<Defrag>

<Defrag>



.1: The Key



And the train chugged on.



The first day we passed through desert and brushland, up bridges through arcane forests, old as time; not a patch of land left untouched by time and the absence of humankind, dunes and day moon; the bright sunlight tripping memo-flexes in the collective mind of the train – we are living organic matter, not the techno paradise that fills our every waking moment; the train further qualifying that point by step our slow soul carrier carrier chugs along without ever the need to destroy and create the same afresh…wonderful.



Not everyone digs this California trip but, then, the analogue style peaks and troughs of the central AI mo swims true to the troughs and peaks of our desires based on our performance after every ran/hol.



Myself being a naturalist at heart (but not an unenlightened one), I dig the grain of the hi-res ambient sensory truth of the lo-fi analogue round trip like Kerouac may have in his day…



'Motion makes any road seem right'.



I don't feel like I need reminding of the beauty of traveling with motion but surely my purposely increased purpose after such a trip makes one means to the end of hooking like minded fiends like myself up with one another by voting with my feet, so to speak, to sway the graphs of those centralized, chin-wagging AI duders.



I'm sure they got it all covered, though.



~*    *~



as the light dimmers and the clouds go dreamy, the oranges, pinks and purples of the great swimming fire in the sky reminds us once again how time passes all too quickly if you don't take the time to notice – awareness and, assembly and disassembly thereof, that's surely the pinnacle of human achievement, as opposed to the ability to split the atom or manipulate the week, or disassemble and reassemble the soul.



Yeah, life is sweet when you take the time to notice and sift through it's myriad jigsaw moments in all their 4d splendour; whether yr an atomic physicist, politician, rocket scientist, layman or even a dense but humble historian of human psychology like myself – gee, even if yr the AI, controlling the ports with care, watching all our ships rolling in and guiding them gently away again. Glide.



~*    *~







.2: Reservation



So when we've supped and brushed and woken, the carefully planned cathartic psychic dance begins, however slowly, to take a turn.



We've all been awake some time and since digested thought as well as the necessary cullights; nevertheless, it's still some time before midday when the 'untouched by absence' segment of our long and lumpy distance takes its median hiatus.



There we are, out in the absence, land rolling by like thick, wavy oceans and tree fractals, in the absolute and sublime middle of now-here; when we pass the first, perfectly positioned little house on the prairie.



To our urban(e)-ised yet cultured minds, the thought of some, one, perhaps no more than one family, living all alone out here tears the antique banknote in the collective consciousness of those sharing this particular experience of big bit.



I've done this trek a few times before, so I know to look around at the shockwave of flushed cheeks and talkative souls awakened by the thought of something truly different to our way of life; so many nearly jumping from their seats at around the same time…the driver could probably set his watch by their responses, if he too wasn't eagerly peering through the front window, waiting for the next lucky glimpse of civilization in it's crude form.



After some times have passed, we all settle down with a rose in each cheek and a feeling of collective warmth at the myriad factors that caused the shared experience we all just went through to be an experience rather than a passing, passive unconscious glance at reality as it now is for us all.



This digested, conversations dwindling to thoughtful waking dream, we pas another prairie shack, then another.

Growing in size and delicate, subtle grandeur, we pass yet more sensory fodder to be digested by the many moving parts of our collective sensory consciousness new; some many waves and respectful nods to myriad fads in architecture, now shops, then Victorian or Hispanic, all unique in size and dimension yet uniformly laid in the space that would have previously been taken up by through roads of dual carriageway traffic; I knowing this from my many researches on the shared histories of transport and architecture, not known to many who pass through here – blind to the unification of cunning planning permission and unable to quite put their collective finger on just what is so uniquely uniform in the spacing of such domestic variance…



…we pass long through the 'juana fields, eyes casually agog at the sheer parental creative output of the AImo's cathartic plans for our minds-melting before we hit the bend in the 'road' and the petit mort fear of the sudden shift in direction takes us back into the gentle land of the uninhabited, the absence.





~*    *~







.3: Cathartistic



When we arrive at the station, we all disembark to stretch our legs and roll in the nanograss while our luggages are fed through to us.

Looking around, you can see the individual purposes of the ran/hol in everyone's clothes and actions. Some will be porting straight back after a few days sunbathing, some clearly got invigorated by the journey and, like me, have already relaxed somewhat. Some also wear hiking boots and already have the little luggage they brought and are strapping to go; but, like me again, keen not to overrush.



My palms like the grass but my wanderlust kicks in and I see the mountain there before me. Still some ways away, I don't want to climb it merely 'cause its there, more so as it's really there. Its real and densely packed with real, time based sedimentary layers of matter, built up over thousands of years.



Here, I can think; drop and meander, drop the mental block and feel the pull of grey matter beneath me and the milky matter above, like a cosmic and pleasant version of the old timey medieval torture racks - a special exercise for mind, body and the reassembled components of the soul.



I better start walking. It's an awful long way on this springy day; the cold wind against my arms and face as much reminding me I'm alive as the stretch of my legs.



Lovely stuff.



As I reach the toes of the mountain, I feel the tug of war begin twix the steepening incline and the milky moon above, wave?



I've been walking the mount for some hours when I reach what feels like the median strip – my safe and stable middle ground; the point of no return as it were. It's already beginning to get dark so I drop the standard issue sleeping gear awhile whilst I scurry about for firewood. Up here there's plenty of dead wood and however bad I may feel about burning hundreds of years of dead, gnarly history, I still gather a sumptuous pile together and begin to lay the foundation with stones of ever decreasing sizes, some to gather heat, some to protect the ancient forest; stuffing dry grass in as kindling, I draw my antique Zippo and let the gentle breeze do it's wonderful work. I lie there gazing at the moon and the stars whilst the fire glows and grows to it's crescendos of a few feet horivert. The stars would probably suffice as a way to melt the psychic block but I need to set the fire in motion to know that it's largely an extension of my desires, a randomly twinkling appendage…



…as I lie there, I gaze into the fire, through it and around it at the shadows it casts.



I let my focus shift and drift, mind swimming in the unexplained and unexplainable – no logic can verify or deny the existence of this moment with words. The logical left hemisphere of my brain dies a little and I can almost visualize the cogs of my mind as a mechanical hourglass, letting the grains of wisdom drip through the dropper's neck when they're compacted enough to do so; much like the hard disk drive of an antique computer in defragmentation mode.



While the dance of the fire dwindles to softly glowing embers, I feel the nice, fresh, empty space in my soul where all extraneties previously lay.



Wise and fresh once again, I drift into dreamy sleep and sleep long.







~*    *~







c2z, 2/2/07



Hull
Currently listening to: mixtape of recently bought 7"s