corpora lente augescent cito extinguuntur

I live a stone's throw away from this.
These are the kinds of people I talk to every day.


<3

I crawl out of bed in a haze, grab my shit in a state of semiconciousness that sometimes results in shirts that are turned inside-out.
I forget my coffee, but now I'm late, so off I go, hauling ass to the bus stop.

Within one block of the stop, it whizzes past me with an almost spiteful humm to it's engine.
"Hummmmmmmm, if you had left one minute ago you would have made it, HAHA"
WHIZZZZZZZZZZzzz


I'm standing there, like a fucking idiot, staring off into space, holding my bags and my phone, trying to decide what to do. I make up my mind to walk to the 82nd stop, where there's a bench, and possibly more entertaining wildlife.

I'm passing a pink plastic tampon applicator, a McDonalds stir-stick, cigarette butts, rusted metallic refuse, plasic ties, tissue paper, all degrading, as though they were ancient boulders, into unidentifiable particles that line the streets like confetti, random bits of things that were useful once, maybe, if you're feeling generous, but have now devolved into flecks of orange whatever in the gutters.
The cars drive mercilessly by, like a damn storm, wave after wave of grey toxic gas just wrapping me up and making me stink and cough and I'm so used to it I barely even notice anymore, but I bet to anyone who lives in the country I would smell like the fucking tailpipe of an 89 camry.
A car drives past me and slows down. I look straight ahead and keep up my pace, the nice way of saying I'm not a working girl.
There's gravel and it's in these traffic islands. Gravel and rocks. I pick up a nice big rock and I think about hitting people with it. How much damage could I do to a passing car if I threw this?
Then I look at it and try to imagine what this place must have been like in a time before humans came.
I heft the stone in my palm and turn it around and imagine lakes, streams, trees, wan morning sunlight and dew on leaves as I pass FAT CITY FIREWORKS and some drunks hooting and hollering outside the Hing Ming Market.
They're flailing their arms around and clearly all worked up about something. Maybe one of them saved up enough to buy a fresh can of Steel Reserve.

I get on the bus and I start thinking about this shitty ass thing that happened to me- how I'm going to have 138$ garnished by the fucking government from my goddamned paycheck becasue some asshole who bought my old car got a parking ticket and didn't bother to turn over the title.
I remember what I told Hunter when I found out via a friendly looking envelope covered sinister official print.
"When you're a little baby, life sweetly pats you on the head like a good puppy,
When you're a kid, life is tousling your hair with the occasional unwanted smack on the ass, and when you're an adolecent, life is putting it's hands into dark places and telling to to stay quiet becasue this is our little secret.
By the time you're grown up, life has dispensed with the finery and has you bent over. It's fucking you in the ass, with absolutely NO lubrication, and you know it's never going to stop until you die."

( The Conlusion, with photos )

Ok, so there are just TOO MANY photos to post, so I made a couple slideshows-

Part 1


And Part 2


There are some AWESOME shots that are in these slideshows that are not in this post, so if you have time, check em out.

Then yesterday me and Hunter watched Xena and played Paradise Burnout. It was truly a day of rest, and I bloody needed it. I did a grand total of NOTHING and it was well deserved I think.

The night before the trip, I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep, and was SO TIRED when we were on the launch boat that I actually fell asleep. I was afraid I was going to get seasick, but I fell asleep like a fucking baby. It was great.

I now know that I love being on boats, and I was kind of heartbroken to have to leave Astoria.

It's an exquisitely beautiful town, and though horribly economically depressed, still manages to be wonderful and quirky. All the buildings were really old and all the paint was chipping and flaking. There were cracks in everything, and the cool, gloomy, grey mist that enveloped the whole town put me in a fantastic mood. I was bouncing around like a little kid half the time, and passed out asleep the other half.

Rindy, my coworker and guide, pointed out to me all the "Goonies" sights (the house, the jail, etc) and we ate Lemon Merangue Pie ice cream and the BEST goddamned squid I've ever had at this fish and chips place called "The Ship Inn".

We had gotten there just in time to see "The World", a floating condominium whose cabins go for a million bucks a pop passing by.
They were going to drop anchor to go to the Scandinavian Festival in the ailing township, but it was gloomy as hell, with rain-spittle and gusty wind all day, so I imagine most of the passengers just stayed on and played shuffleboard.

We ended up going all the way out to overlook the ocean, but by then my camera was out of batteries, tragically.
You'll just have to believe me when I tell you that it was really fukcking pretty.

In the 1800s they stacked up these HUGE boulders on the coast (South Jetty) so that the soil and sand would not erode into the channel and make it more difficult for boats to come in.
It's absolutely AMAZING there- like 15ft high of stacked rocks and if you climb to the top of them it's just ocean- that's all you can see. But if you're down on the ground all you can see is this endless rock wall. It's totally incredible.


Here's some of my favorite highlights for those of you who can't be bothered with a slideshow



The route from Portland



From Astoria to the tipppy tip of Oregon, looking out at the Pacific.








( My favorites, still a ton of photos, don't even bother if you've got dial up )

edit- if you are already on my friendslist, you are automatically added!