pioneertown.

traveling forward

this is mortality: to move along a rectilinear line in a universe where everything, if it moves at all, moves in a cyclical order

asking whyever did we begin. Wherever, what. Both the intuitive leap and the listed reasons wane; an unwalked route is always longer than one walked already. Without benchmarks, we reconsider our prior interpretation, doubt those dotted lines. We think of turning around the way we would flight and time travel—nice options, but not realistic. The van that brought us has left the parking lot (which for all we know has since rejoined a primordial forest) so we try to believe it will meet us at the other end

because even if we could turn around and walk all the way back, we know a trail in reverse is a separate venture, not an untelling. If you reveal a fact and then conceal it, the difficulty remains. With its relentless determining onward: along our path, all the way to the ocean or summit. As in, eat a sandwich and keep walking. Refrain from attempts to chart or transpose purpose

what we mean when we say ‘this will pass’ is ‘we will pass through this’. Though not unchanged. Hardly a rallying cry: the story winds and unfolds. Invented time is too abstract or the mind isn’t yet equipped for rapid transit. Hence walking, repetition. Hence ways, means, ends all recorded or obscured in a kind of expedition journal

days are roped together and paraded until we assume or invent a string-puller. Something connects us to birds that vanish before they can be named

occurrences of being-
rupture/translucence

redrawn with relevant shadows

we took a photo yesterday with our backs to the cliff, breeze tangling our hair, sun in our eyes. Beside us are predators and arrows, pictographs we admired and did not touch

and time is difficult to measure out here. If nothing occurs to us—if no wildlife attacks and the elements remain benign—we risk losing track altogether. So we describe or contrive obstacles. Let’s climb this tree or sketch the river. Add rapids, see if this unmarked path is a shortcut, a detour

unpredictability

at night our fire is purely utilitarian, for cooking. We turn it off afterward to save the canisters; still, we form a circle. We eat, lower our flashlights, and begin to listen

during the war it wasn’t obvious which side would win. No hints from within, from amidst. ‘If’ interrupts; retrospect narrows, making a campaign of boot prints, snapped twigs. We reveal ourselves as we act and speak, as we remember

how neat and convenient the arc

of problem to solution isn’t. How opposite

the dog’s unstoried joy of impulse/routine

accounting lives visible

since I first heard this, age fifteen or so, the idea now frames a span of years in which I leave and return each winter, until memory resembles an often-copied page. Small wrinkles creep in, then discoloration. The emphasis shifts as particular details blur and are replaced

with glancing iterations