Worse Things

“There are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it’s too late and there’s nothing worse than too late.”
 -Bukowski

For The Rest of us

There is, within each day, 
a moment held in contrast to unoccupied space, 
giving our life the emptiness 
which no one notices, 


the edge which describes 
what it was about her
you remembered, what it was you forgot, 
what it was you searched for 
and that you reached for and held. 


For the rest of us it defined our nature 
and kept from us
the reflection through those phases or promises
or gifts of open air.


For the rest it yielded sustenance
and matter, 

sounds from under the freeway

or along the river bank, 

aside from light, 

Outside stillness. 

-Mike Hiler

Pacific Crest Trail


You can not imagine the weight
of the World, 
but I have
carried it over this mountain
in my pack.


And banding against the solid 
footing of the Universe
felt it turn there on my back. 


It turns within you also. 

-Mike Hiler

Some day I think I need to live here,

 or here, 

 and sit at cafe's and smoke these,

 and go home at the end of the day, and be cozy here, 

with you. 

I'm home. 

We studied the map

And bundled you up

And headed for the trailhead

We camped on Bunnt Mountain

And ate backpack food

Now it's time to reflect.

-Mike Hiler

Long Way Home

Well I stumbled in the darkness

I'm lost and alone

Though I said I'd go before us

And show the way back home

There a light up ahead

I can't hold onto her arm

Forgive me pretty baby but I always take the long way home

Money's just something you throw

Off the back of a train

Got a head full of lightning

A hat full of rain

And I know that I said

I'd never do it again

And I love you pretty baby but I always take the long way home

I put food on the table

And roof overhead

But I'd trade it all tomorrow

For the highway instead

Watch your back if I should tell you

Love's the only thing I've ever known

One thing for sure pretty baby I always take the long way home

You know I love you baby

More than the whole wide world

You are my woman

I know you are my pearl

Let's go out past the party lights

Where we can finally be alone

Come with me and we can take the long way home

Come with me, together we can take the long way home

Come with me, together we can take the long way home

-Tom Waits

The Age of String

So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past: iwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglassI'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme...
There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bundle of string to their pockets, but people consider loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small, sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for string. 
The practice of attaching cups to the ends of the string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America. 
When the world grew bigger, and there wasn't enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented. 
Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases, all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence. 
-The History of Love

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order's tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I'll be with you
But it will be a different "kind"
I'll be holding all the tickets
And you'll be owning all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full; so slow on the split
I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?
Now I'm breaking at the britches
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind? 

images from Tumblr, ffffound, Dora's Fur

DEC

So far, December is just the month of me worrying about the future. Which I hate. But soon, I'll be in Wenatchee's snow, which I love. 

Images from ffffound

DEC

Thus far, you're hard to handle. Step it up a notch. October is winning. 


"What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hears through little speakers which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird things is, I wonder if everyone's hears would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war."
-Foer

Images from, Tumblr

DEC

I wear my scars like the rings on a pimp

I live life like the captain of a sinking ship

You fuckin freak
Now keep your days out my week
The world keeps a balance, through mathematics
Defined by whatever youve added and subtracted

Nobody sees tears when youre standing in a storm
Abandoning the norm, and handling the harvest
Measuring the worth by the depth of the hardships

And take this captain to the gallows
I keep steerin us into an area thats shallow
Talkin to my shadow, he advised me not to worry
He said i should plant my tree and let it rise out of the fury
So give me some light, a little love and some liquid
Let life be a bowl of melted ice cream
Or be the deer thats caught in my high beams
Im rollin with the lights on, scared stiff
Reality is just too much to bear with

-Atmosphere

C'est la Vie

“Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”-Foer

“I have this dream every night. Even when I can’t remember it the next morning, I know it was there, like the depression a lover’s head leaves on the pillow next to you after she’s left. I dream not of growing old with her, but of never growing old, either of us. She never leaves me, and I never leave her. It’s true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.”
-Foer

images from: tumblr

Iceland

New destination, the Blue Lagoon

And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact. Forgive me, for I have tried love and everything else, and neither seems to be enough. The rarefied atmosphere that comes with the beginning of love, the first moments of sadness slip out the window. And between the moments hangs a dark and heavy difference. The difference drifts away as moments add up. I will wait in my bedroom as I did before, a thought ajar, and you will slip into my room like a white tiger. I don’t need to suggest that I loved you the best. Still, I want you, just exactly like I used to. I live by the ocean and during the night I dive into it, down to the bottom underneath all currents and drop my anchor.

It’s the opposite of disappearing.

That’s the trouble with silence. Just to utter a single word would be to destroy the delicate fluency of silence. So many words get lost; they leave the mouth and loose their courage. Wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing from the past. But it doesn’t sound good. It doesn’t sound like anything. The oldest feeling in the world might have simply been confusion.

I wish we could have met when we were young, when we didn’t know disappointment. That way, we couldn’t remind each other of it. We stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love. On your porch, alone and loved. Sinking into our own skin. The one string harp, the shot in the dark. It may be the face I can't forget, a trace of pleasure or regret. I want to remember how it feels to say nothing together, to hold hands. My heart takes the beat, then something else. Nudges it. Alive again.

So, I cut off my hair

and I rode straight away

to the wiiiild unknown country 

where I could not go wrong.

-Bob Dylan