A Casual Trip Beyond the Forest

And so once again, we stormed back upstairs, our feet wrapped in rubber and plastic marauding upon the hollow tree corpses lining the floors of my apartment, echoing like a war drum in my mind, drowning out the laughter and distracted conversation of my two beautiful friends. We plowed open the door as a frightened cat, my lovely and majestic yellow cat, bounded away from us to his secret hiding space where silly cats lay for safety, but then emerge again to be with us and exist together for life is lonesome enough, life is stacked against love and this is understood even by young felines having already bounced between two owners, and it is obvious to young people like us struggling to find a home for ourselves. Looking into my kitty's eyes in the early summer morning heat, sweat on my forehead dripping off my bearded chin from the seasonal climate and drugs in my system, the cat simply innocently purrs and circles my extended arm as if its only another day.

Beaglesworth sat down on my couch, drinking water straight from the pitcher's mouth with a exhausted, exasperated look on his face, nervous and uncertain, as his mind wrangles with Hoffman's lovechild. Our brains work hard, having defeated the alcohol already we are stone sober whenever our minds momentarily clear up, causing me to stand and search for something that I know will come in handy, but then I am standing at my bookshelf confused and sweaty, my legs rubbery a little bit so I sit back down empty handed having forgotten why I had stood in the first place.

In the eternal now, we drift slowly in our boats, and suddenly we decide to go back outside again, why not, the air isn't quite as thick and heavy outside, it is cool and delicious and feels amazing on my hot face and body, so we pound back down the stairs after an unknown amount of time inside, it seems like minutes but was probably an hour or two, as the great bringer of light and warmth, our planet's sun is starting to come, poking through the jelly colored clouds, tearing a hole in the summer sky and birds are beginning to wake up and line the tree ways and sing us lullabies, reminding us that we're not alone, but in this together, and Beaglesworth says that the birds are probably out of their minds too, probably way more than we are, and probably all the time. The paranoia helps them survive, he explains, and my heart beats faster and faster as I contemplate this and that, and head in random directions trying to see what is what everywhere at once.

Our trio rejoins, and we come back together, a tripod of chaos and laughter, the sky is orange and yellow with light as sunlight pours onto route 17 which becomes busier with the onset of morning traffic, so we instinctively head back behind the house, taking shelter down a tiny road towards the forest. Behind an old giant mill, rusted and windowless, next door to my building, the lot abruptly ends and trees reach towards the sky like natural cell phone towers, their branches swaying and blurring in the breeze which the sun seems to have brought along, the solar wind making everything dance, including us. Jerica, Beaglesworth and I dance and laugh our way through the empty parking lot, a van heading down the road putts along slowly behind us, watching us for a while, the poor driver probably laughing himself to tears until he beeps the horn twice and we dance onto the sidewalk and he blurs past us, most likely bringing home the bacon to his 2.5 kids somewhere.

We reach the borderline of pavement and grass, and hop onto the grass merrily and up a path. We find a bridge to our chagrin, and we stand upon it defiantly, above slow moving tepid water, brackish with greens and browns, probably another arm of the waterfall further downtown. I yell something about a bridge to Terabithia and we laugh and move along, off the bridge and onto the bank of the water. We shuffle along, examining everything, following an unknown path, overgrown with weeds and plants, the river slowly oozing beside us in the opposite direction, and we continue this for a half mile or so, the world's slowest rush hour traffic on a hidden interstate of grass and algae and water and rock and tree and leaf. We tilt our heads back like lost sailors in the night looking for the stars and get confused in the light filtering through the foliage, the sun is above the horizon now, it is light and the canopy is alive with birds and song, bouncing off our laughter.

The path opens up to our right and we enter the natural archway of trees, and it is perfect, way too perfect to be an accident and I say so, but the other kids don't hear me, lost in their own thoughts and admiration of natural beauty which our videogame generation sadly doesn't have the patience for anymore, and if they did they'd get bored too quickly, because there's no action in things like natural archways made of ancient botanical life, there's no control, and the graphics fucking suck....Nonetheless, we are spat out from the sheltering throat of the path into the wide open air of a green knoll, ankle high in vitality, and healthy grass is thick under our feet and the blue, bright sky is now playing on the giant screen above everything, and it is warm and summer and beautiful, preparing this main course all night we are starving, and we are feasting upon the solemn tranquility of low winds making dandelions and blades of grass twitch and dance on a backdrop of living oak and maple and evergreen, our ancient companions, and for the first time in a long time everything is alright in my life.




Thus Spake Thujonu