Hill Aspecting No.5

"Hey Doc...listen, if you want to reach me from now on just, you know, call my cell phone for God's sake."

The Blue Ridge Mountains, Sir Sugar Frosting, are the boobs of Appalachia. Redneck Valhalla, closer to the 18th century than the 21st, which - you know this isn't exactly Christian Europe of the stained glass cathedral time-period that we're talking about here, ha ha. This is 18th century North America. Vast, overwhelming forests and lusty, cords of billowing river - a continent of harrowing wild/dark, an electric, furious promise of unlimited rough-hewn possibility and a pleasant vinyl-hum of your own desire, first person singular, for the soundtrack.

"I'd like to discuss this some more with you but right now I'm at work which means I'm sitting in a high school in North Philly with my head buried in fucking book trying my best to ignore a verbal smattering of any of the three insults these teenagers know, for example 'Cracker' 'Faggot' 'Corny' or any combination of these three. You want to talk about hills and headfences, these kids have three rooms in their heads, the first one is anger, the second one is sex, and the third one is anger and sex. They walk back and forth among the three rooms all day. In the darkness of their own little hills. That's downhill creep, right Doc?"

Yes.

"So I feel like...like..."

You feel a little bit like Frodo and Sam, after they leave the fellowship and they got lost in the hostile, barren, pock-marked hell of the Emyn Muil. And there you are, absurd, and ridiculous in the face of nothingness and horror, addictions, afflictions, grievances and regrets hung like a ring around your neck. Weary and incapable of moving forwards, you fall asleep and what do you wake up to? Smeagol trying to wrest a circle of cold psychic torment from you? No, you wake up to find out that the ring built a world around you, and now you're 27 going on 28 -oh yeah it's your birthday next month-happy birthday man- living at home and feeling like the biggest fucking loser ever to walk the earth.

"Yeah that sounds about right"

Get over that next hill trooper, we don't take place down here.