Campy, Wailing, The

They say the oil is so thick in Kit’ Canyon, SO thick that they will have to truck in lighter crude from that desolate Central Valley, Bakersfield or something.

We already have enough big trucks on the roadways, so much more than we used to have, and dropping all that debris, giving all the little ones flats and causing breakdowns.

They have to truck it all the way here, to mix it, blend it on-site, with some top secret cocktail of fracking who the frack knows what, in order to get it in a ready enough state to truck it back to Bake-O for further refining.

All that pollution, i mean just the thought of the noise pollution alone is giving me a headache, body aches really, it is other problems being compounded with general worry for our future’s welfare.

Like Time is a human, or living animate.

Well, it is not static, that’s for sure. How did you get here …

…

The wail of the siren came out from the speakers, one could see them across, all along, the borders of the county lines. Out of the speakers, from the lines of connecting poles, like trees but dead and cut off from the oxygen supply, “It’s a tsunami warning system, they said, it just started up again recently,”

“Why would they just start it now? It seems odd, like it hasn’t been in use for so long, until now? What would trigger them to start it now, if the tsunami up north two years ago didn’t do it? After that they put new signs along the coast, but everything is happening really fast now.”

“The flooding, you mean? It just started happening, I now, but in those other places. Not here, yet. Thank God.”

“Or whoever. Kim Jong Someone, anyway. The flooding is in those low coastal plains in the Southeast, nowhere near here. I don’t know, maybe I am just unfamiliar with this area in the Central Coast. Are we at some old ancient river mouth, sweeping into the Central Valley? Imagine if Someone just took a chunk out of this face, our whole mouth being gone…”

“As if the Airforce base is the living body. What would a nuclear warhead do to this mouth? A face without a mouth, a valley without a water supply.”

The high, long wail started again. “It’s just a test, they are just testing the system. Some people got notice in the mail, remember.”

“It just makes me hurt so, like the sound of mourning mothers in black hijab. Wailing, I think i feel it in my chest, like a balloon expanding.”

It’s the way the fear can trickle into our bodies, take over our senses and alter our reasoning. Everything starts to get blurry, and I can let go, and someone or noone will be there to catch me.

No one.

Or me, him, you know, the one. The One.

“Noone, you cannot be here when I need you. I am alone, in reality, even if you can hold me for this hour in the morning.” The alarm made him jump awake, startling her, too.

“Oh ! I have to go, I love you.”

“I know. You were moaning loudly in my ear, like we were making love or something. I don’t want you to go, i want to lay here for longer, forever, or just … I feel so sick about everything coming up this week, things I do not understand, too much to do and be done and falling away, parts that matter.”

When I ran for the school board, he did not support me, said i shouldn’t do it, for as much as i wanted to , saw the missing pieces in our elementary system, i wanted to make change for the good of our kids, all our community. But he had long meetings at night, already away, and it would be more of a burden on the kids, and the family, if i were to have to go too, to evening school board meetings. Again, i gave up my own desires and motivations for him, his lack of wanting to work more as a parent, he just wanted it easier ; so i decided i was not really running, even though it was too late to actually withdraw – and of course i had already given up tenure, long before, i was OK with that part as i wanted to focus on the bigger picture, my children’s lives and the system they were, all were coming up through.

I feel so sick, she thought to herself again. He was gone now. And she knew she could but would not , it is unclear. She felt the confusion, the blurriness. She used to write through it, but now her body felt heavy and sleepy, always so sleepy. She could just lie here and wish for it to be darker. Let the sun be blotted out, she thought.

And the bills, all the medical bills, for all the treatments, like rabies and…

At least you are immune now, you are at an advantage, it is all so … even the animals, you know …