Hill Aspecting No.2

"How much longer?"

"We haven't even bagged half of the list of peaks so just suck it up, you downy fella."

"Shit."

I'm beginning to regret the whole thing.

"The Bulakawi regarded hills with certain religious terror, they masked their terror -of course- as deftly as the normalest of any white, educated, western, suburban woman, with a patina of colloquial suspicion and familiarity. The way you'd act around your half cambodian-half italian, three-card monty playing, best-friend's college suite-mate. Pol-Machiavelli-Pot Schemester. They're subtle beasts, hills. A hill is not a stale acclivity, inert and random. They betoken all sortsa shit my friend."

I am sweating moonshine, redbull and pickled eggs.

"Ok, so the rounded peaks of hills results from the diffusive movement of soil and regolith covering the hill. This is called 'downhill creep' - Which, incidentally, are the last two words my wife said to me when I asked her "Well where do you think I'm headed?" after the divorce. Grab a dictionary and look up: "Rhetorical Question" and "Irony" - Sweet mother of mercy. We are lost and alone, in the hills of nothingness and absurdity. Enough happy talk."

"That reminds me of a conversation I had last November"

"Oh, good, you're just now seeing how the past is connected to the present and how the present is connected to the future. That's crude and basic but you can call it learning. How old are you?"

"27."

"Well, better late than never."

"Thanks."

"Yeah, there's a name for it: Not high enough on top of the world, not bright enough in the night of the world. Convinced someone who believes in angels has nothing to teach you. Simultaneously bereft and spoiled. How is such a thing possible? I don't know. And I do know."

"That sums me up."

"Yeah you're trying to climb these mountains of vanity or you're wasting your time."

Hm.

"Look, little man, we all want to kick the fucking door down, all gang-busters, but when He rappels in you're just going to be ashamed of all the shit you thought was awesome and worthwhile. So climb your hummock of urine snow, your drift of vanity, your knoll of illusion, do a terpsichore on your talus of tawdry triumphs, your esker of aethers, your scree of shadows, your - you hate when I do this."

"Yes."

"You know I worked in a school once. What an interruption. Imagine this if you will: A KFC bucket, a broken clock, two unsharpened pencils, a sunbleached pepsi can with a pencil case beside it in the street, and a social studies textbook being thrown at a Catholic priest during mass. That's American Public Education. Incessant twilight bickering of a galtonized, darwinized orc-theater cuckoo clock."

"Huh"

"Between that job and the way my common law wife would announce some ridiculous wish while she was cooking spaghetti then break into peals of laughter and encore her little bullshit performance with a sigh and bulging forehead vein that sold her out I was between a rock and a hard place. She would stare into that pot like some heathen witch oracle hiding from Saul of Tarsus, inhaling noxious sulphurous psychotropic cave fumes It's amazing to me that I didn't die of alcohol poisoning a long time ago."

"You didn't want to star in 'SAD AND DESPERATE' with actor Lady anymore, right?"

"Something like that. Alcoholics always liken their moment of clarity to standing on a mountaintop or a hilltop, interestingly enough. I counseled former addicts for a while."

"Is that right Doc?"

"Yeah, I guess where we are standing is a little bit like a bottle of rubbing alcohol filtered through a loaf of sourdough hangover at your girlfriend father's Avalon, NJ house as he grills you about work and sports trivia."

"Rough. I know the feeling though. I was feeling like that for like two years, I felt as bad as a female extra in an E.M. Forster adaptation on the B.B.C. Like, Emily Dickinson certain slant of light-not leave the house-know all the words to 'HOOK', going to the movies with your parents, could update you on Sesame Street depression."

"Well, Life is an uphill fight, on a slippery slope."

"And if you don't lose your mind?"

"You move on to the next hill."

"And if you do?"

"You roll a wheel of cheese down the hill. Like the English. Let's get going."