The strange way in which the trombone man was singing at the street corner was delightful in its existence during a downpour. Pouting at the umbrella, I really didn’t have anything to add to the morning commute. There wasn’t much that mattered to me. I think I had stopped in to call a lawyer at some point. Another point to call in to the granite hand. Another stopping point to ask why there wasn’t another granite hand shaking this one.  A strange little restaurant had appeared on the front end of town. After I had gone and sat down at the other end of the stretch of street, and caught my breath on the wooden porch, I ambled back over to the restaurant. I had seen the sign pulling up, and it looked like that type of 50’s little diner that had every sort of business being a business for everyone to have everything they wanted. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I had walked in, and a few kids whom looked to be about my age had already sat down. There was a couple sitting in a booth, and the guy had started to make some comments about me. I felt incredibly amused, to be sitting down at a booth in the middle of nowhere. Incredibly amused, to be sitting down in a restaurant picking out what I wanted to eat. It’s easy to keep in mind I had just been thumbing protein bars for a month. French fries, eau-du-lait, carapace crusty roach I was on the front step waiting for my order. I took it out the corner, and popped onto the curb behind some van on the hill. About three or four cars deep, I was picking up a distasteful mood emanating from the street around the corner. In a way, it reminded me very much of my little own hometown stretch of street business. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, the trial, and crucifixion of a man handled in back-ended conversation swirling about in other people’s personal relationships. I had my sandwich in silence. I think I lost about $25 bucks being pickpocketed out of that little town. Not much to say unfortunately, but the town will always ring a bell. I ran the bike up the sidewalk, taking in the green eggs and ham sunrise at the stoplight. The sun hadn’t risen yet, so the mid-morning glow was about as breezy as the flat top view of the highway. I was supposed to get going for another thirty or forty miles this morning, and break for lunch later in the day. I was skipping from big town to little town, big town to little town. The coffee shop was highly perched on the corner. I ambled around the green hard plastic lunch tables, and rolled up to the window. After I got my coffee, I sat down outside the supply closet in the back. Or the front, the directional of a drive through aren’t really contingent on which way the highway was facing. Of course, and being on a corner the idea’s become even more personal. The other employee bumped his way through the door, and fished for something in the supply closet. Must have gone in and out about three times, never said a word. I just sat for the almost religious coffee and cigarettes. The sun peeked out over the hills, and thankfully. The wind was whipping a bit now, and the steam from my coffee spit through the breeze into a wisp. I buckled back into my seat. The way going was always a little harder in the morning, but after an hours ride it became a lot easier. Warming up, I guess it what you would call that. Quite a strange little town, considering the stars. The night prior the sky opened up as if there weren’t any lights around for a hundred miles. I guess, and actually, that might have been the case. I had landed in Grant’s Pass, after a short bus trip from Crescent City. Two kids had gotten on the bus with me, they were talking in excited tones about a concert, or a party up north. After a short repass alongside the state border, it seemed I was legally going to be able to enter Oregon. At the ticket booth in Grants Pass, the employee allowed me to pay for my ticket. I swung outside, the whole area was entirely flat, it appeared to me. It could have been the sunlight, after for so long in the forested area between California and Oregon that my eyes had been adjusting to. I tried to orient myself, and ended up down in the business district on far end. The incredible architecture was eye-catching, to say the least. Gothic churches, and old fashioned buildings stood erect down certain parts. It was certainly a place for a scene, to say too much all at once.Not having much to do in Grant’s Pass, I took to a bike shop in a hip corner down the shaded half of the block. He fixed my bike, and fixed a flat I had. I popped into a coffee shop, cute as could be. I ended up at the post office quickly, and unbeknownst me to having had 30 extra envelopes in pocket with nobody to write to- I scribbled down some notes, and collected the other envelopes I had on me, wrote something about Grants Pass and heading up north. I addressed them to the downtown Seattle post office, General Delivery. That post office must have had about 40 envelopes the next week, all sitting in a slot. The man behind the counter in Grants Pass was bemused to say the least, but definitely handled me in a professional manner. He must have assumed I was being emotional, what with all the unfilled envelopes and no return address.Roping around the back end of the street, the church looked wildly eccentric in the afternoon light. Bird droppings covered the ground on the steps, and a large cropping of crows ran around me laughing in jest. Hopping about in the maddening way that crows do, on their telephone poles out of eyeline, crows are more polite. I began to go up and down the street on my bike, in a mad way, with people starting to call out and shout at me. Where you headed! They exclaimed, from cars and the street. I must have ran myself right over to the top of the town, and back out onto the freeway in three or four hours after I had disembarked from the bus. There was thankfully, a small campsite just over the hill. It was technically more of an RV park, but had the suggestions of being able to camp there overnight. There wasn’t any camp host, or office to speak of. Perhaps it was the off season, or something like that.I rounded up myself into a bit of corner in the lot, across from some other campers, but close enough to an electrical plug positioned in an opposite campsite. Technically, the campsite with the plug had already been reserved, but it seemed the one I was staying in had been the only one without a reservation. I chomped down on some hummus and tortillas I had warmed over a small fire. Snuggling down in my bag I started to text an old friend. The conversation was quite short, and mainly centered around a small kitten that had entered the campsite hilariously. The tiny little kitten ambled in towards what I assume must have been the heat from the fire. You know, technically I have always wanted to coerce a stray kitten to allow me to take care of them. Adoption always seemed a little too forceful, for me, but I’ve never really been a pet owner, so I don’t know the appropriate words to respect that concept. I tried to pet the kitten, whistle at the kitten, feed the kitten, hell the kitten even got lost down in the bag for a minute. Of course, I couldn’t sleep at all during this exceptionally exciting time of my life. The irony here is that once the fire died down the kitten just ran off. Fortunately, or unfortunately. What was I thinking anyways? Would I have put the kitten in my bag, or the sweatshirt? Would the kitten just walk with me? I was very upset the kitten had left, but I knew the next morning I could not take care of this animal. Sadly, I accepted the idea and left, but not before giving one more look around for the damned thing. I had walked down the path, considering the absence of bike path along the coastal road. There was a solidly built little house, looked like it had been there for quite some time, with all the leaves scattered on the roof. There was a group of men with axes appearing over the cliff, they could have been singing, most likely they were. The ocean swept over the horizon in a brilliant blue, the whitecaps pursuing the reflections of bright morning sunlight. I ambled up the wooden steps of the convenience store overlooking the beach. I walked in, alongside a man and his son who had been talking out the front of the building about this and that. I bought a pack of smokes, and some protein bars. I had noticed the Orca-line, or whatever it’s called on the opposite end of the store across from the front counter. It was a sure notice that I had been making my way a bit farther North. The man had stopped in front of the freezer in the back, and selected a loaf of bread. We chatted for a bit outside the front, while I was eating one of the sandwiches they sold. It was made clear they were walking. All the way to Portland, hopefully to find work. More work up there, they told me. For them, but I didn’t really know what they did for work. They had been traveling up from Mexico, or at least San Diego. Having crisscrossed over to Las Vegas thumbing a ride, they had been travelling in much the same way since they crossed back over into California. Easier to pick up a ride without a bike, was the mentioned topic of discussion. I had been trying to figure out what the road was like for the next 30 miles, on my phone it didn’t look like there were any stores or shops to buy food. They eventually started walking, the frozen loaf thawing in the afternoon sun. The fear actually started to rise up in my throat a bit. I talked with a different person the following morning. He told me he bikes over the mountain all the time. This, with my limited experience on a bike, didn’t yield any concessions to my clearly apparent doubt. I went back and forth alongside the road, much like pacing a hallway on what to do next. I slept in the ditch off a corner stretch, after walking around the beach for a while watching the dogs and their owners run around during sunset. It ended up becoming clear I was sleeping in the piss ditch, which is why the trail had looked so clearly marked in the dimming afternoon light. I ended up being semi-awake and semi-sleeping, slipping down the vegetation on the hillside. By the time morning had come around, I must have slid about ten feet from where I had originally laid down. A car had stopped along the way, probably to take a piss, no doubt. Glad the stream didn’t hit my head while I was awake. A few sailboats had meandered their way out past the breakers, little white sails silently floating about. I collected my belongings, and popped back out onto the stretch of highway.Back into the store about a mile up the road, a gal was working the counter. Some quick folk tune popped on the radio, and I swear, it’s funny when you catch yourself dancing to a tune. She had the Bonesetter’s Daughter resting by the window. I picked up a protein bar, and bounced up the road. It was a bit majestic, this open coastline. By the time the internet had petered out, I was trafficking myself up the major stretch of the HWY 1. A cyclist passed me, full saddlebags on front and back wheels, in a slow turn of a nod. A few more cyclists, clad in what I could only imagine were Olympic notations on their jerseys, rolled past me. A guy going .000000001 mph on an uphill gave me a begrudging nod. The forest began to thicken, and dry out the father up the hill I went. The trees began to grow taller, and the pine needles started to indicate how far along the path I was. The traffic down the road was interesting. Could have been weekenders, who knows. A wave here, a shout there, whooping and hollering with encouragement. Some graffiti was tagged along some trees, a sign about a protected area. A construction crew had been laying some road at I suppose a crossing off the 1. In a hilarious mode of apprehensive traffic signals, I adopted a polite path around the rolling pin. Waving to the construction man with the stop sign, he muttered something under his hat. By the time I had reached the top of this blasted hill, I had double checked and triple checked every mileage marker for about an hour. Quite a zippy way down though. Quite zippy. Fun to brake, as if I was trying to get to the other side. I slid out into a graduated neighborhood, mailboxes lining the street, double yellow line.An interesting stop into the corner store here, in the middle of nowhere. A very large man, who might as well have been seven feet tall, eyed me from behind the counter. Metaphors are easy to confuse with similes, but it really did seem like the store had two shelves, and could have held about thirty. I was investigating the beef jerky, for what reason I could not say. There was a tiny middle school, and a few tables out front. Draining a water bottle around the freeway extension, I stopped into a campsite where the man at the ticket booth happily let me in for five dollars. Of course, I could not really believe this, but I would soon find out this was a common practice. I had ambled into the walled off fenced in bustlingly empty open ended patio bar (there was an exit sign and a pail for cigarettes), and ordered a lemonade. There was an older man and a younger looking guy. It’s easy to say they were Father and Son, but now that I think about it, it could have been a boss and an employee. Or a couple, actually. There was no telling really, not that I cared. They ordered a couple drinks too, and we all sat trying to stare down our tables. The stage was empty. Apparently, there had been news of someone drowning in the river down the way. I had tried to thumb that back in my mind. I walked over to the convenience shop on the other side of the strip. I asked for India Ink, from the woman behind the counter. I said, “Do you get asked that a lot?” She said, “Yeah, actually people ask me that all the time.” She never had any India Ink, and she most likely never will, considering the thousand plus items in the store- there wasn’t a damn bit of India Ink. I found this hilarious, and ordered a set of markers instead, with a little pad of paper. I wrote down something stupid on the paper pad. I eventually mailed that off to my sister back home. It only had one marker in the damn thing. If I was supposed to call that a souvenir, I guess that was a souvenir. What a shamefully distasteful souvenir, a pad of paper. I went back to the counter, and there was an older guy sitting there. I asked him, I said, “Is there any work around here?” He said, “No, no work here. There really is never much work, all year round.” A tad disappointed, I set back outside. I had crawled back into the campside across the street. The two days had become all jumbled together. But I walked all the way down to the river where this concert-goer had supposedly drowned. It was all granite and ash, all tall pine trees and rocks. All placid water running like ice. All slick down into the dark pit of the center of the river. All the centers of rivers are pitch black. That’s where the fish hang out, in the center. They slide up and down the center, never wanting to be seen by anyone. I had started to collect firewood, and unfortunately for me the way back up to the firepit and campsite was all uphill. So my mind-bendingly wild assortment of beach wood, in its stickily branched way, brought me all the back up the hill in a tough puff of hoo-ha bravado. What a macho man, collecting firewood for the fire. What a macho man, still alive, burning the fire at night. There really were no appropriate words to be talked about to the three other long distance bikers at the table. Not that I knew what a long-distance biker looked like. I only say so because a hundred miles up the road I was at the next little campsite, and a seashell was dropped in the bearbox. I wanted it to be from them. Something that said, yeah by the way, we’re the culmination of your training, and we actually doubled back to the beach and back and we left a seashell in the bearbox- and then we left before you even got here-kind-of-message. Of course this was all stipulation, all conjecture, there really was no way to tell. Frog legged man. Man, I guess I’m just writing all this down so I can say I went on a vacation, or a trip of some kind. Just to say I made it out of the house. The conversation with the horned rimmed girl was interesting. A real beauty, what with her boyfriend and her girlfriend and her boyfriend. The two boyfriends were out hiking the beach or something. Or hiking, that’s what the girls had explained. I actually, to be honest, I need a lot of supplies that day. Or maybe I didn’t. I knew that the bike needed to be fixed, it had a flat tire. The whole thing was deliciously awkward, and technically if it was the only Bike and Ride in the area, you couldn’t blame me for camping there. I was technically there first. Nevertheless, I had explained to these girls I needed a pump, and a bracket, and a semi-adapter for the pump and this and that all the while I could not stop looking at this girl in the horned rimmed glasses. She was talking about her room in Brooklyn, her flat in Brooklyn, and I could only imagine, hearing about her friend getting the flat in Brooklyn, what kind of work this person does. I mean I wasn’t really thinking about this at the time, considering I was trying to be as polite as I could be having not taken a shower in three weeks or maybe six. But you know nevertheless, she’s having this conversation on the telephone like she’s happy for her friend getting the flat, and she’s making quite a pointed effort to explain this on the telephone, and not to her friend, or me. She’s looking at the clouds in the sky while she’s talking! This is how I know, this is how I know. Who knows, the point being I had nothing to say about Brooklyn. I had nothing to say about the boyfriends hiking. In fact I was a tad bit nervous about running into them, Jesus. They were camping on the other end of the round about. And thank God for the showers that loomed precariously on five star ratings. It was the lack of branches on the trail. Every bit of scrap had been picked up. I could hear the ocean stirring. It was God doubling in half, on his clutch of stomached Earth and Ocean. It was God, wretched power to be, bending numbness and meaning in half. The rocks of course, coursed through the shoreline. I swear it was the kind of place you would take your family too. The kind of place for an extended weekend biking trip with the fiancé. Of course, this may have been advertised in the previous conversation by the neighborly camp neighbors at the neighbor table by the neighbor bicycle pump. The kind of place kids can get lost in, the kind of place a terrible business man can get his life in order, the kind of place you can get really lost in. Strange memorial. Strange salutes, for what the soldiers did to extend our freedoms here. It wasn’t yet July 4th. I had been traveling on the beach, by the logging company, back and forth for several days. I had slept on the beach the first night, in the dunes with the sleeping bag back where the dew wouldn’t soak into the sand by morning. The crashing surf, gritty as all hell, reminded me of a few beaches in comparison. There’s the Pacific Ocean, which is funny. In parts of San Diego, the ocean is quite powerful, quite cold, and lots of foam. In Florida, the ocean is flat and warm and rainy. In Los Angeles, there are a couple beaches, all of them different I guess. I guess this beach struck me as a beach no one wanted to swim in. The waves broke too close to shore, and the fog kept everything slightly evasive. Evasive, meaning, there wasn’t a clear point to make a camp. The beach was stretched out for long ways in one direction. Perhaps the whole thing was man made, I don’t know. Nevertheless, I had found a camera on my way out one day, by the turn around by the bridge. Somebody had probably left it on top of their car, or most likely had thrown it out the window by the way the road ran. Now this is a strange ethical concern I had for about ten minutes looking at this camera, and eventually the pictures. The camera, had some potted weed. Some pictures of dogs, children, a girlfriend. The owner, taking a few selfies of himself. In some instances, I wouldn’t know what to do. This would have been one of those moments. I obviously wanted to do the right thing, so I went ahead and called up the park department for a lost and found. They said they couldn’t take the camera, and there hadn’t been a report of a camera being lost. At this point, you have to be thinking, well maybe this guy had some weed on his camera, and didn’t want to be caught with the evidence. But still, could have been a two hundred dollar digital camera. Could have been fifty bucks. I could very well have left the damn thing on the road, but perhaps if I kept it, I would be keeping this guy’s secret safe. Terrible me I took a couple photos too! The camera eventually ended up being discussed a pawn shop hundreds of miles away. The camera wasn’t worth much. Sad times, sad times. Of course, this story isn’t very interesting to me. The only value in it, is a detached examination of my behavior and attitudes. The strange thing is, I got exactly what I wanted without even thinking about it. I have this terrible problem with my phone, I send text messages when I drink. Since my phone is always on me, I have a terrible problem losing it. In any case, for several weeks now in an indication of a reflection on my own issues, I never once sent an embarrassing text message. Never felt the need to, never even thought about it. Of course, that’s a strange way to bring that up. In any case back to this beach, will of course is a great place to be. I had ambled up all along this damned filthy sand. Used needles, and cigarettes, beer bottles all up and down the trail. The most hilarious part is watching this group of people have a weekend. Weekends are a funny thing. I read once that drinking on the weekend was an Anglo Saxon tradition? I’m not sure where I read that. We do have culture, a generational culture. Whether drinking on the weekends is an Anglo Saxon tradition, it seems highly unfair to label a generational weekend drinking habit as ethnic, don’t you think? I only say generational, because the media portrays this wildly exquisite peripheral of an advertised “good time.” And not the media, but actual the social media. Trending, or not trending, it’s never actually discussed- but this leak of atmosphere from the online just puddles onto my phone. I mean, you could just pour all the alcohol you see being consumed on the social media platforms back actually on the physical phone itself on your kitchen counter and it would go straight through the glass. But here I am, with a bag of hotdogs and buns and a six pack of Budweiser on this tiny little island in the middle of nowhere BBQ’ing a weekend meal. Absolutely hilarious, as if I was getting away with anything. I think being alone can do wonders for the soul, mind, and body. The funnier part is, after I pack up all my leftover food from Grocery Outlet back into the yellow bag, I’m packing myself up in the sleeping bag in the ditch off the side of the road under the bush. And I think to myself, well thank god the cops didn’t get me! And I’m trying to stay as silent as I can, and don’t turn on my phone, for fear the light will attract attention, and I’m smoking a cigarette with my hand over the flame, about a good six or seven feet beneath the edge of the asphalt down the hill, and I’ve been out for three weeks now like this, and I’m thinking, who is the criminal? There was a tiny little bagel shop on the corner. It had windows fogged from the morning, or perhaps they weren’t fogged. I had originally walked in, to these, it wasn’t linoleum, and it certainly wasn’t concrete either. You know what it was? It was tile. It was ceramic tile, actually. The tile lay so flat on the ground, on the steps I mean, I can understand why I must have had a fogged memory of the situation. The thing I did remember to do, though, is walk right up these three or four little steps. There was a handrail, but I was so excited I never even touched it. In fact, I must have skipped a step or two. Maybe even three, but I doubt three steps at a time. There was a woman, and man behind the counter. Counter, is a funny way to describe in what so many different circumstances and architectural arrangements can only be conceptually designed as a space between employee and customer, actually. Nevertheless, a glass box, or a, well I’m not entirely sure what the words would be. There is actually, a professional term, it would be case? A glass case, perhaps? A case of bagels. This case of bagels was entirely appealing to me, as a customer behind the counter. But I hadn’t entirely been interested in the case of bagels, initially, anyways. I had motioned with my hand to the employee behind the counter I was interested in a discussion of some sort. I hadn’t actually planned what I was going to say, in fact. I have done that before. I’ve written out whole speeches in fact, and I’m not sure if that works any better. You know the feeling you get when somebody is lying to you? There are a lot of psychological, physiological work that has been done on the subject. Lying, or something like that. It seems that the same sense of the term as it has been applied to lying can often be, in my opinion screened in the same way as a speech, a written speech. So, in that sense, I try to write speeches. It sometimes feels quite dry, in a humorous sort of way. So, nevertheless I’m at this counter now. I reach out the guy, in not so much of a desperate fashion, as I had already motioned with my hand for a conversation. The motion of my hand actually at this point must have appeared as if I was making a motion for a point of debate, or a point of contact. Indicating, yes, you see me now. I see you, that sort of thing. I said, “Gosh I’m looking for a job,” something like that. At this point the dynamic, behind and in front of the counter becomes a tangible separation of distance, and space. This counter now becomes somewhat of a defensive wall, involving language, culture, religion, finance, politics, and opinions of all kinds. I had just heard a conversation from Alan Watts this morning, and I have to bring myself back to reality in this situation, of a defensible memory that I can assuredly hang behind in some sort of a faith based exercise I’m sure. Alan Watts, this guy, and I’m sure there’s many connotations and opinions behind actually which YouTube video I’m referencing, but that’s technically not the actual point here. The video involved a teaching, in which the outlines of destroying, not like destroying and creating gender differences, or making concrete the gender differences involved- but rather, if I may be actually more libel with my connotations of Buddhist translations here: The absence of desire actually, the desire in which to destroy desire. Anyways, this guy gone on for quite sometime, and closed with what had appeared to me a parallel in Christianity with being “good,” or not actually “good,” well, now I’m forgetting what he was saying. In a sense though in that defensible action of outlining an outline, perhaps I’ve learned something about destroying the desire, in what he had already outlined, and what I’m outlining now. But then again he ended by saying you just give up. Of course, now in a defensible memory here, and all free association aside, I have to relate back to the conversation I had left at the bagel shop. Because in fact that conversation, in a sense, is what we are all trying to determine. The conversation about how to not demand, a life, not ask for a place to live in the fashion that is acceptable in contemporary society, but to ask in such a way as to respect those that are dealing with just the same very thing. And so, this conversation all of a sudden becomes quite interesting on many different levels. The conversation, actually, in fact, if I was learning anything, about people or business, or the United States, and how professionals act professionally in a business context, would after sometime yield some sort of common denominator in a sense of the ethics and practices that I myself hold myself to. Yet, in this compartmentalized, specialized, sense of the expectations of perhaps, say sweeping a floor, or cleaning the toilets, the conversation becomes absolutely vague. Vague in a sense of the ideas and concepts that I can stand behind and say, I’ve learned something about how to do this. Because to tell you the truth, it doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m learning anything or not. What would Alan Watts say, should I stop trying to learn? Well nevertheless, the story about that bagel shop ends quite in somewhat concussed fashion. I had discussed the opportunity with the owner, or manager, or the woman, or the man. In a colloquial fashion abhorrent of any real foundation standing on myself, I was led to the belief I should come back with a resume. Well and at that point it became somewhat of a contemporary practice, and of course I had a resume on hand. Well not on hand but in the cloud, and I thought it was going to rain, but nevertheless I still had a phone on me, so I went to FedEx and said to myself, well what’s fifteen cents to me? Fifteen cents to me is a position in fact which would yield a lifetime of work, and respect of a community in which I would provide a service. So I print out the resume, and the business is closed of course. Though no fault of my own, of course, I slipped the resume under the door, and I never heard a damn word from them again. Sadly, and I know the emotional content of that situation can become clouded over time, but I still wish they had at least called me. You know? I mean if they had called me, I could have said, well in a professional sense, perhaps the business just wasn’t in the right quarter, or they couldn’t handle an employee without a place to stay or a shower, or clothes. Well and that’s what I think happened. That’s why I think they didn’t hire me. But still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But I have to remember, that in fact I had gotten a cup of coffee at the time, and sat down on the metal tables and chairs outside and had my cup of coffee for two dollars, and then I had a cigarette, and I watched the birds, and the clouds, and the people passing. Passing by, I myself did, of course. And the poetics aren’t really worth much, because it never really amounted to much in a professional sense. You know?  ----  I piddled down the main aggregated road, the thru-way that dropped right into downtown. I was going at a good clip in mid-morning traffic, using all the incorrect hand signals in the bike capital of the Western United States. I had a terribly heavy bottle of wine in my sleeping bag. Nevertheless, I dropped down into downtown at the request of Yelp to secure my mini cupcakes. The city was bright and bustling in the morning light, the industrial scrape of steel and rubber wafted through the passing traffic. The electrical lines were buzzing, and mostly people were all getting hopped up on coffee. What was the best coffee shop in Portland? I don’t know. It seems unfortunate I had to subscribe myself to the interior of Portland, but until I was going to be able to make a decision on where I was going, I was stuck trying to hide in the interior park. Nevertheless, this was all going through my head at 7 in the morning in heavy downtown traffic. A Prius, maybe? Definitely not a Chevy. Could’ve been a computer driven car, some sort of AI out to get me. I highly doubt it. I was on my back, in two seconds flat. Somebody asked if I was alright, and I got back up and tried to check if the wine had busted. I had to examine the bag for a solid sixty seconds, until I realized that it wasn’t wine that had soaked the bag, it was my back. Hilariously, I ambled down across the street to the cupcake office. Strange little office of a cupcake office it was, being all on the corner and this and that. They arranged for my receipt to be pulled up in the computer, and the well-groomed man handed me my exquisitely small cupcake. I passed down around to the mecha-cool tables on the roadway, and tried to examine the scene of the incident. I must have been a bit dazed, looking fairly cool, if you can call that cool. Down on the street having a cupcake and coffee like that.In the middle of the day, I had been trying to find a park or something. There was a pseudo Centralia park surrounded by tall brick buildings, with a layer of deciduous trees covering a drop down of available park benches to sit at. They weren’t really benches, but obscured concrete blocks. Some benches. Mostly blocks. There was a woman sitting down at a bench, she may have had a stroller with her. She was sitting in the shade. Just like me, trying to escape the heat of the mid-morning. It was a totally private little park in the middle of nowhere, in the trees like that, it was really nice. The kind of spot you could just escape to, if you had a chance to escape. I smoked a few cigarettes and climbed up the steel handrail and steps that led back out to the parking lot. I crossed the parking lot, and back down another set of steps. Back down onto the sidewalk, with more people going about their day. It felt rather removed, in a way I had never felt removed. Removed in as so much I felt relieved I couldn’t understand what was going on, what people were doing. It was easier being an outsider, that being a local. Being a local, in a way, extends to the vitality of beliefs surrounding a language on how to do business. How to walk into a gas station, how to walk into a restaurant, how to not look like you’re totally a stranger to people. Like you have business here, and you know what you’re doing, and there’s just no other way about it. Being a tourist, well, I could hardly call myself a tourist, but a passer-through, there was a different set of expectations. Couple a sleeping bag, and people just stopped looking at you. Like the way I used to avoid homeless people, never looking at them, just passing by. This may be an American way of thinking, the only one that comes to mind, sadly. If this is true, then my learned behavior doubled back on me, in an oh-so-glorious way. The chance to escape the perplexity of attention was in itself a sort of ecstasy, one that I had never been given the chance before. In a larger city it becomes even more apparent.  The Starbucks had all the workings of a high profile business Starbucks. Not that a high profile business Starbucks has anything in particular to be different about. About the only thing that made it different was the high gloss wood panel on the wall. I think it was the high gloss wood panel. Definitely glossed, definitely wood paneled. Not that it made any difference to the overall effect of the Starbucks. The tip jar was still a clear plastic box with the top off. If you can maintain the clear plastic tip jar, Starbucks, you’ve maintained the atmosphere. I’m not sure how many times I’ve asked for just a coffee. In the end though, Starbucks won my jargonial colloquialism. I now ask for a Tall Coffee, without room for cream. If they ask me what blend of coffee, I will retort with my emotional content for the morning, afternoon, or night. The morning blend, or light blend, is usually accompanied by the emotional content following a familial coffee pot bonanza. The kind of bonanza where the coffee is free and cheap, and the pot is strong enough. Strong enough even though its glass. If you’re in a coffee bonanza, I swear, break the glass coffee pot. You won’t try to, but if you do, and by you I mean the unintentional hopeful reader here- you’ve reached a new zenith of bonanza. It is no longer a bonanza, it is a bash. A coffee bash. I’ve never attended a bash. Never had I the bash of a coffee pot. Well, actually, now that I pry into my crumbling folds of brain, I have seen a coffee pot break. But it certainly wasn’t a bash. Starbucks has that napkin on it, that I noticed the other day. The napkin reads, Original since 1971. Something like that. And after all the conversation about the relationships between Starbucks, the birth of hip hop, the advent of cell phones, and some angry man not being understood at the phone booth, I can understand why now 40 years have passed. A forty year old business carries certain weight to it. Like that sandwich shop that says, I’ve been in business for forty years. But Starbucks has buckled into a certain fresh approach to its singularity. Starbucks doesn’t really compete with anyone anymore. Of course, this was not what I was concerned about at the time. It was certainly more about the dozens of cigarettes at the table outside, and the concerned looks from the business class (they might be described better in an airport lounge).   -------- Delight, died into the night. Neighed she knotted into night, the gnarl of asphalt ass, my fault! Felled Fall, falling filling feelings with Fall. Fall never knew itself. I do. I wrung my hands around my wrists, resting breasted hawks hawking choices on choice, choice spot, I thought. I clung to the dampness, clinging to my hands. My nails were full of dirt, dared to burn into the world. She opened her Earth, parting voids of berthed births, the cattle cursed. Curred cured, curs upon the feared. Tiny inequities, rattled to the burns along the road. Tiny silences, tiny words, tiny fjords, carried so much into the old. It was Old MacDonalds farm, the real kind. Of legitimate worry, as the animals turned into their garish selves. Garish sweat and snot, the shit, lipped calves and cocks, fucking me up into daybreak. Fucking me up into the sun. Fucking me apart into morning, ripping apart my breast and my bone, splitting my heart in half, fear piling like a million suns of heat into my arms, splitting them at the seams, seamless, females, formless, the God, the righteous belief, the religious asunder, the asunder confused in an already dead way, lidless hills, with lidless wills, with lidless fills, filling the past screens of hate and anxiety with a different kind of life. For that was out of my mind, all of that. And once again, it became a different world. A different life to lead. A different family, a different situationtomake choices in. A different feeling, a different clause upon the side to flaw, slotted into sides, caught into the light, lied into the lies, catching my eyes. Eyed into the night, the crow restfully caws, restfull because he knows I cannot escape. I cannot escape. I wound into the stop, a woman sat uncomfortably comfortable on the chair by the window. Looking at me with half lidded eyes. I bought a coffee, and chained the bike. A girl opened a pizza box to my right. She invited me for a bite. I said nothing, and the man talked about parrots and parties and streamers. They looked disappointed I didn’t join in. The loggers to the left and back into the light. What a spotlight, had they followed me to throw my birthday party? It’s not my birthday, but I can enjoy the coffee I walked into the lake. Into the shine. Into the buzzing Summer. The gas station told me the streets full of booze. The owner walked out, looked at me. The crowd over the music whirled with lawn chairs and polka dot flannel. The ubiquity of small buildings, and little shops. The cars roaring across the street. The big engines, like somebody was fighting for a girls attention. Like somebody was fighting me. I didn’t want to fight, I just wanted a place to sleep. I was full awake, fully aware to the corner I was trying to catch. I wound into a vacant lot, like so many vacant lots, it never has anybody on the other side of the street who cares. I cut into the hill, and hammered myself into the shoreline. A ranger looked sadly from across the way. The lake was filled with a few houses dotted along the shoreline, dotted tiny windows and wintered docks. The geese flung themselves into the water, a fish plopped into the surface. The stars made me stare into the sky all night. I pulled up into a coffee shop, and the girl asked me for ice. I was very confused. I sat by the supply closet for twenty minutes and was on my way. Oh what a beautiful girl, her hair. Sunshine warmed me up really quick, and all the hatred at home started to fade away. What was my home, but somewhere else? I cried into a ditch, ditching my fear away. I was being followed by a red truck, revving its engines and full of supplies in the back all afternoon. Scared the shit out of me. The highway opened up for a few miles without a bike lane, some people told me. Can’t really ride it, they told me. I walked into the gutter, the cold underpass with somebody under it awhile away. A big cutting block in the middle, the kind of place people get fucked up in. The kind of place kids party and never remember where they partied at. Full of loose granite and trash, leveled like a project zone that never grew back. I hid in the grass, and the rain soaked me all the way through that night. All the way through to the bone. I smoked a few wrinkled cigarettes through my wet hands, if you could still call them hands. The bag wasn’t fair under a fearful tree, and the underpass wasn’t full under a feared fool like me. I was up all night, never thinking I wouldn’t be getting coffee in the morning. I was backed into a corner, for whatever reason. I wound my way around the vineyards the next morning, and out onto the freeway. The bike lane was open though, all the way through. perfectly fine to ride, and no problem at all for only ten miles until I could get off the road. Scary how some people can create fear when there is none. Perhaps they were afraid of the rain, like I always was. Perhaps it was a boyfriend just trying to help. Perhaps it was a some stranger who had been there, a local who knew how heavy it got. How heavy the rain can fall, when it fall without a roof. When it falls without anybody to stop it. Without anybody to catch you, without anybody to hold you, without anybody to care. I criss crossed into the road. The 101. She wasn’t an exotic sight. Light, and lay into the hill I might, I thought. The bike shop had explained that I wasn’t to go all the way up, nobody does it anymore. I was to criss cross back and forth, and never to stay on the main road. Why? That I didn’t ask about. That I didn’t understand. She had a roll to her, a certain motion, an exuberance, a flow, a push, a plight, a plied path. Plied into the rock, the huge jut of stone looked ominous. She took me away, she carried me. She carried me for what the signs read as fifty sixty miles, but I’m not sure I believe any mileage markers anymore. It seems like sales, how people are selling gas. But I wasn’t thinking about this at the time, I was just rolling along, hurling into the traffic, hurling into the heat of the day, hurling into the pedal, hurling myself into the sweet hymn, the sweet harmony of elsewhere. The dreams lay like lies, always elsewhere, always nowhere, always everywhere and never obtainable. Never for sure, never within grasp, never within reach. Like the tendril of a serrated grass, catching its edge and the immediacy, the understanding, you hold onto it in its purity, its double edged concept, its fragility and power, never to be handled in a certain way, and never meant to be handled at all. In fact, never to be touched, and its edge becomes earthly at once, the edge becomes something not of a design, not of a comfort, or a use, it becomes a separation, not serration. A separation of use, and relegated to its warning, it carried our pain in it, and of it. It never carried any intent, or ill will. It never carried pain, it never meant to interfere, and yet its recognizance upon contact, given, bends upon it. It bends to the will, it bends with more force than a storm could rip apart a forest, more force than a flood could uproot its cause. It bends slightly, as if the human touch allows it to live, allows it to be of no harm. But it cuts all the same. The girl went down, face flat on the concrete, passed out from the heat, a friend explained to the police. Drug addiction, the police remarked. They carried her off in an ambulance. The librarian told me I couldn’t check out books without proof of residency. They told me that in fucking Portland too. Funny houses, all down the street district. A loose electrical plug, a modern wonder in a poor city, all the places one would look are all boarded up. Strange, how old it must have seemed back in whatever year. I could only imagine what 1978 looked like here. I was lost, losing my patience. Losing my whereabouts. I was in Arcata, the poorer part. Eureka was the rich part. There was nothing I could do wrong here, for the criminals lived here. In the middle, between the rich and the middle class. There was no hate here. A woman could walk down the road with an umbrella, exclaiming about the weather, without a care in mind. The seagulls unnoticed. The wharf without a thought. The wind without hesitation. The grime of the asphalt clung in the air, it hung to the walls, and nails rusted over. The sea slugged itself into the eyeballs. Hilarious, how people try and help. There’s too many homeless. Too many homeless. Too many orphans. Too many addicts, Mary Shelley. Don’t Christian me over which way in walking, because I’m not walking into heaven like Christ. I’m not walking anywhere, I’m walking into nowhere. I’m walking into nowhere. I’m walking so that you may see me, and see my expression, and how it has changed. So that when you see me back into the rigors and the pulleys and the brands and the expectations, you may compare and contrast the smile on my face. The authenticity of my expression, free from expectation and fear. Free from the belief that someone cares. Free from all of that. That, you can be assured of. I walked into the crackling exit, crackling with the graffitti that made sense now. Sensing the pain that comes with leaving, the industrial marks of a sidewalk that stood too high for people made me laugh and skip upon its line. Up and down I walked in line, waiting on the step of a trashed office, littered with scrap and debris. I wonder what it would be like to work at this step, waiting for a paycheck? Payless, pay less, painless, I scraped down the sidewalk. The next town was 30 miles, and I knew it was too far to be safe. I stopped at a hotel to ask of the conditions on the trail. Yes sir, oh I’m an immigrant can you buy some smokes for me across the street? Sure what kind. American spirits. Sure sure. Oh, looking for a job? Yes, well I don’t know ill have to ask the manager, I live in a room here for cheap. Cheap enough to live? Sure, sure do. Oh ok, and the trail, sir? Yes, the trail, right up and over the mountain. Any girls? Well I have a girl back home. She’s cute but you know how girls are at a certain age, she’s too young for me. I never know. Well you know, leave it alone, see what happens. How old, 16. She’s 16. Yeah, I’m saving up, maybe bring her here or go back. Back where? Yeah, its hard to save, ain’t it? Sure is. Nah, I don’t got a girl, you don’t want to ask my advice with women! Certainly don’t, but you know all about me. Yeah, I’ll wind my way up the hill tonight. Sure sure, my friend. I wound my way into the gate, unchained. The electrical poles wound their own gates. One, two, in the grass as high as my head. Encampments, littered garbage, tents askew. A man in a curious suit called out, who’s there? From behind the trees, I kept walking, who’s there! He spun around in coattails, checking his watch. We’ve been expecting you! I’m just passing through, I said. Ah yes, well you’ve quite a way with timing! He disappeared into the grass, without a sound or step. It was cool enough to see the air, passing across the mudded chasm. Lost ’em, I figured, breaking down into the night. Gearing my bike into my legs, I curled around the seat, watching a small head imperceptibly peek out from the brush. A soldier, perhaps? I smoked a few cigarettes, just thinking I’d get robbed straight blind as soon as I fell asleep. The forest was crawling with people, left and right. I could hear a small camp up the hill, the sound of running water, cans rustling. The actors in the playhouse, all painted and bright. All with certain clothes, hung in the light. All dressed and ready, all prim and proper, oh how they waited for the show to fall asunder! Oh how much oh a show it is, as the police rallied behind the man. I watched inquisitively, as the passing strangers all swung into the side. Sidewalks, all walks of life. A man came up to me, so thankful to be able to talk to someone. Many words about the universe and peace, about the fear, about the assumptions. The police began to question the man, who may or may not have been drunk. The bicyclists began to crowd the train, 3 at a time, 3 at a time. Is it my turn? I waited for an hour. Nobody would let me on. The man had three or four police officers around him now, all questioning him. Just trying to get on the bus they exclaimed. Just trying to get home. The police were armed, actually. I stood, in absolute wonder, jaw dropped. They took him away, eventually. Just sitting at the bus stop. I got on the bus then, the exquisitely crafted, technological wonder of public transit. Two old men called me a fag, looking at me, calling me names the whole time. Threatening me, looking at me, poking fun at where I was getting off with my sleeping bag. Sickness, is often masked with silence by the crowd. It’s those that never say a word that are the true criminals. Perhaps I could have said something to help the man, but I was pushed away lightly by the police, not to interfere, not to get involved. There’s never a place to rest freely, never a place to sit, without intention. If you do sit, or stand. Just to be, there will be those who question the intention, and place ill will out of fear. That’s the demand for criminals these days, when there’s none in plain sight. It was the serious man, oh the street was littered. The piano in the quiet part of the park, loosely through the windowpanes. And the kid down by the trash, I’m sticking it out out here he said. Giving a thumbs up to me. The teacher ecstatic, the busman ridiculous. Across the river, across the damned, to sell something. Looking back at the phones, for a charger twice the dollar. Damn him and the department man, I know you’re not opened up and the lights down, the guy with his sharp suit. Sitting silly in a compartment cafe, like I would be called in that day. The metal doors, hanging outside, the pressed fabrics singing in the dew, morning dew, from the busybodies walking too. Who? Who am I, walking into the night, the electrical lines, the shaved concrete, the shaved walls, the shaved men. I rang into a cafe, the postman stopped sad in front, I was claustrophobic, caught in the noonday heat of business. The businessmen scrambled around me, I thought, falling to my knees I’d write a letter. I put it on the windowblades of the truck, and wrapped my bag back up. A million miles an hour, a million miles an hour, it left me into the shade, for an hour. The family shuffled to the side, as the festival burned into the afternoon light. The coolers and parade, the children flip flopping in the grass, the older kids swinging baseball bats. The older sitting alone, side by side, I wound my way into the ground, watching the kids play on the outcropping in the water. I used to swim out as a kid, I watched in nostalgia. I saw the bridge, and the plain men, the singers and the sin, I wanted to ask, do you know the tune here? Or is it all here? I know I can tell you about most everything, and it wont make a damn bit of sense. I laughed, when the gnarl of the branch ripped open my leg, as if I can feel anything anymore. I can’t feel a damned thing, I reminded myself. I can’t feel anything. The breeze blew in, the sweetest breeze I ever knew. The sun rose at sunset, rising into violets and blues. The men cried out and children too, and the confetti all crunched into the grass. The ways in which I could belong, too. Winding up the hill, to catch a meal or two, the glass facades, the tiny street, the bulldozer left in a half finished project. The computer store left locked. The building awash, an empty floor I thought. Maybe crawl inside? Where were the workers, where was the work? I left a note under the bagel shop. No reply, no work here. I can’t believe I’m here. It was awash, the conglomerate denied, it was a toss, the maniacs cried, it was a loss. It was where nobody knew it was, in the chimes on the corners, in the smiles too. It was every way in which I knew you. I was every way we never got to know each other. Sadly, had I, had anyone knew, the wind continued and blew. Up across the scrawling dust, up across the chained rust. It was all gone apart, all the routines that enslave the will, blindly, and so blindly. Deaf, and dumb, wandering in a painting. I wound my way into the signs, regardless of the illicit crimes. Unbeknownst to me, gnashing gears and shaded visors swinging three past the hanging trees. Her leathered thighs and muscled forearms pulling elbows to the Earth. My shuddered twine, hobbling barefooted up the line, while three passerby’s touched their shadows to my climb. I pittered on the ground, stay away from me, I said. They feel back upon the streetlights, and I fell back upon the playground. Eluding a Mothers wary eye, I acknowledged a birthday party to my left. Leaving, I suddered on the swing, hearing the children’s cries. Cries, cries, nestled between the treeline. The gnashing gares and violesce in whirled gushes of gasoline beyond my sight. Lightly, aflight, I washed down the hill in fright- would I make it to the show on time? Oh what a show of mine, delivering myself to the cashier down the street of my dimes. Cash only! She tried, trying out the door. On the hill, in the moonlight, I barely noticed the lovers in a triste, over granite and kissed! My catechism of an eye, realizing themselves away into the night. Only a word, on the garden aligned at my feet. The guards walking in wonder at my plight, who gives a damn, I sought but never sighed. My breath elevated escalated elated, the fireworks alright! Where oh where was the best spot to find? Tonight ringing round the bursts, bursting in my fright. The family was gone, the party over. The swings hung trembling in the shudders of the boom! Boom! Boom! The crashing gears, lashing tears streaming dreams leaning into the mountains curves, swerved, swerved, swerving unnerved around the dirt at my feet. Where am I? I deserve! I earned! I learned! I was, were knotted up inside from years of being burned alive, knotted up from years of fears, fares, force- curse the melting signs! Unnerved, the police appeared in the twitch of my toes. Lost, lose, I wound myself into a frown, covered in her crowns, crowning upon mountains loaned and loud. The parking lot was full, full of cars, I’d never steal one, but I’m the criminal, I don’t know how, how oh how, will I ever learn to love. A stranger sat in ecstatic foundation, crumpled into solidarity and reverence on the tennis court. Love, love, in the chains and chained. I will not sit with her, the crowd gaggled at the stars and stared into their lears. I was playing with the kids. The amphitheatre was full, as I crisscrossed through the branches, in and out of sight, in and out of sight, for the maze on what was right was out tonight. The crowd! At last, the applause! A pause, up laws and down laws, gravity into lost. I corralled into the steps, heaving my bike like a knight. Night was upon us, as the chains on the bikes whirred in incessant use. Crawling through, where was the Japanese garden? I could not find it, walled off of course. I caught myself in the rose garden, alone. Alone, a loan, a lone rose never given back. Back into the pack, I fished for another way back. I watched the lovers twirl, twirling their backs, families collapsing into each others arms. The city was so full. So full, and bright. So birthed, and birthing, it heaved into the air its last ear, is this what you wish for? It’s crumpled buildings so fragile, and wired into the ground. I stuck myself into the dirt, daring to hurt, hurting for her, and all her ways around. I folded myself into the armature of a historic landmark, curled into a ball. To close to the wall, I thought, ringing rosies into the dark. The dark zoo, with its curling growls and heated spaces, a wolf I imagine. Imagining, imagining, its all I do, wading into the knee high leaves to fall. The cars passed, one stopped, maybe two. I fell into the Earth, the leaves, the dirt. I studied the bark, barking into the moon. I could see a sliver, painfully slicing into my view. No more fireworks, but I could hear them all too soon. Soon, soon, soon, soon, washing away into the rain.