It has been raining in buckets since I got to the coast. No more camping! I don't mind my water container being frozen solid in the mornings, but unfrozen water soaking my sleeping bag is something quite different. I am overwhelmed by people - family, cities and conspicuous consumption! I love good food, good coffee and beautiful stores full of lovely things but give me a break! The desert is dry and warm..........................

On the road again!

In the Deming NM public library. They took my drivers' license....... What if I forget to get it back and drive 1,000 mules before I realize I don't have it? Spent last night among sand hill cranes and went slowly mad trying to photograph them using my digital video camera. There they were in perfect pose but by the time I got the photos their heads were turned away. Slept in the tent. It rained in the night but was bone dry by morning. Maybe I dreamed the rain. Trying to take it easy and not go too far each day. Realized what I don't like about music. It's linear. It disappears as it appears. paintings and poems don't do that. Even movies and video somehow imprint themselves in parts of my brain which retains, visually at least some of what I have seen, but music, especially without words just lumbers through my ears and disappears. I was half asleep listening to the radio and it occurred to me that I was seeing these elephant like hills blundering past. I still remember the image, but not the music. Oh well

There's Many a Slip Twixt Cup and Lip

This is my dog finally deciding to return to me after her morning free run. I called and called then after twenty minutes or so started home without her. Then she showed up. I hate it when she does that. Part of me hates it. The other part thinks yay for you, dog, taking your own freedom and having a glorious chase in the desert land beside the road. I felt this way about my kids. They'd be independent and disobedient and I'd be furious and delighted at the same time.
Last Saturday I was driving along merrily in my smashed but apparently drivable van and I was actually thinking Wow! Life is GOOD! And at that exact moment the fan came on and demonstrated that my van was not drivable as it was clattering and smashing at the radiator..... I waited two hours for a tow and had to pay a cab 20 bucks to get home and that was after he took five bucks off from the kindness of his heart. I didn't tip him. Maybe I should have..... Now I have a rental car free from the other guy's insurance. I'll be driving it to Oregon for Christmas, but I won't have the van to live in. Motels are out so we'll see how I manage. The best made plans of mice and men so often gang aglae...... There's many a slip between cup and lip...... don't count your chickens......when life hands you lemons.....etc etc etc...........
I recently found my ex husbands journal and hundreds of photographs of his journey on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1972. I scanned the whole lot into my computer and made CDs of all the raw material. Took me days. Why?? I don't know. It's historic I guess, and the photos are great.

Small Treasures 3

This is a throw-away tea cup from India. I felt very strange being in a country with a lot of poor people and lusting after something that the poorest person tosses away after drinking from it. I suppose the very poor do not buy tea from stalls but...... Any way, I think they are beautiful. They are probably made at the place where they make bricks. I heard that they are being replaced by white styrafoam. Each one is a little different in shape and texture, and many of them have blackened patches. It probably is good that they are only used once as they are unglazed and porous and no doubt would leach toxins into the tea if it wasn't drunk so quickly. Also they probably can't be washed very well. I was hunting around a tea stall looking for unbroken cups on the ground when it ocurred to me how despicable I must appear to the brilliant people around me. I bought two cups and drank them down and took my treasures home without breaking them.
I just printed out my blog to stick in my diary and save me the trouble of writing in it. The astonishing fatuosity of what I write is profoundly frightening.