Weeds from Long Canyon by Ben Huff and Emily Bark Brown

WEEDS

i'm not sure i did anything on purpose to get the life i wanted. i don't think i even knew what i wanted as it was happening. i made a choice from each available option. i liked being over-caffeinated. i liked getting just a little bit too much. i relished chain smoking, especially at night, walking around my dark neighborhoods. at first i lived in the crowded student neighborhoods on the outskirts of the universities that i either studied or adjuncted at. eventually i would live in small cities that cared about things like light pollution, and in those places they also kept it dark at night, on purpose.

i accused myself of not paying attention. or i told myself i was living each day as its own discrete experience. i never planned for the future. i rarely went to the dentist. i didn't keep track of my money. when i had it i bought olives in brine, seltzer, blood oranges. when i didn't have it i bought dollar boxes of pasta and jars of industrial peanut butter that i ate with a spoon for breakfast.

i felt like living a contradiction. i never wanted security but it came to me anyway. i never really wanted to make choices and found that if i ignored things for long enough choices were made for me. it turned out this was what living was.

• Jazz
• ambient
• electronic
• improvised
• Tacoma