The sweet smell of musty hay and tall grass blew up through the blessings of the sun as the truck backed up slow into it’s place in the field. The sun added that faded grainy white hue to all it engulfed and the man behind the wheel felt it’s familiarity like that of a faded photograph. Something about this place always made him sparkle inside, but you would never know it by looking at him.

His jeans were torn and worn-in deep and the grease stains on each fattened thigh reminded him of who he was and where it was that he came from. There was no escaping who he was, but there was always the respite from who he had to deal with. The people surrounding him made him feel like chewed gum stuck hard to the ground, growing gooey in the heat of the summer’s fury.

A short jerky stop and a further slight forward motion led him to stillness, serenity. The quick flashing on and off of the tail lights made them glow with an erratic strobing that was comfortable to the trees that he had pulled between. The trees knew him too well on these evening hiatus’ from reality. No one was there, no one for miles, yet it was as if every friend he had ever known was standing tall to welcome him home.

The malformed and misaligned limbs of the trees hung over his well-worn tire tracks. The endless field of seeding grass and scattered dandelions. The humming birds that would zip and zoom by in search of better things red. The green flies and bumble bees that would know him by name if he had ever given it. They would, however, be able to convey his face to a sketch artist if the need should ever arise. The canals, left by all of his tires’ rotations into that spot, felt privileged to squish deep into themselves in order to receive him. The burnt out circle for his light and heat, never allowing the green to grow back as that would just be a sacrilege of sorts against this man who was raised by these elements and the subtle noises and motions that they pushed out into the atmosphere in order to create some sort of aura that he could call a womb rather than a home.

The ignition turned off with a small resuscitative gurgle and chug. An eerie whine could be heard across the open area between the tree lines as the old green door to the cab was forcefully pushed open. It always stuck, it never opened or closed right or with any ease to speak of. A slam echoed back after he closed it and it covered over any lingering sustain of the door’s cry. He brushed off his jeans in a motion intended to get the dirt off, not the grease. The grease held strong and would never be removed. Years of wearing these dungarees to work made it impossible to be clean again. It may have been the grease, itself, that was holding together the tattered threads.

The old wooden stake bed on the Ford was splintered and rotting through in a few spots where wet mulch had sat too long in the damp spring air before the projects of planting had begun. He liked planting things when he was not here in his solitary place. Work devoured most of his time but a dirty handed morning in the yard offered up quite the minute sabbatical for him. A tiny little Russian woman lived next store and would shout over the fence in the tilling months. She hated the sound of the tiller. “Why on God’s green Earth would you try to cultivate a five by five space that is smaller than your God damned patio?!?!?!?” He would grimace his way into ignoring her. He would not even look up. The pansies and posies, laying in black plastic flats, wished they had tongues so they could stick them out at this rotten old soul who should have been lit on fire by Stalin himself. He sensed their purple pain.

He pulled out the long galvanized bolts that held the tailgate into place and leaned each side up against the passenger door. He was never quite sure why he walked all the way around the truck to place them there, but he knew that is where they belonged. He hoisted himself up onto the bed and pulled down a crumpled pack of Chesterfields that had been cradled in a shirt sleeve and pressed up against the outside of his bicep. The coffin of wooden matches he kept tucked in his sock was retrieved. Slide out the bed, taking the time to select the proper striking stick, he gently picked one up that seemed to have a little more red sulfur on the tip than the rest. He mused that the word ‘bulbous’ was appropriate in describing it; to him, ‘bulbous’ was a simply fine word. He said it out loud for all of the flora and fauna to hear, “Bulbous.” His trailing breath eased from between his lips and he thought of the lip description in the song ‘Mr. Sandman’. This led him to wonder why they could not have fit the word bulbous into that song. As he molested the match shaft between his fingers, he realized that there really was no place for that word in that particular song, especially if the writers would not be willing to change any of the others. “Give her two lips, bulbous like Grover”

The match struck hard against the rust colored box side and a plume of stink wafted up and tickled his nose hairs. The sulfur stink always stuck in his moustache whiskers and repulsed most lady friends that he would take down the ‘Broken Lasso’ for an ice cold bar bottle and a dance or two. Cigarette lit, he dabbed the match against his tongue to extinguish it (this was a trick he had learned in high school and it became a ritual of pain and taste that he had grown accustomed to). Draw in deep, fill ‘em up. Exhale hard and watch the smoke run away like little cloud men escaping the onslaught of ambushing injuns. Simple smoke, simple day. He tossed the spit doused match onto the ground where he normally started a fire on his dusk to dawn sit-and-ponders. This night would be fire free. He wanted the darkness. He wanted to feel so cold that his bones would run away in search of a sweater; leaving him there, a puddle of ice.

His feet dangled from the bed and his toes never even thought about touching the ground. Back and forth as if he were on a swing trying to impress a girl with the highest burst of pumping in the park. There was no one to impress, it just felt right. Each drag from the cigarette was deep and thick and tart like pennies. Nothing really at all was in his thoughts. This, of course, is why he came and always came and would continue to always come. He did not have to behave a certain way. He did not need to talk or be clean shaven or smile at just the right moments. He was never made a fool in the field with his Ford.

The purple and yellow met in the sky just above the trees and a cool wind came across and made the fabric between the buttons on his shirt waiver a bit from side to side; if the buttons were not there, his belly would have been blown bare. The breeze felt good when it tickled the downy soft hairs atop his ears. He smiled as he took the last puff from the Chesterfield. A pretty damn good day away from all the hubbub, the bustle, the interlopers of his peace.

He thought of all that it was in life. His job, his house, his loneliness, his exclusion from all that went on around him. He was a tangential man, a man who is part of nothing but always there in the perimeter’s shadows; a character actor in existence. He often wondered why he never was more than that. This led him to question why he continued to participate in it. He looked around. He listened to hear the night noises in the field. The bugs, the chirps, the branches tugging on each other like unknown lovers engaged in rough sex; the silence of the sun faded away made it’s own very special noise. This was why he dealt with it all, why he participated in something for which he really did not participate. He thought of a religious book he was given by a lady friend who insisted he get some 'good ol’ religion' before she would drink any more long necks with him. She made him memorize a passage that she said would explain it all.

“But when we receive all that enters our lives as from His hands then no matter what may be our circumstances or surroundings, whether in a hovel or a prison dungeon or a martyr’s stake, we shall be able to say, ‘The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, (psalm 16:6)'. But that is the language of faith, not of sight or sense. - A.W. Pink”

He smiled at how well he had done memorizing it. The lady friend who had shared it with him had renounced her faith and was sleeping with a sax player somewhere outside of Poughkeepsie. She couldn’t take the little town, with it’s little men, and it’s little ideas of what it was to be. She left in the middle of the night taking only a silver necklace, a box of tampons, and a package of Fig Newtons with her on the bus. She never even called him to say she had made it there ok. He often recited the quote to himself while shaving his face in the morning. With each tip-greasing of his handlebar moustache, he would recite a line. Each morning a new line added to the one before until he had the whole quote down. It never made much sense to him. He smiled at his most recent recital. He repeated it out loud, raising his voice enough that a gang-bang of crickets underneath his left front tire all stopped chirping at once.

He finally knew what it was and what it was to be. He may not have had the faith of divinity, but he had faith that it was all going to be ok.

The cabinet door slammed shut with the force of his meat hands. Chips of paint had flaked down onto the counter like snow teasing the people below. He looked over at her and was not impressed at all. He never had been. Even all those years ago when he had pretended to be impressed in order to get in her pants, he was not. Those days seemed so far away when he would think about them now. She sat there very still, except for her right hand forefinger that shifted the ceramic sugar pot lid back and forth with a twisting motion. The soft fuzzy scraping sound, that distracted from the just slammed cabinet door, irked him to no end. The little green ribbon vine that wrapped itself lustily around the pale pink lid didn’t seem to mind at all, in fact it kind of liked it.

“Do you plan on doing anything today? I mean, anything at all?”, he turned away from her after shooting her his ‘look of death’.

Slowly, she brought her fingertip to a halt and then just as slow as she stopped it, she started to twist the lid again. It was hypnotic to her; it drove all of her memories from her head and allowed her to breathe, to be calm.

Every morning, when she would awake, she felt fooled, duped. She never saw any of it coming, forming, or building. To her it was a simple ‘one morning it was just like that’ sort of event. Sprung up from the basket, spitting venom at her, she realized her past was now her present and the future was not going to change itself unless she acted upon her doldrums and pushed her existence forwards. ‘Forwards’ always seemed like a tough concept for her to really wrap her mind around.

Something about stagnation comforted her, made her feel safe, made her feel in control. If things were never going to change and it was all just that simply predictable then she knew how to deal with it, she knew where it would go. Safe. Darted eyes shot to the left without the head moving one inch; shot back to the right in order to even it all out. Her hair poofed out in jumbled bunches of bird nest splendor and she didn’t mind so much that the brush would do nothing to rectify it today; yet another comfort. She had begun to smell weeks ago and not once did she consider bathing. Soap sounded repulsive. Hot water could only sting like the acid rain of another planet’s belching sulfur clouds. Her smells were her friends. She knew each and every one of them. Thick chewy breath. Cold-cut arm pits. Rotten crotch. Feet like cheese. A naval that had it’s lint on the run. The lint had actually filed a complaint with the board of health and was waiting to hear back. Her condition was putrid but it was ‘her’ condition, 'her' shape, 'her' status; it cradled her and held her warm and tight.

He had to hold his breath when he walked past her as the breeze of his gait would cascade and waft up a stench that turned his stomach and made him belch vomit. He often wondered what had happened. Occasionally, late at night, he would actually feel guilt for his misled advances and promises but he knew she was not wise to the game, the scheme, he had carried out, propelled into her. He used to fill her up whole and she would rest easy. He had been sleeping on an old moth hut of a couch down in the basement for the last two years. He would smoke pot and drink wine and watch old VHS cassettes of shows that did not air anymore. When he had recorded them, he had not edited out the commercials and now he found himself leaving them on so he could pretend that his day was found in another time that only could be recalled, not re-lived. He would purge his miniscule thoughts of penance-needed-to-be-had with the television; the wine and grass just knocked him out and made him forget what it was he had to pay penance for.

Slide, chisel, grind, chatter; it was like sand rubbing against itself in order to get off. Her in a trance, him in a fury; both took what they put out from the sliding porcelain lid. Back and forth, clockwise and back around again. It was as if she were flirting with the idea of picking it up and throwing it at his head, but she could never even dream of being that methodical or intimidating nevermind violent. Violence was not a common place extolment for her, fury was not in her complacent plan, schedule, registry of daily activities found at the bottom of the redundant barrel. She tried to fake a smile but it only came out as some contorted grimace that a sci-fi visage births out as the alien rips from it’s abdomen.

He turned at just the right time and caught the expression, “Are you going to die today or what is your problem?” His tone was very matter-of-fact and beyond condescending. “At least maybe we could hose you down today?!?” She remained mute.

That was simply enough for him, in his book. He spun around swift and went into his ‘office’ for a little busy work reading the paper and flushing himself out. He sat and sat and sat until the bowl was hot. He tidied up and stood to the sink where the gold rimmed, acid washed, mirror frame held his countenance so. As he shot spit from between his teeth, he ran his moistened fingers across his unruly brows in order to pacify the out of line hairs that would, and could, not conform. He often wondered why he did not shear them down to a much more pristine length of manageability but the thought was often cut short by his pre-occupation with face picking. He stood there for the better part of twenty minutes scab hunting. Every pustule in premature development sunk in on itself in order to be flat enough to be overlooked. Poked and prodded, every pore was afraid of his fat fleshy fingers and the nails that were always too long and did significant and sufficient damage to each and every cell. Scrape, push, pry; every nanosecond a mini surgery with the most unsanitary of conditions. Satisfied with his overlook, he had noticed that a good thirty minutes had just melted away while zit scavenging. He grabbed the big glass doorknob and twisted it quick.

She was standing right there, right on the other side of the door. Their noses almost kissed and he could smell her good. Her teeth had what looked like spinach on them but they never ate spinach and he assumed it to be mold or gingivitis fuzz. She could see each zit he had missed in his faux obsessive scrutiny. They stood, nose to nose, eye to eye, as seconds became minutes and blossomed into full blown moments.

Her nails were long and yellowed and she twirled them about in vertical rolling piano practice motions. Her hands stretched out next to her face like psychedelic elephant ears forming and melting and forming again. The shock had frozen him like Lot’s wife, like Medusa’s victims. Awe had crawled down his throat and frozen his heart. Each clock hand motion swung down like ant legs in jelly, forcing their way into motion with the painful desire to move forward.

His cheeks grew hotter than the toilet had been just thirty two minutes ago. Palpitations were telling him something was not right. He went to open his mouth and speak but his words were eaten by the numbing in his arm. Anger gnawed fury, fury masticated rage; all became as silent as a mime in handcuffs. He fell to the floor like a sopping wet bath mat and twitched a bit like a baby bird guzzling down nourishment from it’s mother’s throat. Her fingers kept swirling about; magic fingers, magic moment. He stopped moving as his tongue rolled out and pressed against a rusty sink pipe when his head fell flat to the floor.

The moment had lifted the air and made the sun seem to disappear. The light became pearled and opaque and almost tunnel-like to her through her sleep caked eyes. Her fingers twirled more slowly now. She bent over him like a voodoo doctor seeing the white man for the very first time. Curiosity flared her pupils wildly. She tediously licked her parched, cracked lips and she spat down hard onto his tongue.

She went to the old hi-fi cabinet and rolled back the recessive top. Fumbling with knobs and delicately hitting switches with the patience of a naïve scientist throwing ideas against a think tank wall. It all finally clicked and the warm soft air of the white noise began to fill the air. Static serenity. The glow of the orange band with it’s large sharp needle to designate the station, it pointed to the wall and for a minute or two she stared at the wall and asked herself if the noise really came from that point on the horse hair dry wall. It did not and she was content in that conclusion. The bows began to drag, the strings began to reverberate; the air was filled with the colours of play at hand, of existence long not spoken, of days that never knew nights.

When the cello of this Haydn concerto came flushing itself up to the surface, she found an overwhelming sense of redemption in her madness, in her soul, beyond her heart. She began to feverently laugh the giddy shrieks of the succubus. She felt light, weightless, and glided back to the bathroom past the mass clumped on the floor. As she past him, she gently kicked his ankle twice and noted to herself, and to the mirror, that it was for 'good luck'. She sat on the edge of the claw foot tub and twisted about the strings at the nape of her house dress. They were never tied, but rather stained and mangled as if someone’s child had used them for teething. She felt every thread of the fabric; the rough and smooth patches, the areas that had dried and grown stiff with stains. She gently, most maternally, tapped her long claws down onto the skyward pointed spokes of the four armed knobs of hot and cold that majestically, and quite regally, stood their posts at the head of the bathing vessel. It was as if Haydn, himself, was conducting her to the black shot ink staffs of his written spirit.

Smoothly, she turned the captain’s wheel of hot counter-clockwise, thinking of the sugar pot lid, and much to her surprise the water was already piping hot. The rusted bilboes had been broken. Steam drifted upward and began to melt off the flesh grease that had caked on her cheeks.

The black bird returned and I could feel it’s energy and strength with each and every caw. With ease the tears fell from my eyes; my cheeks reddened and hot with the succumbed to emotion. A simple night gone dreadfully awry; too much, too much, just too damn much.

The felt feel of emotions grown furry and fuzzy due to neglect; a simple recognition now and then could relieve the dump, the out pouring, of each and every one of them. Sometimes the strength has left the building and the all night tales with Elvis penetrate it’s absence. Ahh, to be strong all the time. The caw pierced the air.

I thought for sure the bird had been a curse, that it was only there to haunt and mock me. I have come to realize that there is no jest, no intrusion, but rather a guided path to serenity. With all of it’s nagging turned to encouragement and reassurance. A simply caw again and again. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Wipe the tears away and cascade through the remaining day with some sort of direction and most of all hope. Could it really be as simple as the return of my black feathered friend? Could it really be as simple as flipping perception? Anything is better than being beaten and battered by the mere thought of existence, nevermind actually existing.

No clenched teeth. No clenched fists. No saunter of disconnect. Breast out proud. Strut done right. Knowledge of destiny sought and received. Caw on my winged brethren; caw, caw, caw.

There are much better ways, many better thoughts. A body at ease with it’s self and no more need for the ravaged muscles of resistance to exhaust the soul.

I have taken from it what I can and will and hope to.

He will fly on with one eye on me and the other fixed on the road ahead.

Caw, caw, caw …

I

When I was fifteen I had a theory that once you reached sixteen it was all down hill. Freedom would only be exiled into a place only to be reminisced about until it’s pardon somewhere around sixty-five. I had figured that when you were sixteen, whether through peer acceptance or societal necessity, acquiring a driver’s license was a mandatory rite of passage thus opening the door to the very steep hill of decline previously mentioned. This is how the theory worked in my omniscient fifteen year old mind: you had to get the license which in turn meant retaining an automobile; either one to use or to own - eventually the latter. This meant money either for gas or car payments and insurance or some combination thereof. Also, if you had a license or a car or a car to use then you were compelled, if not required, to go places and do things. Again, this all meant money, which of course usually leads each and everyone of us to some sort of gainful employment; gainful being a relative term. So, you acquired the license, a car, a job, and why the next thing you knew it’s off to college or a trade school or an apprenticeship: some way to accumulate more money. Most of your time prior to that eaten away by a job and the rest of the time spent driving around spending what you’ve earned (even if just on gas); time ‘drops it’s hammer’ so to speak and you find yourself dangling from the precipice of eighteen. Well, then it’s bigger and better jobs, steadier and stronger relationships, growing financial responsibility, family, loans, and it all tries to forget about itself in the confines of a hot bath only to be dried off and dirtied up again until you’ve reached sixty five and you could endlessly bathe without fear of dirt. At fifteen I thought I was getting ready to climb into one big toilet that I would soon be forced to flush. Spiraling down through the pipes to find myself, hopefully, floating in the ocean somewhere off Key West.

I was now seventeen; four cars, one ridiculous car accident, one recently purchased lemon, a steady girl for a year and a half, and impending post-high school continuation. All had past since I was fifteen. It is quite easy to see why I deemed post-fifteen mudslide theory as one of one hundred percetn accuracy. I had decided at that point more responsibility was probably not my friend but rather my wolf in sheep’s clothing - one big dire wolf. A quick break for a year or so and then off to the eminent temporary death of higher education was in order. Needless to say, my mother did not agree and so goes the great modern American story of youth.

We were living in Southern California at the time and it was nineteen ninety-three. I was the oldest of my mother’s four children and the first grandchild in the family to face this mammoth change. I would look out my bedroom window and pray for time to freeze, but in mother’s eyes college was going to happen when it ‘should’ happen no matter how many time-freezing gazes I shot out at the world. Graduation came and went, as monumental as it was it seemed just like one more reason to have a family get together and a big fancy table of food. My father had come out on the train from Massachusetts and my parents sat in the same room for probably the first time since my christening at age six, so in a way it was monumental. Due to my lack of enthusiasm and some sort of hope that I would not have to go, I chose odd colleges to apply to. San Francisco, being the epicenter for deviancy that it was, seemed like a good place to go. I humored myself with the idea of applying and getting accepted to the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science. My mother’s reaction alone would most surely have made her drop dead, thus supplying me with my own cadaver to practice on and in my mind maybe even gaining me free tuition since I would arrive with my own supplies. I nixed the idea after contemplating how I would have to explain to my grandmother that, yes, her firstborn grandchild would be attending college, but her firstborn child would also be going as ‘school supplies’. My attention swiftly turned to San Francisco State. This became a mistake. My mother thought, “Oh! Great! In-state tuition, good school; maybe he will go!” They lost my application three separate times and I found myself staring out the old bedroom window even more, this time trying to freeze my hand from filling out yet another application to good ol’ San Fran State!

At this point my mother was viewing my attempts as pure procrastination and swiftly recommended that I apply to three schools promptly. She also informed me, that due to a longing for the infernal snow of her youth, she would be moving the family back to Massachusetts. She suggested that one of the schools be there and then I would only have to fret over the other two choices. I was very confused about it all, now more than ever. Sitting on the edge of the bed in between freezing rituals and writing poetry I would think, “Ok. If they leave and I am not going, where will I go or live or do?” Thoughts of my mudslide theory came avalanching into not just my brain my whole being. Lose my steady girl; all of my friends were going away so I would lose them anyway, but lose Ann?

Now I should explain that it was a weird relationship from the get-go but it had mellowed out and well, it was my first real long term involvement with a girl (we all think those are forever!). In the beginning she made me lose my virginity to another girl, convinced me to smoke and made me think that however good nicotine was, drugs and alcohol were bad (which seemed a tad hypocritical, but in my inexperience who was I to judge). Ann lost her virginity at fifteen, so instead of thinking of anything close to my theory of responsibilities she was skipping school to go to motels and get ravaged by a guy named Alfredo who was eighteen and religiously carried ‘prolong’ cream everywhere he went. I wrestled for a couple of years in high school and my first year on the team (before I knew Ann), Alfredo and I would eat together after getting weighed in at wrestling meets. We would sit in his car and in between the seats would be his tube of ‘stay hard’ jelly. He would say, “You gotta use this tuff, it makes ‘em crazy!”. He had this weird Mexican-Italian accent that made it sound silly. We would laugh and it seemed sometimes that I was laughing more at him than what he said. When I found out that Alfredo was Ann’s first, after we had been dating a bit, it gave a weird meaning to the phrase ‘hindsight is 20/20”. Once everything had mellowed out in the relationship (virginities and non-smoking behind us) all I did was think of her. I found that if I wasn’t with her or figuring out schools for my mother, I was masturbating thinking about Ann’s long, thick, red hair.

Procrastination, red hair, and cigarettes seemed to me to have something greater in common than the obvious fact that they weren’t ‘in common’ at all, but what did I know? I thought about that for awhile one day and decided that it sounded too much like country music for me to give it another thought and that in itself was inspiration enough for me to pick out my schools. I thought about obscure places. Places you would only go if you were a merchant marine. I thought if I picked schools based on that, that it would be my last chance at not having to go with the exception of not getting accepted.

Choice number one was Humboldt State University. I figured there was probably more marijuana there than all of South East Asia and South America combined and I knew the grass would at least be better. I knew a couple of people going there and heard the standards were low, so instead of freezing my nice white hiney off in some backwoods puritan hell hole (if I was even going to go) I would at least be going in the great American tradition: in protest as a hippie! Unfortunately my plan backfired right in my kisser. In nineteen ninety-three there were too many dirty hippie potheads in Northern California for some legislative windbag to stand, so the standards were raised. Mandatory GPA went up a whole point and SAT score requirements went up 400 points. What I thought would be my acceptance letter turned out to be a different sort of acceptance letter. Maybe I wouldn’t need to go after all!

Choice numero dos: University of Alaska, Anchorage. Reviewing their strict standards of acceptance (you only had to actually have a GPA, SAT not required), I figured I was a shoe in and it was so remote that there was no way in hell my mother would let me go. It turns out that it was the first acceptance letter that I received. Yippee! I then researched the on campus crime statistics; rape, murder, burglary: zero percent or at least under two percent across the board. Alcoholism and suicide: something ridiculous like sixty-five percent. I figured at that point if all my friends were going to be dead or drunk that I should have just done the mortuary school thing after all.

Last choice, the New England choice: University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Thirty six hundred miles away from everything I had known since junior high in order to live three hours away from where my family would be and for what? To say that I had gone to school at the lesser prestigious school next to where Emily Dickenson had lived? I didn’t even like Emily Dickenson, I was a Charles Bukowski fan. I was accepted and I packed my things.

The dreams that flooded my eleven year old brain (the ones that I will probably always remember) were not the dreams that we all refer to by any of the definitions adhered to the word ‘dream’. They were more the dancing of synapse that occur betwixt and between wake and sleep. Sleep; where true dreams of one type cradle, love, lust, confuse, and scare the shit out of us until day releases us back into the humdrum. Wake; where a different type of dream, yet still true to definition, slingshots us through our hopes and aspirations into our perseverance and discipline with the force of a trebuchet.

I would lie there, certainly not wanting to sleep and not wanting to wake up if I should. Eyes shut but not asleep. Eyes shut but not awake. Flashes of my room; the posters, the stereo, the television, a few models; would colour my eyelids convincing me I was still awake. My breathing would be slower, my heart chugging along at the “you are almost sleeping” pace. The silence coning, coaxing, and compelling me as if the lack of sound itself had donned a striped jacket and matching straw brimmed hat in order to guise itself as some carnival barker verbally frozen into pantomime. Then I would hear it so softly rubbing the quiet that I could have easily convinced myself it wasn’t there; snapping my eyes open and rolling over, re-sealing my eyes into attempted slumber. I could hear it in both ears but it was not a stereophonic image surrounding me, it was more two different sides moving towards each other. Two opposing forces working their way into the colour of sound. I would look from ear to ear without moving my head and see the arcs of two distinct horizons being splattered with balls of lightening. Each infinity oozing; velvet green plush with corrosion, reds that would harden and crack as each droplet shattered on the earth; fiber optic snowflakes turning black as they bounced up off the ground. Each night new colours, new sounds, brand spankin’ new ways of building and building.

From beneath the colour, from within the sound, I could begin to see the shapes as my head would feverishly tic-tock it’s way left and right as if watching the Wimbledon of meth-amphetamine. First banners and flags hung high upon pikes and poles with words I could not read. The sound, ever gradually building and with such presence, forced the mottos and creeds to epileptically rip into shreds. The shadows beneath them, holding them, began to take shape all with building colour and sound. This is when fear would rape and pillage my sanctity of curiosity, pummeling it down and injecting the foul stench of panic. I would look forward and see the two horizons meet and the sound would die, the colour would stop. Looked right, looked left, and again straight ahead. Then it would be there again with such an abrupt entrance I would not be knocked down but knocked up into a vibration that only the darkest point of the night must feel as a star explodes into it. Sound vibrated not to me but through me, while fear and panic and despair would not just take me over but become me. The shadows rose up taller, more defined into less definition than before.

Sometimes my ears would bleed me to sleep, while at other times my eyes would melt. On two or three occasions I came to the conclusion that it was war; it would stop and then attack with more ferocity than ever before. Most times it would just fade away leaving me confused. I had always known it wasn’t a dream but was never quite sure if I was awake either. I never knew what was happening. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t fake. It just was and was for two years.