All of a Rainy Friday Afternoon

I hear there’s that old Chinese saying, or is it really a curse: May you have an interesting life. Interesting is one of those words, you know. “Oh your new haircut is really, um, interesting.” It covers a multitude of unmentionables.

So lately, life is certainly…INTERESTING.

Having become “of an age,” that age where generally, unless you’re Jane Fonda, women become invisible and so very disposable, I’m struggling to remain visible and relevant. And alive. All this after having our collective rugs pulled from under us in 2020 – our Covid Year – to which 2021 is now saying, “Hold my beer.”

Depending on our various constitutions and belief systems, the past 5 years have been a test of our survival and coping skills. Those left leaning of us have been stressed and challenged to our last nerve and sensibilities. However we chose to make our way through the madness, the cherry on top of the unwanted and bitter ice cream sundae was Covid. It was way worse than it had to be, and still it haunts and taunts us, and herd immunity is a concept perhaps never to be realized. We are forever changed, and Normal is a concept even more vague and unattainable than ever. (Not that I ever ascribed to Normal, but hey, enough.)

Covid anxiety, expressed in so many ways. First I lost 15 pounds out of sheer grief and stress. Then I gained 10 of them back. There wasn’t a chocolate chip cookie or brownie or new pie recipe left unbaked, and consumed, along with every comfort carb ever invented, with gravy, of course. Gravy, one of my favorite food groups. The evil whites: sugar, flour, potatoes, rice, bread…and all of those come with butter, lots of butter.

My Come to Covid Moment has arrived. My sumptuous English muffins with butter and pecan honey have now been usurped with oatmeal and blueberries, and my coffee no longer fortified and tamed with International Delight by the gallon. Nutpods now, flavored stuff, tolerable, but not the same. But my glucose numbers are being chased downwards with healthy satisfaction, and perhaps diabetes will not move into my closet.

The years of lifting, toting, pushing, pulling, reaching, carrying, and a family history of arthritis and osteoporosis are rearing their ugly heads now. A second spinal surgery, this one to assuage my train wreck neck appears to be in my future, but maybe it’s good to even have a chance of a future. I’ve lost so many friends in the last few years – to cancer, strokes, aneurysms, horse wrecks, dementia, lung disease, just plain woreoutedness, that it gives this “senior” pause. Time to address the quality of my future, what I have left of it. Time to get on the Health Wagon, leaving the soul soothing comforts behind for a while, and praise the attributes of low carbs and sugar deprivation. Yahoo.

All that said, in pursuit of altering my decrepitness, the past few weeks have been a myriad mess of doctor appointments, steroid injections, glucose measuring pricks – all those things which have come to replace lunch and cocktails with friends, road trips, and laughter. I damn well think I’ve forgotten how to laugh. That is decidedly not a good thing.

On the return trip from yet another medical appointment yesterday, running errands before heading home, in the rain, (blessed rain, we are thankful for it now in our drought bound part of the country)…raiding my HEB for green veggies and more oatmeal, then planning to head to Lowe’s for more garden necessities to help heal our Snowmaggon landscape, decimated by the most outrageous winter storm ever experienced in these parts…when leaving the grocery store I backed out of my parking space, then put the shift lever to the D position to drive on, and when I accelerated, my car went…backwards. What? Many tries, from N to 3 to 2, to P, and whatever number or letter might work and wake up my transmission. Nope. Nada. Backwards was the only way I could go, in the middle of the aisle, (Friday afternoon, no less, in the rain), and the best I could do was try to aim Ponygirl in reverse out of the traffic and the way, ending up jammed into the cart return racks. I thought maybe I could just turn off the engine, restart, (like my computer), and everything would reset. And the universe said HA! No, every light on the dashboard now lit up, and not a sound. Not a click or a grind or a whimper. The silence of the lambs. Ponygirl was DAID.

So there I sat, calling my car people, needing a wrecker, and it’s Friday afternoon and it’s raining. And the number to the wrecker went to voice mail, and the voice mail was full, accepting no more messages. Swell.

About that time, two employees from HEB, Latino guys, came out and said I couldn’t stay there. Well duh. When they figured out I was indeed stuck, they wanted me to put it in neutral so they could push it. I couldn’t get it to do anything, even make the key work. He got me out, him in, and proceeded to figure out something I couldn’t, and then they both pushed while I steered, with no power steering. And, it was uphill, of course. But we did it. Safely out of the way in a bit emptier part of the parking lot, damsel in destress with all the white knight tow truck drivers otherwise engaged. “Oh, you need a tow truck? Let me call my cousin.” But cousin was busy in North Austin far away and couldn’t get there for hours. But he tried. Those two guys were the first heroes.

Multiple calls back to the shop guys, and they were trying to find a tow truck for me, and the waiting began. Wonder of wonders, in a short few minutes, they called me back and help was on the way. The tow people called and said it would be about half an hour. Not bad on a Friday afternoon.

In due time, I saw the big black rig across the parking lot, and I got out and waved, and the driver waved back. White knight on a big black horse. Well, another Latino knight, small guy, dark and bearded, kind face. Great smile. He wanted me to go ahead and get in his rig, to get me out of the rain. So I exited with an armful of flowers, like a demented, masked beauty queen lost in the wrong pageant, wet and bedraggled. “You know,” he says, “when I see flowers like that I know I’m in trouble.” And I told him the story of how, years ago, when I had no one to bring me flowers, I vowed that I would always have fresh flowers in the house, to honor beauty and keep life flowing. I had to go through Covid for a year without flowers because I wasn’t going into the grocery store, and they don’t do flowers with curbside pickup. But now I am vaccinated and feel safe enough to frequent stores, (still with a mask), and again fill my house with flowers.

After he got Ponygirl up on the rig, he stepped back in, and introductions began. He was Tito, and Tito was ready to talk. He did not wear a mask, so I was able to see his face, one of the things I miss most about human encounters these days. Sometimes that mask is so convenient to hide behind, and you walk around in the safety of anonymity and your bad mood or fears hidden from all. And who the hell cares if you don’t wear makeup anymore; you’re a faceless stranger, and no one smiles, or if they do, you can’t see it. Dealing with humans has become robotic in a sense, and few are interested in small talking banter.

But Tito, he was all human and out there, and the ice had been broken. He told me about how he used to be a bad boy, drinking and drugging, so much so that he destroyed his marriage. His wife had enough, and she was done. He lost her, he lost his family, but that wasn’t the worst. He has a grandson now, and they won’t let him see him. He almost choked up at this part. It was the hardest thing of all. And then he told me he’d made a promise – to his grandson. And that promise was to quit drinking and drugging and to be a good man. He told me he’d be out with his friends and they’d be trying to get him to drink along with them, but no. He’d made a promise. And he was keeping it. And maybe someday they’ll trust him again and he can see his grandson. Oh man.

Sometimes it’s the greatest gift to be a listening post. The things I’ve been whining about for the past year fell away, and it was a wonder to be privileged to just hear him, to witness him. The auto shop was close to where we’d started, so we didn’t have much time really. I could only support him, and hope that his actions would tear down the walls and he would be granted time with his grandson. Soon he was helping me out of the truck, making sure I was OK. He insisted on carrying my flowers in the shop for me, then came back out to begin his work unloading my car. He said, as he walked by and I went in the building, “Don’t let them tell you all the tow truck guys are bad. It’s not true.” And then he flashed that smile again. Walking his talk. God I wanted to hug him. And then he was gone.

Next chapter begins as I talk with the guys inside, describing the problem, (Ponygirl had a stroke), waiting for one of them to get free so he could give me a ride home. Again, crazy me with my beauty pageant flowers, with a captive audience of others waiting for their vehicles.

It didn’t take long for them to get it together, and one of the guys brought the courtesy car around next to Ponygirl so I could unload my groceries and transfer them, along with my new Meyer lemon tree to replace the one that didn’t make it through winter. All that done, we headed out West. And then, the talking. About how much everything had changed. About how he used to be able to drive across the dam. And how I could counter that when I was a kid we used to be able to stop and park on the dam, and the family tradition was to spit off of it. And how one time there was this man standing there, looking at the water. Just looking at the water below. How he told us his brother had committed suicide there by jumping off the dam, and his body never surfaced. And how he’d just come now to look, and watch.

He was so into his head that he missed the turn to get to the house, even after I told him twice it was coming up. He apologized, then said it was so hectic at the shop, and I said it was good he could get out for a little bit for a break. And we talked about the houses eating up the land, how folks couldn’t afford their taxes or even get a house anymore in Austin. Then it was the story about how he’d had a house out by Pedernales Falls State Park, (it’s beautiful and still country out there), but he lost it in his divorce. Now he has to live in Austin and pay $1300 a month for a one bedroom apartment and would never be able to buy a house again. He wore a mask, so I couldn’t read his sadness, but I could sure feel it.

When we got to the house he saw the peacock, and I told him about all the changes here – how the developers raped pillaged and plundered the Back 40 and there was nothing left and the Great Horned Owls took all but one of the peafowl. He was kind, unloading the groceries for me, even noting that the little tree had made it and not fallen over. He insisted on bringing them up on the porch. I thanked him for everything, and then he was gone.

Get in the house, talk on the phone, put up groceries….back to the rote of life. But I felt so moved by the last few hours. So many heroes. So much kindness. So much sadness. So many people needing to be heard. So many people who want, and need, to tell their stories, and don’t even know it.

In the end, We Are Our Stories. We live in our own pockets sometimes, squelched and silenced, and just trying to survive. I wonder how many of us have squelched our stories, our lives, our souls, in the past months of trials and consequences. It seems an indicator that I had two such encounters of storytelling by perfect, (perfectly imperfect) strangers in a matter of hours. It was such a gift to be a vessel, ready to receive, ready to HEAR, when those men needed to be heard by someone, and I know they didn’t even know it.

And here I am, reaching out, telling part of my story, hoping maybe somebody will hear. It’s hard for so many to admit what we NEED, when we are programmed to live in such a way to get what we WANT. And what we want is sometimes skewed by media and perception and peer pressure. I am just remembering that an old boyfriend told me once that I wasn’t what he wanted, but I was what he needed. I think I’m still digesting that. It was a compliment of sorts, but not really. It was a statement, delivered on a sword. It went down hard, still does. And yet doesn’t Need trump Want? Or do we just hope that what we want is what we need? Or is it more true that we hope that what we need is what we want? Damned if I know.

And that’s how it all happened on a rainy Friday afternoon. What’s your story? I’ll listen, I promise.

Signs of Life ~ A story!

Anyone on my mailing list will be stunned to see a post. Or else wonder What Fresh Hell Is This? Yes, the old girl lives, and lately has been moved to write. I had the thought a bit ago and actually uttered to a friend, that this might just be the start of my book. My second book. A real book. I’ve been threatening such for years, and now I’m older, not even still middle aged, so I’d best get to it. There are a lot of stories to tell. This offering is, then, a preview of sorts, and is liable to be adjusted a bit if/when this whole thing fleshes out. But consider yourselves the canary in the coal mine. If it’s terrible you can send it to the corn field or throw tomatoes. It is but another form of art, and I’ve been hanging myself on the walls for years, awaiting acceptance and money for trade. I used to do it here, without the money part. Time to return to the scene of the crime.

And so, for your reading pleasure, (and it is a read), I offer you a tale of my blooming youth approaching adulthood. Always approaching – I’m fairly sure I never made it. Take yourself back a few years with me. The Beatles were singing and we thought we could save the world. I wish I still did.

 

 

Falling in Love with the Mountains

A Chapter from “Queenie – the Early Years”

 

I fell in love with the mountains when I was 17, passing through Flagstaff in the summer of 1966, along about July, and I was forever changed. We were in my grandfather’s brand new Alaskan camper, mounted upon his upgraded pickup truck with stowage compartments built into the sides, and I was along for the ride for my high school graduation present: five and a half weeks of life in the camper as we traveled every state west of the Rockies, and some on this side, too. Also there was his third wife – a strangish lady he’d married a few years before, who was indeed an old maid school teacher at the ripe old age of 55 when they’d married. Somehow that always gave me hope. She was his third wife after the two before, my grandmother and after her a nice lady named Modene. Miss Modene. She had taught my mother in school. That’s how small Elgin, Texas was. I don’t remember much about her except baking cookies or a cake with her in that old farmhouse kitchen at what used to be an old farm, with the single open lightbulb hanging down from a raw cord in the center of that high ceiling room. Would I ever like to lay these eyes on that scene now. Or photograph it. I digress. I always digress. Grandma’s and Modene’s stories were sad. My grandmother had visions of the Big City and divorced Charlie, and moved to Dallas – Big D. Something went very wrong with Modene, (it was never much talked about), and she ended up in an institution of some sort, probably called an asylum at that time, and she died there. Many years later he married Camilla. He must’ve had a thing for schoolteachers, but I imagine the dating pool was shallow in Elgin. But for now, it was Charlie and Camilla, and my life was going to take a different direction.

We lived in Dallas then, and I was a captive city girl, knowing I loved the West and all things Nature, but I’d been hardly anywhere except somehow we’d made it to Carlsbad Caverns, and several caves in central Texas. I was a spelunker, and some who knew of my proclivities called me NatureGirl. Word was out already. I planned to go to college and major in Geology and become a Park Ranger. I don’t know why those with such aspirations were called Junior Woodchucks, but already I was all about the great Out There. I thought I’d work for the Park Service and transfer from park to park, eventually seeing all the places that were sacred and holy to me, all across the country.

My grandfather had instilled that love of the West in me, being an old desert rat who had meandered across the wild spaces of California and who knows where all, but especially loving the Southwest, even when he had started a family. I wish I hadn’t been so young when I knew him, and I’d thought to ask more questions about that life, and how he managed it. He ended up being elected the County Attorney of Bastrop, and that’s where my mother went to high school. He was a very quiet man who rarely showed emotion. I think my mother got that from him, and I got the crazy from my grandmother. I’m sure he couldn’t wait to show me all the places he used to ramble across, and back in the 60’s those places were much more approachable than now. No busses in Zion. No lines of vehicles to enter Arches. Moab was not a mecca of mountain bikers and extreme sport seekers and insane traffic. It was just us tourist types, making our way from one spectacular scene to another. I still wince at the thought of other vagaries of being 17, and riding along for miles with a transistor radio glued to my ear. One of the songs of the day was They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha, to the funny farm, where life is sweet and…. We did have lots of good music, though. And maybe I just didn’t want to talk to Camilla. But I get ahead of myself.

At the end of my senior year, Grandpa and Camilla came up from Elgin, which is now a bedroom community to Austin, in flat farmland and very uninspiring. They attended my graduation, and I’m sure some plans were laid. A few weeks later they returned, and we headed out. We were headed West. Due West. The only direction. I wonder what my mother really thought about the whole adventure. Being at home with my father was a hellish proposition most of the time, and it had to be hard to face time alone with him. And I’m sure I didn’t think much about it at the time. I was 17.

We’d come across the Panhandle of Texas, staying first in small, dusty, early style RV places, or somewhere you could park your rig for the night, and they had showers, and a laundromat. Primitive. Just your needs met. Not any such thing as Wifi. Or bars on your phone. There wasn’t any phone. I think it was wonderful. Little no name towns were dots on the map on our way to the Big Show. It all was flat and dusty in Texas, and I didn’t have appreciation for the Big Wide Open back then. But it got better in the high deserts and red sandstone country of New Mexico. It must’ve been about the third or fourth night out, after getting through New Mexico with Albuquerque, Gallup, and then into Arizona and then Meteor Crater left behind in our rear view mirror, that we pulled into Flagstaff. We came in on the main drag from the East, old Route 66 before the I-40 bypass was the thing, and it was small and quaint and an unassuming little town. The iconic motels of the 50’s were still the norm. Big boxes weren’t invented yet, nor fancy chain motels. Town was still pawn shops and bars and Indians on the street. But we didn’t see that yet, and really I didn’t see it till years later. We weren’t hanging around the towns much anyway, where I could ever get a feel for them. We were road warriors.

We didn’t go all the way into what was town itself. There was another of those not quite RV parks over on the right, in just the perfect place. Beyond it lay two ranges of hills, with a meadow between them making an inviting, flat place to see a ways to the north, with plenty of area to hike and explore way away from the park area. There were pine trees all around. Pine trees!

No other way to put it – I was home. I was back to where I’d been before – some other life – some other something or circle that found itself being completed and renewed when I began to walk on pine needles and listen to the songs of the wind when it blew through the pines. I fell in love with Flagstaff, even so smitten with the young guy who put gas in the truck, (they did that back then), that I remembered his name and got the address of the station, and when I got back to Dallas I wrote him a letter. Bold move for a shy city girl. I bet he was floored. I never heard from him, but I reckon the other guys at the station gave him a time about it.

A routine developed in our travels. Space inside the camper was limited, and really no room for more than one person to be involved in cooking, and I was born to wander. When we stopped for the day, Grandpa did the necessary chores to hook us up or tie us down or whatever was needed to be secure for the night, and Camilla worked in the miniature kitchen to put dinner together. Being the golden child, I gathered myself, got my camera, and took off. I never had the time to get too far away or lost, and I knew better than get too far afield, and I stayed Out There till I heard the truck horn honking me in if I hadn’t wandered back by then. I still have the sight memory of striking out down that meadow, surrounded by the tall pines and the feel of the summer air in the mountains. Nothing would ever be the same. I saw a lot that summer: Grand Canyon, the Sequoias, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, the Big Skies, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado. But my heart had been stolen early on. I was in love with Flagstaff, and it became my heart’s desire to move back there…someday.

***

Someday – after some misspent years in college, foolish broken hearts and fits and starts of trying to figure out what was what about this life – someday turned out to be the early fall of 1971. Our small family had moved back to Austin in 1967, and Dallas was history. But I had not forgotten the mountains.

I had compromised my mission from the get go. I had a weird little boyfriend, shorter than I, but a poet type who read a lot, wrote some, was fairly good looking in a blond, blue eyed, Beatle glasses sort of way, and he smoked a pipe and wore turtleneck sweaters, which set him off from all the other male types I’d had anything to do with. He was some version of a miniature Hemingway, without the beard. His parents had long since divorced, then gone their separate ways. His mother, a woman I remember as having more lines crossing deeply into her face than any human I’d ever seen, lived down in Port Aransas with her current husband, a tall, lanky guy who loved to fish, and they ran a trailer park there. They had a little black dog named Poopsie.

His dad had been a long haul trucker, but he’d been killed out on the road, and his grandmother was important in his life. She was a character, was named Naomi, and she lived in Phoenix with her husband, or maybe he wasn’t. The Arizona connection was made, and we visited out there before making the move. We drove in late on a summer night and when we stepped out of the car I thought someone had left the heater on outside. Desert heat – a whole different thing.

I’m foggy on how it all happened. I was determined to move out there, and I had already done the research and house hunting and found a little cabin to rent in Mountainaire, a slow speed little collection of cabins on the east side of I-17 about ten miles south of Flag. I had secured it in my name. I was going. I don’t know how it happened he came, too. We’d gotten a dog together, but she was mine. My first collie, a breed I came to love. We’d taken her camping with us to Big Bend when she was but a pup, but mostly she’d stayed with me. We settled into the cabin, and within days she was killed on the road. I’ll never forgive myself for that. Our hearts were broken, and maybe nothing was ever the same after that. I used to walk with her out beyond the cinder streets and cabins into the wild country surrounding. It was intoxicating. She’d been a great companion.

I got myself a job on the north side of town, and it wasn’t too far to walk to get away from streets and into parkland and that’s what I did most every day for lunch. It was fall by then – glorious, color on steroids fall, with aspen leaves turning neon yellow gold against a cobalt blue sky, with crisp-dry-clean-exhilarating air to breathe and the scent of pines trees in that air. I loved the mountains. I got off early on Friday afternoons and it was a time to head out. Somewhere, anywhere, to just be. Out There.

The first snow came. I was still at work and the flakes were coming down like big silver dollars, floating, falling, taking forever to find the ground, incredible. My boss was a good guy and loaded us up in his jeep and took us up Mars Hill to the observatory. What magic. I was so close to heaven.

It all lasted two months. The romance failed. I worked. He went to school. Maybe it was losing the dog that cursed it. We’d gotten another puppy in town. She was a little light in the head, but we had another collie. Communication ceased. I was unhappy. He wasn’t leaving – he was going to school. My mother – who I know never wanted me to leave in the first place, at least like this – flew out to help me drive home, hauling a trailer with all my stuff: my first rocking chair, dishes, everything. I was a good nester. And my plants, which I’d had to have inspected and tagged in Texas before I could cross the Arizona line with them. Big plants. We went down to Phoenix to get me another collie puppy. I left the other one with the deserted boyfriend, and named the new girl Kachina, after the Hopi gods that lived atop the sacred mountain. My mountain. Her life began on the road. She became my best friend.

It got cold the night on the road on the way home, stopping somewhere between Flag and Austin. Freezing cold. All my plants died. But home I went, and back to school and part time work. I did better in school, finally finding some focus, but switching my major to Anthropology and Archeology. The math and hard science required to accompany Geology was too much for my right sided brain, but there were still places I could use what I was learning to be a Park Naturalist or make dioramas in the visitor centers. The boyfriend was inconsolable and drove all the way to Austin to ask me to come back. I didn’t.

Life in Austin was sweet in those days. It was the beginning of the Cosmic Cowboy revolution. Small listening clubs like Castle Creek/Chequered Flag let us soak in the magic nights with B.W. Stevenson, Michael Martin Murphy, some guy named Willie Nelson, and Rusty Weir. The streets were safe and the music was stellar. In due time I acquired another boyfriend, older and established and with promise. (But still ever the bad choice.) I thought I’d be marrying this one and setting up house and having those 2.5 children – the American Dream. Two years later we hit the wall. Within two months of the end, I’d quit my job, found another cabin, and was packed up and on the road back to Flagstaff, this time on my terms. This time, was my time. My poor mother though. She’d finally divorced my father, and now I was gone again. And her life was just getting really hard, again and still.

I’d found a little vacation cabin on the other side of the interstate this time, the same 10 miles south of town. I moved to Kachina Village, with my dog Kachina, and it was summer. I was 26 years old, and I finally had my little cabin in the pines. John Denver: (S)he was born in the summer of her 27th year, going home to a place she’d never been before. Well, I’d already done that second part when I was 17. But he nailed the first part.

Summer in the mountains. There is nothing like it. It is luscious and green and crisp and punctuated with summer monsoons. I had a picture window view of The Peaks, the identifying landmark of Flagstaff, the tallest point in Arizona. It was the home of the Hopi gods, the sacred mountain, my place of solace and dreams. About mid to late morning a small cloud would form at the top of the mountain. By mid afternoon it had mounded upon itself and then set itself off down the mountain and out to us in the flats below. Lightning and thunder at altitude is an amazing thing. The air cracks and peels away, the thunder rolls in all directions, and you’re smack in the middle of it. It’s over quickly, but oh the difference. What heat might have built up during the day is vanquished, and then the pines give up their scent, cleansing all. Giant dandelions would pop up beside my cabin, and pine needles were a soft carpet to walk on.

I treasured the days I was home to witness it and be a part of it. I was meant to be a Mountain Girl, and I had made it. I often forget the power I possess to make things happen, but for once I was living it, even in a town in which it was difficult to impossible to find jobs – and even with a job not having enough extra money to head out to the hinterlands like I wanted. But in time, I found ways. Utah was close.

Summer moved into Autumn, always my favorite season. My ragtag bunch of friends around the circle of cabins would hang out together – full fledged hippies and those of us a bit more on the fringe – and even some straight types who came along for the ride. We’d load up our dogs and a picnic for the adventure, and head out to that favored road going up the mountain and then head in to the forest service roads to find us an aspen grove, shimmering in gold. Campfires, breaking bread with friends, laughter, communion. We had it all. I had long hair and I’d wear it in braids with a leather headband. I was home.

On solitary expeditions, I’d again load up my faithful companion in my blue GMC Jimmy 4 wheeler, blue like the autumn skies, and head out to Hart Prairie, north of the Peaks on the way to the South Rim of the Canyon, even then to photograph or more often to just BE in the magnificence of the wilderness. I can remember driving back from a visit with my Slovakian friends who ran the Snow Bowl Motel at the base of the Peaks, smiling my face off and thinking myself to be the happiest of girls to just be…HERE. There, in the mountains, awaiting the first snow. Eyes filled with wonder, heart singing, soul soaring.

I think the most beautiful scene I witnessed was the full moon on the snow in the depths of night. The moonlight was blue – it reflected everywhere. You could see clear across the meadows. Where the snow had crusted a bit there were diamonds. Blue diamonds in a blue wonderland in a silence that was so intense your ears would ring. Silence had a sound. It was that profound. The snow had covered any imperfections that marred the landscape, and all was pristine perfection. Oh how I long to see that one more time, and to hear that special almost metallic crunch that the snow makes when a foot falls on it. Oh how I remember the mountains.

Whenever I was troubled or blue I could load up Kachina and we’d either head up to the south rim of the Canyon, or else to my favorite spot up on the side of the Peaks, and we’d just sit. And ponder. And my mind would settle down, and we’d sink into the wonder. So much wonder.

Time passes and things change and priorities shift. In too short a time things hit another wall in my paradise and at the same time I was needed back in Texas. I quit my job in a fit of pique and packed up and left in a scene that was reminiscent of a screwball comedy script, complete with going ass over teakettles in the ice and snow. What a great exit. Leaving the snowdrifts behind, I’d had to get the county snow plow guy, (who luckily was enamored of me), to pull the rented moving truck with my Jimmy attached behind, out of the banks piled at the side of the road, where either me or my friend who I paid to drive me back home had run it aground. I’m pretty sure it was him. Like I said, it was a hell of an exit, and we won’t even talk about the pipes freezing, unfreezing, and blowing out the bathroom wall the last night I was in the cabin. High drama. I returned to Texas in the middle of a winter, which was no winter at all. I left the snow behind, and the pine trees, and my mountain, and returned to the Hill Country, vowing to be back in the mountains as soon as I was able.

It’s been over 40 years now. I am no longer young. I’ve been back many times, but each time feeling a bit like a traitor to the mountain, and thinking my stony lover no longer even recognizes me. It’s hard to return to what once was, and I felt like a stranger. But I don’t feel that communion with the country in Texas, even though it’s where I sprouted. There’s no monsoon season, no aspens, no snowfall. No magpies and Stellar Jays, no pine needles to sing in the wind. No mountain to call mine. But it has its charms. And I have good friends.

I don’t know where I’ll end up, really and finally. Maybe here. Maybe out there. I used to write songs about the mountains, and John Denver sang my life: How can I leave you again – I must be clear out of my mind. But leave I did. And now, here I am. What now. What now. What next.

Finding Hope in the Paint Department of Home Depot

There hasn’t seemed to be much in the way of redemption these days. Or hope. Or belief that somehow, in the end, we’ll make our way out of this morass we’ve found ourselves in. Margaret and Helen have all but fallen silent, and Molly Ivins is somewhere beyond our reach of whatever pearls she has to offer. The news is grim, and humans, as a species, seem bent on destroying themselves and the planet as we pillage and plunder our way though our allotted time…at least the ones who make the news. Murder and mayhem is the order of the day, reinforcing every harrowing thought we have about what we’ve become. Or them. It’s a sad planet out there, and everyone seems very angry about it. I know I’ve been.

But yesterday I saw Hope. I felt it. I was engulfed in it.

I struck out late in the afternoon to be responsible and run my errands, even in 5:00 traffic, so that I would have an unencumbered day to putter amongst my many projects today. It’s hot this year, and tempers and attitudes are shortened and sharpened, and I almost dreaded any encounters. There must be an opportunistic window for hitting the grocery store, even at peak traffic hours. The aisles were clear and no lines at check out. I engaged the cashier, a youngish fellow with schoolboy looks, in fairly meaningful banter about life and our choices in it, (really a not so innocent rant about an art customer who let her mother talk her out of the photograph that had spoken to her, and so her mother chose the image that she liked, even though it would not even hang in her house – sigh), and how we needed to be our own selves. Then “have a good weekend” wishes were offered all around, and off I went to Home Depot. Time for more paint samples in my never ending quest to fix this place up.

Home Despot, as the Queen Mum and I generally refer to it, was equally emptyish, and after I gathered up my reference pamphlets, I sauntered over to the empty Get Your Paint island, deserted and devoid of employees. I waited patiently. And waited. And waited. Nobody in sight, nobody noticing me. (Volumes have already been written on the invisibility of women of a certain age.) After a good and long time it was time to hunt for help, and down the aisles I went. Way back almost to plumbing I spied a fellow up on a ladder, hoisting heavy gallons of somesuch, restocking from a fully loaded pallet of the same. I couldn’t see his face, but inquired pleasantly if he could help me with a paint sample. Of course he could, but let him get these last two containers up on that shelf. They looked really heavy. I went back to the counter.

In due time he was there, an older man, smallish in build, one of the many seniors I so often see working at HD. I told him what I needed, and he commenced to plugging in the various formulas into the masterful mystery of the computerized paint color generator. Solid stain, Atlantic, Premium Grade, sample size. First time was a failure. Second time took us nowhere. I wasn’t in a hurry, so all the time we talked our way though it, knowing one of these times it would work. Third time we found gold, and it all went through like it was supposed to. It was all about not giving up, keeping up the trying, like that. I offhandedly said how stubborn I was, so seldom giving up, and yes, that was why I stuck with that bad boyfriend for so many years – meant to be a self-deprecating joke. It was then that everything changed. While the colors were dispensing, he turned to me and pulled out his wallet, and from right on top of a pocket he pulled out two laminated photographs, one obviously old. “Been married 51 years,” he said. “This is a picture of us on our honeymoon, and here’s one of us a few years ago. She’s turning 75 soon, and in just a few months I’ll be 80.” I told him, “And I bet you still call her your bride.” And he said he did. I allowed as to how this validated my dreams that sometimes it really is out there – it’s real – I do believe in something. And he said, “It’s all because of her.” He told me how they’d moved here after 38 years in Florida, how they’d followed their kids here. And how even now the kids would come over for dinner, and how much that meant. And how his kids, they were everything. Everything.

His accent was certainly not of Florida or Texas, and I easily detected the New Yorker. We traded accent stories, and dollahs and fahmahs markets, and how Brooklyn and Austin had changed over the years. And how much so many things have changed, and how did anyone even afford to take the family to a ballgame anymore. Then followed the stories of living close to Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and going to the World Series when tickets were, are you ready, six dollars.

More stories about how good life was. How if you went to the Italian restaurant next to the movie theater on Tuesday you can get an extra pizza for free, one to take home to the freezer. And Mondays at the League you can get a good hamburger and they give you the second one – free! Always the good.

I could see a bit of palsy in one hand as he put the paint can in the shaker, and still our conversation went on. More stories about how he just can’t sit down in front of the television – there is so much to do. And how every morning he goes out to walk, over there in Lakeway, and how he puts on his music and his headphones, but he doesn’t walk, he DANCES though the neighborhood. He told me a lady came in and said he looked so familiar, and finally they put it together that she’d seen him in the hood. Oh yes! He was the DANCING MAN! We said the words together. More laughter and smiles.

He told me how he came upon a big piece of something in the road down there by the highway, and it was there for days and days. He’d finally stopped to pick it up, and it was ceramic, and heavy, and he’d have to ask them at HD how they could help dispose of it – trash – which no one else was going to do anything about. How life was all about living by the Golden Rule. “You gotta just help somebody when you can. Do something good.” Oh how much I loved this man.

Paint was mixed. It was time to go, but neither of us was ready for it to be over. He introduced himself – Richie – but I could see his name on his store apron. Then he asked my name, and I told him. He startled, and then said, “Stay there, I have to come around.” All around the counter he came, and out to hug me. “What did I do?” I said. “Alexa. That’s my granddaughter’s name! And she’s going to have a baby! A little girl!” He was choking up, a little embarrassed. I was, too. I told him I was so happy about that, because I’d never gotten to do that. By then there was someone waiting, being a bit patient himself while these two humans being were having a moment. We had to let it go then, and he had to help the other man who was looking for Padre Brown. But I told him I’d be back – I was always getting paint. “Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays, 9 to 6,” he said.

Monday’s coming. That paint sample worked out just fine. I’ll be out and about and I need to get that stain to get the deck done, finally. I’m looking forward to seeing Richie again. I have a new friend. He gave me such a gift. And Hope. He gave me Hope. I think I gave him something, too.

They are out there. I should know that. I have such exceptional friends, blessed beyond any expectations.

Somebody else having a bad day could’ve gone down that aisle and given him what for because no one was at the ready and they had to wait. Somebody else didn’t. It was me. And we were both rewarded. It’s made me feel that much better since then. Today, the rant will have to wait. Today is about Gratitude. Thank you Richie. You are stellar. See you on Monday.

 

Regarding a Trip to West Texas

Several friends requested a report of sorts about my recent trip to one of my beloved places, West Texas, on the occasion of going out and participating in one of my favorite art shows. I decided to respond via Queenie, seeing as I can’t help but be political about this, and some might rather avoid this slant on things when they see it on Facebook. Perhaps my Republican friends can be advised to “Move along now; nothing to see here,” or just read at your own risk.

This is no time to avoid our various voices. Even the opposing ones. I found out this week that it’s good to know where your friends stand, for many reasons. There were a couple of jaw dropping moments, more than a few tears, and a coming together of  souls that sustains us all. These are interesting, and terrifying times.

It’s always hard to leave the Queen Mum and the critters. The QM is shaky at best, and but a fall away from some sort of catastrophe. I rely on her judgment about what she can do and the kindness of my wonderful neighbors who keep an eye out and will be available if something befalls her, or she befalls herself. All went well on that front, except that she twisted her knee right before my return. At least it was reasonable timing, but she’s hurting and way incapacitated, and not happy about the whole thing. We stumble on.

As for the art show, we began Artwalk with high hopes, with what positive feelings we could bring up in the face of change and tragedy. Alpine, Texas is a small town dealing with big problems. There was a trifecta of sorts affecting all manner of things. Probably freshest in the minds of my like minded friends was of course the election. To those in the same camp, you understand the pall that covers all our landscapes. We have experienced what feels like a death of immense proportions, and the funeral seems never ending. We are, simply, in grief. To those who are in the same state of mind, I needn’t explain. To those who are made of different stuff, you do not comprehend. The gulf between us is unfathomable, and it has been written about and explored by far greater minds than my own. The ongoing funeral does have a function — it brings us together. We cling to each other. We cry. We wail. We cannot believe what has happened. We have to talk about it, even though we are weary of just that. But the common shot to the heart that unites us is ever present. Is it like living with a terminal illness? It’s just there, and we have to live around it, with it, despite it. If a laugh escapes we feel guilty. It’s still raw, and we’re still learning to cope. But I’m not sure that can happen, really.

And so we tried to have a weekend filled with beauty and art. The beauty was there, but so was the black crepe. We tried. The dark “other” was an unwelcome participant in the festivities. We talked, we clung, we tried not to talk about it, but we couldn’t not talk about it. We needed each other. I left the hotel exhibit the last night late, and then began a conversation with a young couple outside the room as I locked up. We stood in the lobby for an hour, relating our beliefs and experiences, and where to go from here. We talked conspiracy theories, loss of innocence, assassinations, and various causes for what just didn’t feel right in town. And now we discuss another source of the heaviness: the pipeline.

Past the western edge of town and then running south is another assault on the psyche. They are running a gas pipeline through the fragile ecosystem  of the high desert. There was no choice. They began before permits were granted; they grabbed the land of protesting and opposing landowners through misuse of eminent domain, and now it just is. In sublime support, Native Americans have come to stand with the people – many of the same who are fighting the same battle in North Dakota. The arrests will come. This pipeline is owned by the same man who owns the desecration in North Dakota, and he sits on the board of Texas Parks and Wildlife. A little conflict of interest, wouldn’t you say, but now we see that playing out on a national level. It’s yet another of our new normals, inflicted upon us now with water cannons and rubber bullets and dogs trained to attack. America as we knew it is gone now. Evidence is amounting for another stolen election. We have no one left to fight for us. But us. And here we are. Strangers have come to town, to live, for a while, and they are not of the city. They are not community, and they are bringing petty crime, and an unwelcome uneasiness. They are doing damage, and then they will leave. It is another pervading sadness.

And then there is Zuzu. In October a young student disappeared. Alpine is a college town, and it is a positive addition for art, the land, animals, and conservation. Zuzu was a part of that scene, an active participant in many things, with plans to work for the betterment of the land. She’s gone. Neighbors heard an argument, loud thumps in the dark hours of the night, and then she was vanished. The one time boyfriend is implicated, but….there is no body. Searches have been ongoing, for hundreds of miles around. My friends have helped look for her. The parents come and go in town, their lives forever changed. The air is leadened with more grief. When you enter town from either direction, you see a sign offering a huge reward for information about the return of Zuzu. It’s personal in a small town. They are not letting it go, but she is gone. General consensus is that she was taken out in the desert where, with Nature being what it is, not a trace will remain, not even the bones. It’s a big desert. Vast, and uncompromising. Zuzu was a bubbly sprite, named after that little girl in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” She was special. She’s gone. And the town hurts for her, and her grieving family. There are signs everywhere. There are no answers, only sadness.

Artwalk was just not the same this year. Many regulars didn’t come. Not so many bought. Contradictions abounded. I met incredible “new” friends in the flesh with whom I had been connected on Facebook for years. They are wondrous souls. That was so good. I spent quality time with others I don’t see nearly enough, and got to know them better. And in the next moment I talked with customers I knew to some degree, only to find out they were in the camp that believes that Sandy Hook never happened, and it was all staged with paid actors. I could hardly form words. I felt a little mad, (like crazy mad), all weekend. I made some money, not as much as usual, but a few subsequent sales afterwards brought the total up to reasonable levels. Perhaps I felt unfocused and unbalanced all weekend, going through the motions. There was so little Joy.

That’s it. That’s what was missing. Joy. I found Gratitude in so many moments, but so little Joy. They are not the same thing.

I related earlier today the story of meeting a woman in the place I come to for solace and friendship after the show. A new family has moved to town. Eventually they will settle down in the Terlingua area, but for now they are the only black family in town. She was remarkable…inspirational. She had the darkest skin I’d seen in a long time, and it glowed beautifully. She is a new mother, and being away from her son was a new thing for her, and she is madly in love with her child. She is intelligent, well spoken, and talked freely and definitively about her blackness and her experiences in these days. She, frankly, is tired of the bullshit. Don’t lie to me, she says. Speak your truth to me. She was a shining light in a season of darkness. I envy her her strength and resilience. She doesn’t have room for fear. Yet today I see the report of the new Neo Nazis now activated across the country, talking about the “children of the sun.” What the actual f**k? They ended their meeting with Sieg Heils. What have we allowed to fester in this my country? Where do we go from here?

I don’t intend to give my little home away from home a bad rap. I still love Alpine and the people who live there. I still give thought to making that area my final last moving adventure. It’s not so much about the place as spirit wounded. You talk to folks in town and they have no intention of leaving. They just want the hurt to stop. I wondered as I packed up what the show would be like next year. What will we all be like a year from now? In what state will we find our government? What freedoms will have been hacked away? How much more hurt inflicted? Will people still want art? Will they still have the money for it? Will we be still be huddling together, holding each other, seeking comfort?

I wish my little favorite town some great healing. The hurt isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s hard to heal when the wound is still open and bleeding. It’s hard to hug a town. But Alpine, I love you. I wish all of us some better times, no matter which community we inhabit. The love starts in our hearts, then we have to let it out. We have to help. We have to care. Let us all care. Let us all love each other. Kumbaya starts here.

Even Queenie Has a Trump(ish) Story

Some several decades ago I followed a dream and relocated myself to a small, at the time, mountain town in Arizona. Back then it had as many people in the entireity of the town as attended the enormously populated university I floundered around in here in my home state. I was late to find I was really a small town girl, especially since I had mostly grown up in Dallas. Imagine that. I had no formal training in anything accomplished, and trying to find gainful employment in a small university/tourist town was challenging. I almost wangled a job with the government having to do with the land, and geological stuff, (I had, for a while, majored in Geology but the left brain functions necessary for such scientific endeavors was at that time beyond me), but hiring issues and the like left me scrambling for whatever I could muster in the medical fields in which I had worked for a while. I got a job in a medical lab, and then landed a front desk job with a dentist. That worked for a while, and I relished my Friday afternoons off, but like so many folks in the Southwestern communities, the guy was a Mormon. I have never before been fired from a job. Ever. But lordy mercy I drank coffee and alcoholic beverages and I was a single woman/girl with long hair and a free spirit and I dated. It was not a good fit. When I had the gall to ask if I might use some vacation time before it was actually due and take a river trip to go along with the geology class I was taking at the museum there, I found out just how much I didn’t fit, and not because of my job performance mind you, but “other” things, I was summarily ushered out of that situation. Well.

I looked all over town for other jobs. I tried insurance offices. Other medical offices. Anything that showed a lick of promise. Nada.

I was living in a small out of town village down the interstate from the main town – a collection of small cabins and vacation homes and some larger homes, all mostly of the mountain cabin variety, and there were lots of full timers. I had a very small cabin toward the front of the community that was owned by the development company that also operated the utility company that supplied water for the village. I’d made a good friend who was married to the son of one of the bigwigs of the company and they lived right across from me in the two rows of cabins, six altogether. We were a fairly tight bunch, and hung together often. Her husband was a pretty thing, maybe male model material, and he thought he was hot stuff indeed. (He did, however, have a nasally voice that immediately destroyed the facade, and it whined a lot.) They found themselves in this little burg because said son of bigwig managed to get himself in trouble with the law on a bunch of drug charges, and daddy bought him out of it and placed him, and therefore her, in this little podunk town and saddled him with running the water company. It was either that, or go to jail. Welcome to the mountains, sonny.

I was running out of options, and was considering having to move back to Texas. Maybe at the urging of my girlfriend, they asked me to be the secretary/manager/billing person/whatever for the utility company. Along with that, part of my salary would be having my rent payment to the development company eliminated and paid for as part of my salary. What a deal. I could walk to work just down the road, and even bring my devoted dog. I got to come home for lunch, didn’t have to dress up, and all of it was easy to handle. Not much of a future, but when you’re young, such things are far away and the joy of the moment is worth it all. (Funny how I’m getting back to that, except I don’t have much of a future, even now.) And I was promised a raise after six months.

Things went along fairly swimmingly, except for the golden boy’s assholey traits, and his being a thief in general. He regularly stole out of petty cash, and pocketed all the money when our cabin group went in together to buy a chainsaw for wood gathering. He entered my cabin when I came back to Texas for a visit, and stole my engineering tools and broke my blender chopping up weed. The drawing tools I didn’t find out till much later, but I’m sure he pawned them. He was a real gem, that one.

Forward to several months later when one of the very large kahunas from the mother company was coming to town one time for a look see. Not the bad boy’s daddy, but another of the principals. Big money. Big ego. Fill in the blanks. I was a fairly fetching young thing at the time, entirely single and all that, and he asked me to go out to dinner. I did. I remember no bells and whistles, and likely he was married, (I don’t much remember all the details), but I do remember that the evening came to a close, and wonder of wonders, I was not the least interested in rewarding his interest or his ego, and I did NOT care to sleep with him. Bam. He left miffed, and he didn’t let go of it.

Coincidentally, this was about the time I was due, past due, for my promised raise. I was a good employee. I did good work. I showed up with coffee in the middle of the night when the boys were out digging up broken water lines in the frozen ground. Pipes that happened to have “rejected” stamped upon them, when the developers made money by using inferior materials in the original construction, pocketing the difference I would assume. That’s how you make money in business, right? So after boss guy left to go back to the big city, I had the nerve to ask about my raise. And guess what? Yep, no raise for me. No way, no how. Orders from above. He got me alright. He surely did. I suppose I violated the Play to Pay rule, reversed of course.

I was furious. I was hurt. I was fairly stunned. Back then I was young and pure enough to follow through with acts of Righteous Indignation. I quit. I walked out, gathering my coffee cup and radio and what personal objects surrounded my desk, and on my exit promptly slipped on the frozen snow outside and fell ass over teacups on the ground, scattering stuff everywhere. It was impressive. I went to get my truck so I could get the rest of my personals in better style, and tried to take off the drivers’ side door on a tree as I backed up with the door open, looking out to see since my windows were frozen over. It was not a good plan. Lessons learned about having fits of pique in snow and ice and in anger.

I’m sure my girlfriend made Pretty Boy’s life a living hell after that. I was going back to Texas, and I was her best friend. (It was a horribly dysfunctional relationship, and he later fired a gun at her and ended up in jail, but that’s another story). And yet he could do nothing for me. The night before I was to leave, moving truck packed and truck attached to it, he came over and as much as begged me to stay, staying we’d “work something out.” Too little, too late. That bridge was burned.

The upshot of all this is that here is a tale of a somewhat vulnerable, “dependent” woman/girl getting burned by the rich SOB who controlled my physical and financial well being, since I was his employee. I was summarily punished because I would not go to bed with this creep. I could’ve sucked it up and stayed and figured something out later, but I knew how hard it was to find other employment, and by then my mom was really needing my help back in Texas, though she would never be the one to ask for it. I essentially said “F**k this s**t!” and left the next morning. Of course not without my pipes in the bathroom blowing out and giving me a Niagara Falls send off. Nothing without drama for me.

So these now emerging stories of women and their demeaning and devaluing by rich men in power just hit me in the gut. Mine was a story of minor consequence in the great scheme of things, but this crap happens every day. Our Mr. Trump is the poster boy of the entitled male, getting away with everything because he’s never known any other way. He whacks his way around with the silver spoon he was born with, and has never known challenge or his own consequence, and he avoided the line that provided conscience. He’s done just fine without it. He has no frigging idea. None. His is the way of dirty little, or big deals, and sniggering in the locker rooms now moved to board rooms and the back of busses with an equally adolescent bad boy who laughs with him at his snide comments and successes with those hot women. He can “do anything,” because he’s a star. And the sad thing is, it’s pretty much true.

I’d like to hand Mr. Trump his balls on a dirty plate on November 8th, if anyone can find them. I assume they are bronzed. One of his surrogates, (I’ve come to really despise that word), said today that all this is just a tempest in a teapot, no big deal. That his ex wives are just fine with him. Sure they are. They’ve been paid off big time, and he is secure in their signed No Disclosure straitjackets.

It’s not just rich men that devalue women. It’s the hard core macho types that slap their women into submission, and the boyfriends that rape or beat or kill their girlfriends babies. It’s the system that pays women less than men for the same job, and the one in Congress that supports that. Really? We are told again and again that it’s just Boys Being Boys, and Get Over It, will you? Move along, nothing to see here. This is HOW IT IS. And it’s WRONG.

I’m ready for a matriarchy. I’m ready for a goddess revolution. I’m ready for this madman to be put out to pasture and made to grow some callouses to pull his weight. And I’m ready for these WOMEN who defend him to have the chip removed from their brains. I’m done. I wish they were.

How many of us women have stories? How many are blessed with husbands or partners or brothers or fathers who are not members of the Bad Boys Club, who RESPECT women instead of denigrating them. How many women, and men, are raising sons who will not carry on the locker room mentality, which we’re all supposed to accept because, after all, you know BOYS WILL BE BOYS. How about we start raising some MEN? My neighbor across the street is doing it. It’s possible. I see it every day.

Queenie hasn’t been on the soapbox for a while. The view is pretty sad up here these days. But I can see across the street. There is Hope. Maybe.

Raise the bar, America. Lest it come down on your throat. We’re not playing limbo. This shit is real.

September 18, 2016

It’s lingering on summer here at The Slope, not even Indian Summer. We had a few teasers of fall, and a spate of rains. Enough rains to purchase us a third spring, (feeling hot as summer), with the third round of Lantanas, those yellow mini-sunflower looking things, even a few Milkweed blooms, and yet another BIG round of Stapelias and Night Blooming Cereus. There will be more blooms in the morning. The wonders are not ceasing in that category. But it is going on hot and the mosquito brigade was likewise empowered by the rain and heat, so lolling about outside is still unpleasant and not without penalty.

The lake is still so full, but I have disconsolately been staying away from it. And why? It’s one of my most prominent sources of balm and healing. I mourned its absence for those long years during the drought, and now it returns, blissfully, and I ignore it. What a fickle lover am I.

I must’ve appeared much the same when the long ago boyfriend of olde came for a visit, and I was equally unencouraging of anything that resembled a friendly more than hello. It just didn’t fit, or feel right, or I didn’t feel right, and he had nothing to say, and I have little commonality with those who don’t talk. Or write. Or just do something. That wasn’t a chick movie event.

Perhaps that’s a part of why I’m at odds with my own self right now, feeling not quite at ease in my own skin, feeling unhealthyish and then especially more perturbed with my hip deciding to make its bad self known and I have been hobbling and grunting more than is usual. I have a new, improved hip somewhere in my future, but I’m busy right now, or should be, and rallying is the only course that aligns with my projected life for the rest of the year. It happens that these last couple of days have been better and I am convincing myself that indeed, this trend will hold, at least for a while.

Ah yes, show season is upon me. It’s both a good and a bad thing. It’s gets me going, and gets me out there, only there are the many times that being out particularly there is not exactly where I think I wish to be. I’m not even sure where I do wish to be. My puffy little gut took a punch today when I read that my photographer friend who has made it into the rather largish time is coming off one photo assignment, boarding a plane, and is now headed for Alaska to shoot. We stuck our toes into the fringes of the big name photo stuff at the same time some years ago, and now she’s in Alaska and I’m at the Slippery Slope. Hmmm. I wonder what’s right and wrong with any of that pertaining to me.

Am I becalmed? Am I where I’m supposed to be, at this particular juncture of time? That’s what all the oomagooma sorts say, until now – years down the road of oomagooma-ing – that sounds as much a platitude to me as the rest of them that come from the Bible folk or whatever belief system with which one can align. What do I believe in these days?

A good friend took her own life a few weeks ago. Our circle did not find out the way of it until the day of the service. We just barely found out she had left the planet. We were stupefied and cut off at the knees. I say a good friend, and I consider her such though I didn’t see her often, but she was a quality one and our little bunch goes back to the mid-80’s. That’s a long stretch of time, and when you hang on to people for that long, they mean something. She did it with a gun. Now that is seriousness and determination and a firm decision you don’t leave yourself any room to be talked out of, or likely recover from. A moment, a lingering nothing, and she was gone. I’m still mulling it a lot. I’ve let her go, but she’s logging hours in my psyche. I hope she’s flying, and happier than evidently she wasn’t. 2016 has been brutal in the death department.

The Queen Mum persists. I don’t know how. Thank the whatevers that be, or good genes that she managed to get, or sheer stubbornness, that she still does. When she leaves, I shall have to grow up. Really fast. It will be interesting.

I have new art I’m piddling with and it’s fun. Maybe Fun is just what I need right now, or all I can handle. The work is not terribly challenging, but it’s FUN, and one can only hope profitable. I think it will be. I feel good about it. Perhaps I ought to be jumping for that joystuff that I am entertained and energized to throw myself into something in the category of FUN that might actually help me generate some cash flow. Isn’t that the point of it all? I’m not off on a junket to Alaska, but then again, I’m not in the headspace to do that, so hey, this is fairly peachy. Thank you Obama.

Oh that, too. I must say that politics and the general State of Things have not helped my ennui. In fact they have propelled my ennui into dark places that are not conducive to good health. My hip must be connected to my ennui. Of added weight is the continuing news of the onslaught of pipelines and concurrent oil and gas spills; they want to build a tourist trap in a sacred place at the Grand Canyon, and Nature and I are reeling. We as humans, as stewards of the earth, just don’t get it. Well we will. But it’s liable to be way too late. Perhaps, as some say, the Earth is sliding into its next transition or whatever they call it, and guess who is delivering it with all the power we can muster. It’s hard to find a victory, and mankind continues to devolve. We’re really good at being bad at our best interests, both on our physical plane and spiritually. Our poor planet. And poor pitiful us.

In self defense or sheer survival mode I have decided to pick up the sword of Writing again. Here I am. As soon as I get my behind sitting and floating in the healing waters – which are blessedly with the heat still warm – another upward spiral will be achieved. Perhaps the guitar and my voice will follow in short order. Anything could happen. Maybe even Prince Charming will show up. He will likely be on a walker, when my brain has visions of river runners, but maybe all the old river runners end up with walkers anyway. I just hope he has good stories. I ache for good stories. Dear lord I do love to be entertained. And then maybe be part of the act. The particulars of it all are way far out in the ethers. Funny how on the one hand, the oomagooma credo speaks about letting your dreams out of the cage to fly, having no expectations about how the details of your desire are to be delivered…. and be OK with that. On the other hand we are told to be specific in manifesting what we want. How horrible to have our Objects des Desire delivered unto us, only to find ourselves saying Oh I wish I’d thought to say I DIDN’T want THAT with it. Must remember the fine print. Lately I’ve put that Desirable Object thing far back on a shelf that doesn’t get dusted very often. And yes, I know what you’re thinking, at least you oomagooma types. I’m a sorry hand when it comes to dusting.

But I do love to play with picures. And write. And so it goes. Onward and Upward. Deep breath. Tomorrow is another day, and sunrise is coming. And more chick movies are promised by the Hallmark Channel. Life is swell.

Saying Goodbye

My friend in New Mexico died on March 11th of this year. It was a long death. It took her eight months to go from the crippling horse wreck to the place where she finally had to let go. She was in and out of being who she was, away for a time in a neverland of unresponsiveness and from the time of the accident, never able to walk again. She went through setback after setback, but somehow rallied enough to survive, although never quite to live again. In the last months she regained most of her mental faculties, even calling me from her last reassigned “home” in Texas to speak to me in a familiar voice and a seemingly restored mind. I was floored. She imagined a future for herself,  inviting me, even commanding me to come see her when she got out of there and got her new home built. I suppose we all allowed her these dreams, knowing there was no way it could ever come to be. After that the latest round of setbacks took her, and she finally slipped away in her sleep, a blessing to all of us, but I don’t know if she’d ever say that for herself. She was broken in a hundred pieces, and she couldn’t be put back together again.

It is truly the end of an era, and the ripples that have ensued from her accident became tsunamis for those closest to her. The ranch is already sold and in new hands. The horses are gone, the dogs have new homes. No more summer visits. No more sitting with coffee on the big front porch watching the sun rise over the mountains. No more gifts of pinon coffee for Christmas. No more horse pictures. Some lives have been much more disrupted than mine, and soon there will be none of the characters left at the Diamond L. Her friends living on the property have lost their home along with their friend, and must renegotiate their lives and move away. It is a sad story, as most are when it comes to things like this.

Today is the memorial service for my friend. As it would happen, I am unable to be there because I am in complete art show mode, leaving soon for another adventure in making a living. Just no way to throw in a trip to New Mexico and be two places at once. Her ashes will be spread Up Top overlooking the ranch, facing the east. I spent untold hours up there, thinking one of these days I’d be building and living there, too. Never happened, and now it’s for the best. Things change. People die. And the rest of us move on.

I sent these words to be read at the memorial today, along with a few pictures of her that meant a lot. Some of you who read this knew my friend, and have spent time with me and her in New Mexico. Some have only heard the stories and the dreams. I offer it here because I can’t be there, and it is my way of saying goodbye.

 

My Friend Linda

May 3, 2016

 

A harder head was never hatched. It’s because of that hard head that we are all here today, in whatever form that takes, gathered because we cared about this lady, who was decidedly different.

I am always drawn to different people. The “Normals” bore me, and Linda fit the criteria for not being at all normal. I suppose in horse talk she gave something like a Strong Rein, if there is such a term. There was not much telling Linda that something was different than the way she thought it was, and I bet all of us have our own versions of that story.

This little ranch happened to all of us because it is what LInda wanted, and by golly she got it. A bunch of years ago we were caught climbing around Up Top over the house on the day that Linda signed the papers, I think. She was accompanied by two other ladies and a handful of dogs. Ranch ladies and their ranch dogs. Yes indeed. For a while I thought I’d be living up there, but that never quite happened.

Many characters came and went in Linda’s life out here. There were times when it was almost like going to the movies to come visit. There have been cowboy-like ruffians that gave Linda some hell, but she was always taking on strays and hoping for a good outcome. Mostly they all took advantage of her. Linda was a bunch of things, but I have to say she was always fair. And likely gave too much.

Because of Linda I’ve had a place to stay for so many summers while I chased the art circus. She has been a wonderful patron, and I was so happy to have my work in her home. That’s how we met. Back in the late 90’s I came out to do the Ruidoso show and she bought two pieces from me, and ordered more. She pulled out a credit card that had collies on it, and there we went. I asked if I could come and see her collies – she lived in town then – and we went. There’s a picture of me from a subsequent visit with a beautiful tri-color that I would take home with me some six years later. Collin was a beautiful spirit, and I was so happy to have him.

Because of Linda I had more time to trek through the area and become a part of some of the local color from time to time. We sold art in Lincoln and watched Linda and the crew do the Billy the Kid parade, and tear it up at the reenactment show and shootout.

Because of Linda I got to ride a big red mule through the Nogal Peak wilderness, and lived to tell about it.

Because of Linda I got to see the Flying J singers and have so many fun evenings with all bunches of folk.

Because of Linda I had a place to stay while doing the Cowboy Symposium and got to hang out with cookout people. That was interesting.

Because of Linda I was able to bring friends to share in the companionship and madness. I brought artists and alcoholics, and we had even more interesting evenings. I brought boyfriends and road buddies. I still have the road buddies. Everyone was made so welcome, for Linda loved having company. And holding court. Nothing was much better than Steak Night, or Linda’s chili, with everything cut in small pieces, or salad with Mayfair dressing, and why don’t I have the recipe?

Linda’s home was always open. As was her heart. She came on as one tough cookie, but you could melt her once in a while. She cried when we gave her the Prince Shannon lamp. That was a nice moment. I wish there were more.

I am the lucky one because I get to Say Goodbye without the tears and having to Go To and Leave the ranch one last time. I’ve already done that. When I pulled out last July, it was for the final time. Linda was already gone, and the ranch was already losing its spirit. I wish I could be there with you, with Linda’s friends, so we could all say Goodbye together. As we all have found out, it takes but a fractured moment for everything to change and sometimes you don’t even get to say goodbye.

I’m so mad at Linda for taking that ride. But I looked at a picture of her today that showed her sitting comfy and in her element driving the rig, and Buck and Ben, in one of the Smokey Bear parades. Yep, she did it her way. And deciding to drive that rig on July 14th was her way of trying to have it her way, wanting it to be like it was. Wanting her life back on her terms. And that was then and this is now, and here we all are. Dang it Linda. You were a force. And never one to give up. Tough old broad. But this one got you.

You have to admit, this is quite a cast of characters among us. I wish I could be there to see every one of them, and the ones I never met. Linda told me I needed to meet Dave. I never did. Thank you, Dave, for being there for her. You were her hero. Thank you Lynn. For EVERYTHING you did. You were her true friend.

And Becky. For everything else. And Mary Lou, and Marilyn. And any and everyone else I don’t know to say.

There’s a little piece of purple fabric under a rock by a special tree Up Top there. It was always my place holder. I have to hold the place in my heart now. There are rocks up there that I arranged. And there are rocks here that I carried home. And wood. And cholla. And memories. How I wish I could be there so we could tell stories. You know there will be stories…..about Linda. What a character. I am grateful to have been her friend, and wish I could have given her more. She was something.

Wagons Ho, Linda. Ride on.

 

 

Queenie Ponders 2016

I’m basically against, or at least neutral about, New Year’s resolutions. A hidden trap is laid beneath the web of good intentions that would provide an improved walkway for us over our own pit of foibles. Too often we view our pathway with at first a new luster fueled by Hope, only to see it fade and the holes appear after a few short weeks, or perhaps even days. They don’t call them pitfalls for nothing. Then we find ourselves flapping around in familiar mud, and damning the whole business. January starts bright and dirties itself up in quick order, and then we start listening to the news again. Fie.

All that said, here is my Quick List for 2016.

•Write more. Write more often.

•Take more pictures. Play with them. Hone a new style, a new direction. (I have ideas here.)

•Clean my house better. Makes the thought of company less horrific, and I’d really enjoy more company. Mostly.

•Love everybody more. (Until the point that you’re hurting yourself, and that’s a whole ‘nother topic.)

•Never give up. (See directly above.)

•Live in the Now, with proper respect for the lessons and gifts of the Past, (sometimes the same thing), and likewise preparation for the Future, even though it’s never guaranteed. Ask that guy whose bed fell into the sinkhole with him still in it. Talk about a pitfall.

•Take better care of my body. Use it. Exercise it. Respect it. Bless it. New parts aren’t readily available like that fuel pump in Arty that found me stranded a couple of times last year, and that was expensive enough.

•Continue to Think Big. (Never a hard one, except sometimes for the doing of it.)

•Continue to believe in Love, and Miracles, especially the ones we can facilitate.

•Piss on Fear. But have proper respect for Caution when it is needed.

•Never forget Gratitude. Express it. Say it. Live it.

•Take some chances.

•Get back to singing and playing guitar, and write some new songs for Cripes sake.

•Create. Create create create.

•And….BELIEVE.

 

Surely that’s enough for a start, though likely more will appear in short time. Every post doesn’t have to be a star epistle. Sometimes a few words can say as much as a diatribe. And I do have to say that I, WE, must continue (or START) to protect the planet. The best intentions in the world won’t mean much if we don’t have a world. Breathe much today?

And now, Onward! I have commodes to scrub.

Peace out, Y’all. Happy New Year.

Changes…again.

A lot has happened. I believe they call it a sea change. Though Queenie is still at it and kicking, the focus is going back to the Slippery Slope Ranch. See the link over there on the right of the page. Rants are still possible, but I wish to take a different tack. Watch for movement in other areas. It’s happening. Thanks for being here.

Flailing in a Sea of Cs….and the water’s rising, folks, except where it isn’t

Photo by Geof Wilson, in a story about the recent tar sand oil and brine spills up North, contaminating the waters

I wrote a comment to a friend the other night. In short, (which said a lot, really), it stated: Aiming for Contentment and Challenge, and curious as to how they’ll get along. In quite a wonderful response, worthy of Queenie status, I got back: I see Contentment and Challenge to be very compatible, as long as you are the one choosing BOTH.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I was in a pretty fine place. My current path, I figured, should I choose to ascend to it, involved first two, and then three Cs: Commitment, Change and Challenge. And yes, The Contentment thing will surely follow dutifully right along if the others are honored properly. Immediately another C raised its head, as previously documented: Choice. What’s with all these Cs anyway?

And then yet another made its way to the fore, demanding attention: Conflicted.

I want to write about me, my process, my upward spiraling, (see previous post where I talked about Narcissism in writing), my adventures in attaining my reborn dreams, but events keep conspiring to get me off on other tangents. From my viewpoint, (and as stated, it doesn’t take much to discern from which side of the aisle I beseech), the last major election put a few more nails in our coffins. I’m not sure we’re not already sealed in and breathing our last, though perhaps still not aware of that, or in serious denial. For many the quick retort to such a statement is: Duh, wha? as they toddle along on their merry little way with heads full of Bible verses, visions of sugarplums and handguns, and the Lord and Mitch McConnell on their side. Politics seems now to be a game of Contempt (yet another C word) and Conflict. More Cs, more Confliction. Another C – Cooperation? Not so much.

I’m afraid I’m going to be dragging out my soapbox and leaving it in the middle of the room for easy access. In that, I suppose I am fortunate that I do not have one of those jobs where I have to fear speaking what’s left of my mind in cyberprint, for some nosy boss or a sneaking and peeking potential boss to hack around and find out the nature of my being, or at least my politics, and subsequently eliminate me from consideration or current employment.

I started these writings as a venting for a broken heart, hoping to tell a few tales and relate enough entertaining homilies to perhaps help along other likewise wounded beings on the path to a better, less painful place. Though there have been a few fallings back into the ruts, my own healing is fairly well accomplished….especially if I embrace Spinsterhood in this ever mounting collection of years. As I quit spending so much energy on healing my heart, I turn back to the nature of my being and what I love perhaps beyond Love, and that is Nature itself – my planet – this earth which sustains us – until it just can’t anymore. And what vast amount of healing it needs. This goes beyond hurting my heart, it hurts my very soul.

Looking around the Universe, it seems highly likely that other planets once held life until the Big One asteroid got them, or like we seem wont to do, the inhabitants destroyed their own dollhouse. I ascribe to the mindset that we are NOT the only beings in the entirety of All That Is, (Really? Could anyone really believe that – that we are it?), and that we surely could have been visited and even influenced by others who spin around the galaxy and laugh or cry over us and our antics. A few clicks around the internet and you are inundated with conspiracy theories galore, and after a while, even the craziest make as much sense as what we are doing to ourselves here, right now, as we kill our planet as fast as our technology and benumbed senses can manage it. I went far afield and listened to fantastical stuff about reptilian aliens being the source of it all, to their benefit, and governments were in Collaboration with it all. (Another C. Good grief.) No matter what the source, it appears we’re heading headlong into the abyss.

Many books have been written about what’s going on, how it’s too late here and forget about it there, or maybe, if we start 30 years ago, we have a chance to turn it all around. Survival might somehow be possible, and we should educate ourselves. Some that have been highly recommended by equally qualified sources are: This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, and Craig Child’s Apocalyptic Planet. (Thanks to JCH for the recommendations.) These are not going to be fun reads. However, only last night I watched a climate change denier poo poo any such ideas, with ridiculous comparisons to “science said this and that before,” and wah, wah, wah…it hasn’t happened, and this warming earth they claim is nonsense…..and I wanted to throw things at the television. OK, so go drink that water up in North Dakota then, and out of the Yellowstone River. Please.

That brings also the matter of, ahem, the News. Lately it is chock full of the latest disasters falling upon the water sources that feed all our thirsts and the crops we need to survive. Demon oil trumps all, while other power opportunities are pushed to back of the bus, or buried. (Not unlike those who fought for their rights in this country 50 years ago, and STILL do. That’s yet another diatribe about racism, voter suppression and gerrymandering. Sigh.) The news, if you can get it without additives and spin and malevolent purposes, is a necessary evil. We need enough of it to act and choose wisely, but it is way too easy to overdose, go limp and catatonic in the face of such realities. Can one read Childs’ book and stay abreast of the news and not go insane, or fatalistically depressed? Check with me later – I’ll be under the covers, hiding.

I am in a rant mentality. I am disturbed and frustrated. I’m too old and tired to march anymore, and WTF good does it do anyway. Hey, I (and all my likeminded compatriots) were RIGHT when we marched up Congress Avenue in 2003, and sure enough there were no WMDs and the war was bogus and misguided, intentionally so, but very very good for a few who risked nothing and had a lot of profit to gain. But NO….. we were nothing, and we were summarily dismissed and ridiculed, and labeled disloyal and anti-American. Same now, we KNOW we’re right, or righteously righteous, and so what. We’re being run over and poisoned and pushed aside, and treated little better than fungus. (Unless perhaps somehow we are truffles. And even then you get eaten.) In fact they’re killing us with Monsanto. How convenient. I am flummoxed. In the end we all DIE. Is the death of the planet and those on it, both animal, vegetable and in between, worth the few years of high living of the few that this heinous activity of war and plunder supports? How much of ENOUGH is just never enough? No way to get my little head around it. I find some comfort in supposing that if Reincarnation and Karma are the real deal, and these bozos come back to what’s left of this planet, payback’s going to be a bitch.

At what point do you lose your JOY? And at what point in fighting for Beauty do you lose yourself in the battle? Babies are still being born and their parents live in and with Hope, and unless they are starving, they have no idea how fouled the waters are, and how many trees are lost. They are happy to be loved. Those who walk with the weight of the world become stoop shouldered and very poor company. Where is the balance? Do we take small comfort in the little victories in the midst of a tide of darkness? I know that Life is about the NOW. I know that. No guarantees of any sort about any tomorrows, and the plane might fall out of the sky on your very own just completed dream house. Such atrocities and calamities of every flavor are delivered regularly. So how do I condemn those who are indeed living all big and bad in their Nows, but at the expense of the tomorrows of even their own descendants? It is indeed madness. Or is it just me, spinning in my own rut. (I have told you my own theory about the off world planet they’ve been promised for their part in this mess, haven’t I? Oh but I digress…or maybe not.)

I just wish we weren’t so distracted and could care more. And Do. And Help. And in the end, just BE. That shouldn’t be too much to ask. I’m going to go outside and look for a lizard in the sun, and see if he has any connections. Probably not – too far removed from the evil source that spawned the others. Not even a cousin, light years removed. He and me will eye each other and give way on the path, give thanks for the sun, and be grateful for the warmth and our shadows on this beautiful day.

Aho. Peace. And WAKE UP, please. And don’t CAPITULATE. (Had to end with a C, didn’t I?)