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.
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