The House on the Rock

We toured Sections 1,2, & 3 

Sue & I spent five hours wondering through the House on the Rock.  I don't know what to think of it.  I need to let the faces of all those dolls sink in.  I need to let all those walls of carousel figures sink in.  It was so dream like to walk through rooms of doll houses and then turn a corner into more rooms of doll houses.  We got the serious creeps around that part of the tour, and then there was the tower of dolls. four stories high. The porcelain stares of all those old antique dolls turning towards you on that marry-go-round tower, one after the other coming at you, looking, and passing.  Level upon level looking you straight in the eye. Suddenly someone puts a token in the robot circus wagon and the place lights up with wild circus parade music.  I got a little worried wandering when they were going to let us out of here.  It was like wondering through someones obsession. Rod Serling was going to be toking a cig around the next corner. "They thought they were entering a museum, to view oddities under glass, but to view so many objects on display in one day has an effect on your mind. Welcome to the twilight zone." What is really on display here is human obsession. Someone puts another token in and the orchestra of mannequins bust into the Blue Danube. I look up and there are elephants over me with half naked ladies standing all over them....   Did you see the bottle with the model of the baby doll laying in a coffin?  Or a few doors down of the street of Yesterday the doctors office with the jars of tape worms?  The label said, they melt away unsightly fat, and are easy to swallow; all the minute details of such a huge collection. Some of the rooms had openings high on the walls that allowed me to view parts of exhibits I had seen 30 minutes before. THe walls are all painted black to appear invisible, high ceiling low ceiling.  They are trying to imitate a dream environment. This place is museum without a curator.  Just put everything on display, no editing, an Andy Worhol movie, a stroll through the old thought bog. 

Into the Yellowstone

July 14th 2014

       Years ago as a youth I looked at an extended calendar that showed the turn of the century, 1999 going into 2000.  I discovered myself shocked, afraid at the sudden thought that my parents were going to be dead of old age by the turn of the century. I saw their deaths like a mountain range rising up before me.  It was a profound shocking sadness.  As I thought about it I got the idea I need to get through this on my own.  My parents never said anything to me about dying.  They never sat me down and said they were going to die and I should feel this way or that way.  This was a feeling entering my life, and I needed to deal & define it my own. 

       Now here on my own, enjoying coffee at sunrise in Wyoming, a pure red sunrise, no clouds only red air, deep red air. Rock Springs, Wyoming.  (my Father was born 100 years ago yesterday) Every time I see a sunrise it is good. One sunrise deserves another.  We drive north into a woodless land. The hills rise like a slow stormy sea. The car and camper toss like a boat. The Wind River Mountains appear like a coastline in the Northeast.  Small herds of wild horses dance through the waves of sage, the foam of their tails confused with the clouds.  We enter the town of Pineridge, on the banks of the mighty & majestic Green River.  The taillight on Neda is out.  We stop at an auto parts store, replace it, and enter the mountains of the Hoback River.  Its an easy valley glide into the crowded tourist streets of Jackson Hole.  We pass its city park with its arches of elk horn entrances, its pizza bars, and rafting shops, it’s level ground mountaintop easy access businesses, and mountain-man fast food, teenage delights of wilderness, dangerous, quick and manly. The town quickly ends.

      The Tetons appear to the West.  Their jagged tops streaked with snow, an impenetrable wall of indescribable beauty.   All we can do is snap a picture and hug.  Thirty three years of marriage and here we are speechless and in love. 

On into the Yellowstone we go.  Past Yellowstone Lake, up onto the great divide.  We stop at Isa Lake. It’s really just a pond that bleeds into both sides of the great divide. It is covered with lily-pads that Sue photographs; yellow flowers we have never seen the type before.  

Animals We Have Seen

 A list of animals we have seen as of July 20th

 Tick   

  Gray fox

   Prong-horned anilope

   ground squirrels

 Montezuma quail

 Mexican free tail bats

Cave swallows

Rattlesnakes

 Mountain goats

Giant Lichen Orb Weaver

Tarantula 

Tarantula Killer wasp

Mediterranean Gecko

Lesser earless lizard (white rare)

Javelinas

Roadrunner 

Bison (buffalo)

Big-horned sheep

Mule deer

Prairie dogs

Gray ground squirrels 

turkey

collared lizards

Horned-toad lizard

Audad Sheep

Red Fox

Moose

Elk

Camel

Llama

Raven

Staller Jay

River Otters

Cowgirl

4th of July Parade

We are traveling towards our next National Park the "Black Canyon on The Gunnison."  We are spending this evening in the little town of Salina, Utah.  I took in its 4th of July parade.  Sue decided to relax at camp. I went downtown and set my camp chair up on the sidewalk in front of Mom's Dinner and a bright blue building with the sign, "Pool Beer" written across its front.  I peeked in through its dusty windows.  It looked like it had been closed a long time.  At the beginning of the parade an airplane flew real low down the street and dropped a bunch of T-shirts, tote-bags and candy.  Some of the shirts landed on the roofs. The color guard appeared at the front of the parade; serious looking old fellas on horseback carrying a large American flag.  Everyone on the sidewalks rose to their feet, took their hats off and put their hands over their hearts.  There was no music only the clip-clop of the horses, and the flag flicking in the wind.  The procession of twenty riders passed. Then everyone sat down and applauded Miss North Salina and her runners-ups waving from a mile high 4x4 monster wheel pick up.  A few clowns on ATVs doing circles & wheelies followed, then a car dealer & his family throwing candy at he crowd.  There was a guy standing beside me on the sidewalk drinking out of an open container.  He grabbed the edge of one of the American flags that were displayed up and down the street, held it out towards us and said, in an angry tone, "These colors don't run." Me and the other people on the street looked at each other and wondered who he was talking to in such a tone.  We were all perplexed.  He was obviously someone who dearly needed to be put back in the parade and seated alongside  Miss teeny tiny Sevier County."  Her float filled with attendants was passing by behind him.   A girl so small she could walk upright under all the 4x4 pick-ups in the parade. A girl with a smile and wave as big as the Monster truck tires that pulled her float. She looked like someone enjoying the fourth of July.  He dearly needed to be put on her happy float, given a tiara and allowed to be one of her attendants.

Never Tame Your Inner Wlldness

6/29/14

I used the “I” touch as an alarm clock. It used the sound of a harp to wake us up at 5:00am. Our sleepy shadows milling about in the flashlight beam, lazily bumping into each other as the coffee machine gurgled. We were going to see the sun rise over Bryce Canyon.  6:09 am, is what my GPS said the sunrise was at this exact location. We had 40 minutes to drive up to Bryce Point.  By way the crow flies its not too far, but it looms over our campsite to the West; a white cliff with no evidence of its mad capped hoodoos at this distance.  I pour a second cup of coffee into my thermos & started the car. The first tones of twilight showing the silhouettes of the ridges.  The Park gate is open 24 hours. They let anyone in at this hour.  

Its a cold wind on Bryce point.  We bundle up in coats & scarves. Hats are impossible. Cuddling a cup of warm coffee we sit on the extreme edge of the cliff cosy & waited.  

We didn’t come here to see the sunrise. We came here to see our souls rise. Our souls that scientific stew of poems we perpetually stir.  We came to feel our souls rise and perhaps be visited by ancestors; the memories of our grandparents or Mom & Dad. 

    The sun shyly shuffled around behind the Aquarius plateau, the highest plateau in North America.  Then one pink finger tip at a time it crawled into the line of caves along the rim of Bryce Canyon shooting its fingernail Polished eyes into their inner most recesses.  You know how flamboyant the sun can be when it first gets out of bed. It’s all Freudian & spry.  Then like melting ice cream it drizzles its rays down the white eroded slops onto the hats of the red hoodoos.  All tied together like a child's pull toy; an insane child's pull toy. Is that a window or an eye?  The sky was monochromatic; morgue-Elvis-blue except for one tiny cloud running north as fast as it could with a red butt. The light doubles all the formations with crisp shadows slowly moving beside each stone figure, and then there were sections where the light was changed and thrown back onto walls that have seen no sun and this caused an effect where the rocks glowed from the inside, like a bed of charcoal just right to flop a steak onto, bedsprings glowing from love making, but the mountain rolls over the wind rises, and all the woman squirrels line up and do that woman thing dance just as the last bit of the bottom of the sun pulls its bare-feet up over the horizon and traipses over the land with all its heat and brightness. All of us on the overlook oooed and awed, and giggled a little bit at the nakedness of it all. The light got all over our faces and cloths.  People from around the world were up there on that overlook, they got all splattered, and are going to be forced by there deep psyches to write post cards home about the experience. I love the wildness the National Parks have retained in its system.  There is no such thing as a wild system.  Nothing is systematically wild. Never develop or tame your inner wildness; Wildness is always self-defined, and changing; topless dancers at truck stops in the middle of the desert, girl scouts earning their first badge, a fingertip of sun light on a chipmunks nose. 

      The rangers keep asking us to name the rock formations or the cliff-faces in Arches or Canyonlands, or the stalagmites in Carlsbad. I have to move to the back of the tour group because the world is just one big giant erotic hallucination to me.    

The KOA Campers of Masa Verde

All gray & slagged with sleep

It’s a long walk to the clean

brightly lit

warm seats

of flush toilets

and piped in top 40 hits

      from the 60’s

Its a long walk

Nothing is convenient

   The urinal is too bright

           we are spoiled rotten just to be here

We are born crying

Nothing is convenient

Nothing is easy

when you’re old

No matter how organized we get

or how well dressed we become

We are all naked cliff dwellers camping out back at the source of our adventure. 

Stewed Enigma

         In Albuquerque, Sue & I were looking for a grocery store and a spot to have lunch when we came across a large Mexican grocery store.  It was as fascinating as the Chinese grocery store we wondered though in Chinatown in Manhattan. We noticed this place had a cafeteria with a large selection of Mexican dishes.  There was one that looked like Ziti the large Italian pasta.  I asked what it was but the lady behind the counter didn’t speak English and I couldn’t follow much of her Spanish.  I got the idea it was beef.  She called another lady over to translate for us.  The other lady took a big spoon, stirred the dish and said, “Beef intestines.” No, I’m not going to have that.  I looked at the other dozen or so dishes and couldn’t identify any of them.  I said to myself, “Well, I’m on vacation. I’m on an adventure, so I said I’ll have some of that,” and pointed to what looked like stewed pork-chops.  I got some beans, rice and tortillas to go along with it.  I got to my table, plopped some of the meat in a tortilla with some salsa, took a bite, and it felt like the meat was just a chunk of fat.  It tasted good, melted my my mouth, but had all the characteristics of a hunk of pork fat one sometimes gets at a bar-B-Q.  I grabbed another piece and it was the same; like eating pure fat.    I then looked at the meat.  What is this stuff I’m eating? I cut a chunk open and it had a vermillion look to it.  It was not fat and it was not muscle fiber.  I continued eating and moving it around on my plate but I couldn’t figure out what it was.  Is it some kinda sweetbreads? Gee, its probably lights or brains, or menudo soup made with stomach. The main ingredient of Chorizo sausage is sometimes salivary gland, I could have been eating salivary gland or lymph nodes, or testicles.  I finished most of the plate.  I am no Anthony Bourdain, I didn’t relish the mystery.  I didn’t become ill and the meal stuck with me all day.  All in all it tasted good. I’ll just chalk it up to being one of life's culinary conundrums.   We have been eating a lot of Mexican food out here.    

Where Cows & Men All Behave Their Best

      We were on a hike a couple of weeks ago in Saint Bernard State park just south of New Orleans.  We came across an old swimming pool, closed down, locked up behind a half torn down chain-link fence. We studied it and wondered if alligators had moved into its green waters waiting for one last skinny-dipper. As we were leaving we noticed the POOL RULES dangling from the fence.  Typical stuff; no shoving No food & rink, no running, no underwear showing, no bandanas. 

“No bandanas,” I thought perhaps it was because of gang rivalries at the pool. That is why its all closed down.  So I said to Sue, “Thats a strange rule about the bandanas.” She said that they probably don’t allow them because the kids roll them up and snap each other on the butts. 

       Sue believes in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.  I do too, but my mind doesn’t automatically permit it every time.  

     Another funny incident was on the interstate just west of Houston, Texas.  The traffic was still crowded from the city even though we were heading west into the wilds, and we were out of town.  Mica & Colin were a few cars ahead of us leading the way to the house in LaGrange.  A huge cattle truck slowly started to pass us in the left lane.  Horizontal aluminum bars and a gate just a few feet out the drivers window.  It wan’t the first one.  I could make out the cattle’s fir through the fencing as it loudly passed.  As its tail lights were even with our front doors a liquid started gushing out the side of the trailer, and some of it splashed on our windshield. I wooped and laughed. “Welcome to Texas. The cows are urinating on us.”  Sue said, “That’s not cow urine. That’s someone cleaning out the truck as they go down the highway.”   I became obsessed with the vision of some poor soul trying to balance himself between the crowded cows bounding down the interstate, mop in one hand and a bucket of warm soapy water in the other.  I am glad that Sue sees a world where cows and men all behave their best.  

       I wandered into the Rothko Chapel in Houston last week. The culmination of Abstract expression.  When you first walk in there is a bench with a line of around 10 holy books; the Bible, the Koran, The Sutras, the Torah, The Upanishads. In the main hall are Rothko’s paintings all very dark, mostly black; fourteen of them. Some with a subtle purplish tone like the faintest suggestion of light coming from within them. They are like looking at a painting with your eyes closed. There is a configuration of windows in the center of the ceiling that lets in the light from the sky.  We could feel each cloud that passed. 

     When I say they are like looking at a painting with your eyes closed, I don’t mean the malleable shut-eye darkness that Salvador Dali talks of when he talks about putting pressure on the outside of the closed eyes and watching the colors of the physical nerve ending swirl about.  Rothko’s darkness is an intellectual void, a spiritual void, similar to the one Buddhism talks of.  It is a darkness one must conjure on your own, a darkness from the other end of the optic nerve.  

One Day Later

Here I am sitting on the front porch at Carla & Louis’s house in La Grange.  I can look down the hill and make out the water tower across the river.  Its the only sign of the town.  The chickens are hanging out, making unusual sounds, mellow little clucks of contentment.  Rex the rooster fakes finding some bug or something in the grass and calls the hens over, they peck about & walk away unimpressed.  They like to have their dust baths in the flower garden by the front door where they have created an extremely fine bowl of dust. I want to join them.

We drove up to Giddings City Meat Market.  It started pouring down rain as we arrived, but we got a parking spot right outside the front door.  Right away inside my eyes felt the smoke that hazed the place.  What a smoke it was that perfect Smoked brisket smell.  That perfect smoked ribs & chicken smell. The perfect smoked sausage smell. When you first enter the market you are in the butcher shop.  The glass on the display counters was so scratched and foggy I couldn’t tell what was there. Colin lead the way.  We followed him into the dinning room at the back of the shop.  A soot covered walk-in cooler created at hallway between the butcher shop and the dinning room.  On the door of the cooler was a, “How to perform the Heimlich Maneuver,” poster. Next to it were pictures of John Wayne, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Willie Nelson, and a few local country singing heroes I wasn’t familiar with.  The smoke grew thicker as we crossed the wood worn dining area.  I haven’t felt this much excitement to get into a line since  getting on space mountain at Disney world. My eyes stung so much I could hardly read the chalkboard menu; “Ribs, Sausage, Chicken, Brisket, Steaks.” Before ordering We got to collect our raw onions and pickled Jalepenos on a bit of wax paper. When we got up to order they ask, “What you want?”  “Brisket,” I say.  They rip a sheet of red paper off a roll, lay it on the counter, open the cast iron lid to the fire pit that opens effortlessly because of the counterbalanced weight system connected with pulleys to the ceiling. They quickly raise a whole brisket out through the smoke on a big fat fork, plop it on the paper, whip out a foot long knife and whisper, “Say when,” as they start slicing.  I get about four of five slices, some ribs, a sausage, some chili beans, and a can of coke-cola. They deal in a couple of slices of white bread before they wrap it up and add it up.  Remember how Andy Griffith used to say, “Gooood,” on Andy of Mayberry?  

     Halfway through the movie, “Streetcar Named Desire,”  Blanche is getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon alone in Stan & Stella apartment.  First she hears the flower ladies on the street calling, selling flowers for the dead.  Then a teenaged boy knocks at the door collecting for the paper.I think the name of the paper is the Sun, he’s collecting for the Sun. She tells him, “Don’t you just love these afternoons in New Orleans after a summer rainstorm they are like little slices of eternity.” 

When I first heard that line I was awestruck. I fell into that bit of eternity Blanche talks about.  I not only took it into my heart I visited with it and stayed awhile.    

Not only is it a good Idea to notice things and pay attention its a good Idea to pay them a proper visit, stay awhile, have some cookies and tea with a little whiskey in it.  

    Sue is napping, I am sitting outside under the awning reading, “Under the Volcano.” A green dragon fly lites on my boot Lowers and rests its four nylon stocking wings on my toe, looks nervously around at our camp site. Its brainy eyes ponder the warm afternoon. Wasps on the hunt under the picnic table---Children screaming off through the woods at the water park---Olive dip & beer---I play my bamboo flute and all the frogs start up--- Eddie & May May start up in the next camp site.  They are an old married couple from Punta Gorda Florida.  In their 80’s with heavy New York accents. They have entered into what they call their second retirement, their third or forth childhoods. They get into an argument on what number of childhoods they are in. The Hawaiian shirt Eddie wears makes him look like a 10 year old. Eddie explained how here he is Jewish and he retired in a marina development on a canal and the property is in the shape of a swastika. Oy vey. They are a very nice couple; instant old friends; funny

     The view of the New Orleans skyline upon entering Lake Pontchartrain on I-10 is mythical, emeralded City of Oz looking, with  but we veer south and head into a cluster of oil refineries & prisons, the little towns of Chaimette, Meraux, and Violet, right outside of Delacroix; all small towns flooded with the industrial wake & backwash of poverty from the Big Easy.  Ain’t no levee for that flood. 

   We awake this morning in Louisiana Bayou country---slow cooked rib sunshine on feathery cypress tree tops---remains from night before plastic bag drug off to edge of woods---shredded---all the plastic sucked off the bone---All the cans licked clean.  What an exciting vacation here we are talking about the trash. 

 12:53 PM June 4th, We cross the mighty and majestic Edisto River.  I-95’ed it south to Jacksonville and made the turn west, discovered we needed gas just as we entered the National forest.  I-10 goes for miles with no signs of civilization until we pop out at the outskirts of Lake City. We gassed up, made it to White Springs and the Stephen Foster Memorial State Park.  We then discovered there was no Grocery store. Dinner would be what ever we found in the cooler left over from our frantic exit from the house this morning.   had hash brown potatoes, leftover kale salad, and ginger carrots for dinner. 

We set up & popped a beer, took a short hike in the woods and there I got that feeling; I felt myself “slow down,” It was nothing spectacular, nothing earth shaking , only a pleasant feeling.  I found myself looking at a spiders web with the sunset shining trough it. I gathered fire wood and returned to camp.  Sue said that she was organizing some food stuff when she got sticky hands from the outside of the honey bottle. Normally on a campout she would let it go and develop a coating a fine dirt on her hands to relieve the stickiness, but she just went inside Neda and washed her hands in the sink with running water.  “How Bourgeois.”  

  

       If beauty fell in a forest and no one was there is it still beautiful?  There is a person who loves every square inch of the world, someone who has been everywhere and has always found something interesting. Beauty in the middle of nowhere. I am going to go there. Turn down an old dirt road for no reason, like a babies eyes before its had a day to live. The Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon were once in the middle of nowhere.  

IN the Middle of Nowhere

Its getting close to our time of departure.  I have been looking up some good kitsch places to visit; Weeki Wachee and Rock City.  

     If beauty fell in a forest and no one was there is it still beautiful?  There is a person who loves every square inch of the world, someone who has been everywhere and has always found something interesting. Beauty in the middle of nowhere. I am going to go there. Turn down an old dirt road for no reason, like a babies eyes before its had a day to live. The Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon were once in the middle of nowhere.  

     We are considering waltzing across Texas.  I asked a couple of Texas friends for suggestions about where we should meander in our dance. 

Austin. San Antonio. Then drive west on I-10 to Ft Stockton and go south to Marathon (spend a night in the Gage Hotel in Marathon) the bathrooms are down the hall. And Big Bend. Drive up to the Chisos Mountain basin. Unforgettable. Marfa is a neat little town, too. I've only been through it once or twice. It's the land forms driving from Marathon to BigBend and driving around Big Bend that are so impressive.  There is also a meteor impact area a few miles out of Marathon. The surrealist exhibit at the Menil in Houston and the Rothko chapel would be good (they're essentially right next to each other and both pretty small). We could go into Houston for lunch from la grange and see these at the same time. 

I asked about Bar-B-Q. They responded with:Jesus, I'm thinking that god himself would avoid trying to answer that. I've had great BBQ all over the place there.  Funky: the City Meat Market in Giddings (at the intersection of US 77 and US 290. Google barbecue in Austin and see what you get. 

 The other friend responded with; My favorite Barbecue in the world is at the Giddings City meat market in Giddings. There are more famous ones but i think this is the best. It has soot an inch thick on all the walls. You say you want brisket and they say, "say when" and then they start cutting slices of the juiciest most beautiful brisket you've ever seen. 

oh man I'm hungry now.  I've never been to Big Bend but I hear its breathtaking.

Brisket should be in every ones spiritual Waltzing.

       I started writing this on March 3rd 2014; 403 months to the day after our wedding. 

 Sue & I are heading west in a meandering Pop-up camper named Neda, at the end of May. We are going to visit all the thin places between here and there and back again.  The first part of this mythical travelog is to tell you about the mural we painted on the side of our camper.  It's a profile of Bob Marley with Long gray dreadlocks blowing back in the wind.  He is depicted as old and gray as he would look today if he were still alive, and he is alive. He is the same age as Sue & I. (He is really 69 years old this year) Also in the mural sticking out of his mouth is a long spliff pointing into the wind with a whirling trail of sparks haloing his hair with tiny spiraling universes.  Do you think we are setting out on the right foot?

 One  Love