Day started out gloomy enough, not for anything do they call this area "Fog Town". It wasn't inviting weather, but I decided to take the bike out for a little ride. I ran into this graffito on one of the columns for the upper highway. The last and first time I ran into it was on the way back home from the beach, under the influence of 2 grams of mushrooms, it was not pleasant. A little ways up is a memorial to some poor guy. I've never seen anyone around, let alone fixing , the memorial, but it always looks more or less well kept.
It was a very grey day, but that trail was calling.
The other day while I was riding this trail with the missus I ran into a snake. She was coming up the trail, and thought it was dead, and would've ran over the poor thing, probably. I ended up running my tire on its tail, so that it toreass into the weeds. Turns out it might have been an endangered species. But hopefully not.
So I knew where I wanted to go. It was this abandoned military site, which is part of Fort Ord. I wanted to take pictures of all the graffiti there. I really like the all the splashes of different color in this verdant area. Most of these areas say "Area Closed" but I feel that if it is government owned and my tax dollars pay for its upkeep I should be allowed a damn stroll every now and then. I threw my bike over the warning wire, and proceeded to make my way into this graffitied place.
Behind this circular thing I found this graffiti I really enjoyed because it looks like Master Shake from Adult Swim's Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which if you knew me I'm a huge fan of.
There's this hidden path behind the abandoned buildings, which leads to a great little beach.
It led to this...
I sat on a perch, and looked at this flock of seagulls kicking it by the shore. I thought it must be pretty chill being an animal, and pretty much just chilling year round, and eating whatever the good Lord provides. I thought of how birds think equally, with respect to consciousness, as I do. They must, right? They must interior lives as we do, but totally incomprehensible to us.
I sat there admiring the great fucking place I live which I am almost always ungrateful about. The coastline, and the cities it contained, the cities I lived in and loved and hated all my life, pretty much. All the memories contained on this beach, in this ocean, in these towns that I traversed like a wandering invalid, looking to get high and drunk with anyone, the rambling bike rides to past girlfriends, who I loved to obsession, all the memories contained in the very fabric of the towns and the beach, as though the coastline lived in me as well as I in it.
And I felt free, as in free of the suffering I went through, when I was briefly homeless, and sleeping on the beach, blacked out, or waking up in display sheds outside Ace, or in dumpsters, or the many embarrassments that lived in this coastline, I felt free of regret, and shame. I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, and no self-inflicted hell should have distracted me from it, and it was then that I wanted to breathe in the air entire, to somehow embrace this coastline, and its inhabitants, as a bird takes in the entirety up there kicking it in the sky, like some idle god.