Journey VIII

My first memory as I was born upon a planet of the moon was of a small stuffed animal antelope. This is a lie. It was a small stuffed animal lamb called Lamb Chop. It had a Saint Christopher pendant that it wore. St. Christopher is the saint of safe travels. I did however buy a small stuffed animal antelope at a gas station in Kearney, Nebraska.

My next memory on this fair year of gasses traveling out of asses is driving through Wyoming. Just north of Cheyenne the land is desert. A big storm had caused my radio dial to stop playing music and only issue tornado, thunder storm and flood warnings. The majority of cars had pulled over to the side of the road. Some of us riders on the storm continued through hail piled up on the road.

Casper. Cody. In between these wind river canyon. In Casper I slept at a motel eight. I had caught an insatiable lust and immediately started to masturbate once I walked into the motel room. The Big Mac with large fries and a Coke sat on the desk as I busied myself for the next hour minding my own personal business. By the time I got around to the food the fries were no good. 

I looked out of the window at a drainage tunnel and the horizon beyond. The old western feeling was beginning to creep into my bones. The room was done up in cowboy style with a picture of an old abandoned barn and a horse and cowboy. I located the bible and put it on the lamp post beside the bed and went to sleep after a bath.

In the morning I got down on my knees and prayed for the first time in a while. I prayed about whether I should be going on this trip or not. I argued with Him about how it would be if I did go and how it would be if I did not go. The benefits of not going would mean I would still have my money and the benefits of going would mean I would still have my honour. The honor seemed something that I could never earn back so I picked up my bags, checked out of the hotel and kept north.

Wind river canyon is gorgeous. Cody, Wyoming although a tourist trap holds special meaning for me as being the closest thing to civilisation east of Yellowstone. I once worked at a ranch that had Yellowstone as its back yard so it is always like a home from another dimension when I return to this part of the country. I bought a pair of black cowboy boots at a store at the end of the shopping strip and continued north.

In Billings I got a haircut at a sports clips. The MVP experience was awarded me for being a first time customer. This meant that along with my trimmed hair and beard I would receive a shampoo and electric massage along my shoulders as well as a hot towel. There is nothing in this world to a civilised white person in America like a hot towel, warm towel, or cold towel.

Once I got to my destination, Lewistown, Montana, I was still in the state of being dazed and confused no different from my last thirty two years on this earth. The first people I saw were some kids at a skate park. I asked them if people were allowed to camp there. They directed me to the pool. Once at the pool on the other side of downtown I asked a woman watering her garden if people were allowed to camp there. She directed me to a lake outside of town. 

I walked the strip of the downtown. The country up here and everything about the town was idyllic. The Montana I had known was just west of Yellowstone called Paradise Valley and its charm is in its rugged, wild and dangerous beauty all added up to days and nights of epic and perilous adventure. Here in the Judith mountains it was Montana soft.

In San Francisco a person can walk, ride their bike, a streetcar, a subway, a boat, a car, and have the landscape, scenery, socio-economic level, and social scene change from block to block. Here in the northwest I have found that each locality has its own identity and one must sniff, taste, touch, listen and see to know what kind of a place a person is in. Feeling like I was in a town rated G from the 1940s, that is to say the safest I’ve ever felt since hippie preschool, which is to say the way a person feels listening to the Grateful Dead, which is to say the way a person feels after trying weed for the first time, which is to say a reference to Montessori, or Sesame Street, or Adam Sandler, or Jimi Hendrix, it is when something is referred to as dangerous but turns out to be safer than anywhere you have ever been before. 

A town high up in the Northern Rockies should not feel like an oasis of civilisation after driving through the rugged landscapes I had just endured but it did. Just like a street named after a seed: full of strangers, monsters and an oversized bird and an undersized elephant should not be a safe place to learn early education but it is. Montessori, although regarded as mystical and foreign by most people is more home than you’ll ever know. So I bought another number one at McDonalds and watched Indiana Jones at the theatre. Pitched my tent by the lake and went to sleep.

In the morning I walked up a hill behind the lake. I found a pond. A pond overlooking a lake. In that pond was a muskrat swimming. Out of the pond led a creek. The muskrat swam out to the middle of the pond and stared at my general direction. When I moved it disappeared.

I climbed further up the hill and came to an opening above a small four foot cliff. In this small meadow a doe bounded straight up and down into a wooded thicket. Further up was the last gradation within purview and my intention was to climb this grade and see the view. Before I got to the top of this hill I walked into a fawn. It was sitting in a ball in the grass and did not move. 

On the descent I washed my face and feet in the creek that led out of the pond that set above the lake. I drove back and forth from the town to the lake a couple more times after buying a Mcgriddle and a double shot espresso. I walked on a trail that gave a panoramic view of the Judith Mountains. 

I hadn’t payed for my camp site yet. I left my tent out and never saw it again. I dressed in black Ariat boots, black Levi skinny jeans, an “end of the line” belt buckle from an estate sale, my leather belt that I had worn for the last couple years that had warped to match the thrust of my bony waist, and an H & M black dress shirt. I had hoped that I didn’t smell too bad and that if I did that it was good bad not bad bad bad bad bad bad bad but to my luck once I arrived I realised the wedding was outdoors.

Feeling nervous I decided to do something strange to calm my nerves. There was sun protection lotion that had leaked out of the bottle, collected in a cup holder. This had been sitting there for about a month and had developed a glue like texture and was no longer white. I put this in my hair and all over my face and arms. Having done something strange I felt relaxed and ready to be a witness to my friends wedding. 

The father greeted me along with the son. Some of what I guess were his cousins whistled at us as we walked toward the stage. We were all done up in the style of western cowboys. I took a seat at the back of the rows on the grooms side after consulting a small boy about whether he was related to the groom or the bride. The groom and the father stood at the stage waiting for the bride. The bride came forward.

If the reader wants a story about someone driving across the country to attend a wedding then they can stop reading now. If the reader would like a story about someone driving across the country to attend a wedding and then driving back across the country to their home then they are invited to continue to read. I gassed up at a gas station and changed my boots to my all terrain converse shoes. I stopped at an Albertsons and bought a tuna for two sealed package. Drove to the lake campground and found my tent gone. A wind gust had picked it up and thrown it into the lake. Some rangers fished it out according to legend. 

I am still feeling free and easy but somewhere a clock is ticking. I wake up at a rest station and look at my tire. It is flat. Before pulling on to the rest station there was a car on the highway that had rearview lights that looked like dark menacing feline eyes. Gillette, Wyoming always kicks my ass. 

A small nail had entered my tire. Luckily I have a spare. A man at the rest station lends me his tool bar to change out the tire. He thinks it strange that I had a spare but no tool to replace it. I think it strange that I can’t remember the proper, lug bar, that is it. A lug bar to change out the lug nuts. Right. Having some pride for having done something mechanical besides checking my oil I stop at Spearfish and buy my own lug bar for eighteen dollars.

What is a thirty two year old man doing dressed in full cowboy attire and attending a real cowboy wedding in the Northwestern rockies who does not know what a lug bar is until July 2 of 2023? First I am not a cowboy but a hipster. I am a working class hipster who found a job on cool works dot com for a ranch in Montana and took the job. The groom was my buddy and after having studied the cowboy culture of Paradise valley for six months I can identify with parts of it namely the clothes but mostly just Levi jeans. 

Driving on a spare, minus a tent but plus a lug bar I begin driving through the black hills on a scenic route to Lead, Deadwood, Custer, Hot Springs. I think about the groom being sick during the wedding and how the black hills would be a nice place to honeymoon. I think about driving slow because of the flat tire. It is fourth of July weekend in the black hills and the place is packed full of white middle class families. The Black hills is like the Disney land plus of the plains.

I drive past a waterfall and a hot spring. In Deadwood I take a short trail to the top of Roosevelt Mountain. I pay the fee at a lake and walk in with my jeans after eating my tuna for two and lose my pair of Oakley designer sunglasses. I put on my other pair of Oakley designer sun glasses and remember to keep driving slow on the spare tire. The teenage girls in the black hills during fourth of July weekend are like the ones at the College World Series and I am glad that I had two pairs of dark expensive sun glasses to survive them.

The only time lust brought me to my knees was sudden and quick in Casper, Wyoming. Now after the day at the lake it is latently beginning to build back up to rival the stress of the clock ticking somewhere and the tedium of the flat tire and the loss of my money. In Chadron, Nebraska I meet a fellow traveler at Chadron National Forest. He reminds me to get my tire replaced after my mind has been strained to think that I could drive to Valentine, Nebraska on the spare. 

“Oh, yeah. That is what I want to do.”

The tire was patched and I was relieved but what to do about this clock ticking somewhere and my money disappearing. There was nothing to do about this conundrum except get home. What began as wander lust, sex drive, and endurance on the way to the wedding had turned into latent lust, sexlessness and despair on the return. It is hard to describe the country to town folk and it is harder to describe the feeling of the country that a person from the city gets to country folk. It is more difficult still to describe to city folk the feeling of the city after having been to the country. The best way to describe it is to take the adventure of the condensed form I have represented here and match that with what I had started to say to myself as I drove east through northern Nebraska. 

“Now it is just masturbating to ass and working all the time.”

Literature VIII

 This right here partner is an essay on the boys in Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses (1992). About six months back I had written in my notes on my Ipad to have written some kind of buddy film about a couple guys going to prison together. This inspiration was more of a tongue in cheek cautionary joke to myself about having friends and good times that led to unbridled mischief. Unbridled mischief is mostly what the boys in All The Pretty Horses receive from the start of the book to the very end although our protagonist does keep his saddle on his horse.

I will start this essay with a quote from the dream the boy, our protagonist, has in jail when they are first caught up in the Mexican justice system. “They ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.” This reminds me of a song lyric from the Turnpike Troubadours that mentions something being like the act of taking a picture of grace. This sentiment has echoed with me for the last week and a half as I had participated in a story that I can’t tell to anyone because it doesn’t have anything to do with anyone except the people involved in the actual story. I took pictures too, beautiful pictures, but the pictures have got nothing to do with anything in the whole world except the moments I happened to take them alone. Like a sex tape between two arduous anonymous lovers, there are times that are personal.

Obviously I am getting a bit carried away. So I have had some times that I like to keep private for myself. What about this book though? It is sold in your bookstores and online. It won a book award. The author recently died. I had the book on my bookshelf for over a year. I have known about the author for even longer. I watched some interviews that he did shortly before his death. I revered him as the last great American author living. I didn’t dare read his material until he was dead. I guess it might have something to do with all of my favourite writers being of one piece: morte.

This dream that John Grady, our protagonist, has is a positive, beautiful, enlightening dream. When he wakes up he is meshed in a conspiracy. We find out later that the reason he was not arrested earlier is because his ranch boss had kept the law at bay because John Grady was such a good hand. Then later on in the story we find that the reason the law came down suddenly on John Grady and his friend Rawlins was because the same ranch boss, owner, called the police to come pick him up so that he did not have to kill the boy himself for having an affair with his daughter.

In the jail the boys are made to confess and acquiesce to crimes and stories that they had no part or truth in. This is because the original crime that the law was after them for they did not actually commit and the new crime that had got them arrested was not actually a crime at all rather a person in power using his leverage to have them disciplined. Innocent of the crime and guilty of an offence against the wealthy they are shipped to a bigger jail in a bigger town. Along the way the boy who had actually committed the first crime was shot dead.

Once in the penal system of Mexico the boys reckon amongst themselves that they never thought such a place could exist until they got there. They are bought out of the situation after both are sent to the institutions hospital. The aunt of the girl he had an affair with sent John Grady the money for the release. After taking a bus away from the jail they eat at a diner, get a hotel room and buy new clothes. Rawlins takes off for home which is in Texas while John Grady goes back to the ranch for his woman. Being a man of no means, no family and no station leaves him with no room to manoeuvre besides the broken heart of the furious father. This puts John Grady in a situation of deference to the desires of the aunt and the daughter whose desires are in deference to the owner of the ranch, the father. Needless to say he does not win back the girl but he does get a horse for his trouble.

All this crazy what was it for? The boy was a hand and grew up on a ranch and it got sold out from under him. So he left his family behind in America and broke for Mexico with his buddy Rawlins. Along the way a boy with horrible luck fell in with them. He had such bad luck that our protagonists prophesied to each other repeatedly that it was enough to rub off on them plenty. It did. It rubbed off enough that the good name the boys were able to establish for themselves at the ranch in Mexico only inverted itself as quick as it could when the bad luck of the boy, Blevins was his name, caught up with John Grady and Rawlins. It all had to do with a lightning storm and a curse and a horse and a lost pistol and a murder and another murder, all of which Blevins tried to rationally justify when they met him at the first jail. The law didn’t see eye to eye with Blevins and the fact that John Grady and Rawlins could see things from Blevins point of view only meant they were headed for trouble themselves.

What happened in the big time prison? They had to fight from the time they laid foot in there just like everyone else. The only thing was they were singled out because they were Americans in a Mexican prison so no matter how many fights they had they could never gain any ground in the way of status in the prison. Rawlins got cut up by a knife in the stomach pretty bad but not to the gut. John Grady had made friends with a couple outliers of the community. Finally he bought a knife within the prison from a gang with the money Blevins had taken out of his boot before he was shot dead by the law.

About the time that John Grady had bought the knife he was made to use it. Someone had hired a pretty good knife fighter to kill him. John Grady is a very handy character and this time he snapped off a switch blade into the killers heart. It is unknown who hired the killer, whether it was the gang that Grady bought the knife from or from a man inside the prison who continued to claim he could help the boys if only they submitted to his protection, which they never did, or some other outfit is never revealed. After the knife fight John Grady himself is cut up pretty bad and gets medical attention. After he his healed up with stitches and all is when he finds out the aunt has bailed him out.

In an essay a person addresses a certain question about a certain topic. I could of talked about anything to do with the book and any other ideas in the world but I just wanted to tell you about how these boys got in trouble down in Mexico in a general way. People have written much more comprehensive studies on McCarthy’s work as well as relate it to other ideas and philosophies. Did I leave anything out that I could have addressed? Possibly. Or maybe I gave my reader the most complete picture of the scenario that I could without mucking it up and making a clear picture less clear.

All the Pretty Horses is the first book of Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy. The characters of the first book come from Texas. They return to Texas after their adventure with their horses except for the slain boy. After getting released from prison Rawlins high tails it back to Texas without a horse while our hero, John Grady, goes back to get his girl and instead is presented a recently broken in wild horse to ride back with to the town where they lost their horses initially after getting arrested. On arriving in the small town he engages in a gun fight to retrieve his horse, Rawlins horse and Blevins bay horse. Succeeding he makes it back to Texas with all three. In the second book of the trilogy, The Crossing (1994) the reader is presented with new characters in New Mexico that are trying to trap a she-wolf that came from the mountains of Mexico.

“They would be coming out onto the plain in the new snow to run the antelope in the moonlight.”

This prose about wolves and antelope in the quiet night still of wilderness snow is majestic and what I would like to comment upon here in this blog. 

“They were running on the plain harrying the antelope and the antelope moved like phantoms in the snow and circled and wheeled and the dry powder blew about them in the cold moonlight and their breath smoked palely in the cold as if they burned with some inner fire and the wolves twisted and turned and leapt in a silence such that they were the smallest of figures in that dim whiteness and then they disappeared.”

The character finds these wolves at night but does not tell anyone about them. He comes from a ranching family and wolves are a more controversial subject amongst ranching communities than the topic of transsexuality among conservatives. 

“Then he saw them coming. Loping and twisting. Dancing. Tunneling their noses in the snow. Loping and running and rising by twos in a standing dance and running on again. There were seven of them and they passed within twenty feet of where he lay. He could see their almond eyes in the moonlight. He could hear their breath. He could feel the presence of their knowing that was electric in the air. They bunched and nuzzled and licked one another. Then they stopped. They stood with their ears cocked. Some with one forefoot raised to their chest. They were looking at him. He did not breathe. They did not breathe. They stood. Then they turned and quietly trotted on.”

Billy has just had a transcendental spiritual experience with wolves in the wild that ends with recognition, understanding and respect. From now on he is bonded with the wolf. 

“The inward parts of the beast who dreams a hundred thousand years and more. Dreams of that malignant lesser god come pale and naked and alien to slaughter all his clan and kin and rout them from their house. A god insatiable whom no ceding could appease nor any measure of blood.”

Billy’s father and brother Boyd and Billy himself hunt a she wolf that is alone. She has come from the mountains of Mexico. Eventually they trap her and the rest of the book from page fifty to four-hundred is about what happens after they trap her.

“At night she would go down onto the Animas plains and drive the wild antelope, watching them flow and turn in the dust of their own passage where it rose like smoke off the basin floor, watching the precisely indexed articulation of their limbs and the rocking movements of their heads and the slow bunching and the slow extension of their running, looking for anything at all among them that would name to her her quarry.”

This is the she-wolf on her own driving the antelope. 

“Her and others of her kind, wolves and ghosts of wolves running in the whiteness of that high world as perfect to their use as if their counsel had been sought in devising it.”

Cormac McCarthy’s characters will have this, well damn it all to hell moment, when they commit to a plan of action. Like that third Mexican beer and that third shot of tequila are my thoughts of the third book of the Border trilogy, Cities of the Plain. (1998)

John Grady wants to marry a sixteen year old prostitute from Mexico

It’s a long road that ain’t got no turning. What the hell’s wrong with you? Have you been drinking paint thinner or something? That’s it. I’m having your ass committed. I’m an absolute son of a bitch. I never heard the equal of this. They’re going to hook your head up to one of them machines and throw a big switch and fry your brains to where you won’t be a menace to yourself no more. You think I don’t mean it? I’m going to help em hook up the wires. I want a goddamn quart of whiskey. You’re in a dangerous frame of mind, son. Did you know that? How did you ever get in such a mess? How did you let it get this far? More craziness. It ain’t too late, you know. It’s never too late. You just need to make up your mind. Well, unmake it. Start again.

What’s this we shit? You got a rat in your pocket?

Truth is, I wouldn’t pull on your boots at gun point.

Billy goes to speak with the pimp

Your friend is in the grip of an irrational passion. Nothing you say to him will matter. He has in his head a certain story. Of how things will be. In this story he will be happy. What is wrong with the story?

… What is wrong with this story is that it is not a true story. Men have in their minds a picture of how the world will be. How they will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the one they dream of.

John Grady still wants to marry the sixteen year old prostitute from Mexico

Why don’t you take a good look at yourself. Look at what it’s brung you to. Talkin about sellin your horse. It’s just the old story all over again. Losin your head over a piece of tail. Cept in your case there ain’t nothin about it makes any sense. Nothin.

… She ain’t American. She ain’t a citizen. She don’t speak English. She works in a whorehouse. No, hear me out. And last but not least—he sat holding his thumb—there’s a son of a bitch owns her outright that I guarangoddamntee you will kill you graveyard dead if you mess with him. Son, ain’t there no girls on this side of the damn river?

Not like her.

Well I’ll bet that’s the truth if you ever told it.

…Do I think you’re crazy?

…No. I don’t. You’ve rewrote the book for crazy. If all you are is crazy then all of them poor bastards in the loonybin that they’re feedin under the door need to be set loose in the street.

Journey VII

 Day 1 - October 20 - got phone call from Ryan saying that Tanner is setup for the winter but may run into some trouble come spring. We don’t know what kind of trouble he is into but have to turn out for a guy like Tanner. Listening to country music and drinking coffee at 8 pm. Wound up pretty tight. If I plan on heading up to Montana come spring then I will only be winding myself even tighter. Going to have to start focusing on money management, time management, exercise regimen, intellectual pursuit and relationships as well as brass tacks of probation business including AA, intensive treatment. This week I am eligible to get my drivers license back. Going up to save Tanner releases me from trying to pick from one of the four imaginary lusts that I have. 

Day 2- October 21 - looking at my life in preparation to save Tanner. Realize it is in total disarray. Unable to pay rent consistently for the last couple years and falling into debt. All for what? Watched a Frontline documentary on Michael Flynn. 

Day 3 - October 22 - don’t give a damn about Tanner. Tanner is one of those people that in the city I would go out of my way to mess his shit up. Out in the field though a man will lay down his life to make another guys life a little easier. 

Day 4 - October 23 - walked 8 miles at night.

Day 5 - October 24 - nothing to report.

Day 6 - October 25 - walked 8 miles at night.

Day 7 - October 26 - walked 8 miles at day.

October 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, November 1 - the idea of quality and intentionality carries salt with it for the preparation of a trip like this. One is the idea that Tanner is worth saving and with it comes the idea that Ryan is worth saving and finally that I am worth saving. We represent some kind of worldview, value system and code. 

November 2 - hard to stay motivated about this trip. Then again it’s hard to stay motivated in general. There is so much inertia towards apathy.

November 3 - not sure if the relationship between me and Ryan will stretch that far. Still a good principle to pursue.

November 9 - the cowardly slickness. That was the idea in my head when Tanner said he knew that me and Ryan would be his friends for life. We would be except for the cowardly slickness.

November 12 - this trip seems out of place but so does everything right now. I really never even make plans. The whole aspect of it being a rescue mission is theatrical. Not losing enthusiasm. Just impressed by the scope of planning a trip.

November 13 - I have perspired to keep my mothers wickedness on a leash my entire life. I need a lifeboat. Trunk club. I am a flake. I am not going to go on this trip. 

I need to be a professional poor person in Omaha. 

November 14 - I have to Haagen dasz if I want to be hogging dogs

November 15 - feeling a little loopy. Half-marathon scored yesterday. Only thought is to do another today.

November 17 - marathon scored yesterday.

November 20 - what am I going to do next?

November 21 - still hitting these 8 mile a days post marathon

November 28 - I’m on some other shit

Dec 1st - testosterone boost in the middle of the night. Can’t sleep. Got an 18er in last night. Or whatever the wolf is. 

Dec 3rd- went and struck hell again and died, resurrected and worked a hockey game. Got another hockey game tonight.

Dec 4th- let’s get this cs Lewis blog worked out

Dec 15- thinking about caring capacity as a concept

December 30 -

 went to Texas, did Jack squat, happy about it.

AA meetings and therapy became the theme for the last couple weeks.

Hockey games to round out the year.

January 4 -

Not a damn thing between me and joining the military.

January 6 -

Anniversary of the big bad wolf. Evaluating my life and decisions about the future.

January 14 - way too much nothing

January 19 - life is creeping upon me like a wood chipper this weekend, while having a succubus sit on my face. Credit cards are maxed out. Mom is out of town and I have the dog, it’s ok tho because she gave me twenty bucks after I asked. Work schedule is all day and all night with therapy in the middle.. therapy is this huge don’t do this and aa is this don’t do that and work is this do this and that and my income is like, where? My relationships are the smothering of counseling and self-help and mom and no Dad. Like a tentacled beast while the race is going on. Forced to look at jiggly-puff and the anaconda from the jungle book while the tiger is on my tail and I still don’t have a Pokémon. The positive out of this is that I am becoming very aware of the disparity between what I need and what I have and what I could do to kill myself or someone else and Hitler just jerking off in his bedroom instead of leading Germany into World War II. So all in all, pretty fucking hair ball which is to say mid.

March 8 - trying to produce as much at work while working the most hours possible while jumping through hoops to exist. Left with nothing except my room and my car. 

March 15 - smoked a cigar to celebrate finishing hockey season. Smoked another cigar earlier in the week to celebrate the new year. Lots of responsibility working three jobs where I am respected at all of them. The thought comes that I can throw it all away through some reckless, scandalous shit.

March 24 - just want to smoke cigars and win.

March 30 - been through the ringer to get this UPS job. Now they are going to switch my whole scene on me. I still haven’t even been a loader. 

April 9 - everything is beautiful and nothing hurts

April 14 - got the time off from work for the wedding.

May 9 - I sure hope this Buck character gets broken in time. Might turn into Pegasus soon.

May 14 - there is an order to me being laid.

-the confrontation between my angelic intention and my sinister motive

May 17 - working a baseball tournament 🏟️