Even in the patchy fog of six am this town smells like the inside of a paper bag. Western Oregon holds itself, quiet at night, focused in on the valley or out towards the dune-laden coast. The hills are small and yet somehow daunting in the dark, driving through the curves past all the tiny towns. But six am, Eugene, the bellowing homeless men and the city workers, the overly commercialized strips and the people that don't belong here, don't belong there, don't really belong at all. We push them all together here.

And inside it all feels the same. The cold fog lays in my head, pulling down my eyes. New York City, Chicago, Atlanta. Chilled and tired and begging for something to call home. Something clean, not like the subway cars or the street corners. They're calling me: So, how're things on the west coast? A long long strip of lonely. It feels cheap and old in retrospect, creepy like abandoned warehouses on the side of the . . . freeway. I don't know what they're expecting, but the dust blowing through sure looks hungry.

All the hard to reach places are painful and sour. All the corners are dark and starving.