Margot on Freedom

Several years ago Jozien (yes, that's her in the first two photographs), you've seen her comments on some of the posts, sent me a copy of Margot Anand's The Art of Sexual Ecstasy: The Path of Sacred Sexuality for Western Lovers. I've been exploring Anand's ideas ever since. A few days ago I discovered her blogs and there is a video.


The video....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=361&v=j82AaLIGqxw



This article is about her most recent book, Love, Sex, and Awakening which I read a bit of each morning the way some folks read Happy Aphorisms for the Wan & Ennui-struck. Just ignore the cover; it doesn't have anything to with anything except marketing. Her story includes her philosophy, both a guide to discovery as well as personal accounts of her own travails and delights.

Good reading, Maynard!

Leaving ABQ

Got the blood work; skin cleaned; an incredible EFT session with Ms. Charey Fox, owner of The Source and, best of all, a splendid time with Ms. Cook!

Eggbert, The Legend Lives On

Scroll down to #4....

https://automobili.hr/novosti/top-10/top-10-najcudnijih-off-road-vozila

In case you didn't get the translation it's:

The real underdog, Geo Metro, or the subject of the picks, forums, and carabashies of the automotive world, is a real example of a small fighter. Certain Herrmann travels and camps in a tiny triangle of American wilderness. They say the best things in life are free, and here's evidence that - if they are not free - at least they do not cost a lot.


The blogger, Vanja Mirosavljevic, recently stopped by again. (Hello, Vanja!) The article, as you may have noticed, was from December, 2015.

Diff Strokes

The following was prompted by a video on Rolling Steel Tent's blog. Below is the COMMENT I made in response to the video. Later, I added a few afterthots.



COMMENT (made on RST's blog):

Interesting...and look (below) at what it inspired!


I have yet to check out her (Kelly Doyle) prev vid, but what strikes me is how much time she's spending in "nature" in L.A. whether it be the beach, dog parks or where Sophie can be off-leash.

Maybe in her other vid she mentions the incredible exhibits at LACMA or MOCA. Does she mention Bergamot Station, the San Pedro area where you can wander around the docks and boats, or the INCREDIBLE Buddhist temple (I think this is the one, it's been a couple of decades.), one of the most ornate in the western hemisphere, right in the center of downtown L.A.?

(In 2006, prior to going nomadic, I made a trip to L.A. to see Gregory Colbert's Nomadic Museum exhibit Ashes and Snow - Wiki article;   Ashes and Snow - video)


I go to L.A. and other cities for their cultural offerings. But I don't find rollerbladers, surfers, squalling children, the immense cacophony of innumerable cars and planes or the fact it CAN take 45 minutes to go 7 miles or having to move three times a day energy-inspiring.

I've been around Tucson for almost a month. While here (camping in the Mt. Wrightson Wilderness and at various places on State Trust Land) I've attended several meetings of the Tucson Psychedelic Society and one of the Ayahuasca group. I've investigated the MANY alternative and BDSM groups and am looking forward to seeing their venues and perhaps attending some get-togethers.

I saw the Zoppe Family Circus, an olde-world circus from Italy that was started in 1842.

I've seen the Richard Avedon show at the Center for Creative Photography (always free) and attended several concerts (also free) at the Fred Fox School of Music that were offered as part of a weeks-long festival. I spent an incredible hour (it was overwhelming and all I could take) at the world-renowned gem show. The whole time I've been here I've been phoning physicians, chiropractors, my primary physician in Albuquerque and my attorney to try and get treatment for the whiplash and help with making sure I wasn't liable for the $3,247.22 emergency room bill that came after the accident on December 22 (while descending from Jerome, AZ).

In between the above I made a run out to Kofa National Wildlife Refuge to avoid the snow that fell in Tuscon a few weeks ago.

At the end of this month Flam Chen, a Cirque-style group that performs around the world but based in Tucson, will perform Octopus Heart, their most recent.

Last time I was here I visited the Zen Archery dojo and video-taped segments of the class. See:  https://uakyudo.wixsite.com/azkyudo  (See blogpost Jan 24, 2016)

At age 67, and after the accident last December, I'm not as able to get up and go. But truth be told, I've NEVER enjoyed racing to the goal. I'm a process-oriented guy and have most recently (last five years) been attracted to Tantra for its (generally) slow pace and focus. I rarely meet other folks who give attention to the cultural goings on or even, when in the wilds, the things going on around them.

It takes all kinds, and I've seen some incredible art in L.A., but a good conversation about cats, art or the art of love-making; a butterfly going by, coyotes howling, the unbelievable smell of the innumerable flowers as you descend into Death Valley in the evening when they give forth with their scent; the distant sound of a stream renewed by a recent snow, the sparkle of light on water, the LACK of overflight noise or anyone else's voice; a tarantula, (OMG!) a coatmundi...or a bear; all combine to give ME energy.

It's my impression if you're in the company of your dog (NOW where'd it go?), peddling your bike (watch out for that rock!), or "hiking" to the top of the hill (the top!), you're missing the small bones in that scat; the one-and-only of its kind flower in the area, the pleasure of an amble to simply "go see."

I always enjoyed One El's reply when I'd call and ask, "What're you doing?" "Nothing" she'd say.

And I'm getting better at it all the time.

(If you look back at my blogposts over the last month (years) you'll see some amazing places, people, food and art. I don't know about other people, but I enjoy my own company. And I sure as hell ain't jus' sittin' around (as Ms. Doyle suggests at 3:42 in her vid).

And just for the record, I rarely have a fire. I've seen what they can do when they get loose. But when I/we do, we'll often sing C.O.R.....or practice Lokita & Steve Carter's The Breath of Tantric Love, both of which are quite energizing!

Grumpy Annie

We met online many years ago and kept bumping into each other here and there. She's led a fast & furious life and although increasingly grumpy with age, she's not lost her sense of humor as seen in this exchange from a recent conversation.

I, of course, am waxing eloquent about the consciousness-expanding qualities of LSD.

G.A. has her own opinion.

Mammoth Carniceria

Carolina (Car-oh-LEAN-uh) wasn't telling who made  them, but they're the best tamales I've ever had. And that's saying something after 40+ years in Albuquerque. $10.00 for 1/2 dozen. (Watch out for a small pit in each one. It must be a spice, but I nearly broke a tooth on the 1st one.)


I also got ribeye for $8.00 a pound and their own tortillas, Rancheros Carnceria, are better than Don Juan brand, my prev fav.

They're next door to the Dollar Store on the East side of the highway at the south end of town.

337 N. Highway 77
Mammoth, AZ 85618
520-487-0173

Rained In

Whilest waiting for it to pass, I've been reading Matthew Boyden's Icons of Opera, A History in Photographs 1900 - 2000. Comprised of a single photo of the performer(s) with a one-page bio facing, his writing has inspired numerous visits to Youtube.

But this photo (Copyright Kurt Weill Foundation) of Austrian-born American Lotte Lenya IMMEDIATELY brought to mind

Gustav Dore's illustration from Puss In Boots....

Detail of Illustration

After sharing the above with Michelle, she sent back, now for your viewing pleasure, this.....

And The Rain STILL came.

Iconic Arizona

A photographer, a real one, not just a happy-snapper like me, once bade me look at the screen of his large-format digital. It was a typical day at Grand Canyon where, for the last 30 or so years, they've been blaming the occlusion on L.A. and, more recently, on smog from China. Regardless, *I* remember being able to see across CLEARLY in the late sixties when The Bright Angel and Hermit trails provided Spring training. But the filter he was using cut through the haze....and there it was!

My Little Sony, DSC-W830, has a Zeiss lens that does better, for the price ($120.00), than any other I tested. (I try and view it as a source of entertainment: buying three or four cameras and bringing 'em all back. Walmartz gets free product testing.)

But it just can't capture the light!   (Florence-to-Kelvin Traverse, via Cochran. The road to Cochran "deadends" at the river. Mapsource/Basecamp shows a bridge across a mere 1/2 mile from the bottom photo, but between the mud & a real need for a machete, I wussed out.)

The bosque of the Gila River is an impenetrable thicket of catclaw. Bring yer machete....

I've only been stuck a couple of times, but I didn't enjoy it. So I walk when I hear that little voice saying "Youse may wanna go have a look."

Let It Rain

Sometimes this itchy-feet thing gets a little nerve-rattling. I rarely look at weather predictions, they're often akin to astrology....great when accurate; not so much when off. 

Having read about the rain, I contemplated doing what Rolling Steel Tent did. A couple of weeks ago, when the forecasters were warning, I headed west, into the oncoming storm, and made a narrow escape from four or five days of SNOW! (See: When Old Man Winter...)

Whilst perusing the map I recognized a place that'd earlier caught my eye. Several miles into it I came up against a wall:
PRIVATE PROPERTY NEXT 8 MILES NO CAMPING.

I'd come five and another eight was too far. It was a good time to water the lawn. There in the dark, lightning let me know hit whar uh-comin'. Hmmmm.

I knew a spot about 15 miles away and headed back toward the highway. Entreating the goddess to work her magic, I'd noticed the big turnout on my way in but this time decided to have a look.  A small track went behind the dirt pile and continued further. Some reflective cones beckoned. And there, barely discernible in the dark, was a two-track into the wilds. And it lead to the prettiest little grassy spot you can imagine. I put out my gnomes and mushrooms, greeted everyone around and was in turn acknowledged with a coyote chorus.


And the stars continued to shine until it was time to sleep.

Home!

Bill Bauer - Poetry

                         https://billbauerpoetry.com/2015/06/the-reverance-of-early-morning/





        and this one.....


                        https://billbauerpoetry.com/2015/06/the-singularity/





AND THIS.......

                          https://billbauerpoetry.com/2015/06/the-world-n-o-c-3/






As you probably know, the internet developed as a means of sharing research. Links to others' work made things MUCH easier.

I found Bill Bauer through this post on Squishy Tulips' blog. He is, or was, depending on when you're reading this, the featured poet on March 9, 2019, when I went to i70 Review's website.

Nature's Humor

My Dionysian proclivities being what they are, a stroll amongst the regal columns of the giant saguaro is always entertaining. "It's to laugh" -- the phallocentric perspectives nature offers in the monuments of Utah and the flora of Arizona. And this one brought to mind the Albuquerque Play Party rule: NO PENETRATION. This is a good example of a freedom -- that of consenting adults -- we've only recently begun to allow. But we have GUNS!

Wisps of Krishnamurti float about (Be in the moment, yuh h'ar?); I delight in their humor. And did this one creep over during the night knowing I'd be ambling by?

I often speak to them all. Though not a devout animist, I tend to anthropomorphize...enjoying as the triad of barrel cacti squeeeeze with pleasure at my notice of their cozy grouping, keeping each other company, perhaps even warm. And the rocks, slooooooowly moving about; you should HEAR their shouts when tossed! I'm always shocked by the way they laud it over their confreres, traveling ENORMOUS distances (10 to 20 feet) -- relative to their usual pace -- in a single bound.

Und "Guten Morgan" tuh you too, yellow flower!

Florence, Arizona

There's one in Colorado too. And it ALSO has a prison.

I'm STILL not sure how it happened. I looked at G-Maps and noted Oracle was 19 miles (ignored WHERE).

I can't tell time or distance, but after a while I began to wonder...maybe I'd missed it. But it has a library, I COULDN't have missed it. Then came the sign saying: Florence 7 miles. Oracle must be just around the corner.

Map? We don't need no stinkin' map! (We KNOW where we are -- HERE! Buster Keaton's boat -- Damifino -- is our destination.)

At the north end of downtown there's a big park, the City Hall and A GIGANTIC Community Center & Library. The library has a LARGE open area with wifi. They have books for sale at great prices with an astonishing selection of titles! On 3/8/19, I found four, all very different.

The Penal Market is the only grocery. Their small deli has excellent roast beef, sliced by a young woman who personally selected the best jar of capers (capers!) and guided my winnowing of the tortillas. At the register we somehow got on the subject of heritage. Asserting my Deutschness, the cashier said they're a christian family from northern Iraq. We congratulated each other on being in a place that appeared to appreciate diversity. (While I was in the store I saw a woman with Asian features who was speaking Spanish and several other people who appeared to be of Hispanic and African-American descent came and went.) It reminded me of Whitehorse, the capitol of the Yukon, where there are people from all over the world and EVERYONE (except me) spoke AT LEAST three languages and often more.

But what really shot my spliffoes (another cat word) forward was AN ART GALLERY! Casa de Baca Studios shows Michael Baca's and his girlfriend's Janell's, photography. 

As unassuming storefront near the center of town

A renowned portrait photographer, Michael has traveled extensively, including to Alaska, at the behest of his many clients. Specializing in high-school yearbook portraiture, he said people come from all over to have their portraits made in his studio or on locations nearby. He had recently returned from an assignment in Sedona.

Born & raised in nearby Coolidge, he told how Leon Silver, studying to be an attorney, came to Coolidge to teach high school art. A confident New Yorker, Silver wasn't well-received, but he and Michael somehow connected. He taught Michael photography and adding his own spin, it's given Micahel a livelihood. (Silver went on to pass The Bar and has his firm in Phoenix.)

Michael Baca & Janell Evelyn

His landscape photographs are striking and Janell's vignettes offer slices of local culture. 

An amazing little town. And I didn't even get to the gift shop across the street or any of the others down the block. 

Less Traveled

My weather-reporter in Parowan, Utah said they had 40 inches of snow in Monticello the other day. He thot it could be a while b4 it melts.

So, I'm piddling my way northward enjoying the off-road experience south of Oracle, Arizona.

2,673 ft /  814.7 m
pleasantly cool

All the Friggin' GEAR!

At this time of year altitude has an impact. While it's blisteringly hot in Tucson, the nearby mountains sport a mantle of snow deposited during the night.

Environmental Muck-raking Gets Green Light in Wyoming - 29, October, 2018

A press release dated 30, October, 2018, from Western Watersheds Project (click HERE to donate to WWP. Any amount helps.)....


After "following" the link below, scroll down to The Wildlife News. It's under that heading where there are links to various articles about the law.

https://www.westernwatersheds.org/2018/10/federal-court-strikes-down-wyoming-data-trespass-laws-as-unconstitutional/


In an effort to discourage environmentalists from gathering photographic/video documentation of environmental law-breaking, the Wyoming legislature passed a law creating penalties, including jailtime, for "data trespass." On October 29, 2018, Judge Scott W. Skavdahl, presiding in the District Court (Federal) in Cheyenne, Wyoming, struck down and, permanently established, the unconstitutionality of the "data trespass" law.

(Case filing)

Getting a Run For their Money

I had lunch yesterday with a nomadic woman who brought up the subject of Biophilia and the author Edward O. Wilson. In looking into his work, I quickly came across Lynn Margulis who was influenced by Konstantin Mereschkowski's work. This led to (excerpt from Wiki): "Russian botanist Boris Kozo-Polyansky brilliantly outlined the concept of symbiogenesis, the symbiotic origin of cells with nuclei. " which led to 

this book, a translation Dr. Margulis was instrumental in getting published.

In reading about Wilson in Wiki, note #6 gives this: a CNN.com article that quotes Wilson as having written, "the organism does not live for itself. Its primary function is not even to reproduce other organisms; it reproduces genes, and it serves as their temporary carrier."

This corroboration of Margulis's work adds to her interesting stick-in-the-spokes of the wheel of Survival of the Fittest (who gets to fuck the most) that networking is a fundamental basis of evolution. (see below)

Furthermore (also from Wiki article),

Margulis' work on symbiosis and her endosymbiotic theory had important predecessors, going back to the mid-19th century – notably Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper, Konstantin Mereschkowski, Boris Kozo-Polyansky [ru] (1890-1957), and Ivan Wallin – and Margulis took the unusual step of not only trying to promote greater recognition for their contributions, but of personally overseeing the first English translation of Kozo-Polyansky's Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution, which appeared the year before her death. (This month's "gift" to myself.)

But her statement that I've felt was more fundamental to life in general was: (in the wiki section on Personal Life): She argued that "Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create", and maintained that symbiosis was the major driver of evolutionary change."

A MAN telling You

(There's mention in the article of research by a biology couple who found that birds on an island in the Galapagos went extinct when the species of plant they lived on died off during a drought. They postulated that extinctions occur frequently and evolutionary mutations take much longer. This can transmutate into skepticism around Darwinism.)

Then there's this from this great interview in Discover Magazine....

Don’t spirochetes cause syphilis?

Yes, and Lyme disease. There are many kinds of spirochetes, and if I’m right, some of them are ancestors to the cilia in our cells. Spirochete bacteria are already optimized for sensitivity to motion, light, and chemicals. All eukaryotic cells have an internal transport system. If I’m right, the whole system—called the cytoskeletal system—came from the incorporation of ancestral spirochetes. Mitosis, or cell division, is a kind of internal motility system that came from these free-living, symbiotic, swimming bacteria. Here [she shows a video] we compare isolated swimming sperm tails to free-swimming spirochetes. Is that clear enough?

And yet these ideas are not generally accepted. Why?

Do you want to believe that your sperm tails come from some spirochetes? Most men, most evolutionary biologists, don’t. When they understand what I’m saying, they don’t like it.

A film about Dr. Margulis.

And I read a statistic the other day that said 60% of law school students are female.

Things could get interesting.

Twidget Aisle

As youngsters, Michelle and her brother developed a cat nomenclature. Along with terms for different kinds of cats such as Smirket, for a black cat, they invented words for cat-parts.

I suspect a certain giggle-factor, similar to Captain Underpants' appeal, in their choice for the excretory opening: Twidget.

Depicted by crossed lines similar to an asterisk, it's called Sparkle in your emojis:   ❇️



But where I've found it most helpful is here...

I always know where I'm parked; in the Twidget aisle.

For those who appreciate graphic realism.

Ms. Dana-Mae Jo Bob, a real schmooze-wad, the last of two Smirkets who lived with Susan Cook, Michelle's mom, until her death in 2015. Dana died last Spring. You can tell from her expression she felt her rights-and-permissions attorney didn't get the deal she expected for this photo shoot.