brass tacks

Look underwater, in the submarine.  I might be one of four people in the world who understands any of that, but sometimes that’s the way it is, the way it has to be.  To believe otherwise would result in such painful cognitive dissonance that it might manifest itself in telekinetic destruction.  My word.  I’ve been up a long time now and even though I was able to catch a few hours of sleep in a bed and take a shower, I am on vapor cougar.  We’ve gotta land this sucker.  I spent the day walking the streets, had a couple of tacos from a vendor, bought a used Esteban (the dude from HSN) guitar and a compass, went to Temple Square and rapped with some Mormons, went to a park and rapped with a motley group of drifters, had dinner at the Red Rock Brewery and learned the ins and outs of Utah drinking laws.

On my way back to the hotel to pick up my bags, already aware of a two hour delay in departure for San Francisco, I called Amtrak again to make sure of the ETD only to be informed by Julie (the insufferable automated assistant) that my train was delayed another four hours.  The horror.  The guitar turned out to be a fortuitous acquisition, a soothing distraction from the recursive theme embedded by rote in my brain (We appreciate your patience) and also a skeleton key to many human interactions (THE TRAIN IS MOVING!).  Sorry.  I jammed a bit with Bo (Brian?) the security guard after the bar closed in the hotel; a former jazz musician/vocalist, he was supremely talented.  Then a strange Eskimo lady came up with her pit bull and a bottle of Montego Bay Rum while I was noodling, sat on the bench with me and talked as I played, listening the whole time.  Got to the train station at 05.00a, just started moving now at 06.35a.  The train was supposed to leave at 11.30p last night.  Well, I’m on my way, horizontal in my cabin, eyes closing, ready for California.

Damn, I wish I had my camera out.  We just passed the biggest car graveyard I’ve ever seen, not to mention the mountain that was reduced to an eerie multicolored mound being depleted of its mineral stores.  Alas, I’m not sure I’d even be able to hold the damn thing in the right direction.  I’m shutting down.  Ask me a question, I haven’t heard from most of you in a while.  Or do I have to ask you?

The sun is out now, I’ve seen all parts of days.  Here it comes, fleeting oblivion.

Sometime after six in Utah, I woke to the dead grey light of dawn humming off the sheer, striated mountainside.  The sun had just begun to wash the tops of the tree-topped peaks to the west in a red-gold glow when the raspy shouts of rambunctious redneck children shattered my peace.  I had not yet regained optimal body temperature or temperament, so I stared out the window, spotted with forehead grease, and waited for the sun to warm me.  I recall waking at various times through the night, at one point the moon a winking eye, not brown but orange, a bright crescent complemented by the faint embers visible in its shadows.  I’m surprised at how long I slept and in such varied contortions, it is only by the grace of the baby Jesus that my neck is still supremely functional.

The rumbling and shaking of the train is inciting my hunger, and also my patience.  To explain the extreme agitation I felt yesterday would be to relive too much imbecility and my own idiotic expectation that there couldn’t possibly be two ten-hour delays on consecutive days.  The writing will hopefully be more regular and readable from here, it’s all downhill.

It shouldn’t be long now before we pull into Salt Lake City.  Down in the valley, water cuts through rock – don’t it make you smile?  I see cows, I see mountains; I see wooden shacks and concrete factories; I see the future in the shape of the past.

On delay, limbo-bound, lounging in the sun on the porch at the hostel when the call came in that my train would be delayed ten hours. A nineteen-car freight derailment somewhere on the plains, pieces to be picked up by heavy cranes, but only a malleable dent in the machinery that drones ceaselessly, putting cash before people, progress the consolidation of wealth. Only a few years ago, Herr Bush wanted to cut the Amtrak budget entirely, and still he persists in his effort to eradicate its funding – if only they could figure out how to make train travel less energy efficient and more dependent on the oil his comrades dig out from under our earth (ever heard of Mineral Rights?), maybe we wouldn’t have to take a backseat to commerce, but live amiably alongside it, maybe people would see more of this country and its strange folk. We’ve been here a long time, molded in the shape of our environment, and yet our minds have not adapted to the fact of society. Where is our social mind? Perhaps the adage that humans are social animals should be read literally…

I canceled my ticket for today, leaving Denver at 08:00a tomorrow, though it is most probable that will not stand as scheduled. American fascism can be refuted by the simple observation that the trains do not run on time.

The mountain weather is fickle, beautiful in its assured inconsistency. The clear skies of morning work hard under the hot sun, calling up the clouds for some relief in the afternoon, the dew from passing rain cooling the high altitude air, revitalizing the night. This is a siesta culture. Unfortunately, my trip up to the mountains suffered when the sun decided to sleep, clouds angry about being roused roared and lashed out at the trees standing helplessly at ten thousand feet, and I didn’t dare climb high enough to reach a clearing for a view of the tectonic war. Transcendence is found in many dimensions – all – and limited, I found mine in the aural plane.

A girl working in one of a few local head shops told me about a trail off a country road where she used to camp before she had conventional shelter in town. It was unmarked and not intuitively located, but I found it, climbed the steep slope strewn with pine needles until I reached an outcropping of rock on which I regained my breath. I am not ready for Everest.

The rental car drove like a drunken horse. My foot couldn’t do enough to coax its engine to catch up with the traffic, but the cruise out to Breckenridge was smooth, aided by the groovy sounds of the Grateful Dead station on Sirius radio. A concert from 1974 played in its entirety as I climbed five thousand feet between the tree-thorned peaks of the Rockies. A thirty-five minute version of Dark Star seems to have been created to induce harmony between mind and environment. The town was brimming with people from Kansas and its retarded brother Arkansas, Spanish tourists eager to spend their continent’s inflated value on ice cream and t-shirts. Gifts and wares bordered on Western kitsch, but I couldn’t get past the walking sticks. I have thought it would be useful to have a staff, something sturdy to lean on or swing when necessary, but it’s always seemed like more of a found object, not something skillfully carved and lacquered by an artisan, but a stick lying, dying in the dirt only to be rejuvenated by a weary walker, whittled into an instrument of persistence. I got on without one. Navigating a resort town is easy, but orienting oneself is not as much, but more dependent on intention, and I’m convinced I was on an alternate wavelength, which at times caused some awkward collisions of culture. At least the onion rings were good.

Traffic on the way back was murderous. It took two hours to go thirty miles, which, but for the grace of satellite radio, would have been intolerable. Instead, it allowed me the joys of finding the Chill Electronic/Dance station, which played very soothing, trance-inducing beats from artists like Pharcyde and Booka Shade, Interpol and The Postal Service, and a lot of other lesser knowns (to me, at least). As the traffic cleared, so did the skies, but on approaching the Denver limits, a monolithic gray (I really prefer grey) hung ominously over the city. It unleashed some of the most torrential rain I’ve ever driven through, my car hydroplaning down I-70, but the strange part of it was that about one hundred yards to the north and beyond, the skies were clear and staggeringly bright.  The sun was miraculous as it shined through the rain, refracting double-barreled rainbows that seemed to terminate on my dashboard.  It was extraordinary, a phenomenon that erased the disappointments of the day, and however unreasonably, I felt that it was meant for me.  I spent the night drinking with some of my fellow travelers on the porch, exorcising our blues and looking forward to the unknown, where probability meets possibility, always entangled, the future.

Feeling mostly better, just a little precarious.  After a day spent drinking water from an old bottle, refilled endlessly, I was well enough to leave the premises and make my way downtown.  What a mess.  All I know of it for sure is that some sick bastard was singing things like “count on me to let me make it juicy for you” at volumes that can only make juice flow from ears while the freak show did their best to reenact something out of a strip club slasher movie.  My arms are marked up with scribblings of the inanities uttered, screamed, stomped into my mind.  It was like Halloween, only the costumes were real, the face paint intended for flattery made it hard to tell what lies beneath.  Shame was nowhere to be found, its prerequisite being a nominally functioning brain – I was looking in the wrong place.  The Free Love era is over, welcome to the Age of Free Ass.  Eventually I learned to embrace this culture, to love it from afar, the bad jolt I received at the start had rewired this robot to “jeer not, but leer pervedly.”  Oh, the frivolity.

The days go by, unnoticed, they change into another, is a week different than a day, different than a year?  I leave here on Monday morning, peace cracking open my mind, the coast just over the horizon, assured of oxygen and bizarro outlook from a Big Sur lookout.  Time, however, spends itself prodigally, somehow passing hours in an instant, a spasm achieves without intention, no slow deliberation, only you never know when it will come.  Time dilation in thin air, everywhere.  Monday morning.

Now it is time to get out of bed, one forty five pm, it’s time to get out of bed.  Shed some skin.  Heading back downtown to give it another shot, hopefully I’ll find a place with the Yankees on a big tv, a good beer, good food.  There’s a Beer Fest happening in the parking lot at Coors Field from 4-7, then who knows.  Tomorrow I intend on renting a car and driving up to the mountains for the day, though I have to be back by four, so an early start I guess.

Out to catch some baseball and brews.  Big up yourself.

I did not expect this.  I’m in total seclusion now, trying to keep the waves of pain in my abdomen to myself, hoping rest will help.  There’s not much else I can do, but wonder will it persist, and why, in this place, have I ceased to seek out the city?  It probably has something to do with not having a map or any sense of orientation, but I know generally that the mountains are to the west, lower downtown is to the west, the future is to the west.  But how far?

I was really enjoying the rhythm of Denver days.  There is definitely an inherent harmony between us, as though we understand each other.  Perhaps that’s why I’ve felt so comfortable doing nothing much.  I have to constantly remind myself that it’s okay to read and write – that’s what writers do.

People eat.  It seems that in conforming to the maxim, I’ve made a poor choice along the way, though, it was only one out of many successful meals.  Maybe it was an insatiable lust for Mexican food, counteracted at every turn and, finally fulfilled, I am corrupted.  In Raton, Mexican was on the menu, but my rendezvous with Mindy resulted in a liquid lunch at the White House Tavern.  At least I hit one place on my list of things to do there.  My introduction to Denver was of an unexpected warmth, it was immediately a comfortable place.  How could I help feeling at ease in Union Station, I’m there everywhere I go… After watching the city go by for a few minutes, the crowd streaming out from Coors Field, I crossed the street and found a seat at the bar at Wyncoop Brewery.  Nice place, attractive young people, a constant theme.  The fish & chips was recommended and did not disappoint.  There were three lightly fried strips over fries with a side of coleslaw (can you tell I’m hungry?).  The only problems were with my beer, which upon first pour looked more like a snow globe than an APA on tap.  When it settled, there was about two inches of yeasty aggregate on the bottom of the glass.  On the redemption effort, the beer was slightly flat and lukewarm, as if he just ran the beer through a strainer a few times.  The food was good despite the rapidity with which the fish became soggy; I devoured it and found a cab to the hostel.  My first impression was colored by a welcoming commotion, about fifteen happy people having a good time on the porch, cigarette smoke wafting across the lawn, tall beer cans reflecting the light from the doorway.  It’s been a place to be ever since.

Continuing my masochistic musings on food, I made another attempt to find Mexican food on Wednesday night, but a slow drizzle and the uncertainty of a particle loaded with intention but lacking orientation brought me to a place that appeared it might be Mexican, but turned out to be Peruvian.  They had margaritas so close enough.  That they were served in a pint glass with lemon and lime slices muddled at the bottom made it easier to accept.  I sat outside under an umbrella that covered half of my table, reading Houellebecq and writing reminiscences of some things I’d hate to forget.  The meal was one of those things, and maybe that’s why I’m recording it here.  A beet carpaccio topped with a cilantro salad and cotija cheese, a bit of aji amarillo (a peruvian hot pepper) oil drizzled on top.  Damn good, and followed by an exceptional quinotto, a “risotto” made from quinoa, with roasted red peppers, spinach, mushrooms, manchego cheese, and a yellow sauce made from aji, crackers, and a bit of cream cheese.  It was ridiculous, and by far the best thing I’ve eaten since Chicago, not to mention healthiest.  I had the same hopes of my meal in Boulder, but it seems I was betrayed somewhere, now paying penance for my lust.  More margaritas, which at altitude can be extremely disorienting, deadly.  Had chile rellenos for the first time and was slightly disappointed.  They were tasty, but I was hoping for a spicier pepper, like a poblano, and a crispier batter.  The guacamole was excellent, the spicy version made with habanero and jalapeno, and onions and tomatoes were optional.  I settled on the fish tacos, seared tilapia in a crunchy flour taco lined with a lightly pickled cabbage (which kept the filling from falling out), served with epazote pinto beans, red rice, queso fresco, pico, creme fraiche – it was really fucking good.  And now it hurts, hurts.  This is an unwanted peace.  I feel as though a child has been punching me in the stomach relentlessly for the last eighteen hours, a dull ache impossible to ignore.  A perverted version of Montezuma’s Revenge.

Two hours of writing has taken my mind away to strange places where pleasure is sensate, obvious – to futures constructed of new pieces I’ve picked up along the way.  Maybe I’ll finish Houellebecq today, get out of this bed (which is much more comfortable since my Brazilian friends Eduardo and Frederico continued their journey, I have appropriated their room, which has a door and a fan) and, I don’t know, do something, see something new.  It’s too bad there’s a kick ass coffee shop not more than sixty yards away; the search for the necessary is a time to discover the essence of from here to there.

Here are some pictures:

Left: Power to the Future (the Future of Power); Right: Chugging into Raton

Left: Small School, Big Idea; Right: Small Man, Big World

Left: Beast of Burden; Right: Burden of the Beast (Me)

Just to add: Boulder was beautiful, seemed like a really awesome town in which to live.  Beware, beware the fish taco.

I feel drugged, clammy skin and a lack of clarity, as though I’d ingested lead. My will to write conjures up the discomfort in spades. Maybe I just need to sleep, the thought of some food-borne illness too demoralizing to consider.

I made it outside of the three block radius surrounding the hostel today, hitched a ride up to Boulder with a guy who had been staying here.  Nice place.

I really can’t write. Something is rotten in Denver.

There is a profusion of life around me, keeping the future’s secret that flows from the coming together of charged particles, and it would be unwise to buck the opportunity to control the course of interactions, the course of time. A bead of sweat rolls down the length of my torso; a thundercloud peruses the earth for a parking spot. The hostel is brimming with the excited energy of people without a plan, a meeting place for wanderers who are at home wherever they go. My room is in a kitchen on the second floor, and instead of a door, a flower print curtain billows in the wind breathing in through the open window. The houseflies come by occasionally to say hello; I wave back spastically. Interaction does not always give way to an immediate outcome, and between humans, the degree of complexity can be withholding of an explanation. It can also be astonishingly simple, a precursor of lust and fear, sex and violence. I’ve been caught up with being around so many people who, for a wide variety of reasons, consider the road as essential, the only way to go. We are a mulligatawny of searching souls, content to allow life to follow the freedom of its infinitude.

I cannot say enough about the people I’ve met on this journey, so I have resolved to say little until I realize what it all means. Some of my first impressions have lasted for minutes, others for days. I have fallen in love on a few occasions, the transience of a moment does not communicate to the indelible experience. Only time will allow the effect; time is everything.

The neighborhood around this place is curious. Most of the people I’ve seen from the porch, in the cafes, conform to a certain ethos that masquerades as consciousness, sometimes becoming aware of itself, becoming conscious. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. This is a beautiful place.

Tomorrow I ought to go to Boulder, my main goal to discover Naropa University. I’ve had to adjust to the absence of my new Dutch friends, presently on their way to New York City. A part of me longs to join them, to witness an excitement I can never know, but that is not my journey, there are other places I must go.

They’re playing guitars on the porch, some of them, picking and humming and sounding erratically through the house. The others sit quietly, smoking American Spirits on the stoop, not thinking about, but doing what they do.

It’s been busy here just being, the peace is exhausting at times. Please bear with me.

Reading: The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq

Listening: Frances the Mute, The Mars Volta

The lack of oxygen has begun to affect my brain, and the relatively short night’s sleep isn’t helping my cognitive abilities, but here I am, intact, past the halfway point of this rambling run that cuts right to the heart of this monstrosity.  Only now am I really starting to see the contours of its face, the golden plains giving way to a barren expanse of sandy dirt and shrubs squatting low under a merciless sun, then to rise up into hills, mountains grow sharply offering up sheer rock and trees into thin air.  From Trinidad, CO to Raton, NM is a twenty six mile jaunt as the crow flies, but the train winds up the steep pass ever slowly, needing an hour to cover the distance, showing how treacherous the land can be, and making me wonder whether overcoming the obstacle was a triumph or a mistake.  It’s impossible to discount the draw of the west, and the morning sky, the light breeze that licked my eyes open, peaks pointing upwards on all sides are just the first signs of the great magnet that is embedded deep within the earth.  It could never be easy though, and lightheaded, dimwitted, I must seek out sustenance so that I might defy its pull as only the mind can, to write long-winded maunderings that take up entire mornings and only give a glimpse of the beauty to be found here.

Have you ever woken up in Dodge City, KS and said, “Holy shit, what a wonderful place to be!”  Neither have I.  The sun is hot here at oh-nine-thirty, and in the breeze, the fertilizer of our fields, the fertilizer of our dreams.  Sweet Jesus, it feels good to see spotted cows eating grass in the golden hills that wave gently along the uneven horizon.  Horses grazing from hay bales, necks craned in synchrony to the passing of the train.  What a world, what a morning, moving west.

As for Missouri, it showed me cities that made no sense, which makes no sense, the people so wrought with a sense for solutions to the simple questions life demands.  Isn’t that where sense comes from?  Incidentally, now passing King’s Taxidermy -there’s a solution.  And the calves run wild…

The cab drivers in Kansas City were awfully talkative, and on the way out from Parkville, I heard the first refrain of a recurring theme about the place from where I come – no one really knows much about New York out here.  It might as well have been anywhere else in America, though I did here some detailed digressions about hot springs in the Ozarks, a world in the folds of an ear.

My hotel was in Westport, the Q on Westport Road, the only green/HD hotel in KC.  I’m sure they saved a shitload of watts when I was there because I was never really there.  As soon as I got in on Saturday afternoon, I hitched a ride with one of the hotel clerks down the the City Market, an old open air market founded in 1857, spread out on an asphalt lot, farm fresh vegetables lay dirty and irregular like something born from the earth should invariably be.  There were a few ethnic shops in the solid storefronts surrounding the market, including a couple of nondenominational Middle Eastern places, Vietnamese, and Indian.  I tasted a lot of homemade pepper jellies and some kick ass Jamaican jerk, but for some reason, the only things I bought were a few pieces of a dried mango and a jar of pickled beets.  Both the lady and the jar said they’re the best darn pickled beets in the state, though which state she was referring to, I know not.  I’m sure they’ll be good if the jar doesn’t leak beet juice all over my gear first.  My cheeky homage to the Beats.

After the market, I tried to walk up an appetite by heading to Arthur Bryant’s BBQ on foot.  The frittata cooked up by the ladies at the Porch Swing was more than filling and only a little bit uncomfortable.  However, with no map and nothing more than a hat to keep the heat off my face, I succumbed to my arrogance and took a cab.  Arthur Bryant’s is a few blocks from the 18th & Vine part of town, a historically African American neighborhood that houses some of the best jazz venues around, as well as the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.  Unfortunately, after my meal, I was barely able to walk down the street, my senses dulled by barbecue-induced brain damage, or BBQIBD.  The line in this place was slow, mostly owing to the sluggish pace of payment and having nothing to do with the pit chef and pork pullers behind the glass window where slicers whirl and big men put big handfuls of smoked meat on white bread.  Make that Wonder Bread.  Now, I’m all for the attitude that comes along with barbecue culture, and the down-home novelty of eating a sandwich on white bread is cute, but for fuck’s sake be reasonable.  After the first bite of my pulled pork “sandwich”, the bread was no longer recognizable as such, probably owing much to the pork’s consistency, which was more like pork chili or a sloppy joe.   I used up all of my complimentary pickle slices just trying to add a textural change, and by the time they were gone, I was full, tired, and a bit disappointed.  In hindsight, I should have gotten ribs (the sliced beef sandwiches seemed to be the favorite that day), however, I felt a strong urge to stick to my favorite (and purest) barbecue dish.  It was a muddied, almost haphazard mix of flavors, more briskety than pork-like.  I’ll take Dinosaur in Syracuse any day.

Needless to say, the meal required a nap, the itis setting in nearly immediately.  Regaining consciousness, I figured on spending the night walking around Westport (populated with bars, restaurants, and shops), but after doing a double take at the front desk, I inquired about any other goings on about town.  Tera pointed me in the direction of a show at Grinder’s, the previously mentioned outdoor concert venue behind a pizza place, and being a sucker for the suggestions of a pretty girl, so I went.  As I was waiting on line for a ticket, I asked the gentleman in front of me just what I was getting myself into, and after a few minutes of conversation, he revealed himself to be a promoter of the show, but more than that, a genuinely kind person, and thus, Wiz placed a ticket in my hand and introduced me to a few handfuls of people having a good time.  Karma is an active pursuit.  Seriously, if I met you at that show and you have my information, I want to hear from you.  Read Cat’s Cradle.

Yesterday, Bruno made good on his promise and as I stepped outside into the sweltering heat, a little red Mazda hatchback fired around the corner, and the bald bearded sage swung open the door of what was about to be a long afternoon.  An old artist who lived in LA for thirty years, Bruno was the kind of strange character with whom one could kill an afternoon in a weird place.  We drove around the wealthy parts of town, windows literally rolled down, admiring the grand opulence of the Kansas City and wondering what the fuck they did with all their money in this god forsaken place (I think Bruno actually likes living there, though he’s up on the north side of town).  Grabbed some strong coffee at The Filling Station, talking about the state of the world, as though we had any idea how bad it is.  Two misplaced souls, one a reflection of the other at different times, his beard white and about a foot long, ice blue eyes that can take on a hue of distant madness.  We drove out to his house where his wife was expecting us for lunch, and afterwards he showed me all of the things he’d restored, created.  A pristine, yellow Beetle, the sewage pipes (he was proud of the pigtail section that kept the smell out), his gigantic cabinet speakers through which he blasted my mind with Brian Eno and Bill Nelson, his one of a kind crayon art.  Weird guy.  Twisted my arm to see The Dark Knight at the Tivoli in town (are all the theaters out here called the Tivoli?), an old school one screen theater restored and refurbished with a bar and a great sound system.  It turned out to be awesome, a really entertaining and well done movie, and I thought the cuts during the action sequences were a few tenths of a second longer than in Batman Begins, which was less nauseating and more continuous.  I was adamant about not going to the movie, to walk around the station, to think, to write, but he flipped a coin and I lost.  The clock approaching nine thirty, my train leaving at ten fifty five, I had nearly pulled my beard to pieces, the movie ending at nine fifty, we had to move.  We made it, only to be told the train wouldn’t show until nearly one am, all that anxiety assuaged.  Some of my biggest worries never happen. So we got some coffee and french fries, hung out on the tracks for a while, he talking about trains, me listening.  I got on, he went to check out the engine, which didn’t get cooking for another forty five minutes.  We finally rolled out of Kansas City near three, by which time I was on my way to a much needed sleep.

I’ve been writing this post for two hours, and the sheer energy it takes to rehash all of these events precludes any idea of editing.  I wish I could go back and make these more cogent, more contemplative, but I’m happy enough at this moment, the sweaty conclusion of a long session at the keyboard.

Listening: 

A Manuel Dexterity: Soundtrack, Vol. 1, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

Hail to the Thief; In Rainbows, Radiohead

Reading:

Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen

Jennifer Government, Max Barry

Body Odor Index (BOI):

3/10 – German

…later

After a three hour delay, we’re now inching down the track on the way to Raton, NM.  From there, I will catch a bus to Denver tomorrow afternoon.  I’ve never felt so compulsive about writing as I did today, away from my computer until now, yet I am so thoroughly exhausted, my brain consumed in an anxious haze, that I have nothing to relate.  In my sleeper car, but the room is sticky hot due to the lack of electricity during the delay (they were changing out our locomotive because someone pulled the emergency brake twice from Chicago to KC while the train was at full speed – not good), and though I’m horizontal, the permanent headrest for the seat in its upright position is at just the wrong height and is exceedingly itchy and always in the way of a comfortable position.  I really just want to go to sleep, want to wake up and be out of the Midwest, the soupy boredom proved to be a bit wrenching, walking around in nothingness no less than disorienting, stultifying.  I am fighting the urge to let the expletives fly, to unleash a savage and terrible written retribution for what I’m feeling right now, but fuck it, I’d rather just shut my eyes.

The Raton Pass is the highest point on the Santa Fe Trail, just south of the Colorado border.  It’s up at about 7,600 ft., and I’m very much looking forward to being up out of this Middle American morass.  Really, it’s not personal.  Just get me the fuck to the mountains.

Tomorrow, I promise.