Traces of Altitude

It takes so long to understand people.

They will never be able to show you their entirety.

I think a large part of knowing someone is to dream them, to hypothesize them, to hold them up or tear them down. 

And then you can say. Very matter of factly. “Hey… I know you”

But now I stand here, begging YOU, the glorious phantasm,

YOU, from the top of a razor sharp, ice riddled, wind knock me into the abyss, end of the world mountaintop,

Please take ME

Give ME an existence.

Give me your bubble and I’ll give you mine. 

And I’ll be anything that you want me to be. 

Close my eyes, bottom out

Egress and swallow it down.

O Dionysus!

How it withers me to part with thee!

It crinkles me down….

And all of the sudden

I’m a tiny crumpled piece of tin foil!

Packed away neatly into an indiscriminate shiny object

Original shape and size now inconsequential and lost forever.

And I am flicked from that peak with those rose-colored fingernails

I sparkle all the way down

Until even I am unsure of my own existence

But then…

Joy! I am found!

By a wayward traveler, incited by a sparkle in the sun.

I am caressed by his pudgy grime caked fingertips.

Dusted off slowly, unwrapped with raptured curiosity,

Yes! It’s me!

Slightly damaged but still shining for you in the sun.

I wish it was good all the time

There’s something really harmonious about gliding through the golden rolling California hills on a Greyhound bus, listening to the sonorous harmonies of Best Coast.  I couldn’t fathom a better soundtrack.  Even the old man behind me who is relentlessly roping the mother next to him into an interminable conversation that is broadcasting into my eardrum isn’t irritating me as much as it should.  Cows, country, a smelly bus, and leather boots and jacket in tow.  This is home to me.  Man, I miss home.  Traveling by car or plane certainly has its perks; isolation and speed, to name a couple, but the poetry of the journey is lost.  As I ponder what exactly it is that inspires my lasting devotion to buses despite their chronic ability to disappoint me, I notice that 80% of the passengers on this particular bus look Hispanic.  And I prefer it that way.  Is this an accurate cross section of where I live, but am too deracinated to realize it?  Each passenger sinking drearily into one of the two streams of blue seats… each one with a different story, their clothes mismatched and worn out for the most part, with each item carrying a rich history of it’s own.  The crinkled reddish skin of the man’s face resting atop one worn knuckle, the dust covered jean jacket that has paid for itself a million times over, all of these things I internalize.  To me, they represent real life, authenticity, struggle, honesty, sacrifice…but maybe I romanticize too much.

It’s mostly about seeing myself in each person, and consequently, seeing myself on the move.  Creating a new history for myself through the people around me, and escaping a little more into that history with each palm tree now swooshing by my window.  Maybe we’re all escaping, each person creating a new history for themselves in reaction to those around them.  A symbiotic network of traveling bugs, relying on this dirty and disappointing moving entity to give us new identities, and conversely, it relying on us to give it purpose and life.  Each person I observe reflects a version of me, things I loathe and love.  I project and assume whatever narratives and characteristics I please.  Meanwhile, my sense of space grows larger and larger while my sense of self grows smaller and smaller.  The lines between space and self, and you and me, grow dubious, and all that is certain is that we’re all going somewhere.