Thursday, April 23, 2015

Stream of semi Consciousness

Late April, time for spring showers and delicate buds yet snow blows sideways from the west.  Biting wind is ripping through all my layers while the knee deep mud incases my legs leeching moisture into my boots, soaking socks,  finding my bones.

This area is rural poor in close proximity to two rough cities. That is to say ideal for the manufacturing of meth. A drug I have seen in use in other parts of the country....usually in the back of a dive bar. Drug manufacturing is never something that comes to mind when in new places. My mind doesn't go there much preferring historical context, local cultural heritage, and geographical particulars. But the other night an hour before my alarm was set to pull me from my dreamlessness a substantial explosion and the sound of flames broke through. The house across the street from my temporary living situation was a meth  lab now raging inferno probably from a lack of ventilation. This region is one of those sad rural distracts with a  profoundly visible income gap. Trash is heaped in the deep natural water dranages, signs swinging by one hinge; creaking in an eerie cinematic fashion. Once made acutely aware of the presence of meth my understanding of place was rounded out. A place of little social mobility, poor educational opportunities, and a lack of community cohesion.

Perhaps this is merely my own misanthropic perpective. I've seen and done  enough to not romanticize the William S. Burroughs addictions played out against the working poor. Have also seen enough not to venerate the Andrew Carnegie's or the pursuit of wealth.

I'll take the mud, the  hypothermic wind...at least i feel something. The more places I go, which is getting to be a chore keeping up with them, the more hollowed out I feel; a primative canoe set a drift...just like these words...a stream of thoughts unmoored.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Once again

This time it's in rural Pennsylvania. A few hours from Pittsburg and five hours south of where I once lived in New York. Once again part of the army of men extracting carbon fuels we go to war over and can not seem to ween ourselves from. On a well site chocked with iron; a labyrinth of high pressure, sand, and chemicals..the constant grind of gears on gears of fuel compressed into ignition and the small explosions of power overcoming upward force. If I ever knew a place I did not belong it would be here.

Most days I am alone for fifteen hours a day. Enough time to delve into those dark places of the mind one seldom goes without the aid of rye. Today my mind goes back to Europe: a mosaic of memories  not too distant. I think of a small town where I sat on the shore of the Adriatic contemplating Homer and why I was there. Then onto a town in central Austria rowing a small boat into the mountains...pure reflections on silent water.  There in these memories of beautiful places I find emptiness. An emptiness forged from half truths and if I'm honest a mental pathology I have yet to accept.

Once again in this industry. Probably chosen to inflict my own chastisement, create the instrument of my own penance. This is where I come for punishment. My father created the knowledge of my own profound corruption, an insurmountable fallen nature...but there is no god so I must create my own.