The Calico Cat and the Gingham Dog

Filling sandbags today? Yep! Don’t they have a machine that does that yet? Filling sandbags is this community's equivalent to a charity bazaar. It is their regular community building ropes course. The river is due to crest at somewhere between 30 and 39 feet. The big flood of 1991 was thirty-three (I was later corrected - forty-three) feet. The prognosis on the crest  and its timing changes daily but everyone agrees that the breaks in the levee up-river does not diminish the height of the crest but only affects its timing. All that water eventually has to go somewhere – meaning downstream – it will eventually all pass right by here. The question is when?

Like most black-glove cops, [he] believed implicitly that if you ever backed down even for a moment in dealing with assholes and scrotes the entire structure of American law enforcement would crash to the ground in a mushroom cloud of dust – Joseph Wambaugh – The Choirboys, 1975 p30

Dave was telling me that Esmeralda’s real name is not Susan. Nor is Susan’s name Esmeralda (I had been calling her Susan except in my mind where I thought of here as an Esmeralda). It is Trisha and she resents serving assholes but is learning not to not show it so much he explains. She is learning how to perform service all on her own, he says. Dave says that he should know because he grew up in New Orleans where excellent service was the norm. Trisha, he says, is learning that service in itself is not demeaning. It’s just a way to make a living. The secret I say is not to observe yourself. He agrees. And I think that Dave has his own ideas about what kind of service he would have liked Trisha to have performed. The only thing that she had ever done for me was draw me a beer and she had always smiled when she sat it down if front of me.

America’s  most resent great achievement was the conversion of a comatose economy into the world’s greatest war machine and that had happened the better part of a century ago.

Sandbagging is pretty much complete – now for the wait – wait for the river to rise – sometime in the next week, someone says. The high water will last into August.

“The future / is all around us.” // It’s a place // any place / where we don’t exist  - Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p68

The Calico Cat and the Gingham Dog

Simple language does not lie

Truth requires complexity

Falsehood demands details

Agent based interpretation of complex events… appears to represent a default strategy of the human mind – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p49

Dial a 1-800 number at random – you have a 33% chance of hearing an advertisement for phone sex

We sleep together in the dark / but confuse light with love – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p103

Unlike the other apes (man, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas) orangutans prefer the use of their left hands

It is very curious to be curious. History is curious it is very curious to be history – Gertrude Stein – Stances in Meditation, 1957 p213

Having finished their cigarettes the musicians dribble back in – it is spoken word time at The Poetry Center – with music. This was the type of thing the Beat did so well in dark cellars wearing berets and dark sunglasses (I read just today that the US Army was abandoning the black beret and going back to the field cap. A ten year experiments as one soldier said of wearing a wet sock on your head – It had been a democratic process. The brass surveyed the men to find out what they liked and didn’t like – I’m sure that there were other things that they didn’t like). Someone when down stairs – the Poetry Center is on the fifth floor – to put up a sign. Someone wandering about might hear the horns from an open window – the sign was to invite them up just in case they might be curious. I don’t know that anyone was. I once heard an African rite taking place in a warehouse in Lisbon along the Targus and wondered what would happened if I just wandered in, but there was no sign saying that that would be OK so I didn’t. I would have liked to have seen this sign in many places but didn’t. Lots of opportunities missed. But then I don’t recall every having seen such a sign and wandering in either. And I was already here. So the sign didn’t do me any good either.

I’ll take the M train downtown. Walk to the Rex on Sutter. Hear Marcus Shelby.  I already have tickets – season ticket holder.  It will be my third concert today. They were only into their first piece here and I was already plotting my route to my next gig: the M line to Powell St Station, walk up Powell to Sutter and turn right. Walk for half block. Stop for a happy hour beer along Powell if and only if there is time or go up Sutter and investigate the White Horse. I noticed it before but had not stopped. Then I said to myself, “hold it buddy, hold it right there”. “This is now and that is then and you can only be at one place at a time and that is not there.” So I get into the groove and my mind didn’t wonder off again any more. I was getting lost but at least I knew where I was which was here. And when they blow the last note I will smile and said I was there.

It’s already  6 O’clock when I got downtown. By the time that I get to the Rex no time will be remaining to enjoy a happy hour anywhere. I get Oregon Porter at the Rex bar.

Knight Bachelor – a man knighted by the British Monarch but not a member of one of the organized orders of chivalry. There is no female counterpart. Most entertainers who have been knighted are allowed the honorific “Sir” due to their Knights Bachelor rather than their membership (which is generally as a junior member – ‘Commander’ or ‘Officer’) in an Order-of-Chivalry

We can only seek to do justice to a name, not to find its truth. Since a name has no signification, only a designatory function – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p160

Burning kerosene – jet fuel

Two pilots in mock combat

Race pirouette their crafts

Through my overhead space

They won’t go away

They won’t leave me alone

I want to smack them

            With a fly swatter

Sometimes they whine

Roaring as they make

            To run away

A red shift makes them invisible

            Except to the ears

It’s when they are far away

Or come in low that

            They really roar

It is quiet at this moment

They have returned to base

            To take on more fuel

The course of events must assume a certain definable shape, and until it is in a phase where some aspect is an accomplished fact, news does not separate itself from the ocean of possible truth – Walter Lippmann

“Marx was right,” I turned to Brian and said. “Money cranks the handle of the reality machine.” “Nice metaphor,” he replied

Thought is non-productive labor, and hence does not show up as such on the balance sheet except as waste – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p175

Two-thirds of all college grads in 2008 had accumulated a debt in obtaining their education. The average debt of a graduating student is $23,000. And then are all those who never graduate and there debts.

[The] surge lifted all yachts if not all boats – Lizzy Ratner – The Nation 2/14/11 p12

An abstract God

Is Just

            Another dollar

An insignificant

            Certificate

All consciousness is consciousness of language in its heterogeneous multiplicity. Understanding and misunderstanding, as it were, are entwined as the conditions of linguistic interaction – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p156

Tell me one more lie

            To counter all that

            You have already told

Tell me one more lie

            To console me

            Once again

Tell me one more lie

            That you do love me

            And always will

Tell me one more lie   

            That you won’t lie anymore

            That that was your last deceit

Tell me one more lie

            So that I won’t be

            Unhappy anymore

We can only agree to disagree if we can establish agreement concerning what it is that we are agreeing about and we can only establish communication if we can ascertain that we are in communication without first communicating that fact – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p182

Doing What I Must - When I Get Around to It, If I Ever Do.

I don’t like getting up until the sun is shinning into my tent. Now when it’s cold – say 35⁰ like it is at this moment it is hard to get up. They said it snowed here the other night. It takes the dog a while to wake up. I say ‘morning dog’ and it stretches and wobbly hops from the lounge chair onto my cot. I tuck it inside the sleeping bag with me and it stretches and I scratch him on his head and it yawns, a big yawn. Then it naps for a while longer. In a few minutes it will insist on getting up and when it finds it can’t get outside it will begin to bark. “Time to get up” I say and it hops up on the cot and onto my chest and tries to nip at my nose.  If it gets hold of it that will most likely hurt. It’s time, it insists for its morning walk. It is time to check to see if any other dog and been trespassing on its territory. It’s time to go and pee on its boundary markers. Refresh its ownership.

Uncle Iv Owens: he done / what he could / when he got round / to it – Jonathan Williams –Jubilant Thicket, 2005, p177

I have some rowdy neighbors – midnight drunks -don't quiet down until they pass out and fall flat on their faces. Topple over into their campfire. Fortunately it has gone out. Are they also bad parental role models I heard all evening – always hollering – forever making idle threats – If you don’t settle down…, come here now…, stop that this instance…, do what your told… we are going to leave, pack up the truck and go home. I mean it. You behave or we will leave. And when they get the boys settled down for the night they are the ones I think who have turned into the mean drunks. Do what your mother says, the old man chimed in backing up his wife for once, or we’ll go home. I mean it. That was the only time I heard him, so I can’t tell for sure if it’s the same voice as that of this drunk - voices in the night. Walking across the road and joining the couple over there. It’s mostly the men making all of this noise. I only occasionally hear a plaintive female voice. I eventually manage to fall asleep.

What appears to constitute change is actually the unfolding of a code implicit form the outset – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p69

I am unable to gain passage through Apache territory. I am turned back by a stern face emerging from a parked SUV and waving. I was trying to make a U-turn but he evidently thought I was trying to evade him. Just trying to cut across to the National Forest and he waved me back – back off the reservation – his reservation. He had a very stern face - being treated as the 'other' is never nice. Being on the reverse side of privilege - where white is not always right, is disconcerting.  It was useless to try and explain. He refused to even speak - just looked stern and motions towards the direction I had come. His intent was clear and precise. I was the Outsider.

In the planetary imperialism of technologically organized man, the subjectivism of man attains its acme, from which point it will descend to the level of organized uniformity and there firmly establish itself. This uniformity becomes the surest instrument of total, i.e. technological, rule over the earth – Martin Heidegger – The Question Concerning Technology and other essays, 1977

Writing is the act of being conscious of the conscious mind – the act of actually doing this is rare

The train halts. An engineer tells us we’re stopped because we’ve lost touch with the outside world. Things are happening ahead, but we don’t know what they are – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p84

Walter brings in for show and tell a 1:18 scale model of the new VW bus. He says that the real one is not out yet (this was in 2004). He prefers rear wheel drive, he says. This one has front wheel drive. Oh well, he announces, I still like it anyway. He goes burr, burr and drives his imaginary VW bus around the coffee shop. Walter has been staying up late at night with his credit card in hand enamored with e-bay. Can you see me driving this, he says. Of course I would have to be a little smaller. The Eritrean mother and daughter next to me look towards Walter and snicker. They probably have their village idiots too.

Money money money bolo - ching, ching - money, money bolo -- uhee - money, money bolo - sheaka - money, money… I’m trying to figure out how to write ‘sound’. I know it is not with capital letters and I know that the quote marks are unnecessary, but you can not write pure sound anymore than you can pure color. It needs some context. It is the contrast - subject versus object.

He does not receive any and this is a grief to him because he would liked to be rich – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p219

It’s a dreary looking day

Everyone is so somber

They sit quietly and read

Two men are more animate than the rest

            They talk about ‘their’ churches

Whenever two or more shall

            Gather in my name they shall

            Constitute an unlawful assembly

The lady over there munches on a chip

            That she has extracted from a

            Single serving bag of “Miss Vicky’s”

                        (Frito Lay, Dallas Texas)

And then wipes her hand politely on

            A paper napkin. A phone rings

            Then she gets up and leaves

A man in a jogging suit (once called

            A leisure suit) is at the counter

            Placing his order, then he walks

Back and forth like he has to pee

This place is more alive than I

            At first had thought. Brand name

            Logos are awash. Even

God has his

Many believe / whatever happens is the other half / of a conversation – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p84

The three classes: the capitalist, the managerial and the popular

We are more free than we used to be… but we can no longer see what it is that our freedom is freedom from – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p164

The CIA killed at least 607 people in Pakistan last year and of that number only two of the reputed dead’s names appeared on a list of US most-wanted terrorists

Men who wish to know about the world, the philosopher had said, must learn about it in its particulars – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p1

The death of liberalism resulted from a rise of suspicion

We always function in society before we understand what it means to do so, and that we do so until death – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p148

It’s sunny – now!

It will make sense, now

It doesn’t ever

It never makes sense

            Anymore

Any sense now or ever

We do it forever – now and then

We have a feeling – now and again

It is not new – now

It was not then - forever

Now, what do you

            Say?

It’s sunny, by the way

Have I already said this?

Did I say it before?

Now, say what have you

            To say?

It’s your turn. Say what
             You have to say
NOW!

Word comes into contact with word – M Bakhtin

A Mediated Wilderness Adventure and a Turkey Dinner

Another bright day – no ice on the wash buckets – it did not freeze during the night. Spring is coming up here in the high country – the aspens are starting to leaf. This has been the longest drought I’ve ever known, said the old man. There was talk of hunting deer. Went up Dog Canyon beyond the line shack. It got me in trouble with the wife one Thanksgiving day. He had told her he was going hunting. Be back in time for dinner, she had said. He had promised her that he would. But he got the biggest buck that he had ever shot and they were further up the canyon than they thought, past the old line shack almost to the Mescalero Apache Reservation. By the time they came dragging in proud of their feat she was furious – having missed the turkey spread that she had worked all day to prepare.

Experience is never immediate or direct but is always mediated by organizing patterns and structures – – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p67

I went into Santa Fe and got the 10,000 service (AutoCare -first 25,000 miles free) for my truck. I got the taillight fixed too – Trail Dog got some treats – all the ladies ughed and awhed over him - It’s always like this I say to Frank, the service manager – Now I see, he says. I need a little dog too. Got on the Internet – updated Facebook – I had 171 E-Mails. Then after breakfast at Denny’s I headed back towards the mountains. My face felt hot when I had been indoors – It’s because it is sunburnt, I think – But I feel no pain. When one get older one always feels some pain – and one or two more aren’t even noticeable.

Windy is not weather / Rain which is weather / Sunshine which is weather / Dry wind is not also weather – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p222

It was windy and warm yesterday. Today there is no wind. It is sunny today. The weather is perfect for once. This elevation has me winded. America’s Conservation Corp has a group of young people out here building a trail. Young kids? Not exactly. College students. I talked with a young woman from Germany – so how much trail did you build today? She thought for a while. Then she replied, oh, maybe ten meters. They are all camped over at the group site in a ring of two man (person) tents everyone (i.e. tent) a different color. In the morning and in the evening they hike between their camp and their work site. Unlike the seven dwarfs they don’t do it as a group nor do they sing. Not as a group but singularly and in small clumps – you can observe relationships developing by watching the pairings as they occur. I can hear the tamping of hammers and the hewing of axes during the day off in the trees. They walk along the stream bank and pass by my campsite. They have six days left to finish this project. I heard a tree fall early this morning.

The time of education is still addressed in general under the terms of a modernist meta-narrative that has lost its purchase: the passage from ignorance to enlightment in a particular time span – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p127

The ideal worker

            Labors contently

            At low wages

Which is best accomplished

By eliminating all his options

           

The search for the

            Ideal worker

            Goes on – Some employers

Dream of robotics

A Zombie is  a bio-robot

But the ones in the movies

            Are too dumb.

At least they don’t need

            Food nor shelter

Which is good. But they

            Refuse to work during

            Daylight and they are

Too awkward for assembly

            Line work

There’s got / to be more in a picture / than the billboard sight / we first / get // of it – Jonathan Williams – Jubilant Thicket, 2005 p268

The knowledge is dependent on how much you already know. The information is dependent on how much you don’t already know

The jacaranda, for instance is beautiful / but not serious. // That much / I can guess – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000  p20

A great poet becomes profound and then dies. Some poets are occasionally profound and never die

Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it – G W F Hegel

Tax the rich; they have all the money. If you try to tax the poor, you will go broke.

The curious homeopathy of American politics… means we need a large does of the same poison - Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011 p8

Five Economic Myths:

1)             The Great Moderation: we have tamed economic bubbles

2)             Efficient Market Hypothesis – the price is always right

3)             Dynamic Stochastic Equilibrium – monetary mechanism can match supply and demand to mitigate inflation before unemployment

4)             Trickle-Down Economics – economic intervention should always help profit-making

5)             Privatization – a worldview and first principle of Capitalism

Ruling ideas arise not from their persuasive power or inner logic but from the interest of ruling groups – Joshua Clovers – The Nation 4/23/11 p32

One can assist the producers
            Or subsidize the consumer

One can even do both

            But except for food stamps

            It is always those that have

                        Who get

America’s collective goal

Has always been to

            Support those who want

            Rather than those who need
                         Call it a  meritocracy

It only takes a small bureaucracy to

            Administer to the few

The point here is to refuse to equate accountability with accounting – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p131

Systems necessarily include what they cannot include

All of me is within the head, only the tail remaining outside: flagellant, spring-like… All is become mutable. I am monstrous, my head merges into the attic, the attic into blackness – Paul Metcalf – Collected Works vol.1, 1996  p11

Trail Dog? - God, Women Hate that Name - Crime Dog? Some Guy Thought I had Said. Kids Love the Name. I am Fond of that Name

A sign – “Steve Twiggs Ranch – 35.4 miles” – and an arrow pointed towards an unimproved dirt track down which a plume of dust was rising from a pick-up truck. About 25 miles away was a ridge of mountains. There was snow beside the road and snow capped peaks in the distance – to the west and to the north and to the northeast. No one else is out on the highway.

To the journalist, the event is a tryrant. It is the authority that grants him liberty to speak – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p194

I lit my campfire – first of the trip. A car drove by without stopping. A long way to cruise for a drive by. It had a bike on back and a kayak on top. I have six Buds on ice but don’t feel like drinking a beer (how strange). The little dog has already retreated into the tent. Trail Dog does not like fire. I checked the next morning to see if anyone had camped nearby – they had not.  Must have been looking for somewhere more sophisticated to do their recreating - them that sweat together, recreate together.  There were few places more primitive or remote than this place. I sit back and poke at the fire and watch the stars come out.

Things might always have been otherwise – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p56

The sun has finally risen enough to clear the canyon walls – its light touches me. It was so cold and I had hated to get out of my warm sleeping bag. I stumbled out to put on some coffee. The birds were chirping. The dog wanted to be taken for a walk. Trail Dog gets up first and if I don't then get up also he climes on top of me and tries to bite my nose. The first of the hot coffee. God! That's a little better. There is no clean water only the Canadian River which the cattle have muddied (and a lot more - defiantly not potable - Trail Dog won't even try it). Hence everything must be managed with a minimum of water. I minimize the number of dishes that I use. “Due to the drought – beware – bears are on the forage.”

Organisms that temporarly forsake immediate personal advantage in the expression of equivalent near-term reciprocation… [must] evolve ways of reliably discriminating between a cooperator and a defector – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002  p28

God shall not be allowed

            To be self-contradictory

He shall not possess such

            A power, otherwise

God is omnipotent according to

            William of Ockham

God freely chooses his

             Potentia ordinata

Ordaining himself obedient

            To this constituted order

Both miracles and science

            Can thus co-exist

He can go no further. He can identify the full moon in the sky as a cubist guitar – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974  p39

While sitting up camp I had to stop and sit down and catch my breath about half a dozen times. I should be getting used to the routine by now, but I am not. First I blamed in on the heat – 98 degrees the other day, then I blamed it on the altitude – 7,000 feet today. But now I am beginning to thank that it might be  the medications that I am on. I asked about the potential side effects. The doctor didn't say anything about this.

There can be reasons too why there are reasons why / If they can be said as much – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956p26

First there is a constituency then there is an ideology

It’s surprisingly common for researchers… to declare that A causes B when in fact it’s more likely that B caused A – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010 p50

It used to be primarily the health industry that tapped into our life savings and sucked them dry; now the financial industry has figured how to do the same. It used to be that in the end you just  died. Now, when you're broke you die.

We are terrified of dying in a plane crash but think nothing about speeding down the highway while talking on a cellphone. We don’t have an internal gauge of what behaviors are truly dangerous and what aren’t – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010 p71

81% of renters would like to buy a home.  81% of all Americans still believe that homeownership is the best long term investment that a person can make.

The cultural right is not rebeling against its exclusion from the center, but against the exclusion of the center, its reduction. The ‘cultural wars’ thus arise between those who hold cultural power but feat that it no longer matters and those whose exclusion from that cultural power allows them to believe that such power would matter if only they held it – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p114

I lack a good mysterious landscape

            But have plenty of paint

Someplace with picturesque

            Improvised villagers

            And spewing volcanoes

Where little girls can be

            Bought in the middle of the night

And recreation is a vacation

            From reality

Money cranks the handle

            Of the reality machine

Greed only works when there is

The option of running away

            With the spoon as

The cow jumps over the moon

Someone is already dreaming

            Of putting up condos there

The rich are different from you and me. They are ruder and less generous. They don’t get what other people are thinking. And apparently they don’t really care… This makes sense. People don’t craft personal collateralized debt obligations by calling on what they learned in Sunday school – Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011 p7

Congress at large (both the Democratic and Republican leadership at least) has escaped blame by the American public for the budget fiasco. Instead the public blames Obama and the Tea Party.

If the ideological has become visible, it is because the high-stake game has moved to another table – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p104

Wal-Mart’s Walton family owns as much wealth as the bottom 40% of the US population (more than 120 million Americans combined).

Now that the government has divested from the empathy business, we need the rich to discover brotherly love and fast – Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011  p7

The unabashed deployment of the state is the popular shortcoming of both extremes

The strong idea of culture arises with the nation-state and we now face its disappearances as the locus of social meaning – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p86

A Near Perfect Cinder Cone. The Wind Never Dies. This is Eternal.

It rained all day – There has been a stalled front all week from the Texas Panhandle to Ohio. There is flooding all along its shadow. The rivers are all over their banks. I camped out at a Super Eight. When I got back home there was impending flooding there too from the snow melt up river in the Rockies. I had not heard a word about the tornadoes. I don’t listen to the news, I said. It’s one of the joys of camping – the weather is whatever it is - is this case mostly bad. The tornadoes were real bad I had learned after I had returned.

To what indifference people may come, to what profound conviction of having lost the right track forever – Franz Kafka – Blue Notebooks

I’ve decided not to pitch the tent – or rather the weather has decided it for me. I am dehydrated. There is no water as this campsite. I had to go back five miles to the RV campground to get it.  It is 7:30 and the temperature is 98⁰ – no wonder I am so lethargic. The wind has been gusting all day and I just feel like shit. I shall sit here and do noting. There is lightening on the horizon. I wake up covered in hailstones. Something had erupted during the night. A friend said that the hailstones reminded her of bubble ice cream (frozen in liquid nitrogen to 45 degrees below zero). They popped when you touched them. I did not try to eat them.

When hedonism is established as a necessity, death and suffering become pure absurdities, intolerable assaults on our rights – Pascal Bruckner

High mountain meadows. It has been proven that beavers will begin constructing a dam at the sound of running water, even if it is a recording of running waters being played to them. They have built two within a hundred yards of by tent (i.e. I pitched my tent near where some beavers had once built two dams, not that they just did – I don’t actually see any beavers nor can I spot their lodges). At night when the wind dies down you can hear the water running. I want to construct a dam. I want to get up and do it right now. I have a very strong urge to do so. My two front teeth are causing me considerable pain. Today the wind died down and the sun came out. You could smell the pines. It is pleasant to sit in high mountain meadows and read. I am here in the Toledo caldera, which is a little older than it’s better known neighbor the Valles. The Toledo erupted 1.6 million years ago. Above its 200 foot layer of tuffa, which forms a golden cliff behind me, is 100 feet of tuffa from the Valles eruption which took place only 350,000 years later. Having worked with geologists and paleontologists I find exspanses of such abstract time manageable. Dealing with ‘bugs’ they had dated the core sample as 3.2 million years old. It was just part of the job. Having worked in a medical school I got used to people talking about the body as if they were lifting the hood of a car. One gets used to the bazar. The most disconcerting concepts become normalized with time. That's way I won’t stay in one place too long, not as long as a million years or so - not anymore. The last volcanic eruption is New Mexico took place 10,000 years ago. Humans no doubt witnessed it, but they left us no record of their thoughts about it. They left us no thoughts about anything - only a bunch of petroglyphs – a lot of pecking at rocks. We are still pecking away at the rocks. The Capulin cone was created 65,000 years ago. No humans, to our knowledge, saw this. The most perfect cinder cone in North America – 1,500 feet to the top – a great view. And that is what being a tourist is all about, isn’t it? I half hoped that a new volcanic vent would open up as I drove up it. I could take pictures of it. That would make the news, wouldn't it? Sure it would - most viewed video on YouTube.  Getting the most hits is almost as good as dying with the most toys. But then I remembered that the batteries in my camera were dead. It was one of the things on my to-do list – buy two double A batteries. I had forgot to get them the last time I stopped for provisions. Provisions is just a fancy word for groceries and for some beer and some ice to keep the beer cold. Miners liked to call the flour and beans they hauled up the mountainside and through the desert provisions (I am sure the also packed in some whiskey too – for which they didn’t need any ice and besides they didn’t have plastic coolers to lug it around in). Forty-Niners did not include AA batteries among their provisions either, as far as I am aware.

… Whiskey! the stranger coughed as he spite out trail dust. The bartender plunked down a labeless bottle two thirds filled with a tannishBrokeback Mountain my dear)– no ice, no branch, no coke, no seltzer spritzer. And those swinging half doors – what was that all about? They didn’t keep out the flies and they didn’t keep out the sweet smell of the horse shit in the street which is why everyone wore boots and the ladies lifted their skirts when the had to cross from one side to the other which they did as infrequently as possible.

When it comes to attacking humans, grizzlies are equal-opportunity maulers, attacking without regard to race creed, ethnicity, or marijuana use. Hopkin’s [the plaintiff’s] use of marijuana to kick off a day of working around grizzly bears was ill advised to say the least, and mind-boggling stupid to say the most. However I have been presented with no evidence by which I can conclude that Hoipkin’s marijuana use was the major contributing cause of the grizzly bear’s attack – Judge James Jeremiah Sheus

The Valles Caldera is one of the smaller volcanoes in the supervolcano class – 12 miles in diameter. The Valles collapsed over and buried the Toledo, which in turn probably collapsed over yet older calderas. These and associated volcanic structures lie within the Jemez Volcanic Field which lies above the intersection of the Rio Grande Rift and the Jemez Linement which itself extends from Southeastern Arizona to Western Oklahoma.

Perfection has no tension – nothing to call attention to itself, nothing to resist the senses - make them pause. Perfection is boring. Perfection does not stimulate the imagination. Perfection is an indicator of something which has ceased to exist. Perfection is an indication of the absence of man.

The Capulin Volcanic National Monument is a well-preserved, relatively young, symmetrical cinder cone rising steely from the surrounding grasslands with a rim about a mile in circumference and a crater about 400 feed deep.

Sometimes things happen for no apparent reason, just out of shear random chance. If there’s one concept that we humans have a hard time understanding, it’s randomness – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010  p54

Money can best be accumulated when its self-replication becomes play rather than a game – at the point at which it becomes an obsession rather than merely a desire. If you really need it, you can’t have it.  It's one of the rules of the game. Time is money, but time is limited and money, evidently, is not. In the end (the end of time) there will be money left over to burn.

No, no, Piscasso said, waste not a minute. Go do what you want to. What you can. Get a lifetime of work into a week. Plan nothing; make – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974  p23

We have a will to desire

We are a civilization

            Of potential desires

Money making is our

            Kinetic desire

As Eros was to the Greeks

Money making is to

            An American

What pedestry was

            To the Greeks

Chaos is very near, its nearness, but avoidance gives… force – Robert Venturi – Learning from Las Vegas, 1988

The dollar sign ‘$’ is derived from the insignia for ‘in hoc signo’ (by this sign) inscribed on Christian crosses

Men spiral upward within their capabilities. A genius has no interest in controlling people with anything so crude as power – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974  p48

Wisconsin is Republican ‘broke’, but it is not broke. Broke suggest near bankruptcy. We aren’t too broke to do tax breaks for corporations  – Mordecai Lee – If you have a budget deficit you’re broke – Scott Walker

The sciences pursue technological rationality on its own terms, untroubled by the need to reflect upon the social effects of the knowledge they produce or manipulate, since such thinking is supposed to take place elsewhere – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p82

Magical thinking - no harm

The celebrity’s touch is a charm

A just-right experience

            Can be reclaimed

Remain pristine – kept white

            Still in the box

            Germ free

As seen on TV

You know Peggy

            I haven’t seen it

            Stamped on

The bottom of your feet

Hot, just off the presses

I will look it up

            Lick it up

Lie in your lap

Crawl back into

            The womb

God, its so dank

I’m just

Another snake

The end of history is not the end of the account. The many accounts of this ending are preparing a future in which several variants of the fable of the world will reign ‘again’ – and for the nth time – Vincent Descombes – Modern French Philosophy, 1980 p186