The Trinity Site - These Badlands - These Red Reed Beds

The Guadalupe Mountains are part of the finest example of an ancient marine fossil reef on Earth. The reef was formed when portions of what is now Texas and New Mexico were covered by a vast tropical ocean 260 to 270 million years ago. The reef forms a 400 mile long horseshoe shape with exposed portions in the Guadalupe, the Glass and Apache Mountains. The mountains surround a rich oil region known as the Permian Basin

We realize our own nature only in the course of time – Marcel Proust – The Captive

Black rock sullen stiff
Once flowing molten glowing
Oozing imperceptibly moving
Stickedly adhering slowing flowing
Down into the red reed beds  – Tularosa


These badlands in a badcountry
Four score and fifteen years have passed
      A blast that made glass
But only a blink in geologic time
Leaving a collapsed bubble where
     Man laid fire to keep the beasts away
Staying away the heaven’s pin pricked
     Inkiness indistinguishable from
         This land - Trinity

We hear things retrospectively when we have understood them – Marcel Proust – The Captive

The dog is a good ice breaker. The Sierra woman came over and talked until the Israeli guy got their permits revised. She didn’t want to do the fifteen mile hike today, not after yesterday. She said that she was due to fly out  to Cleveland the day after next. Her mother was to have cataract surgery. The park rangers said that the best hamburger west of Chicago was in Queen. Oh, I said, I didn’t even see any buildings there. He has sent the assistant ranger there for lunch, I had passed him on my way to Dog Canyon. Fifty miles is not too far to drive for lunch in a government truck especially if the burgers are as good as he claims they are, but will the survive the trip back as good as they came off the grill or does that even matter? Oh, someone later said, everyone claims the best hamburgers in the country. Well, I said this really was in the country. I considered making the drive myself. They must be mighty good.

To understand what a sign means is not to interpret that sign…. No it is [to be] trained to react in a certain way – Laurence Goldstein – Clear and Queer Thinking, 199 p69

The lava flows at the Valley of Fires may be among the youngest on the continental US with the most recent flow occurring about 1,500 to 2,000 years ago. The lava flowed southwestward for 44 miles. Pahoehoe cover 125 square miles with scattered small areas of aa. Six rodents, five lizards and one snake have adapted to the lava with melanistic color changes to blend in with their dark rocky environment.

I thought… that it would bring us closer together when I lie to you, it’s always out of affection for you – Marcel Proust – The Captive

The neighbors came by for my campfire. I had invited them but had given up expecting them. Oh, we are not married. Not at least to each other. We left our spouses at home. We’re just friends, she says. He had been so contentious earlier, contradicting everything that I had said. But he had taken a shower and was now well behaved. God I wish this wind would cease. The temperature itself is not that bad, but, oh God, the chill factor. I heard them in the dark: “There’s no light. Maybe he has gone to bed.” I came out of my alcove in the brush – what I was calling the cave (a collapsed gas bubble in the lava) with a light in my hand. “No, no I’m over here.” And they followed me in and he wanted to came back the next day and take some pictures for his son. “Yes,” I said, “it’s the sweetest little campsite I’ve ever had. They might have to come and physical boot me out of here to get be to leave.” The two were headed next to the Guadalupes and were coming from up on the Gila after visiting the cliff houses, it was cold at that elevation espically at night they said.

To the general everything was very simple. The road to military glory ran according to the recipe at 6PM the soldier got goulash and potatoes, at half past eight the troops defecate it in the latrines and at nine they go to bed. In the face of such an army the enemy flees in panic – Janoslav Hasek –The Good Soldier Svejk p538

Words have meanings just as gold has value

Words are the burden of poems – William Carlos Williams

As the weather cools
The cacophony of this
     Coffee shop
Grows – women conversing
Intern preachers in sharing
      Experiences
Fall colors in fashion
     Are dull – earth tones
     And some purple
Blacks, whites and grays
     Are good choices
     For automobiles
There is one red one


Coffee shops attract the
     Serious minded
It is not a place to be
     Frivolous
Discussing professional
     Objectives, carrying
     Your bibles
The sincere make horrible
      Fashion statements
      So do liberals


We don’t have much time
We only have an hour and
      Fifteen minutes or a
      Little less
So let’s get to the financial
      Goals here
And she moves her finger
      Down across the sheet
      As she talks
While the other one just nods


This place is a rookery
Most trees are now without
      Leaves having returned
To their bare bones

Fear to vary from the average, fear to feel, to see, to know, to experience – safe under the opacity of a mist of equality, a mist of common mediocrity is our character – William Carlos Williams

This Grumpy Old Bear is Headed into His Cave - See you in the Spring

Thanksgiving Day – the beginning of a descent into the gloom. Solstice is the turn-around point, after which the days get longer and there returns the expectation of better times. Don’t panic – hibernate. That's why we stuff ourselves on this day – sufficient enough to become lethargic. Settle down in an easy chair and watch sports. Greg turned to me and said – we can’t even imagine what its like for our bodies to do that (he was referring to the big play of a foot-ball game on the TV). I agreed with him, I rarely do, he’s a foaming at the mouth free-marketeer. Yes, I said, that is what makes sports so beautiful. Ugh? So I explained that beauty was in part something that was incomprehensive. It was a necessary part but not sufficient factor for the quality we call beauty. Ugh? Well what Jeffery Dahmer did when he killed and ate those people was incomprehensible but it was certainly not beautiful. I’m his favorite “socialist” he says (it is not a complement). I think be means intellectual. To him Obama is a socialist. What makes him a socialist, I ask? He wants to take away from people who earned what they have and give it to those who didn’t earn it. Oh. So that is what socialism is? I was tempted to argue the point – about meritocracy and privilege and the nature of the labor/capitalist relationship – but decided to shut up and watch the game. What one believes is the truth (reality, univeral law, God given) and everything else is just ideology. I believe everything is an ideology and according to Greg that would mean that I didn't beleive in anything - so why does he think that I am a socialist then? It's a cynical attitude - calling your opposition socialist is  rhetorical positioning. Time to head for my cave.

Far from being an invention of the politically correct, victemhood has been a talking point of the right ever since Burke decried the mob’s treatment  of Marie Antoinette. The conservative, to be sure, speaks for a special type of victim: one who has lost something of value as opposed to the wretched of the earth whose chief complaint is that they never had anything to lose – Corey Robin – Conservatism and Counterrevolution from Burke to Palin

The temperature was down into the lower thirties this morning but it did not feel cold – I got up and walked the dog and later gave it a half a hot dog then I headed out to the coffee shop

Richard moved on this morning, the horses got fed; it did not freeze in the night. The wind has been intermittent. It was eleven before the clouds rolled off the top of Sierra Blanca. There is no dust blowing up from the valley. It is finely warming up. Richard said that in may have snowed up there and with the clouds moving off the peaks, yes I can confirm that it has – a dusting of the pines. It was only about ten miles as the crow flies to his place, he had said – just over Sierra Blanca but about fifty miles by the highway – back to Tullarosa and then up to Rudosa

Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman in it – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p278

Yes, I’ve been here before – on my transition from the Army to civilian life – the valley of fires – in my new 1972 Chevy truck (blue). First top along the way – Petrified Forest, Death Valley, Donner Pass, Klamath Falls, the Willamette Valley, Puget Sound. Finely winding up in Bellingham Washington where I deposited my DD-214 in a safe deposit box. I had to get a new one to apply for Veterans Medical Insurance – it was not sufficient that I received a VA disability

From all angles lines converging and crossing establish points… there is a multiplication, a quickening, a borrowing through, a blasting aside, a dynamization, a flight over – William Carlos Williams

And down at the far end of the campground, almost to where they had been bailing alfalfa yesterday is that green and purple VW hippie van that I had seen at Oliver Lee the week before. It probably belongs to that longhaired man in overhauls and slouch hat – he gets his exercise by hiking to the gate and back early every morning. Otherwise he stays inside his van. Inside his little vehicle just like that dude with the white cat also at Oliver Lee and later at Three Rivers. He stays his limit said the host and moves on. Doesn’t bother anyone.

The more interesting questions are epistemological – Lewis H Lapham – Harper’s – Nov 2010 p9

Night is better
     Or should be
     Which would be
Ideal
It requires less structure
     The less the better
Something soft to lie on
     Would be nice
But the older you get
The more you have to get
      Up out of bed and go pee


Then your nights get structure
And your days lose their's

 Day retains it meals times
But the food itself loses its appeal
When you can’t identify what it is
And you can no longer feed yourself
       Open up, open wide
              Now chew

You wanted to see yourself a way you never were. Maybe that’s a game you let people play when you love them – Lillian Hellman – Toys in the Attic, 1960

Bambi Has Fallen Into a Well Out at the Old Mitchell Place and Can't Get Out

I have been reviewing small campers (15-17 feet) Sometings I like - like two piece fiberglass construction and lots of windows and somethings I don't like like price ($50,000 for a Bambi, wow!). There seems to be about a dozen good manufacters to choose from with a price range of about $15,000. The half life of such a trailer is about 4 years (the number of years after manufacture that the trailer's used resale value is half of its original purchase price). But then those big hulking motor homes aren't much better with a half life of only six years (purchase price of $150,000 and up - that $15,000 a year excluding interest, insurances, cas, camping fees and maintenance). Used lite travel trailers seem to be in high demand and low supply - which is a problem, unless you are selling.

No two things can happen both at the same time and in the same place

I had a Roswell Alien Ale and then their Sierra Blanca nut brown last night along with a burger in town (first and only burger of the trip). I dreamed that night of a band of rouges that had invaded the campgrounds where I was camped and were in the process of slaughtering all the campers. The had not yet discovered me, or maybe they were only out to butcher the Rvers (that I could sempsympathize with). Anyway, I then work up and like I have frequently done recently I continued to the dream in a conscious state (i.e. I knew that I was dreaming buy also awake) – what should I do to escape them, what should I take with be when I made my escape? What route should I take ( I knew that I should put on my shoes and probable my clothes, perhaps take my bed roll, but if I should open the truck door they might spot the light, so I must choose among what I already had at hand)? They had not yet found me because my campsite was at a distance from all the Rvers. I would of course take the dog. Or was that a smart choice? Ethical yes, but not necessarily smart. He might bark and give my position away. Besides what use would he be to me. No I should be loyal and take him anyway. I could carry him and hold his mouth shut so that he did not give any alarm. What route should I take? Should I go into the lava beds and find a cave? Or should I skirt along the edge and find that old abandoned ranch? It was only a ridge away and there may be someone there to help. I was unable to get back to sleep until I had resolved all these question. It has only been recently that I have begun to consciously dream (or at least remember that I was consciously dreaming).

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me – Abraham Lincoln

Fort Craig: 1854-1885 – the rugged San Mateo mountains to the west and a brooding volcanic mesa punctuating the desolate Jornades de Muerta to the east. The El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was the lifeline connecting Santa Fe with Mexico City. Fort Craig was the largest US fort in the southwest in 1861 with a complement of 2,000 soldiers. Geronimo and Nana surrendered here in 1885 and then the fort was permanently abandoned. Elephant Butte Lake is the state’s largest lake and has over 100,000 visitors on memorial day weekend (which is it – Memorial or Labor day which come in the autumn?) They have lost all control – just camp anywhere off of the road – it is a nasty looking place. The lake is currently down almost 50 feet below it peak level.

Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute and it were possible by following certain scientific precepts for everybody to be rich. Whereas, riches are a power like that of electricity, action only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbor’s pocket – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p245

The dog hops in out of the sun
The dog hops out into the sun
It can’t tell the time
I could if only I wore a watch

She has mastered the art of time
She knows when to eat and when to sleep


The sun marks her day
The sun come up
The sun goes down
And at the midpoint it is noon


The sun marks the day
And the moon the night
Venus is already up when it gets dark
But she does not know that


I know what month it is although I
     Get confused about the year and
She knows what time of the month it is
     As well has whose birthday this is


The dog barks. What do you want, girl?
     Want to go for a walk? Want something
     To eat? Want to go to sleep?


Oh, you say Timmy has fallen into a well?
Where is he? Where did he fall into the well?
About a mile and a quarter out on the old Mitchell
          Road, you say?
Well lead the way girl, let’s go
         Rescue Timmy, girl.


Timmy: "Help, I‘ve fallen down and can’t get up".

And while they were smashing the king with the ace, far away at the front, kings were smashing each other with their serfs – Janoslav Hasek –The Good Soldier Svejk p538 p463

As Little of 10% or the Day Users Bolt and Rarely do Overnighters

It was not as cold last night as the night before. When I work up the dog was asleep on my tights. Later the campground host came by and asked if I’d seen a motorcyclist leave. I had seen one leave about 15 minutes before. Him I know about, he said, but did you see a second one? No, he was the only one that I had noticed. And there was only the one when I came back from town last night. He said he rarely had problems with campers but that about 10% of the day users were reluctant to pay the fee. He said that there had been another one who had come in last night but that he had only seen the one leave. He told me that his wife (we) had a poodle about the same size but he was not as portly. Well, I explained, I feed him hot dogs – the are cheaper and probably more nutritious than dog food and they have the convenience of coming in a more proportion size – I give him a half a hot dog three to four times a day.

I lie in a room and I go to work and I plan a game called getting through the day while you wait for night. The night’s for me – just for me – and I can do anything with it I want. There used to be a lot of things to do with it, good things, but now there’s a bar and another bar and the same people in each bar. When I’ve had enough I go back to my room – Lillian Hellman – The Autumn Garden

Willie Nelson whines
The lady crosses her legs
This is not pretty, I say to myself
But it has its own fascination
It’s time I remind myself
To get back to reading my Ruskin


Some habits we dearly miss
Some we wish we could do without
This is what habits remind us of
     That some things will not go away


She is a professional
Her high heels clack
A secretary perhaps – no
      Excuse me – an administrative
      Assistant
      With carpel tunnel syndrome
She goes out – clack clack
And gets into a small blue Morris Minor
Such a small car for such a big woman

RONA: If you buy furs in spring, they’re reduced. It’s very wise, Herman, to buy furs in the spring. / HERMAN: Maybe. For those who can pay for them. / RONA: Those who can pay for them don’t need to bother – Lillian Hellman – My Mother, My Father and Me

33 million years ago occurred here an eruption over 1,000 times as great as Mt St Helens. Some guy in an VW camper van pulled in below be and the big rock behind me. It was after I had gone to bed. The dog started barking. “Who’s up there? Is there someone up there?” He didn’t get up until after ten the next morning and it was almost noon before he was about. “Sorry about last night,” he said. “I didn’t know there were campsites back here.” He and his spouse go hiking among the rocks. He has his camera with a big lens on a strap around his neck.

Till Rousseau’s time, there had been no “sentimental” love of nature; and until Soctt’s, no such apprehensive love of “all sorts and conditions of man,” not in the soul merely, but in the flesh – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p498

When it wants to be my pant legs. It is engaged in a competition, four you see, for there are three other male dogs at this campground. The geese (or maybe they are cranes) are feeding up and down the Rio Grande valley – flying up and down the river all day and yesterday too. Even the Tamaracks turn color – everything turns color – yellow then brown except for the cacti.

The essence of the masses is indifference; all differences are submerged and drowned in the masses – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitudes: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, 2004 p.xiv

The computer is kaput – it won’t boot up – the hard disk has crashed I am afraid – I dropped it out in the parking lot – out of communication (no telephone reception); no computer – voice mail (even if I got a signal) wanted me to provice it with a password which I didn't have. There are two Laundromats in town in fact, the barista tells me. I like Spin City. It has a pink roof. You can’t miss it. They require a card rather than coins but you can arrange to buy a pre-paid card, she says. Third light pass Wal-Mart just before the entrance to the freeway. Turn left and it is on your left. Can’t miss it.

If you do a foolish thing, you suffer… for it exactly the same, whether you do it piously or not – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p521

Honk, honk (it is actually more of a squawk squawk) geese ( later I decide that that they may be cranes) fly up river (the Rio Grande) and later down (the Rio Grande again, the return) – feeding, sleeping and flying in-between times – squawking along, one after another – moving in small flocks (irregular groups never in perfect vees – which is one reason I have determined that they may not be geese) – moving south – moving north – first in one direction, then in the other – but at any one time they all move in the same direction. It finally warms up enough for me to remove my Pendelton and I warm up and drink the last of the coffee in the morning’s pot.

Order is a human invention to account for what the senses perceive in sequence – R P Blackmur

The Unhappy Camper and His Dog Head Home

So this older couple with a big assed 5th wheel RV and a huge diesel pickup decide they have had enough of all the generators running all night on their side of the lake – I could hear her last night complaining; I could hear the generators too. Either one or more of those generators was running all through the night. So early this morning I hear the throbbing engine of the pickup pulling their RV to my side of the lake. “You got what you wanted” “It was not what I wanted,” she replied. I could hear them pounding away and lowering the jacks and stretching the awning and rehooking the boat up behind the pickup. But they had been together a long time and he did not push his point. “Get my glasses for me. They are in the briefcase.” “Which pair,” she replied? He talked in a loud voice. And she I had of course heard in the middle of the night. Why come and bother me. I had already had someone come sneakedly into my campsite and steal some firewood in the dark and had already planned to decamp and had I not been so planning I would certainly be now. And they let their truck idle all the while – spa-putta, spa-putta putta.

To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility – Erich Hoffer – The True Believer, 1951

I got as far as Shafer and decided I just didn’t want to do it anymore – I just didn’t want to pitch the tent once more - so I am headed back. I drove five hundred miles the first day and seven hundred and fifty the next. I had the 5,000 mile service of my truck done in Alamogordo. I got in about eight last night.

I felt that my life with Albertine was on the one hand, when I was not jealous, noting but boredom, and on the other hand, when I was jealous, nothing but pain – Marcel Proust – The Captive

The problem is usually not with the theory but one’s understanding of the theory – one’s perception of one’s options that are exercisible  More precisely, the problem is the derth of an adequate theoretical understanding – then on the other hand maybe theory is just not implemental (any theory) to begin with – theory being abstract and implementation concrete. Implementation is constrained by organizational considerations and the will of those doing the implementation. Systems demand simplicity and compatibility and can and do eradicate memories of their failures. And I just wanted to have fun.

Wars, we believe, are like street fights, on a grand scale with the central stragegic challenge being to beat up the bad guys – Gideon Rose – How Wars End, 2010 p2.

Grey, wet and dreary
The litter of leaves


Forties big bands
I’m in the mood


The broad width of
Her withers
Legs akimbo


Bouncing up and down
On grandpa’s knee

His face was sandpaper
Even when he had just shaven

And he insisted on
    Rubbing our noses in it

Nine-tenths of our lives is well forgotten in the living… of the part that is remembered, the most had better not be told: it would interest no one, or at least not contribute to the story of what we ourselves have been – William Carlos Williams – The Autobiograpy

They shift – moving from the west
     Unto the east when they reverse
It’s not just the transition from arboreal
     To the prairie and back
It is also the business opportunities
     That these different ecosystems provide
What they stock in the general store
      For example
The ranch supply store to the farm
      Implement dealer
While In our cities its paycheck cashing
      To lawn fertilizer and ornamental
                      Shrubs

[A Declaration is a speech act that] changes the world by declaring that a state of affairs exists and thus bringing that state of affairs into existence – John E Searle

To travel by carriage
Four good horses in stages
A driver and at least one
     Postillion maybe two
An advance courier
     To make arrangements
      And pay the bills
            At the next stop
The servants in back
       All in black
Then there was mama and papa
           And me and Mary
The courier also served
          As our tour guide
Farther liked large rooms
Mother liked clean rooms
      And I like a view


“Why travel to see less
         Than we may?”

“Border Patrol told us to report them if they demand food… [but if they ask for water] give it to them, and send them on their way" – William Powers – The Atlantic, Nov 2010 p.40

The nights are getting cold and I'm getting tired

Back in Kansas City after two day drive from Stafford Arizona. I dropped my computer and the hard disc crashed (did I make a backup? Of course not. Not since at least Sept 1). The nights were getting cold and long and I got tired. Screw this! I just didn't feel like pitching the tent again. So here I am back - looking for a new computer.