I dropped out of high school yesterday, god what bullshit!

It took all but three hours to separate myself from that school.

In one way its disugsting, in one ways its prophetic.

Because I was tossed aside from the beginning , so I aint gonna change none now.

Its hard to talk about, if you really want to know.

The whole thing, just kind of exploded sixteen months ago.

"Ok, but this aint gonna end up in some kind of magazine, now will it?"

Its easier than you think.

The first cut, the first time in a limosine, is key. I remember my dad had this river boat that he'd take me out every once in a while. He had already thought we were gone, but this Riverboat spent enough time in his craw to matter somehow.

I resurected the fucker almost eighteen months ago, and without warning, he flashed his blade.

I found myself in the middle of work camp again, due to the injury and all. I had so many people to blaim, but it was, at the end of the day irrelevent.

Go wherever you can, because your alive without a knife, and damn, you might as well be without one, because, in all honesty, youll probably spend more time alive.

I lit a smoke around this time.

You know, if you still want it.

Gladys, taking inventory of her personal life, goes back to her husband, if only for the challenge.

In the march, slowly, like a well-kept caterpillar, it came. The feeling that he'd been waiting for, right on cue.

they'd spent the better half of an evening going back and forth in there. His stand on a recent decision made that hadn't taken him into consideration lasted its intended forty-five minutes. And stalled by a last minute conversion tactic from Bob that had Gladys on the ropes, they had made the decision to give it another chance.

Bob and Gladys had been married for thirty five years in a marriage of what one could call convenience. Bob took his afternoons and evenings in front of the television set, in between naps and occasional banter between the ever-present Golf game and his own righteous set definition of a "handicap".

In this Gladys, now forced to do something, anything than watch her husband grow older and for her own physiological needs felt the leftover energy that comes from the half-energy that shed receive for closing another sale at work. Donn's Chevrolet, out there on Route 131, salesperson of the month for the past seven and a half months.

Gladys found in Selling the challenge she used to face from Bob, who had now taken permanent residence in front of this leather recliner. "59 and dead already." Gladys had commented frequently

Gladys made the sudden decision, after splitting up-- (they still called it a "separation" even though for Gladys it was more of "a hit or miss kind of a thing."
--twice, to give the man another chance, if not given another chance, wouldn't Bob respond well to the new acupuncture treatment? She'd talk to herself in the kitchen on those evenings, yapping at her reflection in the toaster oven.

"Your a good Midwestern woman, Gladys, and I want you to stay that way."

Her boss that said that the day before, and she knew all too well how her recent "forays" into modern medicine was not appreciated in the upper-middle-class section of Indianapolis.

Even still, she managed to con her way out of most evenings spent with Bob, and was now dating a local writer, 32 years old.

Now Gladys knew what she was doing. She might let you think otherwise, with her upbringing, faith and the homemade waffles on Sunday that brought with it the fortitude and the back-breaking regimen of Protestant Work Ethic, but inside fired the stirring soul of someone who for two years was a hippy in college, before she found the lord again.

So seeing Tim in the evenings, they'd read to each other. From Gladys's side of the table came the latest in Shiatzu, Massage, Acupunture, or herbal medicinals that she recently starting selling on the internet, secretly pocketing a small fortune in small currencies no one would ever see. Tim read excerpts from his upcoming novel (An obvious allusion to the proclivities in his own recent life, and he upped the amount of words that were older than he was. It was a good fit, and he even knew about Bob, and the increasing amount of hunting shows he would watch, vexed by Glady's all to late returns as of late.

Bob had taken to spending the night in the kitchen recently, setting his briefcase from his job as an insurance adjuster down on the kitchen table, reading the note from Gladys, in her sweet, caring penmanship. He thought she was at a new writers workshop, seeing the flyers in her purse one night, he read the guest list and decided to pay the book group an unexpected visit.

Vancouver, WA 1978

Growing up on the outer banks of the Columbia River yielded all the boredom that one would expect from a shallow sixteen-year-old student going to a shithole of a school that is Gracie.

Gracie High was located on the banks of the Columbia River (as I mentioned earlier in this paper, because I'm filling up space here, even while I'm writing this paper, cute eh?)and not too far from the Paramount Nuclear Plant. My Dad would take me fishing on the weekends, and I'd stare out across the river at Portland and wish I was there, living another life in a town that was actually somewhere.

Not that Vancouver, Washington wasn't somewhere. It was, but only when you compared it to Portland. Without Portland, Vancouver didn't have an identity, just a suburb thank you very much.

My parents would say they moved to Vancouver for the tax breaks, but I saw the disappointment in my Dad's eyes when my Mom took that big job on Mill Plain. I saw the lights go out in his eyes that night. Evident in the way he sat out in his workshop room out passed the garage.

He threw darts until well after I was sent off to bed that night. I think I heard yelling the next day.

We were happy, I guess, though I never could believe that he was truly happy.

Hed have this far-away look in his eye on the river, looking out across the river, at the airport, watching the planes take off and land.

We could have lived in Battleground, Ridgefield or any of the other cheaper places, but dad took Vancouver and the tantalizing tease of Portland in its proximity.

My mom mentioned something about a old girlfriend in Portland. The guys at the bait shop up in Ridgefield where we'd go and get our bait on Sundays used to tease me about my "other Mommy" but I paid them no mind, my dad always says they were full of shit.

The day he left, my mom came home from work and found me reading the note, trembling as she tore off down Mill Plain in search of wherever and whoever he left her for.

I traveled into Portland a few times, in search of him. I've heard he's downtown working at an ad agency, with a wife and kids. He doesn't talk about us much anymore.

My new Dad's a lot more boring. He's at the plant while my Mom orders him around and makes all the decisions. I still call him Tom, which pisses him off to no end.

There are lots of things I miss about my real Dad, but one of the things that drives me crazy, you know keeping you up at night, when he's all I can think about is how much of a philosopher he was sitting out on that water, tugging on a beer. He'd just stare out into the Gorge and dream.

He gave me the courage to apply for Evergreen, shit to get out of Vancouver all together. I couldn't help but feel responsible the day he died. The news didn't come like it had come to my friends who'd had loved ones die, because I had to hear it second hand.

Working on my first sculpture at Evergreen, in the Hollandale Tunnel, smoking after a break, when Tamara ran out of the kiln room to tell me what happened.

It was almost dark when I hitched a ride home with my sketchbook and a vague feeling that I had done this before.

Castle Donnington, Heavy Metal and the Rousing Fists When Molly Hatchet took the Stage.

Blag and Stig had already ripped open the case of Stella by the time I got there. Not to be outdone, they were halfway through the case and were harassing the punters, trying to shake down enough cash to spend on poorly-made tshirts.

Gary Newman had been on for two hours now, and the boys were raging. Being the sole diplomat of the group, I marched over to the oncoming fracass and attempted a vague intervention.

"Oi, was all this then?"

"Oh, Racks, we were havin' a bit of fun with this punter with the Skynard shirt."

"And wos wrong wit a bit o Skynard then, Ill pot on 'Sweet Home Alabama' from time to time."

"Oh ay, but dere not Molly Hatchet, now are they?"

"Nobody's as good as Molly Hatchet mate, they were the fookin originals weren't they? But you cant shake down the punter by the cut of his fookin tshirt now caen ya?"


"Racks mate, how de fook are we gonna get the scratch for de new Hatchet shirts? By taking them off of some cunt with a Skynard shirt, that's how."

"Boys, boys, lets calm de fook down and have a few bevvies, I got me packet from the Minister last night, lets have a go at it."

"Oi, punter, get that shirt off of yous then, its our fookin rag to wipe the lager from me chins"

"In your case Stig, there are multiple chins."

"Aren't you the brave bastard, Racks?"

And it went on this way for the rest of the afternoon. By half eleven we had seen Slipknot, MudVayne, Anthrax, Megadeath and ending with the fookin crescendo that was Molly Hatchet (Stig and Blag burrowed their way up front, bruising the skin of a few punters.)

I was late for my third shift, working the twelve hour shift on the pile driver. On me lunch break, I took out The Sun, and revisited the faces of Blag and Stig from the night before. They'd been arrested, booked and the writer had the fookin nerve to call them "Hooligans". Theyd bashed twelve punters by the end of the show, hospitializing seven of them.

They was always that way when I wasn't around. Still, Castle Donnington was still the best metal festival of the year, and well worth the rat in my brain the next day (night) at work.

Where I'm Coming From, with Sun and Promise

Sleeping off the majority of the night before didn't leave him feeling clean and fresh, like he expected to feel today.

He set off on his white Azuki bicycle, with dented pedals and toe baskets. Coasting down the hills of NE Portland, his thoughts lay in the nebulous future of the next school year.

Arriving at school less than an hour later -- after grunting and panting over hills, bridges and lacadasical drivers who stood in the middle of the bike lanes downtown. Looking up at the skyscrapers, they'd marvel at the heights while not noticing the bespectacled cyclist that laboriously approached -- he pulled into his Scottish Literature class ready to discuss the panglossian blur of fiction and reality. They had just discussed the merits of Gray'sLanarkand were currently devouring Welsh's The Acid House. The man was spot-on in the dialogue department, but did not have the stuff of the masters.

Even though hed spent more time laughing lately, mostly due to a sister and brother-in-law who recently gave birth to their first, a new job was to start next week, and the paperwork was piling up: Certification, transcript requests, his desk piled high with items tossed asunder since last summer and beyond.

But for now he'd take the hint of Fall in the rides home, the azure in the crisp air, sailing down the East Bank Esplanade, the enormity of downtown unveiling itself to him as a trusted ally.

In town he had found himself, nursed his way back home, to the wife who love him, the cats who coated his life in fur, and the promise of tomorrow.

For now at least, it was enough.

What It Takes to Produce Fire, Out There.

They told me of a tribe that lives out there, beyond the reach of electricity or phones, where the limits of society are stretched.

They live in the reservation where lawlessness is the poison that everyone drinks.

They told me of this one time, when a guy shot himself, literally in the foot.

He'd been drinking for hours, and got into a state often referred to as "total inebriation". He was chasing the ghost of former lovers who left track-marks on his wrists as deciduous as the chemical whom he embraced everyday upon waking. The power struggle got to be too much, so one night in a bender of hallucinations he caught the twitching of his right vein in the distance of his vision and he grabbed the first thing he saw, his side arm.

He fired before he discovered to whom the leg belonged, and he spent the night staring out at the desert wishing his rage had a connection, a face, and a destination to rest after venting.

The emptiness called out to him in the middle of the concrete establishment, and not even a full bottle of whiskey could cure him.

He took the truck, and forced his way, via his double-barreled shotgun into the nearest emergency room just outside Santa Fe.

It was daybreak when they helped him, and one hour later when the authorities arrived.

Its one thing to not have insurance, it’s another to not even live in an official country.

He said that the only thing that killed the pain was the understanding of the warden, who showed him pictures of her two lost boys that disappeared four years prior.

I guess everyone hurts, and everyone's cure can be a simple as a bottle and as complicated as an ideology.