back on the streets.

just got back in to town.

there were mountains and fog and ravines and rivers and fat tourists and sunburns and the whole nine yards. i forgot about life here for a little bit and drove a really long way. and slept on the floor. and ate indian food. the whole thing was pretty lovely.

i found a bar in downtown harrisburg which sells "pints" (served in 20oz glasses) of yeungling for ninety cents. needless to say i got drunk every day. climbed down the steep slope to the edge of the filthy susquehanna river and sat beneath a bridge and read most of islands in the stream by hemingway. then back to the bar. and then another drive through the mountains.

and somewhere in there i plotted another plot and i think i have a pretty good idea of what's next. in the meantime i have to pay rent one last time and be broke for one more month. but hey, beer and pool. no substitute for hiking and getting lost in the woods, but i'll take it. i may as well enjoy my bar while i have it. it took about four hours in downtown harrisburg to find a dive that compared in the basic elements of filth and dinginess, and in that time i became awfully thirsty. thirsty for drunk.

question.

why the fuck have i lived in a place so flat and ugly and boring and cold for so long?

layover.

a gloriously drunken evening in cleveland followed by a short drive down the turnpike has landed me for a brief stop in the cesspool of eastern ohio. drove down the beautiful strip of windows covered in particle board, lending agencies, pawn shops, porn stores, and other shitholes. twenty miles before it was all forests and rolling hills. but soon i'll be heading east again, into appalachia. godspeed!

covered in glamourous scars and black electrical tape i am hitting the turnpike once again. there is nothing that could possibly keep me here at this moment. gogogo! east, apparently. to the mountains, to the rivers of rising fog, to the overwhelming blur of colours and sounds which will make my mind go quiet again. finally.

she came into the restaurant today (to gawk?). i couldn't figure out what her agenda was. met for a beer and ran out of patience. but no trollop or manipulative bitch could hold me back from my escape. so sit and drink your beer and wonder why i left in such a hurry. because though you may have strung me along for a good week there is no one in this town for whom i have any regard left.

good bye.

yes!

my escape!

i have made an escape plan. but don't tell anyone i told you. it's a secret.

i've been getting fucked around for weeks. women, employers, the bank, my friends. everyone is suspect. but it won't be long now, i'm certain of it. i've set a date in my mind. all i have to do is follow through.

i know what you're thinking. it'll be hard without the cigarettes. well, yes. but anything worth doing. oh, who am i kidding.

but hey. i've a foot out the door. or that's how it feels. gonna make a run for it. i want you all to feel nothing when i leave. as though i actually left when i was supposed to and the only new development is that you've stopped thinking about me entirely.

why am i waiting? i should just leave tonight.

but i already have a plan. but i've had plans before.

well.

well.

here

i am after another misplaced and seemingly useless gesture. uncharacteristically, i've spent so much time thinking about how my actions would affect others that i failed to account for my own reaction. immersed in strangeness.

i think about the idea of being alone; the weird bittersweetness of it. how i've come to associate it with a sort of guilt-free decisiveness. because in every relationship i make the decisions and no matter how much i convince myself i've done it differently (this time for sure!) i wind up being the same commandeering fuck i've always been. but now.

now am i alone? i don't really know what i've done. probably made some mistakes. that's okay. the idea of consequences has fallen short for me lately. thinking more like a sociopath. should probably get that looked at. but

here is where i am, feeling displaced and immersed in strangeness. the big metaphorical pane of glass that separates me from the waking world, caked with anxiety and responsibilities which i haven't decided whether to believe in yet. i'm wavering. but here you are, followed me and got burned, but really no worse than i did. should i feel bad? the thing is that i don't, but i'm on the verge of feeling bad about feeling nothing. i don't pretend that's ironic. just neurotic.

a girl just stands at the end of the bar. i don't know her, but she just fires a barrage of questions at me. things i can't possibly answer. some of them are personal, about her. others are just about the nature of things, deep and existential questions which i've long since ceased asking myself. at first i find it comical, then annoying. but then something odd happens. i start to feel a tremendous dread of the answers to these questions, and the consequences of not knowing.

and then

sitting still at the end of the bar i am looking down at my drink and thinking about cleansing myself without any fire or trials or drama and how it would be nice.

for a change.

it's easy. i know how to do it. so why do i hesitate?

head for the mountains. the dark black circles are becoming more defined. i can feel the sinus drip coming on.

here i am in my bed. ridden. not really sure if it's a bad thing. not really sure if it's intentional. there. did you hearthatpianolinespeed up a little bit? heading straight for me. in a little bit i'll be

certain.

you can hear the one last spin as the disc winds down into silence. i am living in this apartment, completely without money, unemployed as far as the government knows, have completely fallen off the radar. but then i've been a real socialite lately. these are just things that are happening.

the name for the thing i am is the same as the name for the thing i do. over and over and over again. i can look down at my hands, see where the veins move around, where my wrists, forearms, shoulders have changed noticeably. chiseled into place by my lifestyle. i am growing into a strange and different thing and all i am sure of is that it will be made of of pure mad willpower. i can't see the end from here. so i have to go.

head for the fucking mountains. no need to get above the clouds, really. no need to even hit so much elevation. i want to feel surrounded by them. to see their dark featureless silhouettes far off on the horizon. i want to drive highways surrounded by shear blasted rock walls and abrupt drops. i want to fall off the face of the earth for a little bit and have some time.

but for right now my city is eerily silent and here i am in my bed with a laptop musing the imponderables and thinking about how funny it is that i've let myself get played and how funnier that this is the result. for the time being.