Meet obtrusive Colorado: a plastered skycap of evergreen peaks with greyscale pebbles washing over the receding corroded floor of New Mexico, leaving the chipped child of Oklahoma’s rolling crimson-green and Texas’ charred plain herds. The elevation being more of an illusion, ascent taking place slowly over the course of 1000 seemingly flat miles; these peaks are just that, peaks… we reside in the crease of the invitation, climbing a crevasse to the heart of the rockies. But acclimation becomes a tricky thing in The Highest State…
Colorado Springs: hyper, yet pseudo-aware. Colorado, as an identity, is retreating the beige dust and silt and look upon ancestral tilted slabs and rounded curtained ranges, reflected as a mindset with the nuanced sense of discovery. This stark contrast is reserved in multitudes, even the architecture on the edge of The Centennial State. Lashing out at it’s own terse demography, internally masochistic, the heart is demanding of the veins and the veins demanding of cells, though the process throughout is one of beauty.
The hemoglobin runs thinner and thinner the closer to the heart. The veins of the phalanges are thick and raw, open to permeate the atmosphere, bleeding zest into the ridges and valleys. A car works as a spike, a clot, driving up the fingers, the forearm, into the epicenter, a clinging mass into the heart. The body stretches thin, the blood stultified, but the mind a flurry of peace with hypoxia. Although the circulation of the landscape has air pockets stifling the collective, it is vital as ever, adapting and ever changing, ever expanding.
The heart sheds a series of overtones without shape, but a form with presentability and levity. Denver, where dregs pull box cutters out on block centrals, parallel to a painted street piano crying love tunes from my fingers, what a scoring! People are tight to dance, but the groove in the air too palpable to sit comfortably. The heart of 4 corners inside the states of 4 corners creates TENSE LOVE; a very bizarre concept as seemingly state legislature. But love nonetheless. Rooftops, arrangements of stringed lights an insignia of the sky, complete with a drummer to every guitarist, a bassist to every keyboard, a laugh with every cry; balance as fair as love itself. With everything so up front, out in the open, I can think to tell this bro to fuck off when he asks “is that your girlfriend?”
Crawling north over tectonic history, the air disperses spastically and my mind tenses. The intermittent beauty and suffering acts as another allegory; I’ll let you decide which one. The canyons creep their heads around each canyon I conquer, bound to be bound by such extraordinary heights. A sunset seldom looks this serendipitous, this enthralling. Something about the highest and lowest at sunset altitudes makes you believe you know things…
The etherial mind, the identification, the assertive myriad creatures. MISUNDERSTANDING! Whatever it is, I traversed the outskirts of Boulder, as a confrontational person in a confrontational scene seems irresponsible. The external and internal nature is the same around here; complex, dangerous, magnificent. So magnificent, in fact, it can kill you out of the sheer allure of profound discovery. I steeped a tent on granite, the rain freezing the ground, the same resistance met setting camp near the other vagabonds at 1:25AM.
Back down south to get the busted rear window replaced. Complimentary 2018 Mini Cooper Countryman? Absolutely. Quick paperwork and a long drive later, i become ornery and at times absolutely irate from the cold hard ground of yesterday’s lodging, or lack thereof continuously. I ask Skyler to drive wherever she felt, fill the time of service with anything at all. I am too tired to consider her lack of license or her probation, but shit, she wasn’t supposed to go beyond New York State lines. A little to late for semantics..
Waking to Golden; I might be foolish to fasten the tranquility of the whole ethos, or foolish for feeling foolish. I was fixed a mean dish of fish and grits and bummed a smoke off the waitress, who then kicked me out for smoking on premise. Oh lord… KEEP IT MOVING.
JAMES! I revisited Boulder for all fairness, and the waterfalls almost swept me away. Can’t say no one told me so, the abundance of signs urging your safety to numbers almost that of liter. Now, wholeheartedly, WEST.
Cody Kingsley 