Out of the Blue

This photo is a nice contrast between human squalor and the purity of light and water. I've worked on the squalor a little since I took the picture. I've scraped a lot of the caliche off the chrome and cleaned the tile but it looks about the same. A couple of days ago I got up at 0445 so I could take the dogs and myself for a nice long walk before it got too hot, as I always do, but the sun caught up with me and clobbered me into a sweaty bad temper before I got home. Owing to a cash flow problem I had not had the swamp cooler fixed and I was trying to survive without. True, my house is adobe, but it still gets pretty hot inside when the high temp is 106F - about 41C, and the low temp is 83F. I was feeling miserable when the phone rang. It was the son of my friend who is having intensive chemo and radiation. He is looking after her house and dog (Jack). He said he was coming down to fix my cooler and lo and behold he drove 60 miles and had it fixed and running in no time. Sometimes when I am too cynical I have to remind myself that kindness exists and sometimes hits close to home thank god!

If that wasn't good enough for one day, I went to a goodbye party for an artist-priest who is moving on to another tiny congregation. Priesting is his day job. The rest of the time he paints gender bending versions of renaissance religious paintings. Big. He is totally obsessed with art and doesn't seem to care about exhibiting his work. J seems to think he might get lynched by a congregation one day, but I think she underestimates the tolerance even of West Texans. When he hugged me goodbye he told me I was beautiful. First time anyone ever lied like that to my face! I figured either he says that to everyone or he thought a poor old wreck like me needed a kind word. Of course what I really think is that he is a true artist and discerned my Good Bone Structure.

The best thing about this time and place is the lovely balminess of the nights. I wander the roads eating figs and apricots from the trees that line the ditches. Kids play basketball in the parks in the hot darkness and everywhere people are sitting or walking or bicycling far from their TVs and sometimes without their cell phones!

The Written Word

I am out of love with the written word. More so since I tried to title this post 'The Written Word' but as soon as I put in 'the' it flipped me to all my earlier posts starting with 'the'. I tried other titles and it just kept flipping me back to old posts that I have no wish to see or remember for that matter... Yes I have been gone a while, getting myself stunned by events that aren't really consequential. Like driving through a tornado alert in Texas and discovering the primitive mystique of boiled peanuts at three a.m. in a run down gas station in Nowhere Arkansas where a Faulkner like family group presided. Too much to write about. I can hear eyes glaze over when I start talking on the phone about my adventures.....
So forget all that. I have a new dog available for adoption. She is a Catahoula mix. She is black/brown/tan and sinuously elegant. Extremely good natured. A bit of a chewer, but she is only around eight months old I think. She's yours for a song. All you have to do is commit your life and happiness and that of your family to her for the rest of her natural life.
About those written words. I've about given up on them. I open a book, yawn, toss it into the Out bag and grab another and repeat the process. The Autumn of the Patriarch by Garcia Marquez is keeping me fairly interested. Time to reread Blood Meridian I guess. I sniff carefully around my own writing then back off for a while to regroup. I might bite out a word or two that I don't like but I can't write anything new. I can of course. I just don't want to because I'm afraid it'll be so bad that even I will recognise the fact. It's very hot here and I don't have a cooler, maybe that's the problem.
Hey! Now it has decided to take my title. I must have fallen into a CyberGlitch.......