Damian Westfall

Finnegan Begin Again Damian Westfall

From Finnegan Begin Again: "Mt. Kuhwahkoom! The high point of creation rising up above the sleeping valley of Walnut Creek, four thousand feet from the earth to its highest peak. You stand at the top, you look before you and behind you, you run your right hand through your hair, you clear your throat and lick your lips, and then you outstretch your arms and shout in absolute joy and abandon "Yes!" You feel then something new rising up in you from your intestines and so you go down down down the devil mountain (where the dogs came from). Down past the skeletons of Miwok and Ohlone Indians (rusted beer cans, past the plastic jerky wrappings) and the abandoned tires from which the brown weeds grow, go down down down. You run past Jurassic rocks of no value to you, down into the bay and valley of Walnut Creek, and you go out of Walnut Creek, West of Walnut Creek, past Oaktown and the plains of perpetual slavery, you vault the bridge, you go through the city's labyrinth, merging lanes from 24 to 80 South, down through San Jose and down through Fresno and the grapevine. Swerve left off Five and up into the Rockies, up up up and swerve right and then down down down through the sodomitten San Fernando Valley, cusp of vice, and down further into San Diego proper. You kiss the whale and swerve right again at the old naval base and onto the grains of the sandy baking beaches and (Splash!) into the Pacific Ocean you dive, and down you go, under the brine and the beer cans, where blue becomes black, and down down down to the very base of the of the mountain and there you will find stillness. There where the behemoth grows fat on blind albino eels, where the treasure chests of olde have landed in their final resting places, down where the monstrously ugly and odd sea creatures float and thrive, there where the merfolk dwell, there where the ocean floor is scattered with skeletons of sailors and pirates, who still wear their giant buckled belts and two cornered befeathered hats, there were the weight of gravity and miles of ocean really begin to press down on you, there where the only sound is erratic bubbling, there you will find calm. You go down to where you cannot go down any further and then you turn and face the continental devil mountain and you begin to climb once more.