Monterey County

            These blank grey yellow hills stretch on into the distant haze.

This book is cold and my lips are chapped.

            Billboards that point to more billboards line sections of the road. Pointless broken white fences set along side barb wire ones.

I’m back on this road again but I don’t think I’ll bother making contact with you.

            Now these hills are sandy and they end in artichokes.

I brought my bare feet.

            I’m walking up a hill with the sun in my eyes so I have to look down and I see the world from the hip down through illuminated eyelashes.

…

Albany Landfill

            I’m riding my bike up and over the pedestrian walkway and down the other side again. My weight has shifted up to my arms so I’m standing on the pedals. This strains my recently patched elbow. Past homeless under the concrete structures.

My hands are on my thighs.

            I’ve made it in time before the light goes. Rolling smooth.

…

Monterey County

Clint from Louisiana in his blazer and name tag tells us:

            The octopus and its keeper have a very close relationship. When octopi lay their egg they die soon after—the theory is that they don’t want to have to compete with their young. So when the Octopus laid her egg, her Keeper decided to release her into the ocean so that she could spend her last days in the open water. A few weeks later, the Keeper was wondering how her friend Octopus was. So she dove back down to where she had left her. But the water was so dark and murky that she could not see. But then, a tentacle reached out and embraced the Keeper’s arm. For a moment.

…

            Ukulele, crayons, and a theme of red. I’m in somebody else’s lived in house. I’ve decided that I like the little boy whose too small bed I’m sleeping in tonight.

My dad and I raced cars on his electric track.

I just re-recorded my voicemail like five times and I have no idea why.

My meal was cozy and I am contented in my belly.

…

Albany Landfill

            This is a world separate. Filled with art and junk. And the lines between are smudged, and constantly being redrawn. I like to come here with fruit and pens.

I draw all over anything that asks for it.

It has a history and a life.

            They want to make it like everywhere else. They want to take away what they left and put in grass.

The junk, and the art it’s turned into, will be carried off and they will make it what is down the road.

…

Monterey County

            The bugs are flying over and around me as I make my path.

The beginning of a song sparked in my brain the repetitious cycle that is a song stuck in your head.

            The waves are big and deep and I am above them.

I saw a rainbow when the wave broke.

            I can hardly hear myself through the sand retreating after the rainbow wave. Like cold water dropped on something hot.

Aint noting wrong with a unity song.

            The milk fills the crevices of the rocks.

So many rocks to paint.

            They slope down in front of me into the milky foam. A bug flies across my cheekbone. Where are the many going? Or are they being carried by the wind?

Unity, unity, unity.

I gave those ladies down there something to be more creative with, I doubt they noticed.

            My bare feet may be raw but they are planted firm. I feel the rock connecting me and rising up through my soles.

            Jung thought—am I sitting on the rock or am I the rock with him sitting on me?

            That’s not a direct quote.

…

Albany Landfill

“You have a really nice view and I’m sitting in the bathtub,” you said to me.

There is a dog that has swum too far out into the water and his owner is calling his owner is calling him.

            I biked quickly so that I wouldn’t miss the light. Eli reminded me of this as we sat on a park bench earlier, after meeting on the road. Our bikes propped up on either side of it—mine has fallen over and the wheel is spinning. My usual skill with bikes.

            Now it lies on its side in the sand behind and beside me, the orange of the u-lock glowing.

            I’m sitting on a bench made from driftwood. The wooden arm I’m leaning against has purple spotted on it. It matched my sweater in the orange glow of the sun as it set behind the misting outlines of the hills and sat on top of the water as I sat and talked with you. Now, illuminated on the surface of the water is a yellow, broken up by darker waves and that constant blue which is electrified by this time of day.

            There is another man and his dog playing with a stick, each pulling on their end, with friendly words exchanged. Their figures are darkened by the light of the sun behind them.

There are people doing a few yoga poses—a little girl, I see now, imitating a father saluting his happiness with his present location. They walk over looking I’m not sure where. I think they may want to sit on this bench. I feel that I should call out to them: sit here, it’s okay. But I like being alone and the five of them, a family, set off uniformly jogging back across the sand.

            A plastic bag dances along the ground, pushed forward by the wind. It catches itself on a plant trying to protect its ocean.

I sat on this bench waiting for you and Adam last time. You remind me of this as I tell you I’m alone again. It was dark and cold and windy and I lay down in the arms of the bench to protect myself. You showed up bearing cookies and beer. That’s why you took so long. The cookies slowed you up. I munched it down half expecting them to warm up my belly.

            Now we’re talking and you’re getting all excited-like because we had a parallel occurrence of events—as you put it, which we wont share with anybody else. Each reflect our personalities in a way. Yours was wonderfully sweet, offbeat and magical. You floated on clouds and it wasn’t perfect but that made it perfect. And mine was random and carelessly good and messy and mine ended confused and I didn’t give a shit because that’s how its meant to be. As we laughed over our common thoughts my hair blew over my face and was orange again for those moments. But this time because of the sun and laughter so it was brighter and less tangible.

            I just brushed a bug from this page. And it’s getting darker. The sun has nearly faded from its spread across the bench. And it can almost no longer extend its reaches to the dark places under the logs.

            A girl gets out of the passenger seat of a car. A paper soda cup with a straw in one hand and a green bottle of whiskey in the other. She is rolling up her pant legs.

            Now the pages are glowing blue like the water. And the wet sand left behind by the slow small waves reflects the sky.

            Two cars are racing, on purpose I don’t know, and my shoulders ache. And the orange glow is turning to come from behind. It is that of street lamps.

            The city lights are coming on and I hear a train.

            This wasn’t the final destination I had in mind but that man has a hat and he looks up at the same two planets I’m looking at. He walks on with his two dogs in line behind him. The way they picked their way down to the shore along that log there reminded me of an explorer.

            I hear music and I look back at the car I noted liking earlier as it drove in with its head lights smooth like an old movie. And the couple is making out now as they sit on the roof. Every time I look back they’re in a different position. Standing a second ago now they’re lying down. I am laughing to myself and the geese that I wanted to mention now fly over my head in a V. I wonder if I’ll get pooped on.

            There is an apple in my bag that I haven’t eaten. I forgot about dinner.

I think that goose was looking for the rest.

But here comes the rest?

Calling for him/her?

I say hello back.

I’m standing and I can see my shadow in the sand—I am like the two wooden planks that rise up on either side of me. I’m a little off center and to the right.

I am floating and grounded and nervous and calm. And I can’t stop writing. I say hello back.

…

Monterey County

I have split ends. I am sorry I won’t be seeing you today.

            Those trees mean California coast. They are on my mother’s shirt that is torn with time. And that I wear now.

            There is someone floating on their back, dad says. But I didn’t see them.

Sunflowers alive and dying line the road.

            I was being facetious when I said we needed poor people in this country. But it’s true. Unless we change our whole value system and start appreciating the people that work the hardest. And in America, appreciation is money.

My lips are chapped and she says there are a lot of dead things here.

            This sleepy landscape will grow back.

Unity revolutions gonna come!