METEOR SHOWER muffled by the orange/grey cloud coverage. If we could peel this orange we would be okay. Above that heavy blanket there is a celestial sphere beckoning the ol' spin. The ol' woozy with flashing lights and colors like adult children through free and ill fitting at the jungle gym public park. Indecent exposure to the ills of adultery. You must be 18 plus to cross this line and then you will always be looking back, screaming bloody time murder. A death incomprehensible to the young and malleable mind. I can imagine all the sparks and fireworks above this ridiculous haze. This is pretense. This is the sex and the sleep. But the comets... the meteors... would we drive somewhere to see some amazing flashing lights if we were healthy or would it be hopeless in all directions. Thought of an Eastern Oregon green plains, coming down from the hill we swerved to avoid struggling upwards campers and semi-leaning trucks with the loads groaning under the weight of a vertical gravity, the plateau stretching out into a unique horizon, one of which never before seen with the weight of memory-anchors and the car went a-topplin' over the edge multiple times in our imaginations, how glorious our reactions to surprising and beautiful stimulus, in this sense, in Europe, we will survive with the allure of camel-spiders stories or a sense of exclamatory duty, the job to be done and the respiratory therapist to be won and the splendid sunsets beyond these orange-grey clouds of an indifference both volatile and sedative... An indifference formed in the gaps between false teeth. When the whistling becomes it's own far-reaching language and our pool cues are anchored into the muck and the mire like staffs. lit torches that guide the path into a greater bonfire in which the party truly happens.
Flashbulb memory to when I once half-assed planned an idea to have a party in the woods behind the cup-de-sac of the harbor inlet, where the new tree trunk statue is formed in the shapes of historic and sentimental animal shapes, the salmon the bear... the heron the otter... the spiritual rescue from the over-enlightened inner white man when the destiny manifested ran out and the true history wound up buried beneath jargon of city talk and jargon of committees and jargon of the olympics and world knowledge and a constant world-view when the entirety is all too fathomable. (Do you know that a successful world-view will always be inconsistent with all the troubles of the world as an entirely? Sure the vigilante journalists go out and seek a pacific gyre out in the center where our plastic goes to break down smaller and smaller into dissolvable, digestible bits and the fish we catch consume and consume we must and plastic consumption we must address with a new glorified state of the union when the tarot cards are sworn upon like the face of a new testament, when that "new" is so damn old that our world is subdivided into the realistic and the faintly distracted by the scent of their own religious garb. Oh holy grail, if I drink of you to quench my thirst, will you plague my body with a ravaging ecoli?)
To the party in the woods. I wished to organize some grand and impossible party with tea candles hanging on deliberate branches and motivational signs underneath. About a half mile hike into the forest. I can't imagine too many people who would be willing but then again... secret beach... does anyone remember that fiasco? Matt threw Joel's favorite knife toward a tree and it disappeared. We looked with flashlights for awhile. There was a guitar, a few ramshackle tents in a delirious sleep horse shoe shape, the fire lit well beyond waking hours, the crowd inhospitable and the stoned walk back up after time like time mattered and the parking lot scoured by a land cruiser, looking for drunk drivers and those who stayed would have felt much safer in their skins but I avoided drinking that night... responsible for Matt or Zach or Colby or other. Do you remember, guys? "That was crazy"
Well in the same vein I wished to perform some crazy intense coordinated deep woods party with 20+ people in a bonfire night with the tents and wax candles dangling and the paper signs on the trees, the espionage because if too many cars parked outside the police would have been guided right to our spot and the keg, lifted heroically, would have to be dragged through the underbrush up hills and down into streams and valleys, the mud and the wear and tear of a broken arm, holy shit Dad I don't think I'm afraid anymore. Those old roads scared the wits out of me but hell, I still went gliding down them before the pavement and the landscape architecture burned everything out of clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Memories.
Where the hell am I? I am riding a mountain bike through back woods wondering why I am so cowardly. I am 13. I am 22 wishing to be there again and ride like a maniac. I am in high school wishing the wilderness party flew and that the mix (if 20 had to be equa-gender) worked out. Why not a handful of friends and a tent? Why so large and illogical? Now it can happen, sure. The place has changed horribly. I am the boy watching the lights turn red and the school bus zoom by as I get a ride in the black jeep grand cherokee. I remember the sound it makes when revving. I remember seeing it crumpled. I remember seeing my heart crumpled too. There are scars that do not heal without super glue and a custodial enterprise for the tumultuous mess of driving around the KP without a license, the bowling alleys as if they meant a life more than the risk taken, and a sore wrist and swollen eyes for the time spent, oh beams of gentle light when the harsh light is finally absent... I'm wishing to change myself currently in terms of these old litanies. I realize I will have no current reprise in terms of any of this. I am lost and forgotten amidst those old friendly groups. Aiming too low, they did. The working stiffs and the host of problems that entice my mind so minor they may as well be ghost voices from a present past I cannot access because of a waterfall made out of sockets and gatorade bottles in my garage. The burn holes in the carpet, covered with X's of duct tape and the industrious door with the fowl images painted over. Oh, woe is me, it says when contrasting with current woe. I was stepped on like a bug yet crawled up into the spine of myself and blossomed into something else. Maybe I burst out of my chrysalis. Maybe I found my wings and flew high, high away into the ether. Maybe they knew it all along and ignored my privilege to keep my mind underwater whenever possible. I know I know. Where the back lash lays in within. They don't think about these things.
