At it again an ole used to be somebody’s sailor goes walkin between a pair of century old dampers carryin martini olive eyes, soot curls, and a dirty mouth she’d put to use if it weren’t holdin such a cute little grin. A lump of wood at bars’ end lifts a shout, “ain’t you got some business somewhere Ms.?”
The jingle of her boots fades and silence arm wrestles the room and wins. Her head snaps to a call quicker than a wave of a whip, almost drawing all the air from the room with the unanimous gasp it demands from the crowd. Silence ensued either as an effect of no soul dare speak or because a vacuum prevented sound to be carried throughout the room, nobody knew nobody cared.
Each step squashing peeps before they happen, she arrives face to face with Lumber leaned up against the bar, rising for a moment from his seat as if a flame were lit underneath his teepee.
Madam looks up, catching him with even more of a crack in her lips than before, “now what business would that be Mr. Forest?” leaning in she could smell fear turn to shit.
Log cabin falls into convulsive stutters emanating from his lower chip spreading down his race circuit. Mumbles of, “ma ma ma ma ma” again and again interrupted by sudden jerks stifling each proceeding attempt winding up like a little car about to be launched across a kitchen floor.
“Ahh hell!” she slaps him not too hard across the face breaking the broken record-ness arresting his body landing him back in his seat and before he knows much of anything he spits out, “ma acorns!”
A sigh of relief escapes from his chopstick mouth as though having needed to lose an erection before a passing train could knock it off, that sent vapor spittles into her face in a bourbon breeze.
Throwing back her head in a great “HA!”that forces anything not nailed down into the walls. Tables and chairs slide into leather breeches, glass explodes and falls in subtle applause about the room like an ensemble of fairies hitting pots and pans. Olive eyes narrow on Tinder Box with regained composure she reaches into her vest. Eyes shift around the room curious to the fact that her hand had passed up the shooter astride a rather well rounded hip.
From the vest she pulls a small bronze cylinder and removes the cap in a slow twist. Holding it before Match Stick, in a way he could note the color, which was unusual. Containing an element of glitter magnified by the truest amethyst, emitting a spectrum such that anemones if they knew they’d fight for it’s hue, lilies tell petal-tales of it’s shade, it drives monkeys bananas, and sends unicorns out shopping where they discover in passing a mirror their horns’ held the color all along.
“What they servin you here, seventh sin?” Arms a measure animated. “How bout I freshen you up?”
A gleaming nub grows under her touch, then guides the rocket stick towards Saw Dust’s face.
“Hold still now, you haven’t want me to get this wrong.” Reaching behind Splinter’s head to keep fast his shuttering chin.
We have touchdown. From a deliberate hand eights roll onto his wood chips, a trace resembling a trail of a psychedelic snail after several crossing of his balustrade, inducing a most peculiar spell. Building with each completed pass Plank’s corks pucker ever more.
In a sudden pressure release eyelids flutter his harmonica hums and steam blows out his ears. Withdrawing the wand and placing it back in her vest, she takes a step back to admire her workin play horse. Block’s head a ringing coo coo clock, his body a black and white image against the vortex drawn on his castle.
Placing a boot in his dividers then before going any further she turns to address the room, “now if any of you ladies want a ride you’re gunna have to wait your turn.” Pressing on his stirrup her legs swing over his shelve shoulders and saddle up against his music box.
For an imperceptible amount of time her business carries on in such a comfortable manner you’d think she were alone. Wedging into a joist her charged body expands a field of static potential gathered from forces present and beyond.
Breaking from her rhythm for a look at the faces frozen into the wall, some still pinned by furniture.
“Do y’all really wanna see what this pony can do?”
They weren’t sure, nobody answered. Madam twists his ear shooting a puff of steam down the bar, Jenga teetering on edge. On the well lathered face glimpsed between flickering hips patrons saw eyelids batting at thousands of rpms, a pair of bee stings blowing hard brass, a tongue zapping that could turn a toad envy green, the corrupting color covering his complexion resembled a tumbleweed turn tropical fish.
The lights in his jukebox went out right as her’s finished, both rattling in opposite ways. Leaving, months later, suspicions in those who witnessed the event as to whether his spirit had been sucked out by her receiver like some phone booth in The Matrix. Only this here is the nineteenth century so make of it what you will.
The ride met its end, she dismounts brushing against his chopping block, the force of her impact jostling a dead Stump loose from his seat who falls to kindling on the floor.
Giving herself a once over she smiles down at the Pollock piece between her thighs and runs a finger up her seam front. In passing she drags the dabbed finger across the cheek of a still giant, neither spoke.
Within moments a jackhammer awakens inside the giant inducing in him a tapping twister with rumba manners, the bright cheek streak metastasizing his body through Tasmanian whirl.
The audience fixed on another transformation hadn’t noticed her slip out, and let out a still murmur when a cow hatted and curled head popped her peach back through century old wooden doors, “Y’all be careful with this one, damn near lost my pearls,” with a yodeling chortle, “so long.”
With that patrons peeled off walls, and found themselves dumbfounded around the rutabaga vibrator they knew as Earl.
Most falls in during morning flows. Pen & Page be-pressed for days. Welcome to the Xander Zone!
Aboard Nimbus Nine
By Tyler Mobley
Does the world speak through your eyes? To know is to know anything at all. No fantastic beast, a spice caught mid drizzle down forearm scruff posing to the onion if the slice was worth the cry hoping the answer may remain to remind of what is present, like shower confidence carried into the world, a Sesame Street stride “a good day to garbage grins, bird, thank you for your song, Tree wood you settle your branch brood and leaf yourself blown, any stranger can tell you’re a bit knotted up.” Is that enough? Ok one more, “I went for pizza last time Mr. Tree, leaving your wallet in your trunk is no excuse.” If only money grew on … our backs.
For the love of God traffic lights have more personality than some elected officials. Respect the runway’s duty, a performance demanding stage. Floor is yours, the lights hot, dance as if you’ve practiced all your life, no doubt you have. Imagine every word spoken by a congressional member must include a jig or dance at a minimum of eight counts, carried out before or after the statement being left to the members discretion. Not a thought mind a movement goes unweighted in expression, art or ability the absolute passion for life shines under recognition in unbearable fashion, if one were to gaze directly at this primordial flare the result would imprint itself onto all seen thereafter for embracing our undeniable order, complexity maintained under elegant guise, meditating bottoms know to sink to rise, morphing bubbles on surface ascents, a dance perhaps, prescribed to those who’ve not thought through the depths from which they’ve sprung.
That ought to sort things out a bit. Dance if a lash bash is all you can manage, propel your mind with Saturn sneeze rockets any less is just another dance, pads of melting butter for skates, we must roll, a days roll presents no choice and every option each time time time time time time time.
A grandfather born in 1922 the year Mussolini seized control of Italy by uniting fascist groups in a march on Rome. Mussolini awaited the outcome of his command in Naples, however the capital siege went smoother than expected. King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign an order given by Prime Minister Luigi Facta to impose counter forces on the attack. Instead the Italian government said if you can’t beat them join them and surrendered to the fascist, making Mussolini the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history.
Luca Falcone grew up in the Adriatic countryside far from the piazzas where roaring crowds gathered to listen to their leader work himself up into a coronary of fascist propaganda. Mussolini’s charisma infected the masses with thin promises of empire at the expense of countless Ethiopian lives.
By 1940 Luca had had enough, with his younger sister in tow he fled Italy for a new life in America. Arriving at Ellis Island aboard The Rex, an Italian made steam powered ship that in 1933, won the blue ribbon for the fastest Westerly voyage across the Atlantic.
World War was underway, a pact with Hitler meant there was still hope for victory. Luca, nonplussed by a prideful Mussolini, when referring to politicians his quip that lives on today was, “they all the crook.” A philosophy that allowed him to see past the frantic crowds and smooth talk of his country’s leader, to follow his own dream to a new land an ocean away. Against the grain types listen to their heart and weigh out the options given by the head.
Luca would go on to enlist in the United States Army and see battle in Tunisia and Sicily. Upon return Luca made a life for himself, he married, started a business and had a family. Last to the party was my mother.
I remember him holding me in his arms while he cooked zucchini picked from his garden. He loved to trim the roses in the front yard. He did it, he lived the American Dream. I am forever grateful for the courage it took to leave it all behind to step into the unknown.
“Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”
– Joyce
My father was adopted, though not in the normal sense, his mother remarried when he was only 4 years old so his step father is the one he calls dad. Though the man he sees in the mirror is Ellis Jump, a cad of his day left my grandmother a few years after my father was born.
When Ellis forfeited custody of his child there was no way he could’ve known that he’d go on to become an accomplished sculptor. He fled to Paris with a small black poodle where he’d stay for the next 5 years. Ellis bounced around apprenticing under giants of a booming art scene. He earned specialized skills he’d bring home to Ventura where he taught sculpture at the Community College for the next 37 years.
I knew him as a storyteller, the time in Bainbridge traffic when he used his croc slipper as a urine receptacle and poured it out the window. He could make anyone laugh, any bagger at check out he’d leave in stitches. I remember his smile surrounded by a fuzzy white beard.
If Ellis didn’t listen to whatever pulled him towards Europe where he was able to immerse himself in what became his passion, the world would be a different place.
Chaos theory accounts for the unrealized power of single events or decisions that bear no obvious correlation on later outcomes. Often it is fractional information that skews a system ever so slightly for things to fall a different way.
Developing over time is how most things go, this collection was no different. Retrieving a blanket to be laid down in a starlit park I consider the stickers placed on the back window of my camper shell. As our minds do I created a story for their arrangement. She brought a blanket too, by the time things buttoned up we’d rolled our way onto the grass. Our next meeting I shared the meaning I’d seen in the stickers that night.
“You see it’s really a college of human nature.”
Here the central Octopus tentacles spell out “soul,” with nature on one side and the industry and creation on the other. On the nature side are two trees, one I bought myself, one given by a friend. Symbolizing Ventura’s Two Trees, the prominent landmark of my hometown. On the other side of the soul is an Iron & Resin sticker with a separate black n white anchor in the top corner. The new local brand whose market niche surfboards and motorcycles, their downtown storefront always full of the hippest crowd. These were the first stickers I’d stuck, now created a symmetry to my back window. Done without any deliberate thought I’d made a representation of ourselves in the world, caught between nature and industry. Our souls trapped in bodies bound by natural urges and needs complemented by the ability to manipulate our environment through our imagination.
“Does that make sense to you?”
“That is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for, but kind nonetheless. Her phone rang, time to go.
Originally composed for a Creative Non Fiction Final Assignment, Thanks to Brad Monsma.
“In the Right Place the Trees, at the Right Time the Stars”
Sputnik – Roky Erickson
You’d be hard up for a reason as to why Pumpernickel Valley has a reputation for missing persons and UFO sightings other than it being two hundred miles northeast of Reno Nevada, and a working definition for the middle of nowhere. On day three of driving the mind bends toward consideration of catastrophic outcomes provoked by the sheer destitution should something go wrong. Entertainment procured to lighten the mood, an Audible app opened, thumbing up Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, hoping the information dense volume I’d been nibbling on for years would fill the empty space. From the road, distance is measured in mining operations, turn offs for Iron Canyon or Copper Basin with big red ice cream scoops taken from passing hillsides. A polished London accent is quick onto the Great Oxidation Event; an epoch of Earth where single celled life forms released an abundance of oxygen into the atmosphere; a transformation necessary to arrive at the world as we know it. Evidence of such mass oxidation is rusted rock, million year old banded iron formations, staggered red streaks the nectar of buzzing operations. Both rich for reason, complementing scope and scape as though Bryson’s words were pregnant with impeccable timing.
Other cars involved in the migration would pass with, “solar eclipse 2017” written on one or more windows, some detailing their final viewing destination. The shared enthusiasm was comforting, witnessing the flock to totality, a shadow predicted to swoop from Oregon to South Carolina. I’d planned to be in its path in Mackay Idaho, a tiny box town on the Western most valley of a series of basins and ranges, formed just north of Craters of the Moon National Monument; a geological headache, a volcanic wasteland home to such places as the Great Rift, Devil’s Cauldron, and Hell’s Half Acre. After turning up the basin many of the locals along the road displayed signs offering camping on their property. Circles and rows of tents and trailers occupied most of the well spaced yards as I drove deeper into the valley.
In Mackay a street fair for the eclipse had closed the main road through town. An bosomy old woman sitting behind a display of artwork greets me as I graze over the pieces. I paused on a recreation of a painting called, “When the Land Belonged to God,” buffalo top a golden ridge, distant hills of pink, sensing the rumble of the herd, I thought it was an appropriate title.
“So what is it you do?” she asked.
“I’m a writer.”
“Follow that, just let the words take you, with hardwork in between.”
“I’ll do that, thank you.”
Further up the street I consulted the BLM booth about a place to camp. I’m handed a map and pointed toward the hills rising behind town. Main street becomes the mountain road as you head west, but due to the street fair everyone was forced up and over a block becoming knights aboard a game of chess. Polaris and quads crowd the flatland with masked campers on dusty supply runs. I’m tailing a row of trucks heading up the hills on winding dirt roads, heads crane at abandoned mines, rotted skeletal structures of an industry a hundred years past its boom litter the landscape. Operations were suspended in 1980, the ruins are now relabeled part of a self guided tour, decrepit history with the appeal of a ghost town. A tight pine lined trail cuts North mid ridge before swinging down to a finger of land covered in dry summer grass, providing a clear view over the valley for the solar spectacle. At night I seethe scatter of campfires flickering throughout the 10,000 feet of Mackey Peak, and I’m reassured why I’d come to the grand stands.
Eclipse day had risen set to go dark at 11:33am, priming myself with Modest Mouse’s “Night on the Sun” while preparing breakfast. My eclipse glasses resemble the 3D paper cutout ones you’d find in magazines despite the official ISO stamp ensuring the UV wouldn’t fry my eyeballs; putting them on every 5 minutes to check for the moon entering the solar disk. A subtle shade sneaks up on perception, dimming details of the valley floor, its’ begun. Celestial coordination, alignment inevitable, we gather to witness something greater than ourselves. Twilight descends upon the mountains the valley haze clears, stars much further than our own, out shine the corona spilling over the moon. Peaking, the shades come off, a rustic orange coats simmers on the horizon, as if the sun was setting in every direction. As everything always seems still it is not, the moon continues its path letting light escape from where it had first entered, it was over. Cheers echo up and down the mountain, we’d gained a perspective of totality then things returned as if it never happened.
—
The Following Summer
—
One night while scrolling through Instagram I came across a post from an old friend about a trip to Glacier National Park planned for later that summer. The idea had stuck with me and in a months time I was packed for a trip North. The morning of my departure I stopped at the local Starbucks for a road brew; the line was to the door, a man of many years sat at the first table typing on a laptop, a stack of books on the edge.
“Are these for sale?”.
“Donation based.”
I pick up a copy from the stack, Open Spaces My Life With Leonard J. Mountain Chief Blackfeet Elder, Northwest Montana, by Jay North.
“I’ll take one, I’m on my way to Glacier,” handing over a twenty. Taking one off the top,
“Who do I make this out to”?
Thanking me and wishing me luck, I set off with coffee and skeleton key.
Zig zagging North to Tahoe night as falls I’m in eye shot of a forest meadow where cattle graze, at Crater Lake I watch haggard PCT hikers crowd the ranger station for mail and chocolate. An unexpected sight stands in Maryhill Washington, a replica Stonehenge nestled on a lump in the Columbia River Gorge. A vision of Sam Hill built in dedication to the soldiers of Klickitat County who gave their lives in World War I. Since 1929 it has baffled the ribbed hills with the charm of an English countryside.
A bookstore in Spokane displays the Lonely Planet guide to Glacier National Park, and The Best American Travel Writing of 2017, edited by Lauren Collins, I return with the titles to a text from Mom. A link to a National Park Service website, fire in Glacier National Park mandatory evacuations for all of West Glacier ongoing. If I had rushed I would’ve been right in the middle of it; I’d come too far to turn back now. The following night at the Missoula Club, which has been serving beer and burgers since 1890, I inspect the interior lined with framed team photos of every sport played in Missoula over the past century.
At East Glacier it was getting late and the sole campground was full, I was directed North to Saint Mary. The sun dipped below the mountains as I’m still twenty miles away. Turning off onto an unmarked road leading up the mountain its not long before I come to a sign demarcating Blackfeet Reservation; vowing respect I carry on with belief that it’d be too remote for anyone to enforce anything. After a few bends the trail leads to a field of gravel pitched at forty five degrees, evidence of the hillside unbuttoning its pants. I Imagine my truck rolling down the slope, coming to a rest wrapped around a pine in a steaming twist. I crossed on foot to ensure it was even worth attempting, as luck would have on the other side a flat spot lay just off the road with a view West into the mountains. Trusting the tire track barely distinguishable in the gravel I slide in a gear and crept over bumps and dips, at times the angle so acute the ground seemed to be in the passenger seat. Exhaling, the dice had stayed on the table, now there was just getting back.
In the morning the crunch of a mama elk on the gravel draws my groggy head out the window, pleased to find her two calves in pursuit.
The road into Glacier from Saint Mary is called Going to the Sun, which takes its name after a mountain on the way to Logan pass. I met a guy from Texas, he said it was the road featured in the opening scene of the movie The Shining.
“It’s the road they take to the hotel you know.”
I didn’t.
“I even put on the song from the movie as we were going,” his excitement left me wondering just how far the recreation would go. He was there with his family, after listening to the song during the entire drive in they might be ready for some redrum.
I snagged a campsite before leaving to find some water to swim in, just before sun down one of the park rangers came around to inform everyone of the nightly program at the campfire that evening. Before heading down I made the rare choice of wearing socks with my Rainbow sandals, because why not it’s a campground full of people I don’t know. A minute into my walk I hear,
“Tyler?”
Looking to my right, I see Brendan with his camera, sitting out the back of an SUV.
“What are you doing here?”
I explained to him and his girlfriend Michelle that it was his Instagram post months ago that inspired my trip. With half the park closed due to fire, they had been redirected leaving Banff as I had been in Spokane, still neither of us had any clue our trips would overlap. Even better Michelle had just been teasing Brendan about wearing socks and sandals.
“See Michelle I’m not the only one, thank you for showing up on my side,” Brendan applauded.
“You guys are ridiculous,” she declared.
Promising to stop in for a beer on my way back, I made my way to the little amphitheater of log benches fanning out from the fire pit filing in with others as the program was already underway.
A night of storytelling and song from “Montana’s Troubadour,” Jack Gladstone. A citizen of the Blackfeet nation who knew the families in West Glacier whose multigenerational cabins along Lake McDonald lost to the fire. Each song he played on guitar came with a backstory or hand gestures that he taught to the audience to accompany certain verses. Each time he said “The Bear Who Stole The Chinook,” we’d mime a bear pawing a wispy breeze, waving in unison on “our hero’s journey to release the wind turned west to the mountain bear’s den.” In conclusion he performed an original mash up of “Over The Rainbow” and, “Let It Be” as a feel good send off. My arms full of goosebumps, a shiver down my spine, eyes melt with ambience. The gathering dissolves, parents retreat into the night with sleeping children in their arms, I return for a warm beer, cheersing life.
Sometimes things just align.
Columbia GorgeHedge Overlooking Mackey IDDown the hill from Mackey campBlackfeet Res. near East Glacier Had some pancakes the next morning Jumping into the scene
We walked into a social experiment analyzing things as they unfolded.
The asphalt was cold under my feet as Emmie and I scurried across Highway 1. We found our path in the shade of the trees, avoiding little acorns that had fallen. Two women were on the bench near the pay phone as we approached.
Me: “Hey, are you guys waiting to use the phone?”
She: “No, we’re just waiting for a friend.”
Looking her dead on she had a striking resemblance to Rachel McAdams, her equally beautiful brunette friend looked happy to have the company while waiting. They were in their mid to early 20s and were dressed in casual camp comforts.
Brunette: I like your hat, it’s really cool.
Emmie: Thanks
She must have tossed out the complement as a way to make Emmie feel comfortable as women sometimes do, or perhaps it was just a nice hat. McAdams began to explain that the young couple using the phone had suffered a flat tire on their Prius and were without a spare. At this point, appearing on the scene was the friend of the girls. Scraggly, fluttering about in a bright orange puff blazer, as though he belonged under a tree at some park in Boulder, Colorado. After being filled in on the situation, he went on to express his plan of action as if it was him in this predicament.
Mr.CO: “Yea, I would just post up on one these benches, light up a couple fatties and wait for the tow truck that’d be pretty rad.”
All of us thinking we could do better than that, the brunette took a crack at it.
Brunette: “Maybe they could find someone to bring them a spare from Monterey.”
All five of us diving deep into the counterfactuals to figure out the best way to resolve their abandoned situation. Over at the payphone things were heating up, a few steps away the boyfriend saw she becoming increasingly flustered decided to come join us, and was quick to fill us in on their misfortune.
BF: “Yea the rock just came off the mountain and landed right in the middle of the road.”
Making a sphere with his hands the size of a bowling ball.
BF: “Just smashed into the tire and broke the whole wheel of the car”
Mr.CO: “Wwwoooooo so it hit you guys while you were going?”
BF: “No, she ran it over and it wrecked the whole wheel.”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad for them, the boyfriend did make it a point to say that his girlfriend was Asian and a very good driver. We offered up our conspiracies as hopes of goodwill and sincerity.
Emmie: “Hitch a ride South to Cambria, and pick a spare then come back.”
None of our propositions made much sense, or perhaps the circumstances were undeniable and called for hours, perhaps days of waiting in anguish. Just then, an idea planted itself in my head.
Me: “Maybe you could find someone with a prius and buy their spare tire off them. They’re plenty of priuses around someone is ought to help out.”
The boyfriend and the rest of our little group standing around the bench took a moment to play the events through their minds, resulting in a faint nod of agreement.
BF: “Yea, that could work, but who is gunna give up their spare up here.”
Me: “I don’t know, you only need that one.”
Mr.CO: “Yea dude, just imagine the white prius all sick coming around the bend, it’s got divine light all shooting out from the inside, fucking glowing right. Just pulls up next to you guys on the side of the road, and fuckin Ram Dass gets out of the car. He is wearing a dhoti, with his beard down to the ground and shit. Ram Dass just smiles, and, BAM! your tire is fixed.”
Emmie and I turned to face each other, locking eyes through her sunglasses both taken aback by a stranger bringing up Ram Dass, knowing we weren’t about to get into any family ties. Playing it off we offered up some new outrageous unnecessary act to be performed by Ram Dass.,”Or a flock of birds erupt from his car as he drives off into a mountain of light.” Mr. Colorado righteous banter n all, had touch on something worthy of pause, and what else is there to do other than admire such perplexities of our world.
The young couple disappeared into a car, and Emmie and I went to make our phone call, not getting through.
Letters of Measure 