Slumber party

We live in the greatest calm and grey, a nowhere thought, forcefed sucrose confettis sprinkled down from our mediated starbound elite. There is no politick for us, no struggle or division, we are woefully of one mind, constantly debating between the hemispheres of our own self interest. Feigning attempts at social progress, we become Nihilists, star stripped elephants and asses. We are the great slumber suffering the world a slow and eventual crib death, smothering the minds of the young, dowsing the fires of creativity, relegating the process of social invention and critique to the pompous privileged few who have only yet to inherit the american dream. Oh that wicked eventuality, that resignation and surrender...to close our eyes and sleep, to fall under the illusion that our lives of luxury are righteous, are deserved, and are not bought with blood.

the Hundred Peaks

I didn't care anymore, so I just wandered down the twisty incline to the sound of water hitting rocks. I gave a wave to the Mexican guys who were smoking through pinched fingers with their thick legged girlfriends. I was done avoiding people out here, I needed to be clean.

Three days before my car was overheating on the road up, I had pulled over in a turnout and was obsessing over my next move. I couldn't go back down to the city, I needed to put oil in her...why hadn't I put some in before I left? I have coolant and water I'll just put some more in. When I popped the cap of the radiator, scalding hot antifreeze sprayed out, I had my faced turned away so it only got my body and hair, but I was now covered in hot sticky green ichor.

The first mountain I ever climbed I did so by accident. I had set up camp and had a lot of daylight to kill. I packed my bag with tools, a knife, water and strapped my trail boots on. I headed out looking for a signed trail that seemed to have promise but wandered around and took an alternate route to nowhere. I didn't feel like going back as I didn't really have any destination in mind. I was boiling inside, I needed to break out, I needed space, and so looking up at the hill in front of me I started to run. Up shaley sliding rock and sand, up through Pines and Furs, up and up until my legs cramped and my lungs burned. This was a way I knew to make it stop, to make it quiet, to stop the argument that is constantly occurring in my head between the many mothers and fathers of my personality. Seven thousand two hundred and twenty eight feet later I stood watching the sun sink into the west with nothing but the high screaming of the Santa Anna Devil wind and the vast bodies of the sleeping great surrounding me. On top of my small mountain I was a little closer to heaven, alone, and quiet. The sweat dried cold on my skin and I let it get dark before I found my way back down.

I looked down over the ledge, into the shimmering blue and green. It looked deep enough. " Go for it Bro!" Yelled the taller guy. " Is it deep enough?" I asked him
but I don't think he heard me. They stood on the river bank below and intermittently glanced up at me and gathered their things to leave. I took off my shirt and hat, laid my things by the side and stared down at the pool created by the deep point beneath the waterfall. "I'm going to break my legs" I said to myself as I walked over the edge.

I carefully refilled the radiator with fluid and water and drove back down the mountain, back into La Canada and onto the 2 towards Echo Park, right back where I came from. I stopped at the car wash and washed the fluid from inside the engine and off the hood of my car, then I bought some oil and put it in. I didn't think about it, I didn't say anything, i just did it and headed back up to Angeles. I was doing what i said I was going to do.

I pointed at the tallest mountain in my eye line, and said " You. You're next." I had quickly scaled another small mountain and I had gotten an early start so I had all day to bushwhack, trail blaze and take down the biggest kid on the block. I walked around it's base and followed the beaten path. I got to a wash in the path and looked up, it was steep as fuck but do-able. I wasn't about to follow someone else's path up this thing, I was going to take it down on my own. It's funny the way a mountain tricks you, you can only see so far in front of you, and so you always think you are coming to the summit when in fact it's just another plateau. I started running up this one like i had the night before,but soon I was checking my water supply and calculating the risk of continuing, the risk of dehydrating myself out here, a good 20 mile hike from my camp. I decided to keep going and half delusional from the altitude, exhaustion, lack of water and hunger, I arrived at the peak, the highest point south in the hundred peaks section of the Angeles National Forest, and I saw all the way into the desert beyond the mountains, to Palm Springs and Nevada.I knelt down and cried into my hands as The Devil Wind sang its song unabated.

I hit the water hard, and my legs folded up as i hit the bottom. The Water was alive, fresh born from a snow melt and running young down the creeks and streams leading to this pool where I emerged and screamed to the sky. Cold like new, cold like young and unspoiled, cold like renewal. The kids on the bank cheered, I swept the hair from my face a smiled at them, shining like silver in the dying day.

Come down from there. Come back into the black acrid grid and try not to gag. What can you take from a place where your mountains are manifest and surmountable, to a place where ghost people dream silent and desperate? What are you doing there? What are you doing? Climb the hard way, just as long as you climb, kid. Get to the top half dead if you have to, just get to the top, see the glory from upon high and know it's cold quiet truth. There are many roads to the top of the mountain they say, sometimes you have to make your own.