Why So Many Dog Canyons

In Alamagordo on my way to Three Rivers National Petroglyph Site coming from Oliver Lee. I only made  it up Dog Canyon a quarter of a mile. Last time I made it to the line shack at 2.9 miles. I considered stopping in Lincoln National Forest but every nook and cranny was packed with the RVs and pick-up trucks  with hunters riding around on quads with big bellies and wearing camaflauge (I'd wear red - or dayglow orange, if I were them).  Its deer hunting season and all the deer have gotten out of the way by now. Spent two nights barely in Texas (1,000 feet on the other side of the New Mexico state line – Guadalupe Mtns National Park – Dog Canyon Campground). The National Parks all prohibit dogs on their trails. So what’s Trail Dog to do? We stayed two nights and moved on – besides it was cold up there at 6200’ and it had rained the day before. Several hikers came back off of the ridge having been defeated by the fierce winds. Now I and the dog are just fine. It was seventy degrees at 11 and I slept without the rain fly on the tent watching the full moon rise and watching the full moon set. What is a Dog Canyon? I'm not sure but there sure seems to be a lot of them here abouts.

Fall, when women
Put on
     Long pants
     Wear sweaters
Drink tall cups of
     Cappuccinos
Sit around the table
     And talk
Anything can be
     Performance
So long as it mundane
So long girls, gotta get
    My husband off
         To LA


The tall one in the grey
     Stretch pants
Went out and got into
     A black SUV
She drove away


She tasted of cigarettes and expensive food. I tasted of cigarettes and cheap food. But both kinds of food were good – Roberto Bolańo – The Savage Detective, 1998 p73

Lonnie came by – how’s the fishing he want’s to know? Ain’t even trying, I say. Just as well, he informs be, cause there isn’t any. The lake is shallow and the summer was hot and there hasn’t been any rain nor wind to stir up the surface and aerate the water. They all died off. How long ago was that, I ask? Bot four years now. There are a bunch of small channel cat from the hatchery but they only gain a pound a year. So, I say, won’t be for another four or five years that fishing will be decent again. That explains why there are no boats out there. But if the pelicans get enough shad there won’t be enough for the game fish to eat, I add. Them pelicans are might good at fishing. I’ve been watching them. Besides, he says, it ain’t agonna come back like it was before it has come all silted up from the construction they are doing or Route 11 – up to your knees, and he shows me. The flock of pelicans are a white glistening flurry flapping of wings on the horizon –settling down, rising up, circling around – about a mile across, about a mile away (take about 30 minutes to drift this way). Lonnie had sold his farm up near Liberal. Bought a place in town down here. First started coming here about eleven years ago.

False ideological propaganda… preserves within people outdated structures of feeling and thinking whilst forcing new experiences upon them. It transforms them into puppets – whilst most of the strain brought about by the transformation remains politically harmless as inevitable ‘incoherent’ frustration. The only purpose of such propaganda is to make people deny and then abandon the selves which otherwise their own experience would create – John Berger – Selected Essays, 2001 p79

The income gap between the top 20% of earners and those below the poverty line has doubled since 1968 when it was 7 to 1. Based on pre-tax income and excluding capital gain it now is 14 to 1. The poverty gap between the young and the old has doubled since 2000.

Money acquires its own virtue – and, on its own terms, demonstrates its own tolerance – John Berger – Selected Essays, 2001 p157

Up into the eighties yesterday. I didn’t even put on the rail fly.I saw a shooting star while lying in bed. When I got up the sun was only a glow in the eastern sky. I toured the cavern. I was the only one (besides the guide). I couldn’t get her to talk other than that she was from near the panhandles and that she had been doing this for 21 years. So let see now, if you did on average two tours a day that would be about 20,000 tours that you have conducted. Not that many, she said. I don’t necessarily do them every day.

Unity in a work of art is achieved as a result of the limitations of the medium – John Berger – Selected Essays, 2001 p99

What is human, has now being assigned to the machine to perform

Encounters with nature of the ultimate super intense type seem to morph into something like… extreme sports – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006a p215

They want to know how I managed to do that without an assureity bond. I have a relative (my father in fact) who a trustee of the institution. I am technically still employed here, I tell them and although I have been laid off, I am still on the payroll for another month. Both my father and a representative of the union testified on my behalf. And besides it was not I who would be liable if the contract was not fulfilled but my former employer An officer of the firm accepted by assurance that I would make restitution for any reimbursement for which they may be responsible as a result of my actions. I had gotten into the back office through a teller’s window and had chatted up an acquaintance (a former mate). He told me about another mate (a fellow alumnus) who now had just received a management internship here. Should I make contact with her and congratulate her? He told me that her name was Jeannie Wise. I was unable to place that name. No I don’t think I went to school with here, but you can’t tell with women because they often change their names. No I don’t think I knew her in either Washington or Colorado, maybe it was in Oklahoma?

I know now, it was Jeannie that drove that big beige Cadillac. A short stocky girl with blond hair. No, I don’t think I’ll send her a note. I’m retiring from this profession. It’s time to move on. I started to leave by the same window that I had entered, but one of the officers invited me to exit through the door. It was marked “authorized officials only” and no one below the rank of assistant manager was allowed to use it. I can see the room in my mind’s eye – the table tops and desk have white marble tops with black graining in them. On the back wall is a mural of a beach with sailboats just offshore. There is a woman sunbathing on the beach. She is lying on a red and white-stripped towel. She looks so real. I want to help her oil herself. I walked out the door instead.



A constitution sustained by representations can never get enough. It needs to have too much – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p190



Do you have an amber? Amber is a color. Other brew pubs have an amber. Well it is a color and not a type of beer. You’re just being a hard ass. No, amber is a color. What are you looking for in a beer? Something malty. Something like an ESB. That would be our Pony Express ale. Although we don’t currently have it available. Here try this. Have I had it already? No. Is it an Albatross? No, an Emperor Norton. Ok, diffidently a lager. I am not real fond of lagers this one is not bad for a lager

No dainty dolce affetuso I, / Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-nak’d, forgidding, I have / arrived / To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe – Walt Whitman – The Complete Poems, 1975 p61

At McDonald's Again in a Conditional Situation, Hooking Up with Their Wi-Fi

Santa Rosa, New Mexico - came up out of the canyon (Wells Canyon of the Candaian River) and back in to civilication. I wana go back - but I ran out of beer. Right out there in the grassy grassy plains is this 1500 chasm - but I don't recommend going down there without ahigh ground clarance . Clayton Lakes donsarur tracks and the hightest point in Oklahoma. Still have'n had a freezng night - 72 derees - 43 last night. I have enough fire wood for at least a week, I can get enough beer to last as long also - the problem is the ice - it only last two to three days. Now if it would only get cold and freeze I would'nt have to worrry about that - just snuggle but the sleeping bag and read for it's a three dog night (but wait I've only got this little lap dog and he needs me to keep him warm).


It is easy to stomach
What we ruthlessly exclude
      From our diet
Disgust must remain
      Inert
Relentlessly giving preference
      To lofty mountains
      Over swampy lowlands
Ignorance after all is our
      Best guide

The objects and places and mannerism that constitute our life-world are ‘intentionally’ representational. What culture traditionally provided was taken-for-granted custom, a form of necessity – hence of reality. Options are profoundly, if subtly different and so are the people who live among and through them – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p15

Authority always knows for we are the authority
The Super-ego knows all
The Super-ego torments
       The sinful ego

We are all method actors now – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p11

It is centenary of the sinking of the Titantic (or soon will be) and now the story is coming out that it was a preventable cover-up – a technical mistake by the helmsman and the highest ranking surviving officer did not want to embarrass the White Star Line. It seems that it was common practice to have two set of steering mechanisms – the backup system was based on that used by the older sailing ships and turned in the opposite direction from the modern one. When the helmsman was given directions to veer away from the iceberg he seems to have used the backup system and operated in the manner of the primary system – thus he turned into the iceberg rather than away from it. The ship could still had four minutes left when the mistake was discovered but no order was give to stop or turn the vessel while there was still time to avoid catastrophic damage (it might have stayed afloat until rescue efforts could have been affected

There is only so much a human being can pay attention to in a given moment, obviously, that’s what “paying attention” means, for God’s sake – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p202

I am in a blue funk – I was jovial and outgoing and now I’m standoffish and aloft. I wonder why everyone seems to avoid me. I’m trying to make contact and when you most want it intimacy is withdrawn. I turn to my writing. It makes life bearable for the moment. For a few moments you are present. You are here. You are not wishing that you could skip into some future moment – a time when you might feel a little bit connected. I am not wishing at all and that is nice. I am just slowing taking one breath at a time – breath in, breath out. It is a summer evening and it has just showered. It is the first shower in a while. I can smell the dust. I can smell roses. I am transposed to a pond under a full moon. I am walking the perimeter with a flashlight and a stick with a locust thorn attached. You shine the flashlight into theri eyes and while the frog is transfixed you pierce his lungs with your gig and he lets out an ugh.

You have a coffee can full of crawdads. You dangle a ball of bread dough on a string. You have an old mayonnaise jar full of fireflies. You have been stuffing June bugs into the mailbox beside the front door. They are clamoring out. You are stuffing them back in by the handful. It is a hot muggy night. Phil bangs on the upright piano. Dave is turning the pages. Scott is off for his first day of work. Michael is pessimistic about getting his parking pace back. My mental state? I’m tired and listless. My eyelids feel heavy. I walk across the park munching on French fired right out of the bag.

I come to you / wearing one shoe / what could I do / the other one was on my prick – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems, 1971 p380

Americans way underestimate the concentration of wealth in this country. Thy have the sense that the top 20% control no more than 30% of the wealth. They believe that it would be un-American for them to own more than 60% of the wealth. They are ignorant of the actual concentration, which is 84% and believe this group’s tax breaks (which already average $210,000) should be extended.

You would think that the best things in life were free / but they’re the worst, even the air is dirty / and its this “filth of life” that coats us against pain – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems, 1971 p385

The only important history is the history that you do not know

This century changed into a bird ascends like Jesus / Devils in pits raise their heads to watch it – Apollainaire

ANALYTICAL THEORY


Hunger is self-preservation
Love is the preservation
Of the species


Ego – instincts and object–
Instincts confront each other
Ego – instincts have no
Libidinal purpose
Neurosis is the triumph
Of the ego


All contradictory theories
Have been subsumed by
The concept of Narcissism


Then I invented the Pleasure
Principle


I drew the conclusion, that, besides the instinct to preserve living substances
and to join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct
seeking to dissolve those unites and bring them back to the primeval, inorganic
state - Sigmund Freud


Hence the death instinct
A reconciliation allowing
An explanation based on:


The concurrent or mutually opposing action of these two instincts


Restrictions on the Eros
Result in division
The instinct outward
Towards aggression
And destruction
Destroying the other rather
Than the self

Maybe – as with nature, so with culture – there’s a limit – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p261

Atheists and agnostics it turns out know more about religion (even the religion of those who profess it) than do any other groups in America. The best educated tend to be the most knowledgeable. Atheists and agnostics tend to be relatively well educated. Jews and Normans ranked just below them in knowledge about religion – followed by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, unaffiliated (but not atheist or agnostic), black Protestants and Latino Catholics according to Pew Research. But this begs the question – does education tend to decrease traditional religious belief or does an native curiosity lead to higher educations and hence a diminution of traditional belief? Maybe there is no casual relationship (although a correlation) between educations and beliefs? We just don’t know. We may never know.


If you add infinity to infinity, you get infinity. If you mix the sublime and the creepy, what you end up with is creepy – Roberto Bolańo – The Savage Detective, 1998 p450

Build It and They will Use it - Wher else Have they to Go

Guymon Oklahoma - in the panhandle - agriculture and natural gas and flat flat land. I took a picture. Tried hard to find a tree or a bush for a foreground

By law national wildlife refuges are closed to all public use activities unless expressly permitted. Boats are not allowd in rivers and creek channels. Boats used for recreational activity must be moved from the refuge daily. Designated areas will be closed to hunting, fishing and hiking. Some areas wil lbe closed to all form of public entry. All refuge access in prohibited after dark unless specifically authorized by the refuge manager.

Pelicans by the thousands - must have been a square mile of them - they fish, they know how to fish, they keep rising just above the water and circulingly around driving the shad into the main flock and then they settle down and another group on the perferiary takes off - slowly moving across the lake. The guy at the liquor store lectured me on how alumunium cans causes altzheimers. It's not like it was when we were young, he say's. You have grey hair, you know, I can tell. The cranes are just arriving. In the fall and spring migrations there may be up to 100,000 birds on the lake

The National Wildlife Refuge System began in 1903 with the 3 acre Pelican Island Bird Reservation in Florida. Today there are 93 million acres in 548 seperate reguges.

Water travels thourgh salt saturated sand and comes to the surface where it evaporates, leaving a crust of salt. This is the only place in th ewotrld where hourglass shaped sand inclusions may be found in most selenite crystals. Everyone reaches for a marketing ploy. Alabaster Caverns proclaims that it is the larges alabaster cavern in the world and the only one with black alabaster the regularrly offer tours.

It is a habitate for approximately 300 species of birds - 32,030 acres divided into nonvegetated salt flats, open water, marsh woods, grasslands and cropland. Many ponds and marshs have been built to encourage the growth of wild millet, alkali bulrush, and smartweed that waqterfowl use for food

40 gardeners, trimmers and cloners of medical marijuana recently joined Local 70 of the Teamsters Union and will now get a pension, paid vacation and health insurance

The day begun in a soft gray way / with elephantine traffic trudging along Fifth / and two packages of Camels in my pocket / I can’t think of one interesting thing Warren / G Harding did, I guess I was passing notes / to Sally and Agnes at the time he came up / in our elephantine history course – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems, 1971  p354

What is the basis of the “birthers” belief that President Obama is not a US citizen. Why don’t he release a copy of his birth certificate, they are demanding. But he did, a certified copy was released in 2007 and since substantiated by the State of Hawaii as an authentic copy of his one and only certificate in the archives of the state – born in Honolulu Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Now they claim that it is not a copy of the “original” birth certificate and that the use of the phrase “certificate of live birth” is not equlivant to one’s “birth certificate” To a conspiracy fanatic all evidence is treated as a further attempt of a cover-up. The ‘fact’ that there is a conspiracy is sufficient enough to demonstrate that all counter-evidence is also part of the original plot.

Real isn’t real enough – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p102

Skyblue berries juniper

Chockcherries and walnuts

            In their husks

Cottonwoods demarcate

            The watershed

The insistent wind

            Piles up snow

Everything lies low

            And waits

The development which converged at the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe changed the meaning of both time and space… For the first time the world, as a totality, ceased to be an abstraction and became ‘realizable’ – John Berger – Selected  Essays, 2001 p74

65% of adult cell phone users keep their phones within reach while they sleep – 90% of young adults (ages 18-29) sleep with their phones within reach

If you deal only with digital interlocutors it may take more time but you can do it in your underwear – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p175

Education is an agricultural endeavor – consider its metaphors

And then one of them opened the bottle and poured forth the nectar of the gods into our respective glasses, the same ones we’d been drinking from before, which some consider a sign of sloven lives and others the ultimate refinement, since when the glass is, shall we say, glazed with mescal, the tequila is more at ease, like a naked woman in a fur coat. Salud then!, I said. Salud, the said – Roberto Bolańo – The Savage Detective, 1998 p281

In the hinterland

In the wasteland

On the borderland

To withstand the odor of sanctity

Is to suffer the stench of vulgarity

In my allegiance to Nietzsche

I defected from Wagner

Disillusioned with autocratism

I turned by back on it all

Separate

A part

Depart

Embark

Entrain

Deplane

Aloof

Aloft

Atop

I am … a hydrogen bomb to tiny / to make an eye water – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems, 1971  p376

Terrorists Are Out There To Stymie Our Numbing Routines

She said that this was the last day for which the temperature was supposed to be in the seventies. A lot of people stop by on the way into work – they don’t all seem to have to go in as early on Fridays as the do on other days. Some don’t have to go in at all on Fridays. The woman getting chemo said that she didn’t. I’m of a mind to get back on the road. The coming cold weather is intimadating, but that is exactly why I should. I’ll look for a little travel trailer along the way – I’m headed towards New Mexico. It’s cold and it snows at high elevation. My own little snug corner of the world so long as I have a propane heater. The little dog has long fur but his paws get cold and he hops around on three feet - holding up one at a time out of the snow

The country is the city without houses, the city merely a kissed country, a hamster choices / whether if you own forty cats or just three snakes you’re rich – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems, 1971 p339

Walter wants to produce an all purpose food product that he plans on calling Toasty Toes. It is a multipurpose food, he says – a breakfast cereal, chips for dipping or you can put them in a blender and make them into a drink. Everyone wants Toasty Toes is his slogan – but he fears he may be infringing on Frito-Lay’s trade name.

Performanative habitualities in a mediated adulthood that dims down the horizon of options through immersion in a numbing routine that allow many of us to feel relatively real – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p189

The Texas School Board is to vote on whether calling Medieval European crusaders “invaders” or “attackers (which is true) is a pro-Islamic biase that might encourage their gun-toting children to become jihadists

In real life one is usually a passive victim, whereas in the adventure story one can think of oneself as being at the centre of events – George Orwell – Dickens, Dali and Others, 1946 p212

Where rationality is silent; irrationality goes on a wilding

Devoted followers are anachronistic in a world that’s made for devoted fans – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p105

Democrats tend to believe that compromising with people who you disagree with is a virtue while Republicans tend to believe it is not a virtue and that one should stick to one’s position. Those who identify with the Tea Party are the most skeptical of compromise (Pew Research)

Systematically conditioned by media to avoid anything that [they] couldn’t understand in a minute, these multitudes have learned to think of their indifference and ignorance as sturdy commonsense. They have internalized the flattery heaped upon them by generations of political shysters, serving various agendas all of which have this in common: they rely on the nation’s civic laziness. The vaunted “wisdom of the American people”… is the more to be cherished for being there by definition, effortlessly acquired, no tedious study, no demanding ethical reflection required, yet another convenience in a convenient world – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p170

The whole mother bug
Sprung from the mud


The entire left femur
Was burning with fever


The brightest enamel paint
Of underhanded complaints


Tacky to the touch
No longer feeling it within reach


Sheer speed and lives on the line. That’s the recipe for feeling good – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p192

Women’s Representation in national government: (%):


Country        lower chamber upper chamber    cabinet
Germany           33                            60
Rwanda            56             35
Spain             37                            53
Bolivia           25             39             50
Argentina         39             47
Denmark           23             47
Cuba              41
Netherlands       41
Norway            40                            50
Costa Rica        39
Mozambique        39
Angola            38
Switzerland       29
United Kingdom    22
United States     19             17

The growth of ‘realism’ has been the great feature of the intellectual history of our own age – George Orwell – Dickens, Dali and Others, 1946 p219

I reach into my pocket
      To check my mobile phone
      For the current time
But remembered it is at
      Home being recharged
      Which I should have done
            Overnight
There’s a clock on the wall
But I can’t see it from here
       But I’ll take a look
       When I get up to go pee
             Which I must do soon
And besides I say to myself why do
       I care as to what time it is
But I must because I’m
      Making such a fuss
I do and I did and its
      Three minutes pass eleven
      On Monday morning

I was NEVER so upset / as when last I met // another idiot walking by / with much the same preoccupations as I – Robert Creeley – The Collected Poems, 1945-1975, 1982 p470