I’m anti-secular and I don’t mean in the simple religious sense but in a deep spiritual context that involves the entire physical universe and reality as we know it. I truly believe that science cannot even begin to fathom or comprehend just how beautifully supernatural our waking reality is. Our entire Earth and all creation is full of countless intelligences. Rocks, trees; anything composed of matter/atoms are intelligent. I believe many Native nations had a scientific and intricate knowledge of this but the Western Vulture has it all backwards…
Random Thoughts
Time to Come Back!
As I get older I realize that what is written and recorded on the web becomes immortal thanks to projects like the Wayback Machine that record the internet in real time (billions upon billions of pages) as the ages pass by. Using this tool I can look back on my journal and see the way it looked back in 2003, or 2010. It’s PURE time travel! It is incredible and serves as a way to preserve our history and humanity during the passing of the internet from the present and into the future. So what I’m saying is, It’s really important to blog and write and keep doing it because it’s not in vein. The internet is becoming a permanent book. It’s a daily log that can be preserved as a historical record.
Google, Wayback Machine and try it out. This gets me thinking that it’s time to start writing again, and bring back what’s important – stories and experiences…
A Relentless Rant and Endless Beauty
How do you show contempt for someone in such a satisfying way as not to start hating them? I don’t know, but I’m very angry. For now, I’ve got the the sun-baked shadows in Moab to keep me calm and focused. An air-conditioned hotel reminds me of the lavish excesses of American civilization; I’m tired of the complexity associated with soothsayers, snake oil salesman, and uninformed minions & consumers of American fat.
Why should I fear saying what’s in my heart without reprisal? I don’t fear. It’s no loss of mine to keep my soul and reject the vanities of reckless stupidly. I’m tired of all this deafening excess of fat-eaters with their hollow sophistication. It’s not art, it’s not beauty. They are killing their souls with their greed. Money & greed, and all these pigs make me grieve. What happened to country simplicity? Did it get lost in the translation of money spending? Some people lose their soul to luxury. Culture is not the heart of greed. Rugged individualists never get offended at the thoughtful witty curve balls that pigs can’t stomach. Pigs are those on the receiving end that get offended at every slightest inconvenience or opinion. These things bring disharmony to my life the same way laziness does.
Words are powerful, and my soul sings a hymn against the pigs while they wine and dine in all their filth. Let me be who I am without trying to kill my spirit with your excesses. Let me discover a love so true, for someone who understands me somewhat… and loves me until the day I die. Please, Creator, deliver me from some of these wretched confines. I dream of beauty. I dream of life. I want peace.
The land speaks to me and I cannot expect much from uninformed masses, except to keep teaching those that will listen. For the pigs, I’ll let them be, and I will let myself be reborn. I don’t know how to get away from it, them? If I knew my heart wouldn’t break again and again, I could return to my roots but I am lost, innocent, confused, betrayed because of my kindness. I’m learning that being kind leaves one to be exploited. Lonely are those who are sincere in a charlatan empire.
With faith and hope, the Creator guides me in the desert. In the town of Moab, all things are bustling in the oven of arches, cliffs, cloud and shadow. The beauty is stark and untamed. I just wish I could be as eternal as the geological landscapes and canyons but give me true love for a short while for someone I can trust. An unconditional-untamed love could tame a fiery heart like mine.
Yanny Country: Bluff, Utah…BEWARE!
It’s late at night. The crickets and gas station lights are buzzing into the darkness. There’s hardly any street lights through Bluff. We ate at the Twin Rock Cafe just up the road before sundown and I think the Yannies are out, tonight. Just across the San Juan is the Navajo Rez. I’m staying in the tidy little Kokopelli Inn, writing a few brief thoughts and getting ready to go for a nightly run which feels a little intimidating…
There are ghosts roaming the night. Little people move up the arroyos somewhere out on Cedar Mesa, south of Bluff, busy in their cobweb tunnels. Some lone old bearded man is coming off the mesa into town after passing the rim of the Goosenecks between Bluff and Monument Valley. He can also sense the uneasiness of the night and what hides in the bush beneath the stars.
Crickets buzz, the gas station is burning the darkness like a shining beacon, a light house in a Sandstone sea. There’s barely any traffic up and down the road, maybe a car every 30 minutes on their way to Four Corners and onto Cortez, Colorado. In the little Sinclair station in the belly of Bluff, I’m visiting the two funny Navajo ladies running the register, asking them questions, and just chatting and joking. The buzz of the gas station hums against the eerie night. The neon sign of the from the motel shines into the black, buzzing, and burning away with a Kokopelli playing the flute, but the bright light doesn’t get reach very far into the blackness. The crickets are very loud and the sound is growing, being amplified. It’s like a scene out of a movie. Something out there is moving in the darkness, looking at me and the people in little station.
Most towns in Utah don’t feel like this. Bluff is strange, weird, eerie, comforting, and even unsettling. I’m attracted to the spook of it. It’s an ancient aesthetic and beauty, apart of this rugged little hidden town buried in hoodoos, waterholes, arroyos, cliffs, canyons, toadstools, balancing rocks and the white sandstone that adheres to the sacred Rio San Juan. It’s a river that’s deeply rooted in Navajo folklore, and history. As it snakes around in the goosenecks, in the darkness, off to the South as I write this. I can feel the river, the crickets, the glowing neon.
It’s the middle of May and this is my life. It is beautiful. I’m getting ready to go for a run out in the darkness. Toodaloo! 🙂
When You Leave This World
You see, I love my friends, and making new ones. In the end, when you leave this world, it won’t matter what you did for yourself in this life. What will matter is how you treated others and whether or not they’re going miss you and remember you!
A Few Thoughts On the Wilderness
Thinking as I watch the sun dew dripping off the naked winter trees. It’s a cold winter night, but the Earth is strong and beautiful. All is beautiful. Wish you were here…
…I miss the summer, hiking in the narrows of Zion with my sweetheart, or watching the purple light of evening drape the desert sand…
The wintry sun now softly whispers and the candled stars begin to rise in the eternal dome, not yet totally dark but primordial. The frigid wind wails through the branches of an ancient juniper skeleton. Dressed from head to toe like a redneck eskimo, I look out across the ages, over a snowy blanket of high desert plateau decked with pinion and juniper. A lone raven planes the darkened twilight above me. While everyone else is holed up at home, this is a witness to the surreality of the wilderness. There is peace in the wild.
Ending Greed
Ending greed is a good goal. Greed is the disease plaguing our society as a whole and infects different faucets of life and culture. To name a few of these symptoms they include; racism, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, mis-use of religion, environmental destruction, fascism, forced-assimilation and tyranny, etc.
Greed is a disease of the mind. It has nothing to do with skin color, one’s religious beliefs, where one comes from or who you are. This disease infects the mind. It’s an outlook on life. It has deep roots in Western Civilization that has been passed down through the generations… and it undulates through time and it’s what crippling the world we have right now!
Pain and Adventure
There is a slight breeze coming through the window blinds and the face of sunlight creeps against the bedroom wall and edges down the hallway towards the bathroom. The blazing star begins another summer day as I drag myself out of bed and down the road. The Jeep starts up with a clogged fuel filter which needs to be changed this morning or today. There’s a few other problems that need fixing on the Cherokee but I take on each day without too much worry. I’m just need the next serious adventure.
The neighbor’s window chimes dance in the wind trying to conjure up desert fairies. Cloud ships sail on the wind across the landscape. Like a flash of memory, I’m driving out somewhere unknown, down a wasteland road with the crazy distance blowing in my hair and I am thinking of a far off place, out in the galaxy, lost in the stars, dreaming. I’m traveling through the universe past black holes and alien supernovas. The voice of the mystery of mysterious resonates with the endless ages and I am just a small glitch on God’s intergalactic radar. He moves the clouds that turn yellow wild daisies eastward on the mountain top and Aspen leaves clap with each twisty gust.
Some days like these, I have no care in the world after suffering as a bleeding heart dreamer that longs to be understood. Yet, I remain calm in the silence of the wilderness when all other faucets of life grow turbulent. Manhood is not much different than childhood. Men need love like a child needs affection. In the wild turning of yellow daisies and dark lightning storms that love is discovered in dreams, faith, and hope for a more profound future that is either based on passion, visual aesthetics or incredible goals being achieved. The same discovery is made fighting the woes of human suffering & misery while walking the walk. I want to have a brighter future where not all things are misunderstood and the thin threads of truth can be seen running amongst misguided strings.
Writing is one way to fracture the confusion and myriad of complex thought processes in order to streamline the whole grand scheme and simplify a dreamers quest through the world of the Unknown and the Uncaring. Because I do care but I cannot understand the vast majority of humans in this world and why they are so cruel to each other or to anything. What is with the hostility? Why are people so mean to each other? There is the inherent evil in life that cannot be quenched or quelled, or changed. We are forced to live with our own darkness. This reality is like poison and the only way to change it is to seek the truth beyond lies and half-truths. During all this rambling though I am relieved to hear Edward Abbey when all else seems to fail and his words put a smile on my face. At least for now and I quote Mr. Abbey:
“Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am– a reluctant enthusiast…a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So go out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, and bag the peaks…. and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over your enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box… I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.”
A Bittersweet Experience of Havasupai
Havasupai, in the Grand Canyon, is not just a canyon and a bunch of pretty waterfalls. It has cultural significance as well as a lot of history surrounding the indigenous people that call it home, mainly the Supai. I’ll include my thoughts on the Supai people at a later time, in a different journal entry. This post is regards my experiences with Havasupai and how it is changing my outlook on life. Or perhaps, it has forced me to introspect about things I would not consider otherwise?
Havasupai changed my life three years ago for better or worse in August 2008 when a massive flash flood nearly killed me. My friends, Joe and Robert were there, but this has become more of a personal experience as the years go by because I keep returning to Havasupai and each visit changes me quite a bit. At this point in time, I don’t even know if I understand myself anymore? I return to the canyon in a personal pilgrimage that is making my own thought-processes much more complex and hard to grip.
I feel a need to write down the thoughts I had while introspecting the personal conflicts I have with Havasupai and why it is so much more than a recreational/tourist destination to me. My experiences there were so life-altering that I need to share what I know with other people who love the canyon, or nature in general. My experiences have been both sweet and nightmarish at the same time. The flood that nearly killed me three years ago still haunts my psyche in dreams and flashbacks on the night when we were taken by surprise by this raging mud torrent. The snapping driftwood still lingers in thoughts.
It echoes back into reality when 72 hours ago I was sitting overlooking the famous Mooney Falls, in the solitude of the canyon in the early morning while all my friends are back in camp sleeping in their tents. The morning sunlight just starts to glisten on the highest canyon rims. Today I was still unpacking from that backbacking trip into the Grand Canyon. It was my third visit back to Havasupai since the flood and I have several complex thoughts haunting my mind and the urge to share them is hard to resist. However, I may not be able to share them all in one journal entry. . .
My Experience As An Outlaw
Let’s start a political movement. Several ideas keep flooding my head and I can no longer ignore them. I have a dream for America, and it’s starts in my local community. Conservative hill-billy Southern Utah, here I come. Consider me both conservative and middle-of-the-road but I have ideas that run deeper than civilization and I intend to focus this political energy into a grassroots movement. The first batch of issues I wish to address are as follows; government accountability & transparency, police misconduct, racism & discrimination in the community and asking the “hard questions” to politicians who we elect into office and holding them accountable if they skimp out. All of this starts at the community level, in my own back yard – little cow-poke Cedar City.
Last Saturday night I sang Folsom Prison Blues in a cold cement cell in the Iron County Jailhouse. It made me feel like Johnny Cash. After returning from St. George, Utah on a date with a great red-headed gal, I was pulled over by a polite rookie cop & five minutes later escorted from my Jeep, accompanied by a second officer and formally arrested in front of my date. I wasn’t even allowed to walk her to the door, appropriately. This angered me pretty bad. It turns out my license was suspended and they had a warrant for my arrest over an unpaid ticket. Five months before, I was pulled over & cited for not having proof of insurance while running an errand in my mother’s truck. My sweet mom claimed she would take care of the ticket & clear my name, since it happened in her truck. It’s safe to assume it didn’t happen. It was my responsibility, anyway.
I didn’t have to spend the night in the slammer thanks to my buddy, Tom. The ticket was dismissed on Monday morning with an agreement that I plead guilty for failing to appear in court. The judge fined me $137 & $35 to get my driver’s license reinstated. What a wonderful money-making scheme for the county and state. They made an example out of me; made me feel like an outlaw! It was empowering. Now I declare myself a bonafide rebel. I will misbehave, wreck havoc, and change the world in every legal way possible. I will act as an outlaw in the most law-abiding sense that any legal outlaw should act. I will change the system.
Thanks to two donut-hunters, I have the inspiration needed to write this rant. With all the stories I’ve been hearing about borderline harassment of American citizens by local law enforcement in this town, It’s time to raise the bar and set higher standards of conduct for Utah lawmen. And why are Washington and Iron Counties making bank off of law-abiding citizens like us when they should be chasing after real criminals instead of harassing citizens!? We are still living in the old west. There’s a lot of room to abuse power in Southern Utah. I’ve done my best to respect the efforts of local police and I am one of the most law-abiding citizen you’ll ever meet. Unfortunately two police officers barked up the wrong tree when they decided to mess with me. We can argue that they were just doing their job and this was routine, but I feel wronged for many a reason. . . we can continue this discussion but I don’t feel like writing any more. It get’s me upset.