Green Light

Red lights are the worst
after you've dropped everyone off
sitting there waiting
The mindless act of driving suspended
leaving you alone with yourself
and all your thoughts
Suddenly the least of which is if that's a cop

Alone, with the taste of her on my lips
I wish she hadn't
I'd rather be outside looking in
than to be sitting here, red cast
the feeling of what I'm without
carved into my pec by each of her teeth
I'd rather she hadn't kissed me
rather not have been bitten
in every sense of the word
My knuckles crack on the wheel
and ache to feel a destruction beneath their hardness

The opposing light goes red
an entire intersection bathed in the same color
of wait and think about it
And then green, and I am lost again
hiding in the simple act of
"is that a cop?"
and rehearsed lines.

Darwins Birthday, Damned Lies & Statistics

On the 200th birthday of Darwin, the state of knowledge regarding him is rather frightful, at least according to a recent Gallup poll, On Darwin's Birthday, Only 4 out of 10 Believe in Evolution.
More bothersome than the lack of support for evolution (don't worry, it bothers me a great deal) is the sheer lack of knowledge of who the man was, or what his contribution to science and culture was.
Whether or not you are a believer in evolution, Darwin's idea and work have touched your life. As have the works of those inspired by him, either inspired to carry his work forward or to challenge and deny it.

I find no surprise in the correlation between lack of education and an ignorance of Darwin. That doesn't mean I find it any less depressing.
I know plenty of well educated people who doubt evolution - I will (usually) respectfully disagree with them, but they are at least marginally educated on what they don't believe. They actually know who and what they rally and rail at.
The majority of the people who stand against evolution, do not - That Gallup poll is not needed to tell us this, it's just one of many pieces of evidence we have. They have sense of the history, no real knowledge of the field - All they know, is that something provides a challenge to their belief and it must be battered down. They are barbarians at the gate.
People are entitled to believe what they will and wish, but I'd honestly like to see them believe it for something that at least pretends to be an educated reason. I'd like to see people truly accept a challenge, and use it as a learning experience. Particularly when they stand opposite me on what is a rather bloody cultural battlefield.

It's not just evolution. Plenty of educated, non-ignorant people, have questions about evolution. But, this is an area in which the symptoms of a disease are extremely visible.
My greatest concern for the world in which I live is not war, it is not disease, nor poverty, nor population growth - It is education, or the lack there of. The rising tide is one of ignorance, globally. Of so many things, on so many fronts.
I believe an education is a necessity for ever person on Earth - To function in your world without destroying it, you need to understand it to the best ability possible. If I had to trade everything in my life for two things, I would do it for an education, and a rifle.
A rifle because of all the other people with rifles, an education because of all the people without - Tools to survive.
This is my calling in life - Rifles, and Education.

City Lighted Rain

There is a certain magic to Albuquerque after the sun goes down and the gentle rain begins to fall. The people on the streets, dashing from cars to shop doors beneath newspapers. The girl in Knob Hill who stands unprotected in her leather jacket staring up into the drops. Lights playing in the warm water, as the streets are slicked and washed. That smell of a rained on city rises through the open car windows, as the windshield wipers batter the rivulets for dominance of the glass. The car rushes past. Everything is standing still in the rain, and moving, dirty and washed clean. Nothing on those streets is captive, it is alive and rich with temporality.
Exposed by darkness what is hidden by reflection in day, everything is lost in the revelation nightfall. Every secret exposed is in turn cleaned by the rain. Where the wheels touch the street, they are washed clean, as the asphalt of the cars passing. Each footstep is amnesia. The calls and cries of a city whipping by the windows to become lost in the rain, laughter that cannot be hoarded.

In the cold and the dry, years later, I will wish for this. I will finally realize how much it meant to me. The absence of place and self, irrelevance of care. Bathed in the city lights and washed clean by rain, my own simplicity was a contrast and compliment to those moments of strangers laughter and rain washed shrieking.
But now, I drive and am washed away. If only the sun would set deeper and harder, and the warm summer rain would never stop. If only that, then the road would go on forever, in the laughter of women bathed in city lighted rain.

No North Star

I cant remember if she was talking to me in a living room, or walking out a door into the cold night. The memory that hits me is fragmented, and possibly combining the words with the wrong place. Rolling up of memory, fragments forming bastard children of a weekend drunk and a weekday lunch. I shake my head and continue packing.
This isn't right. I'm packing my ruck, the hard used Lowe-Alpine pack dreams are made of. The one that's seen 10,000 feet, and subterranean depths. Filling it with the stuff of adventures, emergency tools, a medical kit, a pistol and magazines, and a flask of smooth Canadian whiskey. The change of clothes is spare, leaving room for an extra jacket and dry wool socks. This is a loadout for adventuring, or even escape, yet I am doing neither.
I'll toss the ruck, when I'm done with it, atop a plastic tub filled with laundry I need to wash. My mom will roll her eyes when I unload it, and I'll insist I may be bringing it home, but I can do my own. And in the morning it will be washed and in the dryer waiting for me to fold it.
The way I travel is a cry for help. A railing against attitudes of sloth and depression, against the routine of non-achievement. It begs for the excitement I lack day to day. Like a condom in the wallet, my rucksack poses as "being prepared", and is in actuality a cry into the darkness for the light of adrenaline, power, danger, and lust. I will take it with me, all packed and little used, just in case. In case, somewhere in the darkness of my own making, I find salvation.

The confusion of memory, and routine of packing to go home for Christmas, have me listening to the road outside. Anyone going westbound on Sixty is pointed toward Arizona, mountains and meadows, and the faraway smell of high pine wet with snow. My thumb throbs with each heart beat, just to hang it out there in the cold air and see where it takes me. But I wont. I will go home, like I should, where my mother is waiting, and continue on as I have been. I cannot tell if I am utilizing common sense, or if I no longer trust in my own navigation. I have no north star, other than the immediate, or temporal. Like a man fallen and rolling down hill, I am guided by gravity.

Shiver

The gray of late winter evening had settled,
slipping slowly into darkness
as soft white flakes gently fell, spare in the too warm night,
still cold
They stood in his driveway, breath fogging in the false light
talking of the old hotel where they had evened
and its many ghosts
creaking across wooden floors to dance
before its roaring fires
They stood too long, in their conversation
ignorant to the rising cold
Delaying the parting of semesters end
with talk of LP's and the deserved break
She smiled in the cold
and he remembered love
wanting to run his hand through her hair
loose about her head
like her laughter hung on fogged breath
Her lips bare and wet with talking
promising warmth if only he'd lean into them
They hugged, his head passing above hers in his full height
her cheek on his shoulder, hair brushing his face
Then parting, her smell lingering
in absence of her small strong touch
She smiled at him, waving through the car window
as she pulled out and left
Soft flakes fell, fighting their way to the ground
in the night grown colder
He stood alone in the gravel, and shivered

An older poem, about an even older moment in time, that I rediscovered earlier tonight.

Free(BASE) Climbing the Eiger

It seems that some madman, and I say that with reverence as the world truly lacks a good dose of madness on a good day, has free climbed (I.E. ropeless) the Eiger.
He did it with a twist, however. He wore a parachute designed for BASE jumping. Traversing onto a north face route called "Deep Blue Sea" at a height sufficient for BASE jumping, he managed a successful send without needing the 'chute.

FreeBASEing the Eiger - Dean Potter Interviewed

I am not a good climber, nor a particularly accomplished one, but I frickin' love it and am always in awe of amazing performances. This is without a doubt one of the more amazing I've heard of.

Exurban Disconnect

The rich smells of coffee and cedar smoke in cold rooms as yet uninvaded by the spreading heat. Cold save that one spot, bundled beneath layers, that no one in their right mind would leave. Somewhere outside a dog barks, his long and attentive cry of alarm, and right mindedness changes. Dressing quickly, grabbing a pistol off the bookcase and wishing it was a rifle, and quietly trotting out the kitchen door.
Eyes, squinted and suddenly watering against the flat and bright morning light, darting to the west. Scanning for shadows that move and grass that leans into the breeze. The pistol is cold, and not warming quickly, and no grass moves, and all the shadows sleep.
I stand for a long time, gun held low in front of me, playing my vision over the draw above the homeplace. Eyes waking, shaking free of sleep and given to reexamination of previously trusted brush and shade. Cedar smoke drifts lazily on the wind, calling me back to the house, to warmth. I turn partially, and go no where.
I cut my eyes back, looking out the sides of them. I feel like I am staring into the eyes of all the coyotes who have seen me, when I've never seen them. They are hidden in shadow and tall grass, laughing. If only I cut my eyes sideways just enough, as I am quartering away, I'll fool them I feel. Somewhere my vision will slip between worlds, and I'll see hidden things unsuspecting. Maybe even get a shot off. But my eyes find more still shadows, and grass that bends with the wind.
I turn a circle and look into the morning, for miles in every direction nothing but wildness of grass and cedar. Laughter of birds begins to fill the air, quick trilling song. Danger, if it was ever more than a pool of backbent breeze, is passed. I sigh, and start making the mental lists of the mornings tasks. Everything that must be made ready to return to town. Where, if tomorrow morning I answer the morning with a pistol and a hunter's smile, I'll surely be locked up. A roving mad man, hunting for quietude in the city.