Something must be done.

Funny thing about cigarette ash. It doesn't really matter where it falls... it dissolves quickly, it breaks into tiny particles that scatter on any surface in the slightest disturbance of air. It is a non-issue, cigarette ash, compared to the butt, which is a continual and ever-confusing issue, people up-in-arms and posting notices and inventing new smell proof containers for them. They are not biodegradable. They are ugly, they stink, they are disgusting when inadvertently mixed with water. Cigarette butts are the embarrassment of the Smoker proper. Even with no filter, when you and God both know for certs that the little bunch of tobacco and tissue thin paper will disappear during the first rain or trampling, Other people don't know. Or they pretend not to, or they just really WANT it to be true that the little non-filtered butt is an odious burden to society. Anyways. Back to the ash. I was smoking last night, alone on the porch...watching the burning glow of the tip as it changed, as it moved and breathed. And I realized how incredible it is that something must be done with the ash. It must be dealt with. It must be flicked. How many hands, how many billion times a day. How lame if it gets dropped on a shirt, or in a car. What a nice trick how you can lick your finger and then touch a dropped ash, ever so gently, and get it to stick until moved to safer territory. How stressful when in the car or on a very clean porch and you realize the ash does not have a near and present safe spot. The ash...is elegant. Gray, white, and black... Once burning and orange, beautiful and alive, it is now soft and powdery and waiting to be dispersed back into the land. Made of old trees and plants. Full of my breath. I was thinking in the back of my head before that it was kind of a chore, but last night I knew that I love having to decide so many times and so many times more where the ash will go.

a story...and a poem.

"I'm hungry. And thirsty. Want a smoke? I do. How bout a drink? No? Well, fine. I supposed we should just sit here, then?"
"Finally", she thought, and sat, and reminisced and organized each peculiar and sordid detail of the morning she spent with the stranger. They decided to go swim sharks for the day and thought about the contours of sea and how they corresponded to the maps of their faces. Why then are crows the only ones what walk on water. But does explain the faint smell of tidal wave at my doorstep the morning you left. Why does everything have to be so confusing? For once I would just love it if white could be white and black could at least pretend to be black. For once what's sinister could stop pretending. For once I could rest, tirelessly, on a lay-z-boy in the sky. Tethered by my hopes for "seconds". Hopes dashed, I speed away in the car to the nearest tree museum in Anchorage Alaska.

by natalie, sam, nick, and matthew.

i wrapped you in
wool that i sheared
from the oracle of
the forest

which made you
smell of salt and honey
the bees and
sparrows followed us
to the city that
ran on corn and was
built on concrete


~samantha farmer

Tryin' to decide if I should go on this trip with Jay and Luke and Katie and Larry. Should I? I put this question out into the void. I feel like I should go, like its what I've been wanting, like its the type of thing I'm called to do. But you know that special, excited feeling you get about visiting somewhere... I don't have that. At all.. I have no affection or thrill for this land, or for these people. I feel so white. So insecure in my meager pathetic efforts to help. Like if I were them, I would kidnap me too. I am afraid. Really afraid. I wonder if I should just push through and go anyways, even though I'm insecure, awkward, and afraid of being there. Is it the "right" thing to do. To just be brave, even when you are scared. Hmmm? Am I supposed to have some sort of fuzzy good feeling about it? Peace? Would that be an indication that I should go? I love to take pictures...and thats what I would be doing. I love children, and thats what I would be seeing. Oh God, give me wisdom!! Okay people that read my blog...its time to comment!! ALL of you!!

Everyone else already has their tickets. I need to get mine. Soon. p.s. please don't mention the name of the place in your commentary. 'tanks.