Fire, fire, fire

Went for a hike last weekend with my friends Doug and Rees. The Black Crater fire was burning in the distance…



At first the sky was clear and blue, but as the day went on a blanket of clouds rolled over us for as far as the eye could see. It made for some great pics...



There was a lake in a cistern at the top…



The trail went along its ridge…



Rees and I climbed down to the lake. You could say it’s glacier fed, but I don’t think that does it justice. You can be miles down a mountain and say the stream at your feet is glacier fed. But we weren’t miles down the mountain. We were pretty much at the top. There is no distance between the lake and the glacier. They touch each other. The lake is the glacier. All the more reason Rees had to take a dip. He’s crazy.

I would have a pic here of him jumping in, but the lazy ass hasn’t sent it to me yet.

Part of the trail went through the B&B burn from 2004. It mysteriously started the day before Bush was scheduled to arrive to promote cutting down forests to protect them from fire. That’s what passes for logic today. Of course, he didn’t hesitate to use the flames as a backdrop for his speech. Politics.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any good pics of what that burn left in its path – my batteries died. But it was an eerie feeling being there among the charred log pine ghosts with the knowledge that not too far off flames were scorching through another forest in the same way, sending clouds up in the sky, and the sun filtering through it all, painting everything with a fiery glow. It spoke of doom. I started to wonder if there’d be any forests left in a few years. You can’t help but feel the world’s coming to an end in the midst of so much death.

But where there’s death, life is right around the corner…

In Honor of Magro

I still can't believe that she’s dead. This picture wasn’t even taken a week ago and now magro is gone.



My neighbor took her home and late in the night he stepped on her. Magro didn’t die right there, but she couldn’t drink or eat and was having major problems breathing, so they gave her a lethal injection to put her out of her misery.

That’s how fleeting life is people. Live life like there’s no tomorrow, because there just might not be one.

This pic is in honor of her and her sister and how I’ll always remember them – clawing and biting each other, climbing over everything, full of energy.



BTW, I gave the other kitten away to a couple college girls. May she live a long and fruitful life.

Tags:
kittens,
death

Kittens Anyone?

Anybody want a couple of cute kittens? They showed-up on our back porch. We've kind of adopted them for the time being.



This is my roomate Andrew (the one with the beard) and one of the kittens. I call her Magro which is a combination of "Macro" - the the name given to her by Andrew's - and "agro", because this kitten is always pouncing on the other one.

Tags:
kittens

Late Night Destruction

Meghin and I had another one of our late nights last night. 4AM. Actually, that’s pretty good for us. The last time she was visiting, we stayed up till 7AM. We didn’t intend to. The time just slipped away and before we knew it, the pre-dawn sky was warning us of the coming day. “Holly shit, the sun’s coming up. We’ve been partying all night.” Of course, that wasn’t enough to send us to slumber land. Instead we decided to walk down to the train tracks and throw beer bottles at the passing train.

Not to be outdone, we partied till 9:30 AM just a couple days later. The sunrise didn’t sneak up on us this time, but I still found myself surprised when I noticed our neighbors Johhny and Liza getting into their car. Wasn’t it just a little while ago Liza was up here on this very porch drinking a beer with us? The thought that she and Johnny had had a whole night’s sleep since then blew my mind. I couldn’t imagine what we looked like to them - sitting on the very same porch, sitting in the very same seats, still drinking the same beers and smoking the same cigarettes as we had been doing when they went to bed the night before. Had a whole evening passed already?

Liza once asked me what Meghin and I talk about during our all night drinking bouts. “Late night confessions?” she speculated with a hint of envy. “I don’t know. We just talk and listen to music,” I answered. To be honest, I really don’t know what we talk about, and I don’t know where the time goes. We just talk, bounce bottles off the plastic corrugated roof across the street (an act which can be done without even getting out of our seats), and we listen to music…
Me: “These guys sound like Black Sabbath.”
Meghin: “They’re better than Sabbath.”
Me: “Shit, they were still shitting in their diapers when Sabbath was rocking. They’re just a bunch of Sabbath wanna-be’s.”
… and before I know it, the city is waking to the new day while Meghin and I haven’t even said good-bye to the last.

Meghin and I are a dangerous combination. Too bad she’s only 19 and my roommate’s sister.

Tags:
drinking,
girls

Incomplete

“I’m hardly ever 100% comfortable with anybody.”
“That’s a hard way to live.”
“97% isn’t too bad.”
“I never really thought about it. Maybe I’m just covering stuff up.”
“Oh no. Don’t start worrying about that.”
“No really. Maybe I should think about stuff more. Analyze myself more.”
“See that’s why I didn’t want to get into this. I already analyze every damn thing under the sun way too much. Don’t let my neurosis wear off on you.”

That was how our conversation went. My friend Susie and I. Both of us on my mattress. She sitting next to me, leaning heavily on one hand. Me laying on my back with my arm up above my head like I was just run over by a steam roller – an emotional steam roller.

I’ve got my shit together in a lot of ways, but when it comes to interactions with other people, there’s still some gaping holes, and I’m not really sure how to go about patching them up. I wasn’t born with them and they didn’t just suddenly appear with some traumatic experience. They developed gradually over time during childhood.

I picked them up from my mom, and she probably picked them up from her mom, and her mom picked them up from her mom, and … Well, you get the picture. Not like it’s anything anybody did on purpose. That’s just how life is. You don’t intend to be like your parents, but it happens. Before you know it, their strengths are your strengths, their weaknesses your weaknesses, and their fears your fears.

So, I inherited this uneasiness around other people – especially strangers, this lack of confidence. It’s not always there, but it’s around a lot more often then I’d like.

Susie doesn’t have these fears. She’s pretty easy around people – strangers, crowds, the opposite sex, whoever. She has her own issues, but this isn’t one of them.

That’s why, sometimes, it’s hard for me to be around her. I feel like I’m broken and when I’m around somebody that’s not, it really makes it that much more apparent. It doesn’t really heal my wounds, as much as it makes me more conscious that they’re there. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know. All I know is I’m sick of feeling incomplete.

Tags: relationships

The Hood

Our uncurtained windows are open to the world.

A gruff voice worn by years of cigarettes breaks through the morning air, “Get the fuck out of my way! …. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!” Another cigarette-burned response follows it in through the alley-side window, “I’m going to call the cops mother fucker. I mean it. I’ll call the cops!” The shouting goes on, but fades with distance.

A few days later, I’m making my way back from the neighborhood bakery. An emotionally torn couple on the opposite side of the sidewalk lined street are coming my way. Tears roll down the woman’s already moistened cheeks and she’s yelling hysterically, “Will you stop? Will you please stop?” She stands in front of the guy to block his path. He mumbles something with a mask of male calmness, steps around her, and continues on unphased. The pattern of dysfunction continues on past me and around the corner. I feel bad for the woman. I really do. But there’s something more. I’m envious. That’s passion and it makes me say yeaaah!

Reading poetry from my mattress on the floor I hear the repeated sounds of destruction make their way through my window. It’s not enough to break me free from my lack of inertia at first, but then I hear the distinct sound of glass. Maybe someone’s breaking into a car. So, I get up and poke my head out the window. Standing next to the dumpster in the alley is this bobby-haired brunette and at her feet are the battered remains of a computer monitor. She takes a couple more whacks at it with a look of indifference on her face. Then with a sexy little twist in her hips and an air of satisfaction she saunters off. Hanging from her hand isn’t the sledge-hammer I expect, but a long-handled axe, and I realize there’s nothing as sexy as a brunette wielding an axe.

I hear and see such things on a regular basis – shouts, bits of drunken conversation, the beat of tribal drums from the nearby park or the more modern version from the drummer next door. I hear radios, the laughter of girls smoking cigarettes on their porches, and the sounds of things being smashed. I watch the night owls roam the streets - drunkards and troubled humanity. I see girls with enough attitude to take on your burliest of bikers.

This is Whitaker - raw and sexy. It's my neighborhood and nowhere else exists.

Tags: neighborhoods, humanity