I stopped in Alamogordo at a Hastings Bookstore again (it was at a Hastings that I last signed on – that was in Clovis – yes still in New Mexico) but they are having problems with their Wi-Fi (sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t – right now it doesn't). I bought three books (Joyce’s Dubliners, Remarque’s All Quiet and Jimmy Santiago Baca (gotta have my poetry fix)). I still have Stein’s long novel (I think I shall be reading it forever or so it seems – without the repeating, her repeating not mine, I would have been done with it my now). Let me try the Wi-Fi again. No, it’s still a no go – lets hope it's not another two weeks before I get a chance to send this out. I’ve finished my coffee and have shopping to do (food, drink and propane) and a campsite to acquire. Rule of Camping - campsite first then see the sights. Second rule of camping - the colder the night the more you have to get up to take a piss.
Big systems and subversive groups are often twins, and one produces the other – Umberto Eco
Mares’ tails with no contrails
Over the Rio Grande
Down Old Mexico way
Thunderheads are building
Desert varnish blackens
The canyon walls
Except were the cliff sides
Have broken away
And the big dam has backed
Up the Big River
To create an emerald pool
Down there in the
Canyon floor
Hey, it’s me – I’m back – Now in Columbus New Mexico – last place in the continent
al US (if that excludes the Aleutian Islands) to be invaded by a foreign country (Poncho Villa’s army of northern Mexico in March 1916). But more on that in the next blog – let me now catch you up from Clovis to Alamogordo. Started volume 60 of my journals – the drawings are morphing again (I seem to be returning to style elements from thirty years ago – contour lines – when I get a chance I will digitize a few so that the contrast can be seen – I think it has something to do with the Southwest and the air and the light – wish Van Gough could have been here).
Sports as practice, as activity, no longer exists or exists for economic reasons… and there exists only chatter about chatter about sports. The chatter about shatter of the sports press constitutes a game with its full set of rules – Umberto Eco
These are not the bourgeoisie who at least believe
In quality
These are the quantity folks who accumulate stuff
And fill yards full of junk
Buy as much stuff as cheap as you can. Shop
At Wal-martNo they are the ones who stayed in town
They must stay and protect their booty
Make sure its not carted off
God Help Us, we beseech thee and
Protect this our stuff
No these are the ones in the middle
Not middle class we’re all working class here
Those who earn through servitude
Even the doctors and lawyers do so nowdays
These folks just want to get away, escape
If even for just the weekend and
There a few of the still think
That there is gotta be more
Than just stuff and how wrong they are
In the mass media it is not invention that dominates but technical execution, which can be imitated and perfected – Umberto Eco
I do like Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poetry – I usually don’t like lyrical poetry (I got into
a big argument with Joe about the definition of lyrical poetry – this time he was right and I was wrong – but all I can say is that anything that has so many contradictory definitions doesn’t have any real meaning – so there Joe, put that in your pipe and smoke it). Anyway it is not Baca’s sophication as a stylist that I like but his ability to draw imagery from previously untapped linguistic sources – I like best the ones drawn from nature – here are two that involve alfalfa and a cowhide:
Women drawn out from the dark piss-stinking rooms / they lived in / by the powerful force of the moon, / whose yellow teeth tore the alfalfa out of their hearts, / and left them stubbled, / parched grounds old goats of tecotas and winos / nibbled
[She] absorbs hours of silence / like prairie sky absorbs campfire smoke. / Death hangs over her shoulder / a black cow’s hide / slung over the fence to dry
It’s eerie how I always seem to be reading something that takes place just were I happened to be geographically (given a temporal dislocation however – or other
wise I would have been the character being written about). I remember this happening with Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. I would go to a restaurants or a bar or a public park and pull out my book and start reading and every time that I did – what he had written had taken place within two blocks of where I was (and I had not deliberately chosen this book or this passage – it just happened that way).
Well the day before I had been visiting the Salinas Pueblo Missions – at the base of the mountain in which I had camped lay Quarai at Puenta de Agua and I open up Baca and read:
I turn my motorcycle off / next to the Quarai Ruins / and silence drops / into the canyon / sounding an ancient song of sadness, / like a distant boulder / echoing into the blue sky and stubble grass // O QUARAI! Shape the dirt and sediment. I am mineral de Neuvo Mejico // Blow your lower-world breath / into my journey, O QUARAI / I am ready to work
How eerie is that! And I had not deliberately looked for this book and did not know anything about Baca other than that he was one of the poets (of many) on my reading list. I just happened to come across a used copy of this book and it was cheap (a very important consideration). There were others that I would have purchased instead (other authros higher on my list) if I had found them - but I found this one.
Least they never forget
Those tragic weapons
Of notorious murderers
The spear tip that pierced
The side of Christ
Is a relic and not a trophy
Whether a rogue gallery
Or a long line of portraits
Of all the past Governors
There is a criminal type
You can tell it by their eyes
And the shape of their skulls
It’s all just so much common sense
Well from Clovis I was headed north, intending to hang a Louie at the Okalaho
ma panhandle and head towards Cimarron – but the winds and with rains and the cold got to me and I made my turn much sooner than that. The elevations were increasing rapidly – Black Mesa – Oklahoma’s highest point is at almost 5,000 feet and theythat say every thousand feet in elevation gain is the same as one hundred miles in latitude gain as far as the temperature is concerned. This was as far north as I wanted to get and at Manzano I even got snow. Ute and Conchos 
lakes were nothing to write home about – at Ute I got the neighbors from hell and at Conchos I got more wind and rain. Then on to Villaneuva. Finally good weather – and it has been grant since (except for that one night at Manzano)
Then the Salinas Mission – Quarai, Abo and Grand Quivera – the legendary
seven cities of gold for which Coronado hunted in 1540 – but there was not gold – just beans and corn and the Spanish overtaxed this arid land and by 1670 after only 45 years of occupation the economy collapsed and the cities were abandoned. Then in 1680 the pueblos to the north revolted and drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
And that takes me to Alamogordo
Big systems and subversive groups are often twins, and one produces the other – Umberto Eco
Mares’ tails with no contrails
Over the Rio Grande
Down Old Mexico way
Thunderheads are building
Desert varnish blackens
The canyon walls
Except were the cliff sides
Have broken away
And the big dam has backed
Up the Big River
To create an emerald pool
Down there in the
Canyon floor
Hey, it’s me – I’m back – Now in Columbus New Mexico – last place in the continent
al US (if that excludes the Aleutian Islands) to be invaded by a foreign country (Poncho Villa’s army of northern Mexico in March 1916). But more on that in the next blog – let me now catch you up from Clovis to Alamogordo. Started volume 60 of my journals – the drawings are morphing again (I seem to be returning to style elements from thirty years ago – contour lines – when I get a chance I will digitize a few so that the contrast can be seen – I think it has something to do with the Southwest and the air and the light – wish Van Gough could have been here).Sports as practice, as activity, no longer exists or exists for economic reasons… and there exists only chatter about chatter about sports. The chatter about shatter of the sports press constitutes a game with its full set of rules – Umberto Eco
These are not the bourgeoisie who at least believe
In quality
These are the quantity folks who accumulate stuff
And fill yards full of junk
Buy as much stuff as cheap as you can. Shop
At Wal-martNo they are the ones who stayed in town
They must stay and protect their booty
Make sure its not carted off
God Help Us, we beseech thee and
Protect this our stuff
No these are the ones in the middle
Not middle class we’re all working class here
Those who earn through servitude
Even the doctors and lawyers do so nowdays
These folks just want to get away, escape
If even for just the weekend and
There a few of the still think
That there is gotta be more
Than just stuff and how wrong they are
In the mass media it is not invention that dominates but technical execution, which can be imitated and perfected – Umberto Eco
I do like Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poetry – I usually don’t like lyrical poetry (I got into
a big argument with Joe about the definition of lyrical poetry – this time he was right and I was wrong – but all I can say is that anything that has so many contradictory definitions doesn’t have any real meaning – so there Joe, put that in your pipe and smoke it). Anyway it is not Baca’s sophication as a stylist that I like but his ability to draw imagery from previously untapped linguistic sources – I like best the ones drawn from nature – here are two that involve alfalfa and a cowhide:Women drawn out from the dark piss-stinking rooms / they lived in / by the powerful force of the moon, / whose yellow teeth tore the alfalfa out of their hearts, / and left them stubbled, / parched grounds old goats of tecotas and winos / nibbled
[She] absorbs hours of silence / like prairie sky absorbs campfire smoke. / Death hangs over her shoulder / a black cow’s hide / slung over the fence to dry
It’s eerie how I always seem to be reading something that takes place just were I happened to be geographically (given a temporal dislocation however – or other
wise I would have been the character being written about). I remember this happening with Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. I would go to a restaurants or a bar or a public park and pull out my book and start reading and every time that I did – what he had written had taken place within two blocks of where I was (and I had not deliberately chosen this book or this passage – it just happened that way).Well the day before I had been visiting the Salinas Pueblo Missions – at the base of the mountain in which I had camped lay Quarai at Puenta de Agua and I open up Baca and read:
I turn my motorcycle off / next to the Quarai Ruins / and silence drops / into the canyon / sounding an ancient song of sadness, / like a distant boulder / echoing into the blue sky and stubble grass // O QUARAI! Shape the dirt and sediment. I am mineral de Neuvo Mejico // Blow your lower-world breath / into my journey, O QUARAI / I am ready to work
How eerie is that! And I had not deliberately looked for this book and did not know anything about Baca other than that he was one of the poets (of many) on my reading list. I just happened to come across a used copy of this book and it was cheap (a very important consideration). There were others that I would have purchased instead (other authros higher on my list) if I had found them - but I found this one.
Least they never forget
Those tragic weapons
Of notorious murderers
The spear tip that pierced
The side of Christ
Is a relic and not a trophy
Whether a rogue gallery
Or a long line of portraits
Of all the past Governors
There is a criminal type
You can tell it by their eyes
And the shape of their skulls
It’s all just so much common sense
Well from Clovis I was headed north, intending to hang a Louie at the Okalaho
ma panhandle and head towards Cimarron – but the winds and with rains and the cold got to me and I made my turn much sooner than that. The elevations were increasing rapidly – Black Mesa – Oklahoma’s highest point is at almost 5,000 feet and theythat say every thousand feet in elevation gain is the same as one hundred miles in latitude gain as far as the temperature is concerned. This was as far north as I wanted to get and at Manzano I even got snow. Ute and Conchos 
lakes were nothing to write home about – at Ute I got the neighbors from hell and at Conchos I got more wind and rain. Then on to Villaneuva. Finally good weather – and it has been grant since (except for that one night at Manzano)Then the Salinas Mission – Quarai, Abo and Grand Quivera – the legendary
seven cities of gold for which Coronado hunted in 1540 – but there was not gold – just beans and corn and the Spanish overtaxed this arid land and by 1670 after only 45 years of occupation the economy collapsed and the cities were abandoned. Then in 1680 the pueblos to the north revolted and drove the Spanish from New Mexico.And that takes me to Alamogordo
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