The earth bleeding below, no one in this plane notices. Wine and French flow in and out of their mouths and I can’t wait to be away. When I land in the next pool of blood I will be alone; one blessed night of no voices but those in my head. On these night landings in the bloody puddles I think of home and I don’t know where it is. Build a kingdom before a castle, they say, but I have no kingdom, am i even a king? What else is there? Am I ronin? Vagabond? lost…

I have never lost my awe of the clouds from above. They are beautiful and expansive, covering the sea below. Sky-cloud-sea; blue over white over blue. Like Israel. Like Argentina. These flags I am collecting. The clouds look like snow to the horizon. The Alps peek out at the edge of the visible world lending credence to the view of snow to mountains. It will be awhile before I see snow again. I have been gone so long, it is hard for me to imagine that cold and snow have found you again…

The steam from the coffee fogs the glasses, like mirrors. Hot showers and all.

She doesn’t need the glasses. She wears them like armor hiding the red sheen of her eyes behind flat plate looking glass.

I use the key from the envelope.

She arrived here before me, even though I am 5 minutes early. A cup of tea that she indicates is for me rests on the table in front of her; the words “Drink Me” written in dark ink on the white paper strung to the tea bag. She is easy to talk to, but reserved. She holds back her reality, because she thinks others are unworthy. All the strangers parading around this busy coffee shop seem to pick up on this, as I am the only person for almost 10 feet in any direction from her.

The address is easy enough to find. Three flights of stairs; door double locked. The door says, “Open Me.”Black writing on red paper; Alice in Wonderland style.

The conversation is businesslike. The autumn in the air isn’t quite as cold as her tone when she discusses details. Beautiful, but like an angel’s statue. Cold and unmoving. The promise of redemption, but not a redeemer.

The music is loud enough to put the point across. Red waves of sound in a black room. Closing the door behind me, I see the familiar, painfully perfect handwriting on the back side of the door. “Lock Me.”

Her suit is crisp, pressed immaculately. Beautiful lines, clearly not American, but not Italian as so many moneyed individuals are prone to flaunting these days. Bernini, Versace, Cannoli, whatever; it’s all wrapping paper for a present no one wants.

I follow the path of the only light in the house down the hallway; closed doors to the left, blank wall to the right. Down the rabbit hole, the red carpet spills out like a tongue down the hallway; rippled in places like an open mouth kiss. Entering the bedroom at the end of the hall, I can see the source of the light to my right. It’s not so much the bare bulb hanging over her head, but the white babydoll nightgown she has on reflecting the glow. Above the back of her head I can see the words scrawled in lipstick on the mirror, blood red on blade silver, articulated curves giving way to heroin-straight lines, making the letters “FUCK ME…”

Business concluded, she hands me an envelope. She tells me everything I need is inside; time, place, etc. She looks at me, emphasizing her next words by taking her glasses off as she addresses me, “You musn’t be late. It’s a very important date.”

She’s finishing the tail of the “e” falling off into bullet holes of red, dot. Dot. Dot. I can barely see her face in the mirror. The rings and curls cascading around the sides of her head leave her eyes as burning augers melting her reflection. The lipstick tube tumbles out of her hand, falling in slow motion, never quite reaching the sink.

Her whole legs are dipped in snow. The platforms on her heels are white gloss; the kind of faux leather that shines like a holy relic. Stockings coat her legs like icicles. My gaze climbs those stalks while the beat of the music pounds its way into the crotch of my jeans.

She lays the money on the table.

“What are you waiting for?”

She snaps her fingers and the waiter appears at our side to slide the money off the table; his ears are big enough to hear the snap from the bar that he immediately retreats to. She stands, hands smoothing the skirt back into conformity before stepping out from behind the table.

All that ice on her legs is warm to the touch. Tracing the stockings up the back of her thighs, I can’t see the garter straps until my fingers touch them. Lifting the gown; there they are in bone white. Rivulets of milk running down her cheeks across the angels where her legs join her ass. She put the panties on under the garters. I figured this might happen.

The click of my knife coming open snaps her eyelids apart and rocks her gently forward for a moment. I slide my left hand in between those hot and cold pillars and slowly wind my fingers up in white lace; ruffles.

Spider web threads.

I twist until my hand is caught and the fabric is pulling tight, pressing, pulling, squeezing her flesh like a ripe peach with the skin bursting and the juices starting to run.

And run, they do.

The knife blade slides easily through all that bound up silken spiders thread. Slice, slice, back and forth, and her covering falls away in shreds. She’s starting to shake.

Now the ice begins to melt; running and running and running. The trickle turns into a flood. Giant snow tears, threatening to fill the room, it seems all that ice should have melted by now… but it is just soaked.

She walks out the door of the coffee shop, crisply. Her shoes snap across the ground with the same staccato that pervades her body in every movement. Clean, controlled; cold.

The violence of it all makes her hands slip and she destroys the carefully scribed letters on the mirror as she tries to stop herself from hurtling into it and through the looking glass. Soon, the M, the E, and all the little bullet holes are running with red; smeared by her dirty fingers across that mercury surface. Cries and screams are battering at the door to Wonderland; the penance, the price… the toll. Until, at long last, that rabbit hole opens up and we both go tumbling tumbling down. Striking the floor, sliding, and coming to a sopping halt.

I have strict instructions from the packet.

“Leave Me.”

I do. I leave this Ice Queen of Hearts lying there melting; sodden and sobbing and lost in the torrent that only she feels. I get dressed, close the door and leave the key.

And I never return to Wonderland.

We are soaked. These rivers run, joining to flow through the valley down her spine. there is so much heat the water should be evaporating immediately, but it flows on unaware of anything other that this mad need to seek the fastest route to the dampening bedding beneath her.

My fingernails leave trails in her skin, line after line after raised line; creating patterns, walls, routes, a maze across the surface of a diamond. A maze with no exit. If I knew the route; if I could solve this labyrinthine puzzle, would I ever find her heart?

Her ink is bathed in sweat; this flood coursing from her should have washed it away by now. These color spots on her canvas writhe and twist and dance for me; compelling me deeper and deeper.

At this moment, in all the world, there is no more regal a landscape, no sunrise or sunset that bathes a valley in a light more fantastic than the beams these weakening candles cast across her.

What a journey it would be.

One is still moving, and one has moved on; both still in motion. One learned to fight, one learned to dance; one cuts ties and one cuts hair; neither is quiet, neither is sated. They send tremours through the people and world around them inspiring and destroying; creating and changing. What a journey it is. While one spans the globe, one spins circles; both dancing.  When does the music stop?

When the glass slippers go back on the shelf… when the pack is finally hung up… where do they call home? Do they ever meet? Do the circles ever combine? Do they ever lay down and whisper to each other, hot breath on ears, those things they have seen and which have changed them forever?

What a journey it has been…

A great many tears have been shed over you. And some good work has been done in your name. And none of it comes close to making up for you. I am sure that you know peace. It’s just that some days it is impossible to forget what a loss like yours means to the world.

Happy Birthday. I miss you.

This is the “Old City.” Ciudad viejo… the place where men have died running for centuries. The cobbled streets where footpads and cutpurses have shuffled down these side streets and alleys waiting for an easy mark since the city was built.

This is where they are going to murder me.

The light is gone. The door from the street to this passageway just shut and now there is nothing here but the rotting wood, the stone walls too close on either side, and the strange drunk foreigners I can’t understand. I hear them as they beckon me to follow them up the stairs.

No light. Four flights of creaking rotting precipitous stairs. No light.

I can feel the sconces on the wall; sometimes with my head, as they are placed too low. They may have help candles or light bulbs with equal likelihood. They hold no light for me now.

Suffocating minutes choking on the mold seem like much too long. Far too many stairs. Babel. We’re climbing to Heaven.

Finally a light; a bare bulb that has managed to withstand the ravages that are evident in the broken planks and score walls that form this dungeon. Now, I can see my drunken guides as they are. No longer sinister; simply well and truly drunk.

The key materializes in my hand. I didn’t know I was holding it, but the angry red outline in my flesh tells me I was and always have been; it shouts of my tension.

Key forward, I open the door.

The first fresh air in what seems like an eternity hits my nose. After the streets of vomit and urine, and the stairs of decrepitude, this wonderful aroma of laundry and home is a feast and a fortune at once. Hardwood floors greet my feet stepping off the tumbledown palace stairs behind me. there is a study to my right, a bathroom to my left, followed rapidly by a kitchen, a living room and two more bedrooms.

The entire flat is furnished. The walls of the common area are lined with bookshelves which are in turn filled with movies, books, and knick-nacks from all over the world. Africa, China, Australia, America and most of Europe are represented in the décor around the room. Much like the city surrounding us, this tiny place I’ve carved off is filled with thoughts from almost everywhere on the globe.

Joe and Rang are busy staring at Francesca’s breasts while I take in the view of the street. We are on the top floor. The balcony opens up above hard pavement with a tigh high rail made more for decoration than anything else. This isn’t the Waldorf. There are no safety railings or nets to catch jumpers. I am staring 50 feet to the cobblestone below covered with people and light refuse.

There is a guy peeing in a doorway down the street.

An Open Doorway.

I remember why my back hurts. Grabbing my backpack, I open it up and pull out the gigantic bottle of Jack Daniels, thunking it down on the round table at the edge of the room.

Joe’s voice says what we’re all thinking. “Whiskey, you mad bastard.”

She says she is Nashville and today is only Tuesday.

but that’s not the beginning…

White light. Cold, white light. Almost too white for what is left of my stinging eyes to assimilate. The bleak environment slowly bringing itself into focus; turning from a warm white ocean into a perfectly segmented sea of cubes.

Tiles.

A tile floor.

A balcony: well kept and monochrome. After many long minutes of deliberation, I decide it is indeed a tile floor filling my vision, and not the white light of the afterlife. Within moments, the jackhammer in my head makes me think that being dead might not be such a bad thing.

The piercing pain necessitates I rise and find out the nearest route to painkillers/alcohol. The sight that greets my gaze is more than unusual.

A church yard.

And vomit.

This is a scene I’ve not been treated to previously in my lifetime; beautiful and strange in it’s Dali-like picturesque quality. Where are my pants?  This could be a red letter day.

Peeling my face off the geometric landing pad of a balcony, I scratch my head, wondering what in the hell happened. My left hand doesn’t feel right, dulled in sensation, and moist. I’m wearing a large yellow rubber kitchen glove…down to my elbow. I didn’t know they made them this large.

Tucked inside the glove is a key I have never seen before. Looks like the key to a hotel that is far behind the times. That first generation of keys after the skeleton style key finally passed on, slightly twisted and teeth ground down dangerously.
112.

There is a shoddy motel sign blinking “Vacancy” from across the street that seems a likely suspect. It looks like those 1950′s billboards ushering you into Vegas would look if they were still around today; faded and ragged with all the promise of hepatitis. Good thing I’m wearing the glove.

The key fits the lock of Room 112 of the Vagabond Motel. The lock looks so old, I’m fairly certain any key would have worked. Opening the door, I’m scared of what might lay inside. Have I made a horrible mistake? Should I run now while I still can? Where the hell did this glove come from?

Two girls I have never seen before are laying across one another in the king sized hotel bed. Wrapped in the sheets of the bed as they are, it’s hard to tell if either one has any clothes on. I’m not a gambling man, but I’d say no. They’re pretty… that kind of pretty that comes with a price tag. I can see the rather shapely butt of the blonder of the two, and the wrist of the brunette’s arm as it disappears between the blond’s legs. It’s like a Timex commercial.

A mess that might be my pants occupies a place of honor in the middle of the floor amid scattered alcohol bottles and shredded pages of a TV Guide. With a brief check to make sure both of the girls are breathing, I grab my pants and head for the door. There’s a glass of something that might once have been scotch on the old tv playing a snowstorm and audio static. I drink it in one gulp. Looking at my hand holding the glass, I think, I should probably leave the glove. They may want it back.

The brunette stirs slightly saying, “Jake?” as I close the door and make like a brontosaurus.

The sun is up. It’s been up. An hour? Two? Who knows? Time to find my wheels and get the fuck out of here. There is a strange mystery about this city and it’s automobiles; half of the city is a parking lot, yet there is never anywhere to park.

I’m pretty sure it is still AM, so since the sun is east and I live on the upper east side, I figure that’s a likely bet. I start walking.

I like Jiminy Cricket. I think if we all had more friends like him, we would spend less nights sleeping outdoors in our underwear. I think he got a bad rap, being called a conscience. Conscience implies a kill joy; guilt. That voice in your head that sounds an awful lot like your ex-gf who brought up every indiscretion of your life, every time you forgot to take the garbage out. I think Cell Phones are the new Jiminy Cricket.

With pictures, videos, text messaging, and instant drunk dialing available to everyone, everywhere; a cell phone is the closest thing that we in our disposable rocket fueled society can call a conscience. Proof of all your shameful and ignorant activities stored in a miniature digital database on your hip. It’s also a damn good place to start figuring out what the hell happened last night.

I am reminded sharply of this fact when my cell screams from my newly recovered pants that I am missing an appointment.

It reads, 8:00 AM. “lunch iTucsom domt.gave tm eat”

I’m really not much help to myself. Cycling through the pictures on my cell phone provides me with a number of blurry images of people I may or may not know. Some shots of a concert I attended prior to losing consciousness and a picture of a restaurant that should be nearby, judging from a street sign I just passed. I feel kind of like that guy from Memento; no clue what just happened, but I have a whole lot of pictures of whatever “it” was. I have a whole lot of pictures of her, too.

Those fucking pictures.

I haven’t deleted them, though god knows why. That guy from Memento seems more and more blessed as these days roll by like 1′s leafed off into herpetic underwear at the Last Chance strip club. Happiness is good health and a poor memory. The cigarette cough building deep in my lungs tells me I’m pretty far from that side of the tracks.

The pictures are all I have left of her, thankfully. I had the good sense in a drunken fit to take everything she had ever touched, throw it off my balcony and start a bonfire with it in the middle of the parking lot at the apartment complex I lived in before I had to leave town. Needless to say, I didn’t get the deposit back.

I’m back at the corner of Churchyard and Vagabond with the vacancy sign flashing lethargically overhead; reading only “Vacan” from this angle. I’ve just walked in a gigantic circle. Shit.

With the addition of pants to my wardrobe for the day, I remember I have pockets. The first pocket yields a pack of cigarettes and a match. I light it and drag hard, making my head spin a little. Oddly enough, in one pocket I still have my wallet. Giving my wallet a once over, I discover that I apparently paid the girls very well. For what, I have no idea. In place of the last dollars I had left is a valet check. This means wheels. This means escape.

Escape. I beeline to the restaurant showcase in my pictures from last night. They’re doing brunch.

The valet looks at me like he knows me. That wary stare with uncertainty and… something that might be fear mixed in. Trading him my ratty piece of paper for my ratty ass keys to my near useless car I shoot him one last look, wondering what he knows. Donning the battered old sunglasses that are shaped a little differently every time I park in the sun, I leave the scene of the evening and head back home. I don’t leave home much anymore. When I do, things like last night tend to happen.

I park the car.

I walk inside.

A madman lives here. You only have to look once to know it. And I fucking KNOW it…

My phone makes more noise and I look around the room. I haven’t changed my number since it all went down.

Down. Hill.

I walk around the tiny apartment picking up scraps of paper all banged out on the same antique typewriter I stole from the last professor to give me a shit grade before i wiped my ass with my Literary Arts degree and walked away. It’s hell to find ribbons for this fucking thing, but keyboards have no soul.

One hand answers the phone and presses it to my ear while the other hand keeps propping up pages in my vision; almost accusatory in the action. What have you done? What are you going to do now?

I find whole pages written I don’t recognize. Maybe there is a phrase or something that makes me think it is actually me writing. Somewhere in there.

She says she is Nashville and today is only Tuesday.

The voice, I recognize.

But that’s not the ending…

]]> 0 Mon, 18 May 2009 23:00:10 +0000 kain Continue reading →]]> Getting ready for Cornerspeed was a pretty big thing for me, since it was my first day on a track and I really had no idea what to expect other than what I had read. I would not have been HALF as prepared without Voodoo, pgood, jtalerico, seriokilla, ZuluHour and his dykes, and several other people with names not quite so weird.

I made a Costco run to prepare and grabbed water, Gatorade, Rrrrred bullz, chips, snacks, sunscreen, memory cards, batteries, etc. I was probably a little overstocked. The Sunday afternoon before the big day, Jtalerico, and the crew at his house helped me out by ridiculing my safety wire job, and then showing me the right way to do it. We set up the cleaned up the brakes, disconnected and taped the lights, took off my newly painted plastics, and I was ready to rock.

The weather report was about 90% likelihood of rain all day for Monday, so I was a little sketchy without rain gear, but decided to just say Eff it and roll on. I left my house about 5:30 am, and drove my ass off to get there. I got the idea to rent a small Uhaul trailer from a local police officer, and it turned out to be perfect. The 5×8 only cost $15 and after I saw the trailer, I realized the hidden wisdom that it would be much easier to load a wrecked bike into that low trailer than into the bed of my truck. not that I would ever wreck a bike. I’m just saying. ;p

I am still kicking myself for getting there a little late. In the rush I neglected to mount either of the GoPro cameras on the bike and so I have no video footage which I was really looking forward to. That was probably the big disappointment of the whole weekend, though one of my friends said, “from the look of the pictures, all the footage would have been sideways, anyway!”

Jen from PhotoJenic came up to shoot the track and I lucked out with some great pictures, and she was a godsend when I lost the key to my bike and helped me out a lot with my general disorder.

This was a whole new experience for me. Passing another rider is something that I’ve never had to do before, as the group rides I have been on are generally static riding order. The hand signals required for the track were new but easy enough to understand. On my first session I completely forgot to raise my hand at red flag until the instructor pulled directly in front of me was pointing at me and motioning wildly. Often when our bodies are working at elevated heart rates, we experience a multitude of symptoms like auditory exclusion, slow motion time, or, as I experienced, tunnel vision. I never saw any of the corner workers or the flags during the first session. Though, I never felt nervous or panicked, I was probably running at a little higher threat level than normal.

My second session of the day was better. I was riding much cleaner lines, I started paying more attention to my body and exaggerating my position more and noticed all the things I was still doing improperly like bouncing from one side of the seat to the other; unloading the chassis and trying to reload in turns, things of that nature.

After I got over the newness of it all and Aaron’s, the head instructor for Cornerspeed, words started to sink in. I learned more in one day about motorcycle physics and theory than I have in two years of riding. My body knows what to do by feel, but before Cornerspeed I never understand what the bike was actually doing underneath me. These classroom sessions opened up huge new levels of understanding for me.

After the first couple sessions, Aaron started explaining to us that we use our brakes as a panic button much more often than we need to. So, for the third session, we were not allowed to use our brakes to get around the course, relying solely on downshifting and intelligent speed modulation. The “No Brakes” drill was extremely eye opening. I only had to grab brake twice; once was to avoid hitting an instructor, and once was to avoid rear ending another student. After that drill I realized I could go into every corner faster than I had been. Faster! Yeeessss! “Trust your tires,” Aaron told me with a devilish glint in his eyes. Afterward, my instructor on this session said he was having a hard time keeping up with me, but he was on a 600rr vs my 750.

After this session another one of the instructors, Pete, came and found me and we talked a little bit about what worked and what didn’t. Pete was really knowledgeable and extremely willing to help.

The next session, Pete led me and a couple others through body mechanics drills. I thought I was doing fine with this before I came to Cornerspeed, but the more the instructors spoke, the more I knew I needed to work on. I got smoother and smoother through the day, but I’ve got a long ways to go.

For the next few sessions I worked with Pete constantly, mostly one on one. I improved more swiftly and consistently with the dedicated scrutiny of an expert. Pete paid me a huge compliment when he told me it was great to actually get a chance to work with someone who didn’t mind walking it out a bit.

Some of the technical details are as follows. I started out the day going dangerously fast through turn 7, a great right hand up hill 90 degree turn with a ton of positive camber. That is until someone explained to me the magical negative camber where the patriot course comes in causes over ¾ of the first timer wrecks for VIR North Course. Turns 1,2,3 were a constantly changing equation all day. I started out slow and a little uncertain, but by the end of the day it was quite fast and nearly fluid all the way to turn 4. Turn 4 is probably my favorite, a more than 90 degree left hander, but early on I was having a lot of problems linking it properly to 5,6. Each of the instructors told me I was killing all the corners that people usually had problems with, but was in need of some work on the simpler ones. Leave it to me to do everything in reverse. Pete took me through 8,9,10,11,12 and after about two laps, I knew what to do and that became one of my favorite sections of the course to build and carry greater amounts of speed and pull off some great passes. I didn’t get it right every time, but I came pretty close and was flying through there cleanly by the end of the day. Turn 14 was daunting most of the day as I couldn’t really pick up reference points for it, it is a completely blind 90 degree right hand turn that you can’t see until you come up a hill and are already upon it. Novice stuff, I know. 16 almost gave me an “agricultural experience” on my first session out with Pete because we were cooking and I panicked and grabbed front brake. 16 is a high speed left hander going downhill into a hard right hand turn (17). We were coming in plenty hot and I grabbed way too much brake, touched the rear and my back tire just started sliding all over the place. I realized I would never be able to slow down before I ran off the track so I just “trusted the tires” shifted my body over to the and cracked the throttle. After all that panic, the Vagrant and I shot through 17 amazingly easy and it really made me realize a) what a dumbass I was, b) just how awesome my bike is. I got progressively faster and faster all day with fewer mistakes each time around the track.

I got called out by an instructor for passing another rider on the inside of a turn once, but really it was a line I had committed to in the prior turn when I was outside the guy behind the dude I passed inside, so it would have been more dangerous to not continue with the line I had committed to. This was just a symptom of the fact that I wasn’t looking far enough down the course. Shifting to a longer time frame was one of the major difficulties I had on the track. After the session, I went up to the two guys I blasted by on that pass and mentioned to them that I hadn’t meant to cut them like that and I hope there were no hard feelings. They said to me it was no big deal, asking me what happens when other people cut me off or wreck into me when it is actually a full-fledged race day instead of practice runs. When I mentioned this was the first time I had ever been on a track their faces fell in unison with their uttered, “Oh…” and the instructors eyes behind them got as big as saucers. Veterans apparently don’t like being smoked by the new guy.

I lean. That is about the shortest complete sentence possible in the English language, but there is a lot being said there. I lean the hell out of the bike because before anyone told me it was difficult, I just went out and did it. I watched a MotoGP race where they were doing up to 72 degree lean angles like it was nothing. The following weekend I went on an amazing high speed switchback ride through the Arizona mountains outside Yarnell and just did what I had seen the riders do on television. After the ride, a couple more experienced friends, white in the face, came up and asked me to dial it back a bit so they didn’t have to scrape anyone up off the canyon walls. I didn’t realize anything I was doing was extraordinary, I just thought you had to do it to get down the twisties.

As I tend to lean so much, I was raking both knees, my toe sliders, my pegs, and even my exhaust on the ground all day. Some of the pics have plenty of sparks coming off. I’m just crazy like that.

Brakes-and-Blip-Brian was there in the class and on the track with me. As he can attest to, I need to learn how to effing launch. At the end of the day, all the students who wanted to were allowed to participate in a full “mock” race; no trophies, but everything else was the real deal. I was given pole position, front row, outside. The green flag shot up and I killed the engine and sat there with a stupid look in my helmet while everyone else rode by me. I started the race about 20 seconds behind the last person. It SUCKED! I went out and had a blast anyways, even had a great run with Brian, whom I passed in style! I would up rolling in two bike lengths behind first place on an R1 for a solid second place. No trophies, no flashbulbs, no boobs, just a good hard run with some passing practice and crossing a finish line. About halfway around the track on a “cool down lap” Brian rode up beside me and started slapping me on the back in congratulations, scaring the ever loving bejebus out of me. He got a good laugh out of that.

One of the interesting points of the day was riding 2-up on the back of a racer’s bike. I’ve always wondered what it was like to be a passenger, but never trusted any of you bastards enough to ask for a ride. Riding a motorcycle is a wonderful experience, often skirting a line between life and death, but I am always in control, not a passenger. It was interesting to me and while other students who got the opportunity to ride as passengers were impressed by the speed of the ride, I was impressed by the amount of work I was putting into the balls of my feet and my hands to stay on the bike. I think that experience is going to make me a much better pilot when I have someone on the back. It was not scary, but very physically demanding and I have been taking special concerns when I have had a passenger since then.

At the end of the day, I am reminded why I came here: to get a license to race. Cornerspeed is an accredited Race School that gives you a diploma to start racing with Semi-Pro racing groups all around the nation. I aced the test, got my diploma (YAY!) and asked the remaining instructors and Aaron to pose with me for a Polaroid. After handshakes and loading out, the clouds got dark and thick quite quickly. As I was finishing tie-ing down the bike, the rain started coming down. Whoever prayed to the rain gods, you are my hero, we had a completely dry day and it made for one amazing experience. I will be going back for Cornerspeed track days (June 1!) and practicing my ass off. I’m an addict. This is a whole new world.

You can tell yourself it is the sweat that stings your eyes; in that weather, it’s easy to do. You would still be lying. When you see that much death, when there is so much lost, those that remain become more valuable than we can imagine.

He spent the 2.5 weeks prior to that day, all the notice that he had, liquidating everything he owned save for a bookshelf, a table, and 6 boxes. Selling his car, he bought a black truck. He donated everything that I hadn’t worn in the last month. Those few items that had value were sold to the first person who would take them and everything else was simply given away.

Mindlessly, from a list the Outcast bought packing materials like some sort of Zen ritual. Removing any meaning from the act or the materials, lest he actually take a second to think about what it entailed; what this all led up to.

An Outcast, he left, accompanied by a girl who loved him very much, in the careless way that a child will still love a toy, long after it is irrevocably broken.

Miles Driven: 35,042

In the days after the Phoenix, the world was green and blue; the color change was drastic to the outcast after the landscape the color of cracked flame, and dust, and ash. it would be shocking to his eyes for the first few months. In the coming months, the cracked lips would subside, the eternally parched feeling would stay, but it was simply psychological now. but in the days after the Phoenix, the days close enough to be called such, the lips still bled if the outcast opened his mouth too wide. he tasted the sand and dust in his breath and hid from the sun as if it were still necessity.

Motorcycles: 3

In the Triangle city, people were different; less distinct, more fat. they smiled, but it was only because they land around them was friendly, not because they were. In the days of the Phoenix, a smile was something marvelous and genuine because it came from the inside when it did come… never spawned by the parched world around it.

The trip into the city center was less hectic, less restricted. The city seemed less structured but it flowed well.

As a conscript of the ruling powers, the Its, the Outcast wasn’t trusted initially. He was hired to perform a service that no one really understood, but everyone seemed to think they needed. Organization, structure, help but only insomuch as it didn’t step on any of the ITs toes or infringe upon their sense of mastery over their little domain.

Each day he arrived at the gates to the Center and was escorted by guards, or officials, or sub-officials to the places he was thought to be needed to gather the information he asked for and turn it into something that was beneficial to those that watched over him. Soon they lost interest and simply expected he knew what to do. He was provided a pin; a badge of sorts with which he could gain access to the Center and it’s antechambers.

Hours at work: 2080

The outcast changed too. Became dedicated. Wholly absorbed within himself; his body, his mind. Every day was fully engaged. He became aware of his body and his abilities. The weight, the fighting, the water, the struggle. Free time was everywhere and nowhere because he filled it with semi-purpose and rage and intent.

Trophies: 6

Max Depth: 126

Rising before the sun, when the simple fact of the suns return was carried by faith alone, he left the small room provided him at the outskirts of Triangle and traveled to the gymnasium to destroy himself, the old self… the one from yesterday, and recreate a new, better, stronger man in his place. Still the outcast, but there among the titans he was allowed the opportunity to change.

Certifications: 12

Leaving the gymnasium the sun had returned, each day without fail, it came back; not with the strength of the Phoenix, that rebirth in flame, but with the warmth of life. Gentle, coaxing, enough to settle the surrounding populace into quiet obeisance and obesity.

The Outcast fought the laziness in the air around him, rode recklessly and with abandon, thinking that feeling the cruch or the crash would be better than feeling nothing.

Motorcycle wrecks: 1

Life was not without romance, the hint of amorous, but it never stayed long.

Broken Hearts: 2

He went without sleep for days, trying to find the edge, but it will always elude those that seek it. Such is the nature of these things. And so he seeks, for meaning in numbers, for purpose in himself, for emotion in another, finding nothing…