The Unabashed Power of the Gods
Jun. 28th, 2005 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaLast night, for the first time in at least four years (mayhap even as much as five), I set foot on Pine Knob.
My old homeboy Joe called me Sunday to let me know he was back in Uniontown for a while, due to being sidetracked on the way to Norway by the sudden decision to leave his wife (a decision that he, honestly, should've come to years ago). Yesterday, after I got out of work at midnight, I rolled over to Joe's mom's place on Gallatin Avenue, where Joe was staying, and after a few minutes just catching up and bullshitting, the decision was made: to take the Jeep Liberty he rented at the Pittsburgh Airport up into the wilds of the Allegheny Mountains and visit the ultimate sacred spot of the Powers of Awesome...namely, Pine Knob--where all problems of conscience can be solved via the auspices of the Gods.
The Jeep trails leading to Pine Knob have grown over a bit in recent years and are a lot more rugged--and much narrower than I remember...but that's probably just a function of not having been up there for four years. But the Liberty made it down them easily. The sidetrail leading up to Pine Knob itself has been blocked by some big rocks, but it's a short walk up past the rocks, so we parked and just hopped out to hoof it. Then Joe realized we didn't have a flashlight to light our way.
"Eh, so what?" I said. "It's only pitch fucking black up here. The Gods will guide our feet!" I am truly an idiot sometimes. And, yet, the Gods actually came through: even though I was wearing sandals and, like I said, the woods were blacker than the blackest black, we managed to walk up to Pine Knob without breaking any ankles, falling off any cliffs, or otherwise damaging ourselves. As we approached the mountaintop rocks, we heard giggling and loud voices somewhere else in the woods: teenagers up at the Knob having a good time in the dark. We saw the fading embers of a campfire to our side, but no other traces of locals. So we just passed on by and climbed up onto the rocks and...everything opened up before us.
I'd thought about what it would be like to step up to Pine Knob again many a time over the past few years, and always imagined it would be much like the first time: a souldizzying revelation, a seizure of energy shooting up through the soles of my feet and along my spine like a lightningbolt traversing my spine, incandescent cerebrospinal fluid shooting out my ears...but it wasn't anything like that. It was like meeting an old friend you've known for a thousand years again after a short separation. The mountain just sort of reached up, gave me a nudge on the shoulder, and said, "Whassup, man? Haven't seen you in a while. How's life in the lowlands?"
The wind was blowing, shivering the trees. The sky was rich with stars and a bright, silvery slice of moon heaved itself up over the horizon at our backs. We took our usual spots on the rocks and let the view swallow our minds.
The conversation was, well, a bit dark--but just like the lowlands of Uniontown spread out before us were mostly dark, nonetheless there was a great scattering of light, and a realization of patterns in those lights. "I just can't take it anymore," Joe said. "I don't even know who I am anymore. I mean...I haven't listened to Devo in, like, three years because anytime I do my woman bitches. She bitches about everything--nothing satisfies her anymore, and I'm sick of compromising."
"Nothing wrong with compromising," I answered. "As long as you ain't the only one doing the compromising."
"That's the problem, man. I am."
You know, sometimes I swear Joe and I really are related. We think waaaaaaaaaaaay too much the same way. Basically, we both will dedicate ourselves to something and do everything in our power to stick with it and make it work until...well, we lose ourselves in the process. I never thought I, of all people, would end up being the Voice of Experience in something like this--but I've gone through it too damned many times. Mainly because I've always lacked the courage to just let it go--to take my hands off the reins and give up, to let a dying relationship just die, or to just put a bullet in it and put it out of its misery. "Don't be a coward like me," I told Joe. "I can tell you just what's going to happen if you don't just cut it off now. It's like cancer: once you get the doubt, once the dew is off the lilly and you no longer care...you can't go back. You can try, but you'll never get back to where you once were. You can force the dislike and doubt and all that shit into remission, and maybe for a while things will be okay--but the cancer will come back, and this time it's gonna be worse. It's gonna hurt more, and suck more of your soul away. And then, maybe, it'll go into remission again. But you know it's going to win. You can fight it and exhaust yourself, destroy yourself even, in an attempt to keep it at bay...but you'll never be happy like that again. Each time, it'll take more and more of you and give you less and less back. Don't be a candyass like I have in the past, and keep fighting when it's no longer worth it."
"Sounds like a plan."
"But don't worry about it right now, man....We're at Pine Knob. Everything is cool here. You can worry about how you're going to do this later. Right now...we just enjoy."
"You notice the Coelacanth doesn't really look like a coelacanth anymore, right?"
He was: the constellation of Uniontownlights that used to delineate the shape of a fish-with-legs had grown a strange appendage of streetlights from its forehead, and a sort of stringy tail, in the years since last we'd seen in. "Kinda looks like a Bull, now. A running Bull."
"Yeah...and the Roadrunner's gotten kind of squashed. Like he got run over by a truck. And, look, the Scotty Dog now looks like he's humping another Scotty Dog."
"Where's the Marlboro Man go? It looks like that entire section of Uniontown's just gone black."
"Maybe the Martian Invasion has started and that's the first place they hit?"
"Around here...? I wouldn't doubt something like that."
"Check it out: over there's a new one--a walking Penguin wearing a blue scarf."
"Yeahyeah! I can see it now. That's Fairchance, I think. And it doesn't look like it's walking...it looks like it's on iceskates."
The lesson of lights strewn out on the blackvelvet duvet of the Coal and Coke Region, as seen from the holy mountaintop: the constellation of beliefs and thoughts that define us change all the time, lights winking on and off in the black, patterns changing all the time...but still, fundamentally, the same. We've got to change with the times, roll with the punches--but if we let ourselves vanish into the black fighting a war that's already been lost, then we'll both follow the Marlboro Man into oblivion...all the Lite-Brite zigzags of our souls swallowed up in the dark. Not a good thing.
A light suddenly winked on further down the rocks, and a tremulous, young-guy voice asked, "Hey....Hey?"
"Whassup?" I yelled back.
"Who're you guys?"
"I'm Joe," Joe said. "This's Pegritz."
The trees and weeds rustled, and the light bobbed closer. Two young guys, teenagers most likely, were standing beside us, the one in the lead holding a flashlight. "Hey. What's happening?"
"I'm up here trying to figure out how to leave my wife," Joe said.
"That's cool. I'm Pete. This here's Jeremy."
"Have a seat, guys," I said. "Plenty of mountain for all of us."
"We're camping just down over the hill," Pete noted. "We heard you guys walk past and we got kind of freaked out, you know--these other kids came up and were making all kinds of noise, but you guys weren't, so...."
"No need to be scared of us," Joe informed him. "Only okay people come up to Pine Knob. I've been coming up here for a decade or so now, and I've never met anyone who wasn't cool here. The Gods don't let assholes up here."
So we ended up bullshitting with the young guys for a while. They both worked for Hartsek Catering in Uniontown, and came up to the Knob to camp often. "This place is just so incredible," Pete, the non-quiet one, observed. "You can always come up here and just relax and everything will work itself out."
"Damn right," Joe said. "I flew in from Arizona to come up here."
So, we sat and talked for a while. Turns out Pete is a student at IUP who wants to join the FBI as an accountant, and has been seeing the same girl for four years now. Everything going well. "Just never give up yourself, man," Joe said. "You start glossing over shit like that and soon enough you're entirely glossed over, and you see a stranger looking back at you from the mirror."
"Things are going okay," the kid said. "We're a lot alike."
"Good. You know, they say opposites attract...but those opposites soon become differences, and they just push you apart."
Well. Not much more to be said. The kids went back to their tent and fell asleep. Joe and I did some yelling--the ol' Would You? Could You? lines, "I would do anything to keep her alive," Baba Reba and all the old Marine marching cadences that for some reason Pine Knob seemed to demand we scream out at the lowlands--and then we walked back to the Jeep in the cool, silvery moonlight, and we drove back down into the lights far below.
I really feel bad for Joe. He's got a hell of a task ahead of him--but, hey...the mountain's there to back him up. And so am I. And Lenny. And Rhonda. Jamie. Amy. Jason and Jeremy. The wheels of NONFICTION! haven't rusted into place. The stories continue to develop, lights winking on and off in the universal dark, stars burning still.
My old homeboy Joe called me Sunday to let me know he was back in Uniontown for a while, due to being sidetracked on the way to Norway by the sudden decision to leave his wife (a decision that he, honestly, should've come to years ago). Yesterday, after I got out of work at midnight, I rolled over to Joe's mom's place on Gallatin Avenue, where Joe was staying, and after a few minutes just catching up and bullshitting, the decision was made: to take the Jeep Liberty he rented at the Pittsburgh Airport up into the wilds of the Allegheny Mountains and visit the ultimate sacred spot of the Powers of Awesome...namely, Pine Knob--where all problems of conscience can be solved via the auspices of the Gods.
The Jeep trails leading to Pine Knob have grown over a bit in recent years and are a lot more rugged--and much narrower than I remember...but that's probably just a function of not having been up there for four years. But the Liberty made it down them easily. The sidetrail leading up to Pine Knob itself has been blocked by some big rocks, but it's a short walk up past the rocks, so we parked and just hopped out to hoof it. Then Joe realized we didn't have a flashlight to light our way.
"Eh, so what?" I said. "It's only pitch fucking black up here. The Gods will guide our feet!" I am truly an idiot sometimes. And, yet, the Gods actually came through: even though I was wearing sandals and, like I said, the woods were blacker than the blackest black, we managed to walk up to Pine Knob without breaking any ankles, falling off any cliffs, or otherwise damaging ourselves. As we approached the mountaintop rocks, we heard giggling and loud voices somewhere else in the woods: teenagers up at the Knob having a good time in the dark. We saw the fading embers of a campfire to our side, but no other traces of locals. So we just passed on by and climbed up onto the rocks and...everything opened up before us.
I'd thought about what it would be like to step up to Pine Knob again many a time over the past few years, and always imagined it would be much like the first time: a souldizzying revelation, a seizure of energy shooting up through the soles of my feet and along my spine like a lightningbolt traversing my spine, incandescent cerebrospinal fluid shooting out my ears...but it wasn't anything like that. It was like meeting an old friend you've known for a thousand years again after a short separation. The mountain just sort of reached up, gave me a nudge on the shoulder, and said, "Whassup, man? Haven't seen you in a while. How's life in the lowlands?"
The wind was blowing, shivering the trees. The sky was rich with stars and a bright, silvery slice of moon heaved itself up over the horizon at our backs. We took our usual spots on the rocks and let the view swallow our minds.
The conversation was, well, a bit dark--but just like the lowlands of Uniontown spread out before us were mostly dark, nonetheless there was a great scattering of light, and a realization of patterns in those lights. "I just can't take it anymore," Joe said. "I don't even know who I am anymore. I mean...I haven't listened to Devo in, like, three years because anytime I do my woman bitches. She bitches about everything--nothing satisfies her anymore, and I'm sick of compromising."
"Nothing wrong with compromising," I answered. "As long as you ain't the only one doing the compromising."
"That's the problem, man. I am."
You know, sometimes I swear Joe and I really are related. We think waaaaaaaaaaaay too much the same way. Basically, we both will dedicate ourselves to something and do everything in our power to stick with it and make it work until...well, we lose ourselves in the process. I never thought I, of all people, would end up being the Voice of Experience in something like this--but I've gone through it too damned many times. Mainly because I've always lacked the courage to just let it go--to take my hands off the reins and give up, to let a dying relationship just die, or to just put a bullet in it and put it out of its misery. "Don't be a coward like me," I told Joe. "I can tell you just what's going to happen if you don't just cut it off now. It's like cancer: once you get the doubt, once the dew is off the lilly and you no longer care...you can't go back. You can try, but you'll never get back to where you once were. You can force the dislike and doubt and all that shit into remission, and maybe for a while things will be okay--but the cancer will come back, and this time it's gonna be worse. It's gonna hurt more, and suck more of your soul away. And then, maybe, it'll go into remission again. But you know it's going to win. You can fight it and exhaust yourself, destroy yourself even, in an attempt to keep it at bay...but you'll never be happy like that again. Each time, it'll take more and more of you and give you less and less back. Don't be a candyass like I have in the past, and keep fighting when it's no longer worth it."
"Sounds like a plan."
"But don't worry about it right now, man....We're at Pine Knob. Everything is cool here. You can worry about how you're going to do this later. Right now...we just enjoy."
"You notice the Coelacanth doesn't really look like a coelacanth anymore, right?"
He was: the constellation of Uniontownlights that used to delineate the shape of a fish-with-legs had grown a strange appendage of streetlights from its forehead, and a sort of stringy tail, in the years since last we'd seen in. "Kinda looks like a Bull, now. A running Bull."
"Yeah...and the Roadrunner's gotten kind of squashed. Like he got run over by a truck. And, look, the Scotty Dog now looks like he's humping another Scotty Dog."
"Where's the Marlboro Man go? It looks like that entire section of Uniontown's just gone black."
"Maybe the Martian Invasion has started and that's the first place they hit?"
"Around here...? I wouldn't doubt something like that."
"Check it out: over there's a new one--a walking Penguin wearing a blue scarf."
"Yeahyeah! I can see it now. That's Fairchance, I think. And it doesn't look like it's walking...it looks like it's on iceskates."
The lesson of lights strewn out on the blackvelvet duvet of the Coal and Coke Region, as seen from the holy mountaintop: the constellation of beliefs and thoughts that define us change all the time, lights winking on and off in the black, patterns changing all the time...but still, fundamentally, the same. We've got to change with the times, roll with the punches--but if we let ourselves vanish into the black fighting a war that's already been lost, then we'll both follow the Marlboro Man into oblivion...all the Lite-Brite zigzags of our souls swallowed up in the dark. Not a good thing.
A light suddenly winked on further down the rocks, and a tremulous, young-guy voice asked, "Hey....Hey?"
"Whassup?" I yelled back.
"Who're you guys?"
"I'm Joe," Joe said. "This's Pegritz."
The trees and weeds rustled, and the light bobbed closer. Two young guys, teenagers most likely, were standing beside us, the one in the lead holding a flashlight. "Hey. What's happening?"
"I'm up here trying to figure out how to leave my wife," Joe said.
"That's cool. I'm Pete. This here's Jeremy."
"Have a seat, guys," I said. "Plenty of mountain for all of us."
"We're camping just down over the hill," Pete noted. "We heard you guys walk past and we got kind of freaked out, you know--these other kids came up and were making all kinds of noise, but you guys weren't, so...."
"No need to be scared of us," Joe informed him. "Only okay people come up to Pine Knob. I've been coming up here for a decade or so now, and I've never met anyone who wasn't cool here. The Gods don't let assholes up here."
So we ended up bullshitting with the young guys for a while. They both worked for Hartsek Catering in Uniontown, and came up to the Knob to camp often. "This place is just so incredible," Pete, the non-quiet one, observed. "You can always come up here and just relax and everything will work itself out."
"Damn right," Joe said. "I flew in from Arizona to come up here."
So, we sat and talked for a while. Turns out Pete is a student at IUP who wants to join the FBI as an accountant, and has been seeing the same girl for four years now. Everything going well. "Just never give up yourself, man," Joe said. "You start glossing over shit like that and soon enough you're entirely glossed over, and you see a stranger looking back at you from the mirror."
"Things are going okay," the kid said. "We're a lot alike."
"Good. You know, they say opposites attract...but those opposites soon become differences, and they just push you apart."
Well. Not much more to be said. The kids went back to their tent and fell asleep. Joe and I did some yelling--the ol' Would You? Could You? lines, "I would do anything to keep her alive," Baba Reba and all the old Marine marching cadences that for some reason Pine Knob seemed to demand we scream out at the lowlands--and then we walked back to the Jeep in the cool, silvery moonlight, and we drove back down into the lights far below.
I really feel bad for Joe. He's got a hell of a task ahead of him--but, hey...the mountain's there to back him up. And so am I. And Lenny. And Rhonda. Jamie. Amy. Jason and Jeremy. The wheels of NONFICTION! haven't rusted into place. The stories continue to develop, lights winking on and off in the universal dark, stars burning still.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 07:54 pm (UTC)I think there something in antiquity of these places that is felt by people. The many years the mountain has seen, that provides a sense of tranquility, of perspective.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 09:19 pm (UTC)It is a sacred place, indeed...whereat the ley lines cross, and the Power of Awesome blooms.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 09:48 pm (UTC)