Another outstanding New Mexico experience!

It rained, it thundered, it hailed, there was one rainbow after another, and then the Grand Entry parade began. Toward the end, I got as close as I could to this drum group (sorry, I don’t know their name) and captured a little of what it’s like to be there at a pow wow. I’ll post more video of the dancing later, but for now, enjoy “DRUMS”…

At the end of the grand entry, my wife broke into sobs. “It’s so awesome and overwhelming,” she said when she could get the words out. That’s how it is when you’re from god-help-us America and this hits you all at once: the beauty, the dignity, the power of a culture rooted in the universal. A pow wow isn’t a religious event — far from it — but you feel the spirit, anyway.

(I also had a Navajo taco that dwarfed my paper plate and scored a killer silk-screened shirt, which kind of frames the whole thing rather well.)

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Pow Wow Drumming (Video)

Obama says a second economic stimulus isn’t necessary. What else can he say?

Keeping the current flowing to the Frankenstein monster of global finance has sapped the capacity of the system to respond in any meaningful way to all the other problems we face and still won’t fix anything, because the people in charge are scared and have no vision. (We could call them corrupt, assign foul motives, but what good would that do?) Nothing will ever be the way it was, despite all forced “hope” to make it so. Failure is a feature of the system, not a bug. With each day that passes, we lose more flexibility. Meanwhile, the imbalances build. Despite incremental improvements here and there, like the rising green consciousness, there’s no “fix” on the horizon for just about any issue one could name. It’s more a question of evolution instead of logic.

We may in fact be on the cusp of something new, although we won’t recognize it until well after the fact. Even in the “green” world, no one is envisioning a seriously altered lifestyle, just a saner version of the old insanity. We still imagine that our security consists of things, only smaller ones, perhaps, or made of better stuff. All this is ripples on the surface, however. We mistake the patterns for the sea. But what if a new (to us) kind of intelligence came into the mix? Could we in our present state even recognize it?

Case in point:

I urge you to visit this page. Set aside for a moment your prejudices about other items covered at the site and just focus on this amazing “crop circle” which appeared in Wiltshire County, England on the summer solstice over three consecutive nights. This thing is enormous, intricate, and wholly inexplicable. Human pranksters can’t possibly be responsible. What’s more, it makes a kind of sense to certain people who have tried to mathematically interpret the symbols you see here. What they came up with was a prediction of a massive solar flare on July 7th, which has in fact occurred, although with no apparent consequences. No one can predict the onset of a coronal mass ejection, least of all a gang of art students on a lark, and yet it seems like something did. Does this not make an impression?

The patterns seem to point to something with the sun, at any rate. Perhaps the 7th isn’t important by itself but indicates the onset of a dramatically significant solar cycle: we think we know everything, but what if we’re only insects in the larger context? If the crop circle diagrams are indicating something — never mind how in the hell they got there in the first place — our minds would likely miss the point! And that is what I’m getting at: we can’t “fix” anything because we don’t understand. We only hear our own thoughts, not the music of the spheres. We feel so old and beaten up, and yet perhaps we’re only waiting to be born.

There’s nothing “wrong” with species-limited ignorance: it’s certainty that’s in the way.

[Photo Credit: Lucy Pringle, 2009.]

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Sleepwalking Through History

This one is actually my favorite. I wouldn’t mind it in a big digital frame running constantly, without the titles. Enjoy!

(And now, off to a motorcycle rally & music fesival to take pictures of Los Changos del Mar, if I can actually get through the traffic and drive to town!)

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More River Video

We decided to turn supper into a picnic today, so we headed up into the mountains.

It was 93 degrees on the main drag in town shortly before. Back at the house in Llano, it was only 82 outside. By the time we got up to 9,000 feet it was around 70, and we found an empty paradise of a picnic area just a little ways south on Rt. 518. The reason it was empty, though, had to do with the hordes of carnivorous flies! After eating half our sandwiches, we packed up to try our luck a little farther down the road.

The scenery was gorgeous, and of course it started to rain. By the time we got to our other favorite picnic area by the Rio Pueblo, it was pouring down, so we sat in the car and finished our supper. It was all very pleasant, actually, and then it started to hail… By the time everything calmed down, the temperature had dropped to 55 degrees (!), and mist was hanging in the air. With the rain stopped, I took advantage of the fact that I was wearing my Crocs to go wading in the river and shoot some video. Miraculously, I entered the water three times and never once fell down. The rocks were slippery, too! I’m such a fool, dancing around in a rocky riverbed with plastic shoes and a video camera in my hand. But I survived.

How about that clear water, too?

Shortly after we got home, by the way, a sudden dust devil came up like a five-second tornado and blew all the lawn furniture into the sagebrush! New Mexico rarely disappoints for drama…

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River Video

Who knew I would find my long-ago favorite Austin band’s seminal ancient LP, “Take Me to the Mountains,” available as a new CD from Amazon? (No link, I just got the last one, but they’re ordering more. Scroll down for update and link to “My Baby Knows How.” Good stuff!)

Well, I should have known. In this day and age, what can’t one find? Lead singer and fiddler Spencer Perskin is still around, I do know that. Ah, the old days in Austin, what a time. Everywhere you turned, somebody different was trying to kill you: rednecks, draft board, Viet Cong, etc. America eating its young, whoopee. Now we have “change” with a copyright symbol, America eating its hope. Funny how nothing really changed in some quarters. If you want something done right, gotta do it yourselves, I guess.

I had the original LP of this album, back in the Cenozoic. Had a priceless collection of underground comic books too, left in the possession of a succession of various people while I moved around in the early ’70s. Everything is gone now except for the Gilbert Shelton poster in our bathroom. That one’s a classic, and I’ll never part with it: Shiva’s Headband and the Conqueroo at the Vulcan Gas Company, oh my. I was at that gig and helped do the light show. Then again, maybe I didn’t! Reality is malleable, empiricism a joke. You need to remember that, in case you get caught in the wrong place.

(Man, if this post doesn’t pull in a bunch of googling weirdos, nothing will.)

Onward, chilluns! There’s still lots of work to be done.

UPDATE: Hey, I found one of the early songs on Blip.fm! Try it… (And for you Mac users, word: Audio Hijack Pro, oh yeah.)

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Happy Boy: Shiva’s Headband Rediscovered! [Updated]

Hey, it’s better than none!

All kinds of fine things have been happening to me since my 87-year-old mother threw me out of her house last August and my experiencing an alchemical transformation in a dream. The latter doesn’t mean what you probably think it does, but so what. (To learn more, see here.) Yes, it really happens, no, it doesn’t last, and yes, it has to be repeated, although the circle of relaxation gradually expands. I may be a biological geezer raised by dysfunctionals, but the clamps are coming off. It seems that a condition of freedom from fear is the normal one for creatures like us, not sitting in the midst of plenty gnawing off our own limbs as we are wont to do.

For one thing, I have a birthday coming up, and it appears I may get to play with Los Changos del Mar on the very day itself. Heh. The band has a gig at a house party, and if a lot of things fall into place in time, I’m invited to sit in on the songs I know. A lot of assumptions are in the air, but let’s just call them positive expectations instead: no one has actually heard me play yet, you understand. By this time next week, a lot of things will be more clear. I’m pretty excited, though, and having fun already. This could get out of hand, and I hope it does.

You may recall that last week my wife cracked the big kitchen window by swatting at a fly and hitting a hanging crystal pendant that slammed into the glass. The vertical crack has now grown from bottom to top, while the horizontal cracks are holding steady. I have hay bales arranged outside the window to make a tall raised-bed garden with tomatoes planted in 100% compost. They’re doing incredibly well, and why shouldn’t they? Water pours off the roof there when it rains and keeps everything moist. It was bumming me out thinking of having to rip all those out to get the window fixed, but now I’ve come down on the side of the plants: as long as the glass doesn’t fall out, I’ll just wait until the tomatoes are harvested and fix the window in the fall. Then again, we may have found another house by then, so either way, it doesn’t matter:

“To HELL with the window!”

I’m on to other business, and I hope you are, too.

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Delayed Gratification

The other day I saw one of those “Old Guys Rule” T-shirts. This one read, “Only the good die young,” which might explain a few things.

One can never predict what one’s partner will say in the morning, especially if you haven’t had any coffee yet. Today there was a premium due on the life insurance policy I took out on myself a number of years ago, and my wife wanted to know if the benefit would be enough to pay off all the debts if I died. (Women are very practical about these things, and she was trying to decide if we should keep paying or surrender the policy.) Unfortunately, it isn’t the kind that builds up cash value, and what’s worse, it runs out when I turn 70. Some life insurance, huh? When I was a lad, nobody ever told me that you can’t get the good kind of life insurance if you’re already over a certain age. Not that I would have paid any attention, of course, and this pathetic, expensive policy was all I had.

“Sure, it’ll pay off all our debts and leave you a hundred grand besides,” I told her. “That is, if I die sometime in the next six years!”

This led to a brief discussion of her annuity payments, which are as large as they are only because I signed away any right to them after she dies. At the time, I figured this was okay, because we needed the maximum payout then (and still do), and why should she sacrifice income now so I can live it up after she’s gone? Besides, if she died, who’d want to go on living, right? But this morning I saw myself alone, alive, and trying to survive on Social Security and my wits. I wished the image had never entered my mind.

For that reason and a thousand others, by the time I left to run my major errand of the morning, taking a load of computer gear to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore Center, I was already trolling for snags in the big black water. It was a glorious day, however, and I deeply enjoyed the slow drive to the north end of town in my truck. The news at the other end wasn’t so good: the ReStore wouldn’t take any of my old SCSI peripherals, the software, or anything, really — what I had was just too old! I probably didn’t want to get rid of it, anyway, being me. So what if we don’t have room for me to maintain a Mac museum, we might, someday. That meant that all the junk had to go back to the storage unit where I’d gotten it from the week before. A tactical retreat, as it were.

At the storage unit, I beheld a surprising sight: walking up to one of the smaller units was a quiet, thin fellow dressed casually but nicely, pulling one of those suitcases with wheels like you see in airports. This wasn’t an airport, though, and the wheels made a lot of noise in the gravel. I looked around and didn’t see a car — okay, here’s someone walking along pulling a suitcase, fine, I told myself. This is Taos, what the hell. Then he did a remarkable thing: he unlocked the door, walked inside, and pulled the door down with himself inside! I’ve never seen anyone do that in my life. Five minutes later he opened the door and emerged wearing a completely different set of clothes and carrying a backpack. He walked straight to the portable latrine over by the fence, did his business, and walked on down the road… My God, he’s living there, it hit me! Almost envious, I started to estimate his living expenses and then caught myself. (Good!)

On the way home I dropped off the recycling stuff that we store in my truck. Literally, as it turned out, because a bagful of bottles fell out of the passenger side door of my truck and smashed on the ground at my feet. While cleaning this up, I happened to glance over at the feeding frenzy at the “free box” adjacent to the recycling center: someone had dropped off a couple boxes of clothes, and half a dozen people were tearing into the donated items, flinging them right and left in a mad rush to find something that fit. I looked more closely: one of them was a big guy with a beard and a beat-up hat, maybe 30 years old, and wearing a dress. Well, who doesn’t like matching outfits, I told myself. Fling, rip… I could hardly watch, even with the comic relief.

By the time I sat down in front of my computer to eat my lunch and read the news, I was ready for a change. Didn’t happen, though. The first thing I saw was how some Democrats don’t want us to have a government health care plan because it would be cheaper than Blue Cross and hurt the private insurance industry. I’m pretty sure the fellow living in the storage unit and the guy in the dress have wonderful health insurance from their employers, however, just like I do, so never mind.

Later that afternoon, I cut down the tall weeds around the house. There were a lot of them.

After dinner, my wife looked so beautiful in the soft evening light. Even after 30 years, to see her curled up in a chair with a fresh tan on her face and her bare feet tucked under her legs still takes my breath away.

This is all that matters now, that quality of attention…

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Lurching to Oblivion

Another little experiment… I also wanted to try editing some audio that I recorded a few years ago at the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram here in Taos, so I could use it for the background music on a short 30-second video of Highway 71 in eastern Colorado. Just an experiment, mind you, and mostly sky, but it gets me thinking.

As short as this is, it touches something in me that’s important. Hope it does something for you, too.

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America Meditation: Eastern Colorado w/ Ashram Chant (Video)

With regard to the previous post, after a second 90-minute, non-stop practice session, I finally got, um, excited. I heard the GROWL. Some of you know what I mean, the place where the guitar(s) let go and everything’s in tune, and the big electric sound is all one animal with a life and voice all its own. Nice!

This time playing “Wipeout” in C, the IV and V chords way up the neck happened almost by themselves, so long as I yelled first, and my hand didn’t fall off. I also learned “Flight of the Surf Guitar” for the first time. (Sounds really scary on a 12-string, heh.) I’m almost ready to see if I can play with my friends, in other words, because I know I’m over the body/attitude hump: I played three hours already today, and I want to keep going! My body is fried, though.

When I did stop playing, I was so speeded up! It would have been a great moment to have a fight or take someone up on a dare.

Devil music! (Quite true, actually.)

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Ovah the Hump