April 23, 2009 - Columbus New Mexico - village library

I'm still here in Columbus New Mexico. It is strange that upon first sight some things that do not at all appeal to us, but become strongly alluring once we get used to them – such is this town, such is this park – not that I would settle down here, but four nights might not seem too long. Here I have an isolated campsite in the middle of a well-maintained desert garden. Here Iam in the middle of a national historic site (Camp Furlong – from which Gen. Pershing launched his punitive expedition against Villa – a sort of practice run for the run up to the AEF to France later that year which he was to command). Two blocks away in the village library I have access to the Internet – so I can send this.

In order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of the original relationship with the whole – Umberto Eco

From my campsite at Rockhound State Park I spot a silvery object over the Florida (pronounced Flo-rita) mountains. It hovers there. It has not moved all day. I conclude that it is a balloon. But why in the middle of the desert. I ask the ranger the next morning. Oh, he says, the border patrol uses that. Rock hounds like bird watchers are strange people. People with an advocation that consumes all their passions are strange. But birders like to flock together while rock hounds tend to be loaners – they don’t acknowledge your presence – you go about your chores twenty feet from each other and pretend that the other does not exist. The guy on the other side of me is neither a birder nor a rock hound and yet he too is strange:

He’s going through a divorce
He’s having a tough time
He rode his bike out into
     The desert
He talk’s to himself and
     Attempts to sing
“This may be the last time
How right you are!”
He stays in his tent all day
He sleeps a lot
He’s having a rough time


And those balloons, they are officially known as the tethered Aerostat Radar Systems. Eleven are employed along the border from Puerto Rico to Yuma Arizona trolling for drug trafficing aircraft – each site maned by 30 man team. Unoffically they are known as ‘Fat Alberts’.

“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less that half-real: nonexistent – Edward Abbey


At Oliver Lee State Park I hiked up Dog Canyon were the US Calvary pursued Apaches. I made it to the Line Cabin – three miles (six round trip) and fifteen hundred feet of elevation gain – my personal best (not bad I tell myself for an old man with arthritic knees) and the soreness doesn’t hit me until the middle of the night – I am getting fit, I tell myself. Soon I shall be up to two thousand feet and ten miles, maybe! From the Sacramento Mountains rising three thousand feet above the Tularosa Basin and over there is the famous White Sands glistening in the sun. Later when I walk among those dunes, the glare will almost blind me as if I were among drifts of snow and tears stream down my cheeks as I squint to see were I am going (no danger of stepping on a rattlesnake – they only come out at night when their prey is also active – the only thing alive are the blackling beetles [stinkbugs] – who leave that strange trail that looks like sewing machine stitchery – everything that has been about since the last gust of wind leaves a trail – I leave a trail)

Finely the weather is here
In which I could go
For a cold beer
When the flies become a nuisance
As one waits out the heat
Yearning for a cool night

And the White Sands lie in the midst of the Missile Range where the US space program began with the firing of captured German V-2s. I stop at Missile Park. To the north is Trinity Site [first Nuclear denotation] but its closed to the public except for the first Saturdays in April and in October. I haven’t read or heard or seen the news for two months now. Anything might have happened, but I doubt it. We no longer worry since the demise of the Soviet Union about sudden nuclear holocaust – now we worry about the economy and about the environment and about crime [and don't forget terrorism] – much more frightful concerns – we are doomed to always be worrying. Anyway I am told that Easter has come and gone and that the deadline for filing tax forms is past. And I head towards another campsite. I purchased a state park camping pass good for a year from date of purchase (that is a date that has some meaning to me) and after fifteen nights of camping it will have paid for itself, so the last two nights my campsites have been free. "What me worry!" [Alfred E Newman]

Coherence… it appears is an optimum: the greatest possible number of contradictions resolved by the simplest means – Michel Foucault

I like dusk the
Best – a summation
Without any conclusion
Everyday so far
Has had its cessation
Something at least appears
To be constant
Now the night sounds
Command
And sight ceases its
Control

Perhaps what fascinates me in being a writer is that it necessitates communion with all and sundry – Henry Miller

Today marks two months on the road.

April 17, 2009 - Alamagordo New Mexico

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 continental 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 otherwise 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 Okalahoma 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

April 9, 2009 - Clovis New Mexico

That goddamn wind – interminable wind – and those goddamn cheep Wal-Mart tents; they don’t at all get along. Where is the nearest REI. Impossible to shop on the Internet – no where to deliver the merchandise. My tent was on its last legs up in the Guadalupes and the wind was blowing is gusts of 50-55 mph and up to 85 predicated for the night. I had been patching the poles by duct taping (splintering) spare tent pole sections (from previous Wal-Mart tents) onto broken sections and I didn’t think the poles would make itthe night. I took the tent down and slept in the hammock and froze. And after all that the wind died down and it was all for naught.

Three young girls soap up
Under the open air shower
Wearing their bikinis and they
Are so aware of their erotic
Performance and they giggle

And I want to applaud
And they return to their
Camp site draped within
The folds of their towels
As if they were ball gowns

And this morning the wind began to blow again – and damnit Wal-Mart is selling even more miserable excuses for tents and charging more. I kept thinking the wind will die down. The poles were bending almost doubled over and I was sure one was going to pop. I took the tent down and broke camp – I’ll find someplace with less wind – and I headed further north. Now I sitting in a Hastings bookstore in Clovis. Out on the high prairies where the wind never ceases. Clovis, namesake of the Clovis point. I was at Oasis State Park just a mile down the road from Blackwater Draw


Do you remember…? And the light of the past flowed magically from the far distance into the present. It was fun, they enjoyed it. It was perhaps like turning around after having doggedly trudged along a road for hours, to see al the empty distance one has covered transformed int a grand vista, to one’s genuine satisfaction – Musil

I did this and I did that
You’re no longer like the
     Young athlete
Who only needs to catch
     His breath
All those aches (the neck,
    The shoulders, and there’s
    A new one in the hips)
Will never go away again
They shall only get worse

Department One sent out a memorandum; Department Two replied; When Department One had been notified of Department Two’s reply, it was usually advisable to suggest talking it over in person and when an agreement had been reached in this fashion, it was decided that nothing could be done about the matter; and so there was always something to do – Musil

 The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park in Carlsbad was a treasure – specializing in the Chihuahuan desert and flora and fauna of New Mexico. And there was Maggie Oso – the painting bear – her watercolors available to purchase in the visitor’s center – and not a bad artist either. Carlsbad is know for the Caverns but don’t miss this. One gets quickly adjusted to the caverns – their enormous size. Carlsbad Caverns are huge. Mammoth Cave has longer passages. My favorite is Blanchard Springs in Arkansas for shear beauty, variety and pristine condition.

Ideas striving for power tend to attach themselves to ideas that already have power – Musil

 Then the night at Brinley Lake among the Tamarisk (Salt Cedar) – the scourge of the west. It was introduced as a means of soil conservation and has taken over much of the native habitat where there is water near the surface.

Once the genuinely great, with its usual material poverty and purity of spirit is displaced by the mere label of greatness, all sorts of spurious candidates for the label push their way in – quite understandably – and then you also get the kind of greatness that can be conferred by publicity and business acumen – Musil


Then I headed north across Eastern New Mexico (why would anyone do that – well I have a fondness for the flat land – strange when there are so many mountains so near). So next came Bottomless Lakes

The personal quality of any given creature is precisely that which doesn’t coincide with anything else – Musil

 And now I am here in Clovis and god do I hate this wind.

April 6, 2009 - Artisia NM - The Choas Cafe

The great thing about this blogging is that you can make an entry while in a rush and comeback later and revise it - which is what I am doing now. Making a few corrections and filling in some details.

I am having breakfast (it was too cold in sit in camp waiting for the sun to come up) - biscuits and gravey and chorizo - and I found an outlet to recharge my battery and an unsecured internet connection.

Chirzo in Spain is usually a fermented cured pork sausage. I argue in vain that Spain has better sausages that Italy. Every region has their specialities and there is such a variety there. Spain is in love with the pig - jamon - Case de Jamon. And no a Javalina is not a pig - it is a class (technically a family) all of its own (meaning it has no close releatives). They come through camp in packs (pigs are found in herds - so there) of half a dozen to two dozen emitting a musky smell and brouzing on the vegataion at dawn and at dusk. In Mexican cusine the chrizo comes uncooked and is generaly fried and served soft.

The only safe thing to do is nothing
And noting is what being safe is

To do good, you must, to begin with, do something – Musil

 Just time for a quick update on my travels: Big Bend - four nights in the Chisos Mountains and two at Cottonwood on the bank of the Rio Grande (Rio Brovo is you live on the other side). $5,000 fine if you cross over and it true when they show the calvary crossing over in those old western movies that you can wade across - only four feet deep right now. And where it comes through the Sante Elena canyon you can touch both walls at the same time.



Davis Mountains home of the McDonald Observatory (Jack Horkehimer with is too obvious rug sitting on an image of the moon exhulltingly extilling the night sky on your public broadcasting station). Located just past Fort Davis, Texas.



Balmorhea St Park - pool feed by one million gallon per hour spring - scuba divers explore its 25 foot natural bottom. The day I was there a woman was photographing a friend dressed in a glittering red mermaid suit - almost another Wikiwasahie Springs. The temperature is a constant 71 degrees.


Guadalupe Mtn National Park the world's largest reef system fanning out in a horseshoe enclosing the Permian Basin and exposed here in the Gaudalupes (Texas' highest elevation.




Carlsbad Caverns Nat Pk. The caverns are huge. Hunderds of thousands of Mexican free tail bats make in their home in the sumer (only about a hundered had arrived - the count from the previous night). Taking the Natural Entrance path you descend 750 feet to the Big Room (an 8.5 acre cavern). There is an elevator back to the surface (at the time of construction it was the world's larest single assent elevator - those of the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower being multy assent elevators) in 59 seconds.



Then into New Mexico - the high plains - up the eastern side - got a National Park pass and a NM park pass which includes camping - so I'm comitted now to roaming this state to recover my expenese - 36 state parks and a lot of the state that I've never seen.

And all of the pick up trucks
Scurry about like foraging ants
And the RVs are lumbering
To escape
Their ravenous fury
Along comes the family dog
Occupying the extended cab
With its big bore diesel chugging
All the family hop out to brush their teeth
There at the water spigot. They are all
Cursing about awaiting the sun
And for the fun to begin

Well back to my breakfast before it gets cold (what's the use, it already is).