Good and Bad Shit

Why does anybody travel in this part of the world? I found the guy who was at the Chili cookout last year, with the pan of "adult" corn bread. He used coconut oil, so it was really good, good cornbread.

Huh. How long was I at his place? It's pissing down rain. I gotta get my windshield wiper on this old VW bug fixed. Just my luck, I'd run over a zombie. They don't seem to care about rain, and if you hit one, jeeze, you can skid for miles. For his - or her - sake and mine, I hope they're all tucked up in some nice, safe hole tonight.

I didn't expect it to be so strong. I think my guy made it weaker last time. Because I was really hungry, and I ate all three pieces on a empty stomach. Now I'm seeing purple spots, and I don't want to drive back to the Hoko. Officer Goofy will probably take me in anyway, even if pot is legal now. Well, it would be fair. This is very much Under The Influence. And Goofy doesn't like my old bug, anyway. They used to be called PotMobiles.

I really don't feel good. I haven't driven that far. I need to go to the bus parking lot, and just maybe get some sleep. Just pull carefully in here, make sure nobody's on my tail at 80 miles an hour, with something so big they can't brake, and only one headlight. Just ease the car in here, off the road.

Quietly, pull in, stop the car.Yup, turn off the lights - I'm on autopilot now - and just listen to the rain on the roof of the car.

Jeesus Christ! What just ran through the parking lot? Is it a zombie? Were those brains, a bad hoodie, or just long hair? I'm not getting out of this car.

WTF? It's jumping up and down and screaming. Am I being threatened? Man, the purple spots are getting worse. I'm gonna pass out, I swear.

Oh, no, somebody's at the door. Did I lock it? Lemme see. Oh, my hands are numb. I can't tell.

I knew I should have stopped going to that guy.

I'm gonna die.

Here?

Ohhh Shit, OH shit! Months of planning and I missed the bus while I was in that stupid portapotty? Maybe it's just late but the bus is supposed to come at 6:16 and it's after 7. It was so beautiful out here and I was so happy coming to my new life, at least until it started clouding up. The forecast was showers early and clearing about noon. It's not clearing up. I shouldn't have eaten those stupid fish and chips in Port Angeles. I missed the earlier bus and the grease tasted funny. But I'm trying to make my money last. I shouldn't have gone off to smoke in the woods. I should have just gone to the portapotty before it was too late. Shit, now it's starting to rain. Oh, shit, should I hitchhike? Maybe I look enough like a guy that I won't get raped by some crazy guy. Maybe I ought to just hide in the woods so some crazy doesn't see me alone out here and kill me or take my money. Do I wait out here until morning? Now I gotta go again. Stupid fish and chips! What if some guy stops to use this portapotty and finds me in there and gets me? What if there is a bear in the woods that mauls me? And I don't get any reception out here either. Stupid AT&T. I did bring extra underwear, but where am I going to change? Now its really raining. Shit. Whoever finds this, this is how I died. If this is how it was meant to be. 

Alone Alone Alone

I'm so sick of the stupid nickname. I can't even hide at school. I don't want to go to school; I don't want to go to the pow-wows. Everybody says my family never talks to anybody, and even they go to the pow-wows. I wish I knew who found out about "Snotboy," and thought it was a cool nickname.

Nobody has anything I need up here. Nobody thinks about what anything means. It's all money money money. I guess some of my people used to live like that, but nobody can do it any more. Or they say they can't.

I don't even want money. I just want to be left alone. I could live up here, all my myself, I could even hide. I could be like the deer and the young bears, moving on ahead of the clearcuts. I don't want to be like the old bears, that can't think how to move on, and eat goats, and get shot.

I'm writing this in my alone place - a burnt-out cedar stump, a big one. I've got everything I need here, because the burn didn't take out the center of the tree. I have a roof. I have tinder, all that dry cedar powder. I have a place to sleep, when nobody's missing me, which is all the time. I have a place to hide my notebook - the paper one, not the electrical ones, because I don't need even that. I wish I could be naked like the animals and live here without ever coming in.

I even wish I could die like the animals, and just dry away on the beach, so there's nothing left of me but scattered bones and feathers or fur.

I'm named after a spirit; why can't I just be invisible?

Join us for the Zombie Challenge!

At the Clallam Bay Comicon panel, come watch Roberta Gregory and Donna Barr write an episode of "Only a Zombie," before your very eyes. 

If you're local, join the challenge to become a character in this blog novel!

And remember, in this blog, zombies are just part of the population, and we all have to try to survive their antics and appetites.

Come join the fun!

Time to fly

Well, it is about time. Schools's out forever. I am free. So hard to really grasp that, as I sit here in my forest for one last time, at least for a while. The mountains wait for me and as always, there is a halo of clouds over them. Showers predicted, not so bad. I'm from here. 

In a couple days I really will be FROM here. I get away from the ugly. The endless trains bringing unspeakably horrible things. Tired of the ugly. Too much ugly. I deserve beauty, that beauty I saw so many months ago. Tired of ugly, of people who act ugly, give off ugly, souls that are ugly. And everyone says that this is such a good city, the perfect city, climate, growth, wealth. The rest of the country must be hell on earth if Seattle is so wonderful. Am I the only one who sees what a sad place it truly is? 

Just have to make sure I have what I need. If I write it, maybe I will think of something I forgot. I don't need much. I'll learn what I need when I need it. That's another one of my skills. A small drawing tablet and some pencils. Can fit them in somehow. I'll never be as good as Alison but good enough. If only she could draw Angel's story but she has her own agenda, her own way to go. Never did finish her book but maybe they have libraries out there at the end of the earth. Just too much right now. I wish she could just sit down with me and smoke a bowl and realize we are just all in this together and it will all work out. Maybe I am supposed to draw it. I just need to learn how to draw. How hard can that be?

The thimbleberries are not quite ripe but where I am going, they will be. I think the only thing I am going to miss is this forest. But they have even better ones out there.

I am coming, Cougar. Wait for me.

Zombie Hunting Strategy

Just because the Zombies grabbed the rooster and a few hens and put them in a truck, and then tried to claim that starving mom cougar and her kid got them - doesn't mean the neighbors didn't see them do it. Man, I sometimes wish these Deadsters would just pick on people, because we're a match for them.

Oh, well. Everything runs on rumor to rumor up here. The guy who runs Triple Nickel farm claims the game warden helped him kill three homeless juvenile cougars by trapping them, shooting them in the box, and burying them. He sounded all proud of it, too. Maybe that's what drove the guy who trapped the neighbor's cat in Forks and shot it in the cage. He thought he was carrying on the west end tradition of wiping out the predators. 

Huh. Do early-stage zombies look human? The guy at the farm still looked pretty healthy. 

I wonder who that game warden was? Or if any of this is true. There's supposed to be a human body buried under the front porch of his place, too, but that's from a long time ago, and somebody else said those were pig bones. You can keep yourself entertained on the flittering stories up here all day long, and half the night during power-outs and the resulting oil lamp parties.

There's no use trying to figure it out, because anybody who looks like they're getting someplace, including kids who want to be artists, is laughed at for having ideas. I wonder if this is how they've always kept each other down. Or do people with ideas become vulnerable to zombie attacks. It's about the brains, after all.

Rumor-to-Rumor. It's all Rumor-to-Rumor. 

Two Lucky Cougars

It's late spring, and the young cougars are on the move.

They usually have to move out and find their own territories, but with 50% of all the forests being cut down in the last year, they're in the neighborhoods this year. This year, a young mom cat and her half-grown kitten were wandering after food and shelter like German refugee women in 1946, and mostly for the same reasons.

The zombie neighbor across the street lets her chickens run loose. Having a rooster three feet tall didn't stop an early-morning raid, not when the cat's starving and has a baby to feed.

Buster can take on human kids, but not so much big cats, and all the squawking called out the zombie household with armament to defend the homestead. If Snotboy hadn't been there, the mom refugee cougar and her kid would have been just another pile of carcasses with some zombie Tarzan-footing on their ribcages.

The zombies were screaming unintelligably at the hissing adult cat in the front drive, chickens going every which way, the desperate rooster taking swipes at mom cat's flanks until a big paw sent him bowling down the asphalt to the road. He was still trying to shake himself back to a new attack, when Snotboy stepped in. And just in time, because the  dead guy from the house was out there with a hunting rifle.

Snotboy stepped right in front of the cougar family, with his back to the neighbors. Usually you don't turn your back on zombies, but even dead people are more afraid of the cats. Especially dead people - they can't even heal a scratch back, let alone can let a broken limb set.

They stood there with their mouths drooping open, saliva stringing cold, matching the strings from the jaws of the cougar kid, taken advantage of mom's stand-off to go for food. He cowered behind her with his jaws clamped desperately around a dead red hen - the first food in who knew how long since he lost his home?

Snotboy said to the cats, "You have your dinner. Go someplace and eat it."

The mom cat stopped growling, and seemed to get sane in the eyes. She turned around and loped off down the road, back toward what remained of the woods on the ridge, followed by Junior. They wasn't here for territory, just a full stomach. Nobody else saw them, because most people on Slip Point don't get up very early.

Snotboy turned around and said to the neighbors, "You better lock your chickens up. You just taught them we got food down here. If we put all the food away, they'll go find another home."

If there's one thing zombies get, it's food. They nodded and started herding chickens back to the pen, including Buster, who they had to convince not to hit somebody hard. Daylight was coming, and they wanted to go to the beach. They're cold people, and the beach is warm when the sun hits it. It's usually where they are, playing with little rocks, and catching sand-fleas in a net for snacks. Or crunching up dead seabirds that wash in after the spring breeding mortality. Snacks, ahoy.

Snotboy went off wherever he was on the way when the attack happened. He's liable to be up and about any time at night. He got named when his elder brother fell off a fishing boat and disappeared, and his mom cried and cried so hard that it seemed as though she'd built him out of snot and water. He doesn't seem to resent the nickname. It's one the natives use for one of their myths, or something. Something about a revenge spirit, made of tears and snot.

There's nothing revenge about Snotboy. He's tall and dark; sometimes he looks Hispanic, and sometimes he looks Indian, and sometimes everybody just shakes their head because his mom is German and Swedish and his dad - could be anybody. His mom's had troubles.

You'll have to ask him his real name. The teachers know it, so they say, but his family keep to themselves, supposedly up the Hoko River valley. They're not like everybody else who boils out of their house up there and hope you'll stay and talk and have coffee - or even stay overnight. Nobody knows how they make a living, because there aren't any signs on them, and they're more likely to hitchhike or walk than own a truck full of equipment or firewood. Two of them are said to make twig furniture and sell it on ebay, shipping with UPS. Could be. It's all Rumor To Rumor, up here.

Maybe somebody will get him to open up some day.

The numbers add up

18. Welcome 18. 18 will be my number from now on. Few people come to these woods that I have visited for most of my life. The salmonberries are fat and red and sweet, waiting to quench my thirst. The stream still speaks to me and the birds speak to each other. I still hear the trains, so many more now, but they are distant. Where I go there will be no trains. 

I walk 18 steps and 18 steps again and each time I look up and find myself in the soaring temple of yet another forest goddess or god, the ground strewn with the offerings of their faithful. I thought one day I might learn their names but perhaps someday I will come back. This forest will always be here unlike the ones that are cut away and linger as ghost trees mourning their lost loved ones. Still learning how to take pictures with this thing, but I'll have to travel light. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten it used but I have to make the money last. It's all I have and it's not that much now… about 18 saved. At one time I thought I could get a car, but that will have to wait. 

But another forest and another Goddess waits for me. Deep in the woods across the water Cougar rises to her feet and stretches, her tail moving slowly. She waits for me, too. There's no home for Cougar in the land of humans on this side of the water, but over there she is free. So few days to go. Thirteen? To the end of the term, end of term, like a birth. My birth. Breaking free of the shell that has protected me and stretching my wings.

I go to look across the water, and like before the only clouds in the sky are over the mountains. So much life over there, too many people over here, swarming on the beach to take things. Over there are people who love the sea, honor the gifts of the sea, take care of the beach for the sole reason that it deserves to be  treasured, as the birthplace of us all. Soon I will walk the shore with those who respect it. 

No. There are good people over here. But they are not my people. My own people wait for me, I know it. In the hours I'm afraid, and let others tell me I should stay on my side of the water, I remember that knowing, seeing the place and knowing it was my home. Here my people have fled. Or been exterminated. Or driven to the ground by cruel people with gravel, with the grave in their souls. Like Cougar, I go back to the woods, to my home. 

Angel, I hear your voice in the stream and your hand warming my cheek when I walk into light. I won't let your words die. I won't let you die. That would mean darkness wins.

Screaming, But Not Zombies

Ick.

No sooner does the park bridge ramp go back in over the Clallam River, than we get screaming.

I thought somebody got cornered on the sand spit. Most people up here know enough to look out for what's on the beach, and not let the confused and sandy Dead surround them in the surf. Choice of being sucked out by the undertow in cold water or getting crunched as an afternoon snack.

Just for the record: 16 sooty shearwaters, 
3 common murres, 1 loon. :(

Not even kids get caught that way up here, growing up as they do on full alert, even when they're throwing each other's bicycles in the river (local prank; they just haul them out and return the favor).

Only tourists too intent on finding beach glass or agates get bitten and then have to be hauled away by the Fire Department to - well, wherever they take the bitten. Putting out fires, teaching EMT classes, supervising fireworks for the dragon dance and saving kittens isn't enough, I guess. Probably re-opened the old sanitarium in Sedro Wooley. Dolphin helicopters - not just for guys who get their livers cut in half by a sheet of plywood.

It was a tourist screaming this time, but it wasn't an attack of the undead, only a bunch of birds caught in a net and washed up really quite completely dead on the beach. But still, it's pretty sad, and the shops and art gallery are all unhappy about it. Not only does everybody hate seeing a bunch of nice birds getting killed for carelessness, but the smell is going to draw the wrong element. And right there at the end of the bridge ramp, too, right where people who haven't a clue are going to be taking their picnic lunch, and never thinking they'll be one. 

Try to get the Chamber of Commerce to put up a zombie warning sign. Tsunami escape routes, yes; zombies, not so much. 

Back in the book, back on the road

OK, thank Goddess I found it. Guess it was in the stack all along, and I just didn't see it? Strange, I thought I went through this whole pile earlier and now it was on top of Are You My Mother even though I got it from the library Thursday before last and haven't read it since that first look through. But my book went missing before that, didn't it? Here's that last bit about the park. At least I didn't lose it out there. Those other two pages are gone, don't need that in here now. This is all about going ahead, the future, life, new skills I don't know I possessed, my craft, not looking back and being stupid. So easy to do, but I keep my word. It's on me now but I can take it and I will never let her down. Was that pink smudge on the back before? And was this page corner bent down like that?? OK, no smoke for awhile, at least I didn't actually lose it. Didn't have to ask about it and get Mom started again and thinking she has to send me back to the shrink. Again. 

At least now she knows that I know, and I'm ready to tell, so we're not bringing it up anymore and that's good. A bit sad it has to be this way, but it works. She knows I can take care of myself. Thanks for not being there, Mom. No, I do mean Thanks. Our families keep pushing our buttons because they installed them. She installed some good ones on Trashley. Me, I escaped. Knowing when to escape is another of my powers. She keeps saying I seem so old for my years. If she only knew.

Anyhow, The Face is so looking forward to graduation and will miss all those friends, yeah sure I do, and The Face says it is time to move on into the world and blah blah blah and I'm going to look for a job and I'm looking into SCCC.  As if I'd waste the money on that. As if I need a job now. They can believe whatever they want. I know what I'm here to hear, here to do, here to become. Just get away from the noisenoisenoise, the full of empty, the walking dead. Now that she's gone, there's nothing left here. Tomorrow I'm getting the mini and soon the money will be mine and then the wings unfold, and I'm off to land's end. And beyond.

Zombie Snacks

Pick up your mess, zombie dude!

Dude. I know you're a Zombie, but if you're GOING to eat somebody and throw away the bits you're too lazy to pick the meat out of, pick up the litter, will you?

You will make KIRO News crazy if you leave rotting feet all over the beach for everybody to trip over.

BLAGH. Living with these dead people is like living with a really bad little brother.

Driving With Zombies

Elk herd, not looking at zombies.
But then again, you never know.

Damn damn damn damn damn. 

Add a speeding logging truck and some old guy on - or off - his meds, and I'm lucky they put all those guardrails on Highway 112 a few years back. Otherwise, it would have been me in that gully by what's left of Pillar Point. Yay Triple A and towing insurance. Up here, you get 200 miles on the policy, or you don't bother buying it.

Now I'm going to have to save up to fix the car - and take the bus until Gary can get the parts. I mean, Fernandez Enterprises is the best place to take the car, now the zombie shop has had to run because of all the liens, filed-off VIN numbers and funny noises upstairs in the old warehouse where they kept their shop. 

But Gary knows I'm not really glad to see him except at the mirror-ball dances in the Sekiu Community Center. He shows up in his black mechanics overalls and dances with all the girls. The only other person who plays Pan to the dancing community is Scott the UPS guy. That's only when the Magic Negro music company - the former DJ - show up to scratch his tapes (Hey, I don't make up these company names; don't look at me). If it's Loose Gravel, we get Zombie guys who think it's cool to wear their rubber boots to a dance. Dudes. It's not 1895 any more. Or even 1950. 

At least when we hear that fast bluegrass - and the band has definitely improved since it got a new member - we know to keep our backs to the wall at a dance, and keep the cops on tap in case some guy thinks a face is part of the potluck. When The Soul Ducks are playing - the real down-and-dirty hard mud blues - all bets are off. You want to be really careful about allowing anybody to swing you for the Sugar Push. It's why the girls prefer to dance crazy in a bunch by themselves; safety in numbers.

Wouldn't you know I wouldn't have a car when I have to go to Port Angeles to do some real honest-go-godlets research at the Library? Our local library branch is pretty good, but it's all murder mysteries and books on how to rebuild your deck, skin game, and that back-corner graphic novel collection for the kids. "Back corner" is why they took out the bean-bag chairs, but I'd think that knowing the teens were back there snogging would at least put some parental minds at rest. I mean, in the library they can't really smuggle in beer before driving. Or getting the back of their heads bitten off when they're not paying attention.

Anyway, we're really in good shape with the Clallam County Transit. $3.00 all day, any bus, and pretty decent schedules, in and out of town. Will have to remember to take a flashlight, in case I need to flag a bus down on one of the out-of-town roads. And a hatchet.

Paper is good. It burns.

IF ONLY 
IFONLYIFONLYIFONLYIFONLY
if only i'd told you 
lots of things
we could have gone if you could only have waited
never have to hear them or see them
leave them and this TOXI-city far behind
they were nothing NOTHING 
they were always nothing but cruel dead people
vicious children from vicious homes
what they said always meant NOTHING
I would have had money and you had a car
it would have been perfect if you had only waited
If only i'd told you 
you could go to life, not death
we both could have gone to life
your car could have brought us to life not you to death

just a little longer
time is another enemy now
I was going to tell you but I said I wouldn't
and I still believed she knew something I don't
she knows nothing
Mother smother

and your mom smiled when she said that wet cold night before it happened you were burning lots of papers in the fireplace and one was a green notebook she smiled and said some fangirl crap that is what she said and she smiled OHGODIFSHEONLYKNEW 
She is another dead one
Mother smother
WHYWHYWHYWHY 
why did you not let me see more
it was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen
and it was from you it was so you it was all you
IFONLYIFONLYIFONLYIFONLY
am I the only one who knows it wasn't an accident?
Am I the only one left now?

And all you left was
Don't let anyone know about us don't tell anyone
They could only rape me, they would kill you
I still don't understand
no matter how much my hand writes this down I don't understand 
but I trust you even now that you are gone
I will never tell

even though I know somehow you are still here
I heard you in the woods walking behind me but I look and you aren't there and I heard you in the wind when all the noise was gone but maybe this is just something not true that I want to believe or maybe I hope you will see this somehow, I want this to be you with your hand on my shoulder now but maybe it is just me again

but this I do know
I will never tell anyone
never tell a soul

is this helping? I don't know anymore.

I think nobody knows

Zombie Season Already?

This is completely out of season. Usually, you see zombie evidence only where people eat - the heads of animals, hanging over the plates, dripping with ghosts, formaldehyde, and Gods-knows-what parasites and bacteria, while the tourists and the industrial foresters gobble away at the grease and fake maple syrup and caffeine, totally oblivious to what's over their food.

But up the Hoko, right on the trout stream - by the shallows where the big steelhead come up to your feet - today, there were three beheadings, and a pile of shit.

Okay, they were elk heads, stacked up like Legos, sending a waft of reeking rot up the stream, out-competing the stack of human crap, all of it leaking right into the water. But they were heads, put together by something wrong, something inhuman.

Zombies do stuff like that. It's like they're practicing. Look how they took the skull-cap off, like they were removing antlers. Antlers on three cow elk? I don't think so. They were after that first taste of brains.

Usually, we get warned about hunters and their sloppy firearms practices, but we all know what's really dangerous up here. Looks like I'll have to put off looking for morels for a while. That, or take a machete into the woods. 

There's no use counting on firearms; they give anybody and everybody a rifle-carry permit up here, and considering how some of these guys dress, how can you tell a live stink from a dead one?

Oh, man. A Zombie truck. Will you look at that. There's something about Zombies - they just have to destroy everything. It's like, since they're going to pieces already, they have to take everything else down with them, too. What's up with painting it on their truck? The cops are so few and far between they've ignored the brain-bombers like they try to ignore anything that isn't outright property crime or assault-and-battery - something they can take to court. I can see that. Imagine the judge who has to face a case over zombies. What next? Sasquatch in on a possession charge? Next thing we know, we'll have zombie vanity plates. Does anybody own "BRAAINZ"? And would a zombie argue for more "A"'s?

Counting the weeks

Excuse the lined paper. I know the other book is here somewhere but had to find something to use. Can add in later. I'll find it. Hope Trashley didn't get her hands on it. Shit. All I need. No, it's somewhere but this is so bringing me down, will be fine. It's all so petty, really, just words on paper when there is such a big picture and huge forever and so much ahead, just overwhelming in its wonder. Not so long to go. 10 weeks? Something. Screw calendars and little lines and numbers, life is so much bigger than lines and numbers but we are all so chained down to the little numbers and lines and the letters above and below them. So sad. So few of us still hear the voices telling us what we'll be.

Countdown to the money. Thank you Dad. Get tablet. Look up what kind. Clean off laptop. Like Trashley's going to appreciate it. Look up about out there, for real. There's a bus you can take. Takes you right there. So easy. Why don't we let life be as easy as it wants to be? June will be perfect, lots of daylight. Goodbye electri-CITY and all bad energy and stars you no longer see. With vora-CITY eating minds and souls. 

FantaSEA will be REALity.

Something important. What? Something important and just a bunch of whining here. Looking for something to write in and I lost it. Big cosmic joke. It'll come back to me, it all comes back eventually. To make a circle you come back to where you began but most of us don't know where we began.

Such beauty there is but behind it such sadness. A joke you cry at. When the soldiers show up it's all over. Of course she killed herself. After they shot him its her turn and she'd wish she was dead before they were done with her. She was already dead. So many people are already dead. How there is so much more that I never imagined back then. 

Bring music and things to draw with. Smoke.

The Zombie Holiday

Happy Easter!

Really a Zombie Novel

I swear, if this place were a Zombie novel, we'd have everything we need. We even have a comedy cop.

The last time I saw that guy - skinny, blond, Swede-thing- he was cruising that bad intersection that bottlenecks out of the west end of Port Angeles, hitting everybody who got so confused when they tried to negotiate that scrambled mess. They've done their best to try to safely bring three roads together, with stop lights and crossing zones, but that it still looks like a mini version of Seattle's "retarded octopus" freeway system. One speeding logging truck that dumps its load, and the whole town would be locked down for the day.

Speaking of that, looks like somebody reassigned Goofy out on Highway 112, and told him to watch out for overloaded logging trucks. So, of course, he stops everybody in a beater pickup with a load of firewood. 

We got a loader up here in the clearcuts who must be on something; all his trucks are flopped into the beds with all the butts pointing the same direction, so they're heaped to slide out the back of the bed. And what's with piling the load up over the left side of the truck? - so when some driver who's never been up here and has no clue of where the speed signs are, takes a hard curve 20 miles over the curve recommendation, the whole load leans like a ship with a bad ballast. There's a reason the guys on "Axman" have to get their teeth fixed. Nobody cares about the staggering walks and ragged filth out in the woods. The animals manage to stay clean in the woods; I guess only a zombie would look that busted-up in nature.

Those drivers scare the crap out of me. Where is somebody supposed to go if one of them comes at a person and goes over the line? A ditch? Just my luck, if it ever happens, there will be a cyclist on the side of the road, in that skinny strip on the other side of the white line. Some "Scenic Route." No place for a bike, and they clearcut the only State park - probably to steal the maple trees.

I'll bet that's where that new "Hardwoods" store in Port Angeles got them from. I'll bet a walk in the woods without looking over my shoulders or sniffing for things that smell dead.

Not that Officer Goofy would track any of those loads down. Too busy making sure his lights and siren are on so he can speed through small towns, and then turn 'em off when he gets on the highway.

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west

This park used to be a whole lot quieter. Now there are trains every ten minutes. Just now a big coal train with more than a hundred cars (yes, I counted) took its time going by, and before that, something with a lot of those containers on it going the other way, screeching and clanging and making noise to wake the dead. The black and white ducks, that were peacefully bobbing on the smooth water near shore, took off for deeper water, but most of the people here never looked up, but the kids got all excited and climbed on the overpass to wave and shout at the trains. OK, I did that once when I was younger too but that was before I knew what was coming in and going out on those trains. 

Now that it's quieter I look across the water at the mountains again. It's mostly blue overhead, but out west it looks like another land, so covered in clouds that I can only see the darkest shadowy outlines of some of them. I would hope it would be clear, but this is good, too. It looks like another country or an island far away where everything is different. Like a citadel ringed by the steepest most impenetratable mountains. They don't have any trains over there. The sand and gravel are warm, and the log supports me. Where did this tree come from? Maybe some day someone will show me how to listen to them. Someone over there. There's nobody over here. If I didn't have to leave soon, I could sleep here in the sun but I need to call when I said I would so I can come out here again by myself. Like I would let anything happen to me. I blend in. That's one of my powers. I need a better phone. I love the walk back. It's a dirt road through a little canyon and past an orchard, and when the people ahead go around the bend, I can be anywhere. It can be anyplace else and hundreds of years ago. I can think. I can plan.

Dumb kid just asked me what I'm writing. Where's her mother? I won't miss anybody over here. Now there's another train, looks just as long, every car is a new, shiny black tank making it look like a giant millipede or something. Each car has a flame logo on it and it moves a lot slower than the coal train. Time to go. I'll be back. 

Getting Out Of Town

Local psychopath at large

I can't believe I was out of chicken food again. My shopping list keeps getting shorter and shorter, but some things you can't get without a 60-mile round trip. So off to Forks and what's left of the businesses. 

It's not a trip I like to make. Things are scary enough around here, and Forks is worse. You can't even go into the hardware store without finding flyers like this.

At least up here, the cruelty is just short-sighted and stupid. Nobody can get it through their heads that if the land by their houses gets clearcut, the resident predators, small and large, will have to eat the pets or the chickens, just to survive. 

Kind of sad, seeing the Twi-Squatch tours in Forks. The place had been making some money on that Twilight novel, but no series lasts forever. I dunno, maybe a vampire/Bigfoot tour would be kind of fun, in a campy kind of way. The Twilight store burned down, but that's the old wiring they have around here; sooner or later, everything will go down and it will be more empty lots.

Nice to see that the "Native to Twilight" store is still in business. The commercial stuff based on the book is slowly being crowded out by some really nice native art. Meyer and her agent kinda screwed up with how they treated the Quileute, but once they knew it, they got on the ball and made sure the tribe benefited. Now there's an hourly free shuttle down to LaPush; it's nice to be able to jump on the little bus and go down to the beach for a couple of hours. Better to do your research late than never.

And at least vampires are imaginary. The only people with weird teeth in Forks are because it's the meth capital of western Washington. Though, to give it its due, it's also the meth-treatment center. You can get the stuff or get off it; take your pick.

Clallam County and the cops - though they won't admit it except in whispers - are looking forward to the marijuana farmers and the resulting tax money, as they see it. I'd say it was also to get rid of the exploding meth labs - but we already know there are guys who can blow themselves up making budder.

Neah Bay's got pills, proving even the legal stuff can be hell. I guess one of the advantages of this place is the freedom of choice. 

The most beautiful place in the world

Of course, Mom blames me for the wrong turn. She'll never know there is no such thing as a wrong turn. Her kind never do. Trashley just whined as usual. What kind of a beach is this? I'm not walking out there. It's all rocks. They're getting in my shoes. Whine, whine, whine. You should have heard her whine when we finally got to Forks. LOL 

That's OK. I'm coming back. I'm going to live here for the rest of my life. I'm counting the months now. No, the weeks. And right now I'm the only one who knows. I'll make a little house of all that wood on the beach. There's an Indian reservation down at the end of that other road. I'll go live with them. I have Indian in me, probably a lot more than they say.

I'm leaving a space where I can tape in the photo. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the eagle but there will be a lot more. I just know these things somehow.

Does It Walk?

The Walking Wood?

"Sometimes you wonder, if you met some of the things on the beach after dark, you'd run for home. Does anybody else think this looks like a giant Hallucigenia?

A lot of people die up here, or at least that's the rumor; it's hard to tell. Rumor-to-Rumor is how the news gets around, and since the Makah have gotten cell-phones, the news spreads in Neah Bay even faster.

It's odd not a lot of people get shot up here. Then again, being able to run off to Shipwreck Point in the rain, and have tiny beach fires under the overhanging tree, and suck down a six-pack of the limited beer selection from the Weel Road Deli (forget Killian's Red, but at least they have Alaskan Amber, which is better anyway), and then ranting up and down the beach in the rain until you sober up, probably keeps down a lot of hunting rifle incidents, at least at home. And watching grey whales feeding while you're calming down doesn't hurt, either.

Yeah, that's what passes for therapy in THIS place. We may not 'have any mates,' but we have sand and booze and isolation for our primal screaming. Normal screaming, I mean."