, and I want to devote my life, what's left of it, to preservation of life and keep it from mindless destruction.

Then I get drunk, usually with another pretender to humanity like myself (same haircut, anyway), and I feel the rush. The rush a person accepts and lives when they are on the number one team in the sport where you don't lose points or games. You lose lives. And I was among the star-players in the televised event. Here and there, a rifle may take a life or a grenade dismember someone, but thousands of pounds of matrix delivered by systems that just don't miss is what wins the game. What won the game.

I high-fived and cheered watching the after-action assessments and making our estimates of how many actual and collateral lives had been lost and establishing financial cost of equipment destroyed. We were out there doing Iraq before doing Iraq was cool. There was no war on terror and September 11, we were just fucking up a bunch of unwitting combatants for no Goddamn reason. Came back next year and they called it a war. CNN was watching us work. Letters poured out of the cities of America, England, Australia, Singapore telling us they were proud to get to know us.

Let's be brutally honest here, killing people is fun. The conscientious aftermath is not, but the act, the team scoring the ultimate touchdown, is invigorating and fulfilling. When I watch football and see the faces of those around me aligning themselves with some team of people they've never met, I see it all over again. If they took away the rules and gave John Elway an M4 and the Raiders AK's, and Jason Elam a carrier air wing of his own, the fields would change from friendly green to bloody red and hazy, but the faces of the spectators wouldn't change. Your team is winning.

I don't have party to the death of anyone anymore. I've been home long enough, I quit having to hear that I'm a hero. I have my old medals lined up along my desk with the ribbons growing dusty and the copper and brass getting tarnished. My old red shirt that meant everything to me not too long ago is collecting dust on a rusty nail. My old wedding ring sits in a dish I reserve for spare change, sits on top of a Dinar and some mystery coin with Asian characters. My trophies of a life that cost me my own small family, and the ability to deal with all these fucking civilians and their fucking bullshit sit about eye level from my chair in front of my computer; Armed Forces Expeditionary, with three clusters, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Good Conduct, Sea Service, three clusters, GWOT Expeditionary, GWOT, Homeland Defense, Joint Defense, one cluster, Humanitarian Service, Military Unit Commendation, Naval Unit Commendation, Expert Rifle, Expert Pistol, achievements here, commendations there, citations sitting in a tupperware bin in my closet; In the words of Paul, I have nothing.

The other day, a girl stuffed full of a margherita pizza I had made and some wine I didn't want to open, happened by my desk.

"Those are pretty."

When I get asked why I did everything I'm only proud of when no one is looking, I usually give them some bullshit answer about college money or travel. So now, being honest, the truth is more complicated. I let my innocence and respect for life, I let my ability to be optimistic about humanity's plight dwindle and die, for a bunch of reasons. I did it for you guys.

Please don't thank me. I think I was duped.

Sorry for the Crazy

You'll notice over the next couple weeks that I won't update. There is no need to worry. More than likely I am not dead, though in two or three weeks who knows what can go down.

Basically, I have some shit I need to do. The biggest of it is to get my head back into the game. The real life game, not the Internet and cell phone bullshit game. In fact, I am going on a little bit of a fast. These are important in my raising beliefs. Anytime you felt you had slipped out of touch with God, or you had a general foreboding about the future, or you heard knocks that I won't even bother explaining, you went on a fast. Or when times got tight and you needed the assistance of the Divine. While I don't really believe in God, and don't plan to start, I think the idea is sound. So, I don't believe in that God, don't intend to start, but I'm going on a fast; you may think that is wierd. I assure you, it is not.

Reasons for this are numerous, but one of the most urgent is the need to deal with my own reliance on anything or anyone but myself. I have slowly but surely let the World creep into my life like ivy under a poorly fitted door, creeping across the carpet and around my ankles, far too long. Also, I don't know why, but when I figured out some pretty major symbolism in my odd dreams I speak of in the posts titled Preternothing, I decided never to finish that group of posts.

Anyway, the fast is really just an experiment in fighting a sickness we all have with a remedy handed down from generation to generation in my line. Feel free to use alcohol or other chemistry experiments when you deal with yours.

So, to sum it all up, food is not on the menu for a while. I could stand to lose a few, anyway. The other aspect of the fast is media.

I will be away from any form of electronic communication for a while, save the half hour I have allotted myself for returning calls and checking email (nothing important gets to me in a steel mail box, so this is necessary) every other day. I will commence this at 2100 today and keep it going until I feel like stopping. I may throw in a quick update at the end of a week or so if its still going, just to check in. I will be, for the most part, off the grid unless you email me and I have time to get to it. I'm also limiting personal visits and social gatherings. TV is out, though I never watch anything but PBS anyway, and music not produced in my vicinity by fingers on strings is not going to be listened to. In other words, I'll be my own company for the next little bit. I feel scared about this. It's a little like going around the dark side of the moon.


Which is exactly why I'm doing it.

*****************************

I have to admit now, at the 25 minutes till phase that I'm questioning the whole thing. Since I have no answers to those questions and no one to call within the next 24 minutes to ask, I'll open them up. That, and it's one last gasp of the self-involvement I am going to have to lose to survive this.

Questions for eventual discussion:

23a. Is Casey really social enough anyway to need a break?
23b. What will keep him alive for the next week?
23c. What implied behaviors are also going to be cut?
23d. What about beer?
23e. Why would a person need to know what they're alike when no one else is around?
23f. Does this have anything to do with being born in a desert?
23g. Are there just no good deserts to walk out in for a while?
23h. Fuck, what if I'm Elijah? Can I handle that responsibility?

Prinipia Methodologican Petronity

Or: Spritual Geology

I, Cassius, son of Locomotus Truckae, Son of The Most Mightiest, have been visted by the angel Cassiterite, who smelled of sulfur and had impressive dual octagonal and mackeled breasts. After noticing my vector of eye, she smite me for looking at her twins. She hath given one or several revealed manifestations that may or may not be secret until the end of the Age Suburbia. This is important, or it may not be. As it were, all spelling mistakes are property of her mackel breasted self.

Manifestation Unit of Truthicality I:

We are all mostly oxygen, with some other stuff, too. Or not.

A. This is important, though may not be, because oxygen has an atomic number of eight. Originally, there were eight aliens who made it off the "Ark" and started making whiskey in Turkey. These aliens were part of a "Homestedd reelokashun" plan, as you should already know from your learning institutions.

B. Oxygen, when combined with the principle building blocks of this earth makes them sort of flaky. In fact, this is also a race of aliens. I know Flaky people. They obviously are alien Homestedders. They should make whiskey, but do not. They used to, when they immigrated to the Southeast and they interbred until, even today, they are still at least a little Flaky. Though sometimes they are not.

C. The earth is principly formed up Eyerun. When thrown together with Flakies, it produces Fe₂O₃. When The Green Cactus Monster taketh away the Flakies and the Eyerun, it leaves but ₂ and ₃. The last days approach when 23 holy cows are, or won't be, abducted by these new Homestedders, as they will mistake the cows for your average caucasion at that point in history.

That is the word of Cassiterite. Or it may be not.

Note: So, at the reccomendation of Anaglyph, I decided to check out Discordia because of the truly disturbing frequency of "23" in my life as of late. And I figured since Australians invented cheese, they can't be all bad. My tireless research, exclusively in Wikipedia while I ate Doritos, led me to the Principia Discordia. I had to quit reading about the point they mention baptizing the dead to redeem them to the Green Cactus Monster. I am in a library, after all. That is when Austin Nichols shew himself to me and introduced Cassiterite. Her boobs were pointy and vaguely botryoidal. Feel free to introduce this new belief system into the Big W.

Fall

It was cold.

I had been wearing a plain white T-shirt earlier in the bright sun of an Eastern Seaboard fall. They don't do Fall in the Middle Colonies, really. Just hot, then cold. If you live by the sea, your life is determined by cycles of currents and climates you may never see. The Atlantic hates people. It has dealt with expansionist humanity for so long its disgust pours out in abstract weather patterns and bitchy little hurricanes.

I lived next to the Atlantic. The Atlantic decided to be cold. In the space of my twelve hour shift, the sky turned clear and the waters froze. I looked up into the cold from the mildew riddled concrete of the CALA. The stars were arrayed as clearly as I ever saw them back East. The cold chased away the smog. Dippers and warriors and lovers scorned were snapshots of the human condition manifested in the original Rorschach.

I packed up my guys and our tools into the ordie truck after the watch was set on our live ones and we went back to the shack. She was waiting there to take me home.

I don't mond the cold. I find it invigorating and affirming. She shivered, she had no insulation against the humid, icy atmosphere. I opened one side of my field jacket and let her squeeze in next to me. She took a deep breath with the coat over her nose. She loved the smell of jet fuel and nitrates. After she smelled it, she settled into me a little deeper. I waved to the flightline gate watch. Her little hand poked childlike from out of my coat to wave. He giggled in a way men with rifles rarely do and reciprocated.

Later, in our little shitty apartment, she was laying in bed. Though it was cold, our clothes found themselves lost and crumpled in the floor. I had needed a drink of water and returned to our little slice of temporal attained conglomerate bliss. We always got along when I was set to leave soon. I tripped over the packed seabag in the doorway. When I crawled into the bed and pulled the covers up, her icy body clung to mine and her face burrowed deeper into my chest. I could hear her internal little girl seeping out through the grown up she tried to be.

"You're always so WARM."

I love Fall.

How To Eat An Animal, Part II

To return to the issue at hand.

The animal is dead. You have killed, and forces of economy staining your manicured hands or forces of saltpeter and nitrate bruising your shoulder, it doesn't matter. The animal is dead and it's your fault irreversibly. The cut of the animal is a blade roast, and the animal is an elk.

A quick note, shoot a cow elk, preferably small, the meat tastes better than the huge majestic bull, though the trophy is more profound and so subtle as to impress no one. No one displays good taste on the wall of their den, but there are many men, and women, who have enormous racks (antlers) of killed beings festooning their enclaves. The statement, subtle as vodka vomit on the stairs, this makes about the man or woman's self image is so obvious that I won't even waste my time.

Take an onion, I prefer it to be yellow. It should not be plunder of another mindless trip to the grocer, but an example of the bounty of the good, red earth. My onion comes from the quaternary deposits, prepared with work and sweat, behind my mother's house. Discard the husk and first two layers of the onion. Cut it into quarters and then eighth's, the onion, if it is from dirt you have touched, is strong and full of fiery flavor. Onions are beautiful.

Select four or five potatoes. Pick the red potatoes. They are the sweetest. As you wash the good, red earth from the potatoes, reflect on how much love a person must have to take time out of her schedule to provide her family with such bounty. I like to cut them in quarters if they are of a normal size. If they are the enormous monsters sold in a grocery store, they should be cut smaller. The potato should be a bite, all by itself independent of the powerful punch of flavor in the elk.

Four turnips, planted in the dark of the moon, and make sure they are too small for bitterness to have taken them into its grasp. As you skin them, remember the man, the friend who taught you that small turnips are best and that they should only be planted in the void between the wax and wane of our lunar friend. Miss him, as he is dead.

Slice celery into four inch segments. It is good and flavorful.

Take a cutting board and coat it in black pepper and a small touch of cumin. Hold the blade roast in your hand, feeling the coolness. Reflect on how much that trip out to the Northern, rough country means to you. Roll it into the pepper and cumin, careful to grind it in with your own hand. Rub in a good amount of minced garlic, game meat tastes best without lame spice-in-can, but with robust flavors. Savor in the world of memory the experience of dragging the heavy beast four miles to the road. It was a good day. Exhausting, but full of laughing. And snow. Heavy, heavy snow that added another ounce of misery to extracting the 600 pounds of meat from the lap of the Earth. Remember your father's hopeful and infuriating comment, "Well, this snow'll sure make good ice tea come summer."

Roast peppers in a hot oven. I prefer pablano and chile piquin, but you may use any large chile. Mine come from my sister-in-laws little slice of the ever ancient and creepy Monument Valley. Somehow the red sand and fickle creeks, combined with her ancient and equally spooky name, produce amazing chiles.

In the pot, stack onions, another bulb of garlic (skinned), the potatoes, the meat, and on top, the celery and peppers. Salt and add sprigs of fresh oregano and mint as well as a lime, quaterred.

Turn slow cooker to a medium setting and go to work.

Incremental Honesty

Fr: c#####e@hotmail.com
To: Casey
Re: that chick

Casey, you've never thought chicks dig you that way.. have you asked her? How can you know if you don't ask her?

Fr: Casey
To: c#####e@hotmail.com
Re: Re: that chick

Well, you have a point. I haven't. I have a feeling anything between me and her would be pretty much physically based. Not that I mind. Well, geologically and physically based. She's coming out of a long relationship and there hasn't been anyone else. Our hypothetical relationship would probably be hiking, mostly, then recreating naked. The other day, well, it would have been cool.

We went for a quick rockhounding trip and got rained into a cave under a waterfall. I controlled myself. I am a good person. But thunderstorms, caves, and tall, skinny women with issues are pretty much the capping pinnacle of what I find erotically stimulating.

When I finally decide to be honest with myself, I might admit to finding that kind of stuff what I want anyway. Some insightful discussion on the latest Nova and some corporeal communication. PBS and lovemaking would be the goal. Well, nerdy wilderness talk and fornication. Maybe just outdoor expedition and some less than moral fun.

Ok, I want hiking and fucking.

How To Eat An Animal, Part I

The first step to eating an animal is to kill it. You may prefer to do this with a credit card slid through a machine at the grocery store or through the placement of a gun shot. Either way, the animal is dead. Practically, most prefer the labeled friendly pink packages that let them disassociate the act of consuming from the act of killing. That is your prerogative. The initial step of preparing to eat the life that used to be, is to be suitably mindful of the gravity and beauty of what you are doing. You are contributing to the potter's hand shaping the pot. By eating another living thing, be it a carrot or a caribou, you are propagating the balance of life and death necessary to the beautiful mechanization of all living things and their orchestration in a grand improvisation.

Before you eat an animal, or any living thing, this is the first step:

Gratitude.

There are two prayers that have made their way trickling through generation after generation of men of faith who share my adjective surname. This is profound as my family is Protestant. Actually, it is incredibly more complicated than that, but "Protestant" is what my mom told me to tell the other kids who asked me about my religion. Protestantism, at least the American rural variety, finds organized prayer to be a good example of why all those worldly churches are empty and soulless.

The first prayer, preferably prayed in a cold, cold river at altitude fed by snow melt, is thus:

(Insert name here) has made it known that he has wanted to join with the blessed family in the Household of Faith. He has received the lead of Holy Spirit and is a Believer in the birth, death, and resurrection of your son, Jesus Christ. He understands that this baptism will give him the right in the eyes of God and men to preach, teach, and testify in the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn until such time as you see fit to take him home or return in Glory. (Insert name here), I now baptize you in the name of the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The other is even less formal, but still pretty important to me:

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to meet here in the presence of our Brothers and Sisters to partake in this meal. We ask that you look in on our widows and orphans that cannot be here with us today and hold them in thy perfect thoughts. Lord, we ask that you keep a kind heart and watch careover our Brothers and Sisters on the highways and serving their country overseas, and bless them to return safely to the fold. Heavenly Father we ask that you'd bless this meal as nourishment to our bodies and our bodies to your service.

Amen.

This last prayer is also used loosely when an animal has fallen to a bullet and will be consumed by the hunter and his family. It may come as a shock to many, but in the part of the country I'm from, the difference between hungry and fed in the winter is still the taking of an animal during the Fall's hunting season. Well, sometimes in season. Strict compliance with the law has always been the luxury of the rich. We were always so poor. More than a time or two, God and Winchester fed our huddled, poor family when times got tight.

These prayers meant so much to me. Rather, they mean so much to me. I may not believe as the rest of my family, but I did have a small and insignificant conversion on the road the other day. The road was not Damascus, it was Little Park, and the light was not from heaven, but from my two misaligned headlights. My conversion was not that big a deal, really.

Anyway, my favorite cut of elk meat, besides the ambrosial backstrap roasted over a fire, is the shoulder blade roast. The best way to cook it is in a Crock Pot. I will provide this recipe in part two.

06SEP1980

I had a really amazing and heartfelt piece of literature to impart to the world in this little corner of a big waste of time. Then Blogger ate it. I don't know where it went, I don't know why it seemed tasty. I do know that I can't for the life of me remember what I wrote.

Anyway, forgot it was my birthday yesterday until a friend left me a nice email message. I appreciated it greatly, even though I don't give two shits about birthdays. I thought birthdays were cool as a child, but I also thought Transformers and the gravel in the driveway was cool.

I might still think transformers are cool. Gravel might hold my interest sometimes. Gravel is so important. You blog people don't even know. Go on talking about iPods and clothing options. You know what you would have without gravel? Nothing. Take a look around you and count the concrete structures you need, both above ground and under. Concrete is a mixture of portland cement, sand, and gravel at a ratio of 1:2:3, usually. In other words, your grocery stores, theatres, highways, tunnels, and pretty much everything else you need if you don't live in a grass hut is mostly gravel.

Transformers are giant robots that turn into cars and trucks and shit. I stand on the solid base of my tastes in cool.

Now, birthdays are, much like almost all fornication in certain parts of Asia, a commodity. You have only so many possible, and the stock in the those birthdays is a function of the continuing formulae of supply and demand. While the number of available birthdays, like my own, is suspected to be great, such as when you are mid-twenties, or if you prefer the cold ten year rounding, late-twenties, they mean very little.

In other words, I find no reason for ribbons and streamers, or any foofiness whatsoever for a birthday that has no significant numerological value or dwindling forecast for future possibilities of another birthday.

A birthday for 1-10, sure. It only makes sense, as you haven't been alive long enough to flood the market with years in which to celebrate. 13 holds the distinction of being the first in our language of numbers to carry the suffix "teen," thus deserves noting. None of the following teens, save voting age in your locale, carry any weight. 21 holds some meaning in the US for no other reason than some fairly ridiculous legislation. After 21, there really is no reason to celebrate. You've had enough childish little shindigs and need no more.

Welcome to adulthood where no one cares how old you are unless you are targeted for procreation and people make fun of you for playing with Transformers. Your life is over. There is no reason to note any occurence, save marriage or the creating of a new set of birthdays in the form of progeny.

I will allow my minions to celebrate any birthday of mine after 100, but it will probably be more of an imperial holiday at that point, anyway.

Tassels Are The Only Proper Send Off

I had decided my funeral would be some type of odd memorial where there was no body and no one was sure entirely that I hadn't just joined some random revolution. Whether or not I got euthanized by execution would be an enduring mystery. There would be rumors of me living in the hills of (insert country here), holed up with a new, young and native wife. Rumors would be that I was cavorting among the bushes and a new tribe of brown-skinned children with blue eyes and home-made rock hammers could be found nestled in a mysterious valley.

That was the plan.

Then I found a much better memorial arrangement. I obviously can never have my funeral in China now, but hopefully I can get the ceremonial ball rolling before it's illegal here, too.

Just send the one with the lop-sided implants my way and stick a rolled up dollar bill in between my blue lips one last time, please. If I'm already laid up, it don't matter how many pathogens she may be hiding in her person.

All I Can Do

I had a good buddy one time. He used to have a sweet tooth for some Wild Turkey and he had a tendency towards irrational behavior, we had a lot in common. Not that I would let him get into my Turkey, but the guy was huge; he sort of got what he wanted. He had an interesting part in my life for a short, and sometimes tragic, time. We used to enjoy eating dinner together and watching the paint on the walls fade to an even duller antiseptic white. He would wake me up for work and remind me I had obligations when I forgot I still had reasons to breathe in and out. He was a good guy. I would defend him to the last. When I had to leave, I told him to live with my mom and dad for awhile to keep them going.

I make him sound like some type of little brother. In truth, he was usually the grown up. He would take care of me and do the best an independent man can do for another independent man when comfort or a shoulder to cry on is needed. We were brothers without the inborn hierarchy of birth order.

He went on to whatever reward or anticlimax waits to meet us all when we lose our individuality to the engines of Life. I loved the guy. He died shamed and alone. He never knew what he did. His psychic pain took him out of civilization for good. He's been turned to ash.The crystalline structure of a diamond is that of an octahedron. They are octahedral in nature because that's all they can be. Carbon can only bond with seven brothers in such a way. Shoreline critters and plants in the fires of a subduction zone, the organic matter of a continental shelf, the Life, is poured into the forges of Vulcanus and catalyzed and purified into the basic building blocks of the one true individuality. In the loss of the temporal bodies to this terrible maw of famine and extinctions and illness, they prove that there is some order, there is some Platonic Idea of perfection. They never see it, but they prove the mystery simply by having existed to fuel the engines of survival for this little chunk of carbon we call life. Heaven may or may not be, but by passing on, Duck the Dog proved that he is perfect. In the gleaming white robe washed in the blood of time, he is one of the elect.I had a very close friend lose someone who was closer to them. Somehow, I don't think this is going to help.

Sorry.

Damn that guy

I have more than one voice in my head. While I am a ray of fucking sunshine at all times and only leave the world with the coziness of rose petals and tender Balian honey, The Devil's Advocate is a thistle and a skunk.

DA shows up when I'm riding high on a wave of undeserved euphoria to remind me that my rent's due or that my life consists of sitting alone in the dark studying shit no one cares about in a shitty, Boo Radley house on the Mesa That Time Forgot. Or that giving a girl your phone number is not the same as receiving her phone number. Or that my writing skills are so terrible I have to resort to italics for emphasis. He can really ruin a mood.

I was thinking of what to drink with my frozen pizza I scratched together the other day, and he made an appearance. He always does this when I have impressed myself with amazing cooking. I thought to myself:

"I need some beer. Maybe I'll run get some before the stores close."

Why buy beer if you're going to sit and drink it alone?

"Because I wanted to be alone tonight."

Did you?

"Fucker."

You know, you could open that bottle of wine. The one covered in dust.

"I told you, I'm not going to open that just for my own consumption, it's a five year old reserve Syrah. I'm not wasting it on getting drunk and watching SNL. I'm just waiting for someone who deserves it to come by."

How long have you had it now?

"A...while. I still have faith that someone will deserve it."

Before it's vinegar?

"Sure. That takes years. And years. No more wine talk, please. I'm getting depressed."

OK. So, why the frozen pizza when you have that ditalini in the pantry gathering dust and the pancetta in the fridge waiting for the next power outage to make a fool of you?

"We've been through this before the ditalini and the pancetta are not for me. Besides, a bolognaise would go great with that Syrah. I'm saving them and that's final. "

Do you realize how unlikely it is you will ever have anyone over in this shitbox house who would even appreciate it? Or the cook?

"I think those likelihoods are on the rise. In fact, I think there just might be hope for it. See, you're going on some old intel, buddy."

Something I don't know about?

Morphology

The interaction between the mass populi and I has been altered. I walk into work and the men go out of their way to say hi. The women whisper, but are a little shy if I approach. A look of primal lust and titillating fear ripples over their calm facade. I have become some sort of god-man.

The change is subtle, but for someone who has a tendency to notice minute and unimportant details of all my human interaction, this new mysterious subethereal communication of status is a little disconcerting.

I stopped by the Ghetto Gas and Save on my way to work the other day. The section of town is known as Clifton and it is populated mostly by cars with tiny wheels and men in wife beaters and gaudy bling. The August heat was baking me in the cab of my old truck, I was flush and sweaty. I exited the truck and began the journey towards the door. I try to ignore people in Clifton. They, in turn, ignore me. I could feel eyes on me. I looked to my right to see several men of questionable moral nature leaning and sitting on an Impala. Their uniform white shirts and baggy shorts signaled that they were not of a type who would appreciate my company. I met their eyes. I had a feeling this could end badly. The loudest of the group returned the gaze and gave a slight nod. Not the polite society downward drop of the chin, but the pointing of the chin at some celestial body on the low horizon. I returned it. The others of the local posse of indigents mimicked the movement. Odd.

I walked in with my coffee cup and filled it full of black tar Sumatra. My skin still had the sheen of sweat, hilighting my sun-browned skin. Veins bulged tastefully from my forearms. I pondered my new Olympian limbs. I slapped the lid on my coffee and looked up at the mirrored display behind the tobacco. I didn't ever remember seeing those defined of shoulders hiding under my ears. I have always been stocky, but there was a lean quality, a mean quality. I noticed my plain T-shirt collapsing and bulging out where muscle tone seems to have excreted itself out of my pores. Under my chest was spare and desolate country where once a very minimal beer belly had resided. I have been working out, but not this hard. I scared myself. Even my two-day beard was intimidating as it outlined my square jaw and blocky cheekbones, somehow pulled tight like the cheapest chuck shoulder steak.

Confused, and a little arrogant, I walked up to the counter with my swirling oil to lubricate the skids of an ungodly shift. When I set it on the counter, the girl with the red vest and name tag looked up for the first time in our consumerist history together. She was openly staring. I greeted her as I do all counter help.

"How are you doing today, ma'am?"

My delivery startled her. In truth, it frightened me as well. She stepped back a millimeter or so, but her body leaned towards me. When did my voice acquire grit? It sounded like a cellist pedaling the C with his bow too heavily rosined. What was wrong with me?

She blushed, contrasting her nose ring against pale skin flaming in a state of fiery hemoglobular bliss.

She stuttered twice and then caught her breath.

"The Mountain Dew is behind you."

"No, just the special coffee, like always."

"You don't want Mountain Dew?"

No, never touch the stuff," I was positively rumbling, "I only drink water or coffee, really. As long as the coffee is good stuff and I'm not having a good wine or something."

"But...'do the DEW!', what about that?"

"Nope, I don't like the stuff."

"Red Bull?"

"No."

"Full Throttle?"

"No."

"A Jagerbomb?"

"Hate 'em."

"Well...", she was panting, "I guess just coffee then."

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much."

How could gratitude sound sinister?

I paid and stepped away from the counter. She followed me with her bloodshot and unremarkable brown eyes. A young girl walked in the door, caught my eye and tripped. The loud teenage boys at the end of the magazine aisle who began to laugh and belittle went silent with a look from me.

I looked back at my reflection.

I saw it. The change. The animal ferocity of uncaged masculinity was channeled by my sheened scalp into my distinctively broken nose to be radiated out by heavy-browed eyes. I had messed up my normal No.2 to No.3 fade with my clippers, so I slapped on a No.1/2 and went to town. It would be ugly, but it would grow back in a couple weeks, I thought.

I never anticipated the change when a person's civilization is left in pile on the bathroom rug.

I walked as unassuming as I could to my truck. The girl in the Lexus was unabashedly gazing. The man in the VW was trying not to. I began fueling the ugly beast and folded my arms as I leaned against the door. I couldn't help but arch an eyebrow.

Marine Engineer, Savior of the Universe

There's something I've played around with for a while now. It's not really an actual project, it's just me having fun practicing writing in the first person. It's fun, really. I also started writing on this before I had any formal writing instruction (my one comp class counts as formal writing instruction in my world), so its rough. I used to have a little better inspiration living in a sunbaked alkaline sink called Lemoore. Luckily, I have escaped there for good, and this project suffered.

Anyway, this is not a promise that it will be updated with regularity, so comments over there may be ignored. The plot has no plan whatsoever, so don't bug me about it. In fact, don't even read it. No, don't even look at it. Just forget I said anything.

Billy Hodges.

First Commandment of Blogging:

Thou shalt give time for readers to comment and comment alike before adding a new entry.

Fuck that. See, I was sitting here puppy sitting, and came to a conclusion.

Before the conlusion reached en utero thoughto, a brief story.

Years ago, I was standing outside my little Government issued family house, the house absent of a family at this point, drunk as all get out. In this case, "all get out" must be defined as "hell." I am rural and use terms such as this when I try to make polysyllabic points. I also inheritted a baritone voice free of gravel, but towards the left hand of a piano's scale.

To continue:

I was not sober. I was pontificating, as I am wont to do in states of any "all get out", when I stretched the definition of death, hell, and the grave*. I remember beating on the hood of my Scout to drive home every fourth or fifth gerund as my strange haiku unfolded. I told of dancing demons and firy graves of innerspace galactic drama. I called down pyrological deluges from heaven and pummeled the disgusting draw of our humanity towards our fellow man as a photophyllic ameoba towards the pond-water sun. I decried the Whore, yet called also for empathy and a small touch of the calming ethylene-glycol of masculine reason and masculine acountability. Hell was not merely in my words. It was a real sulfur proceeding from my mouth to kiss and fondle my gathered friends at the temple of closing time. My rumbly voice, product of too much alcohol and too many preachers in the gene pool, wooed their senses into my state of being and made them agree with the hateful lies I tried not to believe.

My rant and rave and sermon was nearing its climax wherein I no longer cared whether the stupid children who rode out into the street may get run over or the dirty tramp thumbed her way across the West Coast for a blowjob and a bump of rock, when I noticed the wide eyes and slightly hypnotized stares of my compatriots, my brothers in arms. They held their beers at waist height, frightened at the world I weaved out of my phonetics. They believed everything I said. I saw whites of eyes making room for irises. I knew the look. They might as well have been sitting on a church pew listening to my father.

Thus, I shut up and threw my two-pint glass over my shoulder. My keen hearing, conditioned by a few too many years at the business end of super sonic death machines, heard it obliterate the cross-walk behind me. They snapped out of the stupor.

One of my best friends, a guy named Baron Peter Christian von Blah Blah Some Elitist Horseshit, looked at me as an alien creature. I was no longer his friend but a Sunni mystic, one hand pointed towards the mysteries above and one pointed below to the dirty soil of life as I spun our way to freedom.

"Dude, you should fucking write."

He had honesty, and frankly, good taste in literature.

My papist wop friend, Fabian, agreed with a solemn hush and a heartened nod.

The conclusion:

To answer a quick question I get asked with remarkable frequency, that is why I write. Maybe if my shared thought is nothing more than ones and zeroes, it won't be an hypnosis. Maybe it won't be a sermon.

Sermons scare me.



_{*This is a Pauline term I had hammered into me, "...triumph over death, hell and the grave." One of those letters to Corinth, I believe.}