Act IV - Erie Route Nine

ATHENA (Notes): This is what Athena saw in Centralia.

After graffitiing the sidewalk we walked to a meadow where I saw Ryan and asked him what the symbol he was drawing was and he didn’t tell me and, well, to tell the truth I thought Centralia was dead as Emily told us that the governor had covered the highway all up with dirt and tore down the ruins to stop people like us from going there (what luck that people like us don’t like listening to authority like that, the fuckers) so we made our way down the street and down a back road passing by the two last (maybe, I don’t really know) inhabited houses in Centralia and the types of people who must still live there were and there were some cats at a house with at least a dozen cats and we went down a path into the woods where we saw a tree that grew around an iron fence and we see the plugged up gas popes while emily lags behind and we wait and she catches up so we continue to a meadow and then we walk to the top of a big rock where we drink beer and Ryan places a sticker and the guiness blonde, which I found to be delightful, is drank and I am convicted of being the most adherent to the commandments given on Sinai for which I am stoned so today the jest to rest we travel to a graveyard discussing the name of God (YHWH) which I later accidentally invoke after we exit the graveyard from the early 20th/late 19th centuries and kick a cop painted on a whim so we make our way across the highway to the buried highway and as far as the eye can see mounds of dirt and rubble rise, giving one the sense that one was amongst the burial mounds of thousands and we begin to hop from mound to mound and Emily and Ryan begin to talk while Will and I go ahead he worrying again (classic will) that we will scatter to the four winds, and I admit I feel the fear too but I hope against hope that we won’t, that the four winds can be held back, and my fierceness, stupidity, and doggedness will be enough and I told will about my feelings of exile (YHWH) and no consensus was reached and we saw some graffiti (fuck desantis, we say gay, matt walsh fucks kids) and Ryan and Emily begin making their way down to us abd we toast with our Noah’s Mill and Ryan pours some out and we discuss how hot everyone is except me and I insist that my rizz is negative so Ryan (now drunk) punched me in the stomach for it, spilling the whiskey I was drinking and we signed our symbol and wrote “Here we stared into the abyss together” and we began walking further down the highway and Ryan began to cry and we stopped and he said that he never thought he’d make it and he thanked us for coming and I said of course and he said that this was not something that I could say “of course” for and I asked obvious questions (which Will informed me I shouldn’t have asked) and Ryan continued to cry and I didn’t know what to do and Emily and Will said they loved Ryan and a little while later I said we love you (I do not know why I didn’t say it for myself, perhaps I felt I didn’t earn it) and Ryan cried and we waited and Ryan stopped crying and we walked down and we discovered that we could not stay at our campsite so we decided that the best course of action was to stay in New York City and so Will called his father as I appologized to Ryan if I said something wrong and he did not say I didn’t but he said it was all cool and I said something to the effect of that is not the point but the discussion ended as we began to flip the axe while Will and Emily searched and we found a pod hotel which Will and Ryan paid for and we walked back towards the car and I began to feel off because I realize how little history I have with these people and I walk past them I walk like I’m walking past them like I’ll leave like always and we get to the car and we decide to take a picture and I can’t be in the picture because that would hurt that wouldn’t be me its like I was never here like I briefly entered their lives and will soon be leaving again there would be no rest and I would be forgotten out of history and this is what I mean when I say I am in exile. This is what Athena saw.

WILL (Notes): This is what Will saw in Centralia.

Part 1

Centurial was a nothing place of a ghost town. All that remained was that which was living things -didn’t even see a ghost. The whole place is just time bomb waiting to blow; as the fire burns and has no way to escape. Sometimes a sink hole forms and the smoke is released. I have not much to say about that place. I will instead remember the faces, expressions, thoughts, and conversations that I had with those that I went with. I learned nothing new, but I did get to see the smoke that was buried -in the people there. The roads cleared more; the thoughts of people were unearthed. We left our mark in the hope that others too would see us. Nothing changed. We all left there knowing we knew each other well. That was enough for me.

Part 2

We enter. I’m convinced Ryan has been here before because he found the perfect parking lot super easily. We leave a mark of the root 9 symbol on a small piece of sidewalk near the milf-mobile. We all follow Ryan who is trying take a piss and retrieve once this fact is made clear. We begin our adventure sight seeing the three residents homes that remain. We journey up a side road and find A sink hole; sadly it is not smoking. I realize that they will never leave, because they won’t be able to afford too. We turn back our original path; being lead along by graffiti: hunting for interest. We eventually find the pipes that Ryan wanted to see. They are supposed to be smoking, but they have been full of dirt. Ryan leaves a mark. We all share a drink. The beach safety rules are Ignored: rocks are thrown (at a lifeguard). Eventually stumbling into the graveyard where we find a strange on looker. We leave our packs out of respect for the dead. The graves are old, some harbor civil war soldiers. After we all feel satisfied with feeding our interests we leave. Athena, invokes the name of God and his wrath. We begin our journey to the highway. Having to crossing an active road to get to it. Athena and I were asked to move forward without Ryan and Emily. We did. We discussed how hard it must be for Emily based off her current predicaments (with poverty in particular). Emily started moving before Ryan did. Ryan remained for a while. We took this to be a bad sign. He eventually moved up and eventually they both moved further together to us. We all left a mark. Shared a toast and stories. Ryan realized what the trip meant to him now. We searched for a hotel in the dirt and then we became pod people.

RYAN (Notes): This is what Ryan saw in Centralia.

Centralia has now come and passed. Erie Route Nine has reached its intended destination. My voice has returned.

On Thursday morning, we departed from Lorna’s house and set our course for Centralia. Something twisted in me when i heard the name repeated by the voice in the navigation software. After a few miles of driving, I asked people to use my camera to take some pictures. When they noticed the camera was absent, we turned back. None of this matters, though. It’s a story already told. What comes next matters.

On the approach to Centralia, to the end of my long chain, I asked for a moment of quiet, and played some music. Old Black Train. Felt appropriate. Everyone sang along, but my voice was too ragged to sing it well. As we got closer I changed the song. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. It was striking how beautiful the woods were out there. An old, thoroughly eastern town greeted us just before entering it. It. I have a hard time even typing out it’s name, feels more like an event than a place. Centralia. Something hallowed.

It took me a minute before I realized I had arrived to the center of it. Centralia. I asked “how much longer.” It was either Athena or Emily who replied “We’re here.” I don’t remember who.

I took a moment to find a place to park the car. I came across an alcove that resembled a small driveway under an arch of greenery and parked the car there. Emily looked at her maps and the internet, and told me that none of the original buildings remained. They had all been destroyed to discourage us. She told me the highway had been covered by tons of dirt. It has been covered to discourage us.

Will seemed convinced I had been here before. I think he saw something in me he mistook for familiarity. I don’t know if it was determination, resignation, something somber, something sublime?

I left the car and grabbed my bag, my camera. The others looked after me, asking where I was going. I just wanted to look really. To see if any traces remained. After a moment, they followed. We decided to make our mark on the sidewalk where the town was. I made the mark of Erie Route Nine in black paint. Newcomb made the mark of the eye in white. They decided they wanted to move on, explore elsewhere in the town. I asked for a moment to piss. Went off on a long driveway covered in cracks sprouting ankle-high growth. Having taken the white paint with me, I decided to make a mark before turning back. “Centralia Lives.” The ghost moon.

I returned and Athena commented “Seems like you did more than use the bathroom.” I walked past, but didn’t answer. We decided we wanted to see the graveyard. We began moving through the ruins, and saw the three houses of the remaining inhabitants. Will and Athena began to get quietly frustrated with Emily, who kept falling a hundred feet or so behind everyone else. As we walked through the back pathways, we saw places where trees had broken through asphalt, and grown around fences. I took some pictures before agreeing to move on.

After a few more minutes of walking, we came across a stone-floored clearing. We decided to sit down and get a drink. We each had a Maryland Guinness. Newcomb didn’t have a bag, so sat a little more uncomfortably than the rest of us. I placed an Erie Route Nine sticker on one of the two old fire vents we found there. I’m almost certain we used the beers to toast to something, but I can’t remember what. Maybe it was just a cheers. We discuss which of the Ten Commandments we have violated. After maybe 45 minutes we got to moving again, this time in the direction of a nearby graveyard.

At the end of the graveyard I saw a target that had been drawn to look like a state police officer. It has a heart drawn in the center of its chest and looked as if it was pointing a gun at the viewer. It read “Hi I’m EARL N I’M A SCRAPER.” I called it out and Newcomb came over and kicked it, before setting it up again. “For the next person,” they said.

Leaving the graveyard, I seemed to feel nothing for the town. At the end of my long string, I had found a collection of empty woods and old graves without names. I could not see Centralia and it became just a place. It made me quiet and somber, which Athena clearly noticed, but did not comment on.

As I left, the others followed. I started grabbing my things and asked Emily if she could guide us toward the old covered highway. She said she could and pointed out the right direction. I got to moving that way, and Will and Athena followed quickly. Emily seemed to be packing up her things. I walked and after a hundred feet or so I noticed she had not caught up. Turning around, I saw her staring at us from the spot we had packed up again. I waved her to come over.

She walked up with a quiet bitter look on her face. She said she was waiting to see how long it would take for us to notice she was not there. Will and Athena mumbled a bit and turned to keep moving. I said I had assumed she would catch up, an answer that clearly angered her. I asked if she was ok. She said she was good. It was a harshly obvious lie.

We got to moving again and crossed the road over towards the start of the highway. As I turned onto it I finally saw Centralia. The dirt mounds were covered in graffiti, the marks of fellow travelers, standing in defiance to the destruction of beauty. I realized we were there. The soul had not been removed from its body. Centralia still remained in that place where the signs read its name. The others walked up to meet me as I stood on the highest mound I could find and looked over the old road.

“Hello, darling.”

We got to moving, but as we did, Emily stood back, looking with quiet anger over the road and towards us. I sent the others ahead and asked what was wrong. She deflected, and I doubled down. We each sat down, leaning against mounds adjacent to each other. She said she was sick of being left behind. We had been walking ahead of her the entire trip, turning and waving her to catch up, to move faster.

“This is something bigger than that, isn’t it?”

She talked about the distance between us. About feeling as if this entire trip she has never belonged, been an accessory to a group that functioned without her. That in talks about philosophy and dungeons and dragons, new dynamics and old inside jokes — she saw all the time she had missed, something that had grown into being without her, and had not left a space she could live in.

She talked about the life she had to go back to. Her hatred for it. For feeling stuck while we moved in with our lives, and trapped alone in a place we had departed. I opened my mouth to respond, and she left. I called to her as she walked away, and she didn’t turn back. She sat against a mound between where I sat and where -off in the distance- Will and Athena stood.

After ten or so minutes passed, I turned and painted something on the mounds. Circles were Emily and I had sat. A thin line connecting them. A question mark at the line’s center. A variable. The distance between us. I set off to meet her.

“You want spray paint?” “What colors do you have” “You know.”

We stood for a second, and she asked for red. I tossed it and she caught it. She apologized for walking away, saying she just needed to vent. She talked a little more about her frustration, the feelings of worthlessness, of being told she was wrong over and over about something she did not understand, determined as incorrect by rules she could not follow. I asked if she wanted me to respond. She invited me to.

I sat opposite her and spoke. I talked about how she had been gone for a year, how I felt as though I had missed time in her life just the same. How she has new interests, people, and stories I do not know. I said it was awkward and strange trying to find a place in a dynamic that had grown from acquaintance to close friendship almost entirely in her absence. The weight of old worlds lingered. I could see them on her face. I could feel them on my shoulders.

I asked what i could do now, said I was tired of the passive-aggression. The anger without voice. Said I wanted to fix it however I could. She said that was enough. Knowing, seeing was enough. I replied that there was still a distance between us. That we had both changed. That though old friends, we were still meeting each other as new. I said I know that distance will close in time. That in time, in the love each of us have for each other, such wounds can heal. She said she hoped so. She thought for a minute and then decided she agreed. We shook hands and caught up with the group, making errant markings on the mounds we passed in red and white.

We killed the king and made a new one.

As we reunited, we decided to make a mark on a part of the road not yet covered. “Here, we stared into the abyss together.” A dumb joke. We each write it in turn, then each wrote a section in our own hands.

W : HERE, WE A : Stared into E : THE ABYSS R : TOGETHER

As I wrote the last word, i willed a piece of myself into it, pushing it into the asphalt. Made it a part of Centralia. Underlined it in all three colors. I am confident that when the paint cracks and chips, the asphalt decays, and the dirt and earth moves, that word will be there still.

We made our toasts and drank our whiskey and beer. I led the toast. To Centralia. To Erie Route Nine. To us. I pulled out my camera and asked each of them to say a few words. They obliged. I said “Centralia Lives.” I drank and poured the dregs into the ground, to Newcomb’s dismay.

We rated each other, told embarrassing stories, and I punched Athena for berating herself.

We made the mark of Erie Route Nine next to the message we had left. Will made the null. Athena the moon. Emily the fire. I, the nine.

We got to moving again, and Emily and I raced to a bush. Emily’s camera began falling out of its bag, so I won.

I ran ahead of the group and found the place on the highway where the dirt was now too sparse to cover it. A web of paint and memories hung between each pile now. I shouted as I ran.

“RUN OUT OF DIRT, COCKSUCKERS???” “YOU MISSED A SPOT, YOU FUCKS!!!”

I slowed down and began to walk. The others followed. As I did, I found the end of that long thread. It went directly up to the sky and stopped. I pulled on it and its weight collapsed onto me all at once. The promise had been kept, the oath fulfilled. I had made it to that impossible place I could never be. Asriel lived in the end. All his friends had followed him here. They had walked by his side and he had walked the path and walked the path and walked the path to its end. Asriel had not bowed. I cried when I could not hold it in anymore. They comforted me but i do not think they could see because I did not have the words.

After a while, I stood up and started walking again. Where I stopped to turn back I made my mark: the ghost moon. We worried about finding lodging for the night, but i don’t know that I cared. My voice returned. Eventually, we went back to the car. We took pictures and left. Athena was saddened and angered at her inability to be before the camera.

As we left, I asked everyone to say goodbye to the town. Will and Emily said “Bye, Centralia.” Newcomb said something in German I didn’t understand. I said my piece.

“Goodbye darling. See you on the next go around”

We left and turned away into dark woods.

If you find the right spot, you can see the whole sky from Centralia.