Angela Park

I went to Nescopeck Creek today and tried taking pictures.  I saw these nice flowers.  They were being assholes.  They let me look at them all I want but they were so camera shy.  I had to pay them for this.  That's how nature stays so prim and elegant.

The woods are pleasant when you aren't being followed.

Can you spot the metal, rusty, unknown contraption?  Sometimes industry and fauna intertwine and you don't even know it, creating a symbiosis that we didn't even know we needed until it was too late and the Earth was but a barren core.  This is one of those times. 

This shot was probably 300 feet from a highway.  That only made it more beautiful to me.  Also about 75 feet further on we found a whole mess of condom wrappers.  The beauty was palpable.

In an effort to inspire creation and photographic integrity in myself I was creeping around the woods.  This is the soon-to-be-sought-after style of "Peeping Tomography."  I have 30 more of the waitress at Denny's thong climbing out of her jeans.

If the camera had simultaneously been snapping 'graphs of my face, you would be able to categorize the exact look of regret.  If it had been snapping pics of my undies, you would find an undesirable brown mess of fear.  In the end, the stupid reptile slithered off into the woods to probably die.  Animals cannot take care of themselves.  Fucking limbless moron.

This gentle bastard thought he was camouflaged.  Too bad I've got keen eyes and hyper senses.  And blind luck.  And indomitable flatulence.  Anyway, check out this cute water rat.  Cheers!

Out of the Void

The other day I got stuck only thinking in rhymes. Having a song part trapped in your head on repeat is awful, but this was a travesty. I started to feel guilty about this after a bit of time. As if this was some sort of gift I should be using. Putting these rhymes to prose, at least. Eventually I came out of it. I don't remember exactly when but I remember being overjoyed that I could think normally again. To have my thoughts belong to me and nobody else. Rhymes became loathsome to me. After having them forced into my conscious I couldn't stand them at all. I suppose I'm biased but that's the way it was. "Shelly," I'd say to my wife Karen, "why don't we throw out all those Dr Seuss books? The man was an utter fool." Response was given in the form of a stare over the brim of her glasses, never really stopping motion on the clothes she was hemming. Admittedly it was a strange request. I hadn't told her of my cognitive troubles from earlier, so it just seemed like I was jealous of a children's book author. I think he was also famous as a voodoo priest, but most people remember him from writing those colorful rhyming books. You would think I eventually calmed down about the whole thing, and you would think right. Too bad eventually ended up being about 7 years later. I was furious with my own mind the whole time for taunting me, until I met someone who only spoke in rhymes. I realized that there are very few instances where someone does not have a worse, yet related, issue. That didn't mean my own struggle with keeping my mind free of wanton poetry was meaningless, I simply found peace in the evidence of communal suffering.

Therein lies a topic I became addicted to. I say addiction but it felt more like compulsion. My innards would creep around my body and squirm if they didn't get their way. "Complain about people cutting in line!" They'd shriek at me with their slopping and stirring. "Talk about how the best things in life are still low-grade piles of rat shit." They'd bellow from deep in the chambers of my heart and subsections of my large intestine. And I'd appease them the only way I know how: Getting on my weathered soap box and projecting a mist of vitriol onto anyone unlucky enough to be in my incredible vocal range. In a way I added to the very suffering I was madly barking about. Everyone had already come to the same realization as I had. We're all suffering together. They didn't need me vomiting diatribe in their direction. I was a modernized Bible audiobook that nobody had purchased.

And I'd trudge home after a long day, satisfied. Imagine that. I was content that I was doing good work. I was more foolish than that fucking clown Seuss. The bastard got me. I've only my wonderful Karen to thank for damming me. I'd walk through the door, begin round 5 or 6 or 7 of my unwanted sermon, and she'd give me that wonderful glare as she sewed or knitted or tinkered or whatever her beautiful little hands were doing. Eventuality got to me again, and after enough piercing eyes and dismissive love, I wound down from a speaker-on-high to one of the accepting people of the masses. You don't always need to strive to be above the torment and punishment and dissatisfaction. Not when you've got brothers and sisters that are holding your hand through the rain. When you've got cousins who know all your pain. We all float together, and we know that we circle the drain.

The River Nile

Clouds so close you can touch them. And fast too. An off-black cotton candied balloon flowing overhead.  Overtaking the previously white and blue polka dotted view. How swiftly thunder rolled in with the clouds.

A downpour and a fog. Rain smacking off hard cement, stone, and metal and glass alike, without prejudice in it's landing zone. Raindrop melody singing the earth's praises. The song and dance of storms has arrived at last.

We hope that the storm will wash away the disgrace, but it only takes the evidence. The feeling is ours to wash away however we can. No wind nor rain nor darkness of sky can eliminate memories. These memories outlast even time.

A new rain arrived, following a prophet. Adjudicator downpour.  With it came penance, mercy, or judgement. Some couldn't tell the difference. All they cared about was watching the rolling black as the heavens swept over them. The rain washed away their sins. Be it by death or forgetfulness meant nothing. Two sides of the same coin. The arbiter became a god. The people became as husks. The clouds never ceased to escort storms to the source. Humankind boiled and bubbled as it does, but there was a subtle worship that twisted their simple, malleable minds.

And after the prophet was gone,  we were left with no lesson learned, no solace, no matter taken. Disgrace persisted. Weather had lost. But it still came aplenty.

Might Over Matter

I've always been a little bit of a pen fanatic. The feeling of ink gliding across a smooth surface to produce something I created gives me a buzz unlike any other. My cigarettes and drink can't compare to the natural high I've honed from putting pen to paper. After careful consideration and minutes-to-years of testing and teasing, a pen has found it's way into my arsenal for good. The Bic Atlantis. It is a sleek extra finger used solely for spreading my mind across space. I doubt it will ever fail me.

Having found such a phenomenal pen put me into a ridiculous and unfounded predicament. I became bored with regular paper. Actual weeks were spent learning how to and then subsequently producing my own paper from trees I cut down in a section of woods I probably wasn't supposed to be in behind my grandmother's apartment complex. They all turned out small and brownish and barely resembled paper at all. More closely related to coffee filters, I'd say. So I wrote on these for a while and I was loving it. I felt a sort of bliss that is felt by people who pretend to accomplish things. It was pure joy in a simple form.

As I have grown accustomed to doing, I became complacent with my created paper. It, too, began to feel like just paper to me. I was writing a massive story and throwing it out every day. The pen was the pinnacle but the medium was unsettling. Where once stood a man, stood an indecisive shambling mess of a struggling writer. Though I did not struggle with content, but channel. Never requiring inspiration for my stories, I was festering in my home, languishing in my inability to innovate. In a fervor I grabbed my coat and stormed out into the winter storm and walked in no direction in particular. After a few blocks my feet forgot about inertia and allowed the slick ice hidden under the soft snow to up end me. Twisting unnaturally in the air, and without proper attire, I landed hard on my side, and scraped a good bit of my naive skin off my right palm. Knelt in the snow like a clown, I gripped my ribs and my head at the same time and noticed a little droplet of my warm blood interrupt the peaceful colorlessness the snow was enjoying. I let it drip in different spots, drawing circles and squares and altogether unheard of shapes. Probably heard of, but not by me, or people who don't frequently think about shapes. I signed my name at the bottom with my DNA and then I sat still for a while and counted my breaths. Gathering myself up, I rushed home and washed up, forgoing speech and thought and writing for clean up and sleep. Dreams rushed to me of a group of painters with easels in a field of colorful wheat. The field was on a rock suspended above a whirling yellow pool. It was all pleasant and still, yet moving just the same. My hibernation ended.

Seasons were allowed to change as they normally do before I finally had a solid replacement for everyday normal paper. Mid-spring would be my incredible new debut! Walking aimlessly, my hands resting in my pockets, I wandered the city in a white t-shirt and jeans; no destination but with immeasurable purpose. Something caught my eye as if a movie camera were focused on it. Part of a discarded church flyer, bent in half and bearing shoe marks, entirely un-literally spoke to me. I snatched it up without hesitation and sat down on the nearest curb. The honking horn of the car pulled me out of my trance momentarily to realize that I had stumbled into the middle of a busy intersection to grab my treasure. Whatever, I was busy. So my butt rest painfully on the concrete sidewalk as I set to work. I filled up as much empty space on that flyer as I could. Before you knew it, an entire six paragraphs of one chapter were plastered upon this discarded relic. This wandering library. Not wanting to burden the public with my trepidation, I immediately released it for publication. I kept all the proceeds and eliminated all middlemen. As the wind picked up I tossed the flyer back into the air and walked away. Simultaneously, litter had gained worth and I had gained stardom. In anticipation of my meteoric rise I asked the closest person if they had heard of Hamilton Byrnes. The answer fell on deaf ears as I had scittered off to write paragraphs seven through nine on the margin of a grocery store receipt. I left it stuck to a branch of a tree sprouted mid-sidewalk. I was finally doing my part. I was finally doing my pen justice.

Sisters in Arms

One day.

That was their mantra, their motto, and their promise.

Two girls stood holding hands in front of a drab, gray wall. Together they imagined the possibilities of things awaiting on the other side. Their minds were so depraved of experience that they had a hard time picturing anything other than what they were used to: smooth metal corridors, colorless cells, and electric barriers.

The girls stood on a crack-less cement pavement walkway, perpendicular to it's suggested trajectory. Two lines of others just like them marched behind them wearily. The echo of their footsteps bounced around the seamless walls and up to the high ceiling, cascading back down again; a self-conducting orchestra of despair. Before long the chains shackled to the arms of the dreamy prisoner girls were pulled along by their compliant partners-in-captivity. They were ripped out of their meditative state and fell in line with the rest of the despondent many. One day.

One day.

Each day was the same thing for the girls. Everything was the same. Though this prison housed no torture, no pain, and no physical suffering, it touted a psychological burden that was much worse. They were in cells side by side and exactly alike, just as everyone and everything else. All the walls smooth and dark gray, all the floors stone and hard on foot, all the ceilings high and white, all of the areas restricted by visible electric barriers, all of the guardsmen cloaked in silence and black and default mask. A world devoid of feature, and vacant hope. Even the skin of these unfortunate prisoners has grown simultaneously dismal and porcelain in the unnatural halogen glow overhead. There was no ambition or desire or aspiration among the prison folk; optimism sank and circled the drain. Yet two young girls had an innate desire for freedom. Two young girls who were born into this colorless madness found each other and found a way to look upward and onward. Each day, on the walk to the feeding hall, they stepped out of line and faced their wall. It was theirs now. And with their faces mere inches from it, they searched their own minds, apart and collected, for a life on the other side. Talking in whispers, they would build pleasant confusion in one another. I bet there is warmth out there. And soft. And fresh. For these things they longed, having only had involvement with their counterparts.

After stepping out of line for only a few short seconds, not even enough to constitute one single minute, they would be tugged along their path and ushered back into the succession. Back to the plain and ordinary and life as they new it. On the outside, they were just like everyone else around them, generic and manufactured and docile. Inside though, they were combating their surroundings. Before they get yanked back into the life of nothing, they sprinkle water onto the soil and seed of their hearts. If any two words could hold vast meaning it was the two words they chose to inspire life in their born-dead vessels. One day.

One day.

She awoke naturally, turning in bed in a just-woken state of confusion. All at once her head was flooded with questions. There was no blaring morning alarm pouring out of the wall speakers. There was no guard outside her door, and even stranger, the electric prongs that normally create a cell door were uncharged and dull. With trepidation she approached the area of the non-existent electric field, and after a seemingly long session, stepped through to the short outer corridor. She ventured to the cell to her left and looked inside. The girl's eyes met; one pair out in the corridor, the other pair above a huddled body, knees and chin keeping each other company. Strength was to be found in each other, as usual, and they joined hands to walk the hallway. The reached the end, where they normally are herded for roll call, and walked in with a triumphant disdain. A gun was shoved into their collective. It wasn't a merciless and stoic guard, but a man with face and color and care. He spoke to them. He hugged them. He told them an army had finally been mounted. The war was being won. They were about to be freed. They knew of no war, no army, no freedom. They knew of one life and one home and one master. They had nothing to say. There was no response to be given, but it was not waited for, anyway. He grabbed them and ran them through their course. All the familiar sights had given way to things unknown, and they could not comprehend the new features being placed before them. It was as if you had grown an altogether entirely new sense and your body couldn't process the new stimuli given. They passed by salvation and justice and intervention long-awaited, without acknowledgment.

The following moments were erased from their memories. Not due to any force other than inability to retain. The soldier led them to a leader. The leader led them to a gate. They were spoken at and congratulated and hugged and talked to and overwhelmed. All of this forgotten in favor of the ultimate memory. The one they had pretended to be having the whole time. The memory they had been dreaming of without knowing what it possibly could be. The only memory they could ever want.

They were led to a gate. A button was pressed. The interlocking teeth of the only irregular wall they had ever seen began to separate. All was white for a while.

Before they had realized what was happening, they had been ushered out into open air. They choked on the freshness and the liveliness. They were scared of the cool green grass and the gentle, invisible drifting winds. Their nostrils were flooded and overflowed with pollen and smoke and pheromones and sweat and blood and all manner of earthen delight. Finally, their eyes adjusted to a powerful sun. It took time, as it was their first exposure. Involuntarily, their hands had already clasped. They stood triumphantly outside the prison and turned to face it. It's walls burning and crumbling, and the black flag atop it being torn down and trampled on. Their only home ever was being demolished and desecrated and it brought legitimate, natural, innate smiles across their faces. They turned again and faced the outside. The outside. The perfect memory. Their heads turned inquisitively and sharply as they took in the greens, reds, browns, blues, oranges, and yellows of the flora and fauna. Unnatural shapes reared their heads in the form of trees, clouds, fields of green grass and ferns, roads, hills, valleys, skies, dirt, and rocks. Their shoeless feet dug into the soft mound and they fell to the ground with tears of elation. Cuddling and rolling and feeling. After an eternity of experience, they found themselves stood once again. Much of the commotion had died down. And they found this time appropriate to pay tribute to their saving grace, their mantra, their maxim. One day.

Day one.

Cavewoman

"Your psionic powers won't work here!"  The advancariist said before laughing and thrusting her arms to her sides in an overly grandiose motion.  It turned out to be adequately grandiose as she summoned a ball of fire from another dimension. The fire instantly eradicated her and the person she was talking to because she didn't know how to control it.  Don't play with fire. 

Re-Routine

There are times when you contemplate life, but pushing the vending machine back and forth trying to free your chocolate milk isn't one of them.  A few thoughts were going through my head, but none of them pertained to the current state of my life. I pushed it up against the wall and let it rock forward again. A Fanta slipped out of place and slid to the bottom.  Damnit. I tried a few more times with no luck and resigned myself to my unwanted orange beverage. Defeat was truly personified by me that afternoon. Slumped at the bottom of a drink vending machine outside a bait shop, head between my knees except to sip another burning sip of a drink I didn't want. In an effort to stay positive I lamented the fact that I hadn't been crushed to death. I read in a magazine once that more people die each year from vengeful vending machines than from shark attacks. I also read in the same magazine a recipe for a spicy shrimp pasta. My thoughts had redirected me to negativity again. Now I'm out a drink and a meal. Oh well.

I picked myself up and headed down the street. The pavement was cracked and broken all down the sidewalk. For the bugs living there, a world torn asunder, for me, a slight bother.   I realized I had started walking the wrong way. I awkwardly stopped in my tracks and lost my balance, spinning on the balls of my feet and landing again sideways. Normally another contemplative moment, but I chose to forgo embarrassment and trudge off in the other direction whimsically.  I reached the public parking lot and immediately forgot where I parked. I started calling out the make and model of my car out as if calling for a lost dog. I thought it was funny, even though nobody was around to laugh. I laughed for them. I eventually found my car, even though it never answered me. A  1993 silver Chevy Cavalier. There was no upholstery on the ceiling and my friends had all carved their names in the asbestos-laced, dirt-stained foam.  The asbestos part was facetious on the part of my friends and I, but it was truly hideous. The muffler was annoyingly loud for everyone around me, but somehow the decibel level lessened considerably inside. The stereo was from my old car and it didn't fit. It was jammed into an empty radio compartment and jutted out a full 4 inches, though the duck tape secured it  quite nicely. I turned my broken MP3 player on shuffle and revved my engine to give myself another laugh.

I drove to the supermarket and it was densely packed. I already forgot what I needed but I went on in, to wander aimlessly.  I grabbed a shopping cart and went through the aisles, putting in things that looked appealing. It had a half gallon of orange juice, a package of cookies, two lightbulbs, paprika, Rolling Stone magazine, and some bendy straws in it when I abandoned it in the middle of the aisle.

I walked into the crowded restroom and assumed the position in front of the only open urinal. My boxers had somehow twisted themselves into an ampersand without my permission and right under my nose. This was preventing me from pissing, so I just stood there for half a minute and pretended. Then I walked, unzipped, to the stall. At this point I had already turned a simple task into a project so I sat down to splash out. The cold porcelain was a treat on my buttocks. I stayed until my legs fell asleep and then awkwardly hobbled out of a still crowded restroom on pins and needles. 

I decided I didn't really want anything in my cart so I went and put it all back on the shelf. I walked out feeling a little bit like a criminal for leaving the store without any products. Nobody cared.

 I got stuck on traffic on the way home.  I could smell the disdain in the people around me. Frowning, slumped down, jittery. People have no patience. Whether caught up with other drivers on the road for 30 minutes or stuck at a red light for 20 seconds, they become irate and filled with
malice. I enjoy traffic. It gives me an excuse to skirt responsibility for just a while longer. I was sat there, music flowing through my speakers quietly, hands drumming on the wheel, head bobbing enthusiastically, and just forgetting about stresses and worries. This is when I had my contemplative moment. A group of steaming metal vessels trapped in a stuttering conveyor belt together. Humans jammed into boxes and not a one of them interacting with each other, save for the occasional honk or lane switch or passionate vocal tirade. Everyone collectively deciding to follow the rules, no matter how much it irked them.  I wanted so desperately to rebel but I didn't want to hurt anyone or make a statement. I just didn't want to follow the path of the complacent any longer.  I put my car in park and grabbed my belongings. One broken MP3 player, one tube of chapstick. Not too much, it seems. I walked home that day. Seven miles of wandering and taking in the sights and sounds. I bought myself a bike the next day and made an effort to see as much of the city as my legs would allow. I showed up to work two weeks later as though nothing had happened. Nobody confronted me. Back to the grind.