11/28

I wake before the sun this morning.  Rise before it does.  Begin moving with the moon.  Through darkness.  Through cold.

Baltimore awaits.

So I grab what I need.  A bottle of water.  Some marijuana.  Cigarettes.

Then I'm out the door.  Into the frigid morning air.  

Ice covers my windshield and I bash at it with the scraper from my car.  Shards fly at my face.  Into my eyes.  I'm blinded.  In a rage I bash harder and when I regain my vision I see the scraper has lost all its teeth.

Then I'm in the car.  Then I'm driving.  Squinting through the frozen mess before me.  Puffing smoke out the window crack.  

I take the one-hitter from my pocket and load it.  Hit it.  Close my eyes.  Sink into my chair.  Swerve between lanes.

The sun is rising and the silhouettes of the mountains beside me tempt me to make a hard right and never look back.  To speed down the dirt road till I reach the feet of their forests.  To strip myself of clothes, products, and materials.  All my notions and philosophies.  All my beliefs and disbeliefs.  Obligations and recreations.  To walk on the fallen leaves and broken branches of life before me.  To scramble up blankets of boulders and hike through legions of trees.  To take in lungs full of air and worlds worth of sight, all to stand high above and look down with the knowledge that this journey accomplished absolutely nothing.

I press on the gas.  Focus on the black stretch ahead.  Drag on the cigarette.

Baltimore.  Will you be my mountain?