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.