Forks, of course.
Portland. Terrebonne. Jackson. Gros Ventre. Jackson. Terrebonne. Eugene. Portland. Seattle. Dawson Creek. Whitehorse. Tok. Anchorage. Hope. Seward. Anchorage. Palmer. Anchorage. Whitehorse. Dawson Creek. Prince George. Great Falls. Jackson. Gros Ventre. Jackson. Terrebonne. Portland. Boston. New York. Boston. Chicago. Portland. Terrebonne. Portland. Anchorage. Portland. Terrebonne. Elko. Salt Lake City. Jackson. Gros Ventre. Jackson. Helena. Spokane. Terrebonne. Portland. Seattle. Anchorage.
58 words. 58+ destinations. the last 15 short months of my life. myriad stops in, among and between. doors opened. doors closed. gas pumped. clouds gouged reflective in that white space around the colored eye. smiles released. frustrations blossomed. apologies given in lieu of understanding. not knowing who or what you might possibly be written across the brow. homeless. searching. allowing place to sear remembrance on the visible backs of said eyes. cars, planes, and trains, my own two fucking feet – forms of transportation, travel.
I have quite normal revelations, realizing as they happen that ‘quite normal’ seems both intuitive and circumspect. The world is an intrinsic place; one that we must neither apologize to or for. My job amidst my movements and actions has been to find that place – the blue moment of just before dusk – where the magic of created fictions dovetails with the loneliness and ache imposed by public reality. How do I impress upon the world that geese heard at dawn coursing upriver beneath a pregnant, coming pink sky is what I hear when anything utters the word perfect? Where does one find the proper place to exemplify the stone silence of a mountain that has just allowed you to climb her?
Words are given and taken — and I wonder how often they are gifted and how often they are just given away. Photographs compile unforgettable, ratcheted seconds of time. Books soothe a mind that aches for the impossible and gives said mind relief in all of impervious beliefs.
I am here to stitch realities together. A seamstress – one quietly pumping the foot pedal that the machine in front of me may sew from the myriad threads that unravel bright and searching from behind my eyes. Seeing all as a precursor to making notations. What constitutes mere thought and what is waiting language? How do we decipher what goes where?
Quite literally, I am sitting on the floor of the room I came to age in feeling – the good and great pressures of one who must channel that which has been given to them, mainly thought. Snow falls. The silent world is both in and outside. My laughter is lonely. Adrift. My smile fading in and out like AM bandwidth somewhere in North Dakota – Minot, a town where you’ve seen the sun rise across the dusty brick of main street, bits of hay collected in the gutters like last nights dreams and car exhaust piling up so that you slide from the town both noxious and removed enough to question what you just witnessed. I’ve met no one to whom I can introduce myself with abandon. What doesn’t seem to exist, what was once prayed to, is not troubling so much as unlinked — the inability to know too much drives my molten, somewhat disheveled core. Temporal and transient living means that the self is relegated to finding meaning in created understandings that chance to follow you everywhere. Dynamism through connection. Connection as that thread that hasn’t yet spooled from behind my blue eyes.
Helena, Montana.
We’ve seen this before; a boy standing in a place without parking lots, sodium phosphate lighting or stains of a mercurial, fuzzy sort. As always, he is flying beyond such trivial things in search of the smile he can take back to earth as a showpiece for the miles logged, the journey undertaken, the golden brilliance achieved. Once again, he stands somewhat awkwardly, arms akimbo and sporting fingers splayed as peaceful triangles. Happy as a lark or a man who just traversed a minefield unscathed, he sees the sea [sic] of rolling, tree-stunted hills beneath him as the face of a teenager yet unable to find continuity in his facial hair. Sun bathes his tanned, wind scarred face. Adrenaline and fatigue mix a heady, much-loved cocktail in his working, worn muscles. The day will pass, but the moment is one being committed to eternal memory. I think.
*photo courtesy of A. Tendick.
[Nearly] lost photos from a Christmas in Alaska…
1 & 3 – Bridger National Forest, Wyoming.
2 – Gros Ventre Wilderness – Wyoming.
Elko, Nevada.
Too much light as in there is never enough. Oh my! the sunset, as seen from mild slopes beneath those inverted incisors the Tetons, can bring such slow, nearly stillborn, magic into the eyes. For those who read what I write, I welcome you. If you bet on only the photos, then I wave bon voyage! — Lo. Jackson Hole presents one with a consummate, American view of beauty. Blue mountains distant, white and with real, actual tree lines. Air that tastes of that which surrounds – distance. Boulders of passing clouds taking on light, shedding light, disintegrating often enough that you don’t expect them to ever answer any of your questions.
I’ve no qualms with any of it tonight. In fact, tonight finds words pouring forth at a rate I’ll call prodigious, invective, and fun. I am a lucky soul; a traveler inclined and full of: towns that appear like conscious thoughts in a dream, thick Interstate snows that channel a single reality, furious scribbblings (and the want to pursue them to any end) wide, drenched plains of space, and on on on.
Think of where you start, where you end. Thought babbles and burbles in your head like the best open stream that you can’t help but cross. Intimidating, this world of ours. Size, space and continuum means that in one moment the crow feeds at the foot of the cow and the next has you launching interrogative missives to the 11,000th passed electric wire.
Pack up the cats! Rejoice! Fat gray clouds of the afternoon lose sunset oranges and reds with slick, timed ease (think: blood draining from a face). I see it all happen[ing]. The chickadees tornado through the aspens, knocking off whatever snows still cling to the branches – meat on, or off, the bone. Breath comes out of my lungs to look around. Time stands where time should — still. Darkness asks lights permission to invade. A soundless, but tuneful, evening walks into your life.
How can we ever say we’ve had enough?
Terrebonne, Oregon.
Steens Mountain, Oregon.
Winnemucca, Nevada.
Snow, wet and without scorn, falls. A heaven is obscured; the humped vertebrates of rock that form thousand foot hills appear then disappear then appear like a devil roiling, diving and being generally spirited along in a hundred mile lake of hell. Deer, darting between the great carnival wheels of rolling, suspended irrigation systems, fire themselves around fallow, winter-lost fields with synaptic ease. Ravens make playful questions in and of a sky that is pewter and distance-less. A single coyote howls and the sound is stretched quickly to the point of disconnect. There is no space out here for the music of animals — we’ve given the day over to whatever weather is. Hands were bound in the beds we awoke in. Spirits were asked to seat themselves down and enjoy the show. The blast furnace of mind feels its metal cooling, contracting, if only for today. The wheels slow as sightlines are cramped. Prejudice against any day is a Telegraph Avenue walk in a blizzard – never right.
Mt. Jefferson, Oregon.