I realized today, after an official pricey consultation with my naturopath, the truth of it.

I conditionally, but genuinely, love these mountains I am fighting so hard to leave.

The conditionality is all about the cultural geography. There is, first, the fact that I am so close to the border that I live in the mirror opposite of a DMZ–an MZ, a militarized zone. I can’t get north into the rest of the tierra without going through their checkpoints.

Inside the MZ, the economy is dominated by a large and literal military base, and ringed by ‘defense’ contractors small and huge. The attendant attitudes permeate the society, and even the school, even the students to a point. If they continue to marinate in these attitudes, they’ll be lost, in human terms.

I am a small influence on them in the countervailing direction, but I am not enough.

Pigs rule, and the fact that they are javelina is again not enough.

I could talk about the splinter religious beliefs of the people in charge of the school as well, but it’s not necessary to the the main thrust of the narrative. Only a confirmation.

It’s time to go.

The title of this post is completly tangential, with only my self in common with the textual body.

The Skulls were a small group of colleagues who I worked with in the library in downtown Portland a million years ago. They were fond of leather and authority.

I got along great with them, but one day the girl Skull remarked to me that I wasn’t a Skull. She said it with no suspicion, malice, or ill will. She was musing, on the fact that she liked me as a fellow human, and that it was odd that she did, because … I wasn’t skullish in my heart.

I’m still not a skull. Maybe no one is anymore. I’m not a javelina, and I’m not a perfect soy boy, or even a perfect boy of any kind.

I’m the other kind.

And today I am feeling it.

Mostly, it’s good.