The Cat-Sit Trail - Albuquerque

Actually, I meant to say...

The cat-SHIT trail.

But this is a fambly-values (poly-fambly, that iz) bolg. 

Regardless, it's rigorous.

Note the pristine scratching post

Drawings by Michelle Cook.

LSD In Ojito

I'd been looking for several years, asking here and there. I even went up to Gerlack last year in advance of the horde to see if I might be able to endure....but decided not.

Suddenly, last time in Albuq, it appeared. The story went that this had been formulated on the original sunshine recipe. It took a couple of months for the right time to come along but today was the day.

I took a quarter dose. Liftoff was as gentle as it gets but as we headed north on the freeway I knew I'd need to get somewhere quieter. Fortunately, Ojito Wilderness is only a little more than an hour away.

Michelle stayed straight but she's naturally stoned so we had a wonderful time ambling about in the desert.


Its tongue hanging out....

In this, our commemorative selfie, Ms. Cook is "overshadowed" by Mr. Nose.

The rest was impossible to capture.

Aldo Carotenuto

Looking at postings that've been read (in Blogger's "stats") sometimes prompts me to go back to the post and do some editing. Most recently I added links to the psychologists on the one about Maria Miles.

It's been a couple of years since I found The Vertical Labyrinth in a library's "Books For Sale" pile. What with the multiple, multi-colored page-markers, my copy looks like an anemone streaming Tibetan prayer flags.

I might have written the following myself...

"In retrospect, I must admit that I owe my very life and my realization—as in Italian we call the psychic achievement—to women, in the sense that they made possible the transformation of my inner energy by providing a canal into which it could flow." 

Curiously, there doesn't seem to be a Wiki article about Carotenuto. I took the above (an obituary or eulogy?) from the European Juournal of Psychoanalysis. It's quite a ways down.)

I do wonder if something is lost in the translation; "canal" seems a bit too Freudian -- After all, Aldo was a Jungian.

Frog Went A Courtin'

....bag of donuts by his side,
Chocolate frosted and sprinkles too.....

                       crammmboooonee.

Margot Anand Documentary

Updated: 1, December, 2019 at 8:57 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time (Albuquerque, New Mexico)

HHUURRRRAAAYYYYY!!!! YOU DID IT!!!! 

$52,877.00  pledged toward a goal of 50k.




This woman's done more than anyone to promote unconditional love except maybe Winnie-the-Pooh.

Dear Michael, Lire en français ci-dessous. Dear Friends Of Margot Anand, My name is John Antonelli.  I’m making a documentary film about the amazing life and work of Margot Anand.  I’m reaching out to you with Margot’s permission.  We’ve created a Kickstarter campaign for the project.  Complete information including a sample of the film is available by clicking on this link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnantonelli/higher-love Your email information is protected and won’t be used by Kickstarter or anyone else as a result of this contact.  If you’d rather not I have your email, please reply to this email that you want to be taken off the list.  You may have received this email previously. We've been unable to reach some email addresses, so our team just wants to ensure our message is received.  Thank you to all of you have already made positive comments about the campaign. The early pledges are extra meaningful because they let others know that there’s a strong community that supports the project.  We hope that once you see the film sample and read about our plans to share Margot’s story with the world, that you’ll join us by pledging a few dollars or a few hundred, or even a few thousand. No pressure, of course. All donations of whatever size will be greatly appreciated. There are some wonderful incentives for pledging anywhere from $50 to $10,000.  Kickstarter campaigns run on an all-or-nothing basis. Please help to keep the progress moving forward so we can reach our goal.  Don’t be shy about making a smaller pledge. Everything that moves us even a little closer is meaningful to us and to everyone who is considering pledging. Margot and I really appreciate your support.  Warmly, John Antonelli ******************************************* Chers amis de Margot Anand, Je m'appelle John Antonelli. Je fais un documentaire sur la vie et le travail étonnant de Margot Anand. Je vous contacte avec la permission de Margot. Nous avons créé une campagne Kickstarter pour le projet. Des informations complètes, y compris un échantillon du film, sont disponibles en cliquant sur ce lien: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnantonelli/higher-love Vos informations de courrier électronique sont protégées et ne seront pas utilisées par Kickstarter ou par quiconque à la suite de ce contact. Si vous préférez ne pas avoir votre courrier électronique, veuillez répondre à ce courrier que vous souhaitez supprimer de la liste. Vous avez peut-être déjà reçu cet email. Nous n’avons pas pu accéder à certaines adresses e-mail. Notre équipe souhaite simplement que notre message soit reçu. Merci à tous d’avoir fait des commentaires positifs sur la campagne. Les premières promesses ont plus de sens car elles permettent aux autres de savoir qu’il existe une forte communauté qui soutient le projet. Nous espérons qu’une fois que vous aurez vu l’exemple de film et pris connaissance de notre intention de partager l’histoire de Margot avec le monde entier, vous nous rejoindrez en promettant quelques dollars, quelques centaines, voire quelques milliers. Pas de pression, bien sûr. Tous les dons, quelle que soit leur taille, seront grandement appréciés. Il existe de formidables motivations pour promettre des contributions allant de 50 à 10 000 dollars. Les campagnes Kickstarter fonctionnent sur une base tout ou rien. Aidez-nous à faire avancer les progrès pour que nous puissions atteindre notre objectif. Ne soyez pas timide pour faire une plus petite promesse. Tout ce qui nous rapproche un peu plus est significatif pour nous et pour tous ceux qui envisagent de donner en gage. Margot et moi apprécions vraiment votre soutien. Chaleureusement, John Antonelli" Message endorsed by Margot Anand. Margot Anand

For more information about Margot Anand, her bestselling titles, and teachings, visit her new website at margotanand.com

It's Always Nice To Be Appreciated

https://learningenglishthroughliteraturetw.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-hitchhiker-by-roald-dahl.html



Wiki article...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl



Roald Dahl website....

https://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl

It's THAT Kind of Neighborhood

Perhaps it was gonna be somebody's meth lab. Perhaps it IS somebody's meth lab.

Michelle said it appeared about a week ago. I keep meaning to stop and knock, but I haven't been feeling sociable.

They chocked the wheels with pieces of concrete block and there's a nice bit of nylon tow-strap hanging off the front.

It's been red-tagged so the city'll take it away eventually.


But it fits in so well as an installation. It's just what the neighborhood needed!

Note Sandias peeking over the top.

Cats!

They bring it on themselves...

Grand Junction

It's interesting how this lifestyle fosters gratitude, but Thursday was one of those bizarre days where everything went copacetically.


I'd found a decent campspot north of Loma in the Fruita Desert Conservation Area; reasonably flat with no anthill or cacti. (About a mile north of the G in Grand. This map is slow to load.)

Around noon Discount Tire called to say the tire had arrived (see blogpost). I'd just completed my baaahth and was debating whether to go exploring...or not. I sed I'd be there in forty-five minutes.


At the shop an attractive woman accompanied by a small, four-legged blonde named Mr. Boots asked if she could sit next to me. She told of the delights of the nearby public pool and how she'd let her children in Oregon know she wasn't gonna be driving up to visit them anymore. She'd take the train, but they'd have to come pick her up. As I got up to leave, she introduced herself and expressed appreciation at the meeting. I reciprocated. Perhaps we'll meet at the pool.


At the Western Colorado Center for the Arts I enjoyed the exhibits of Paul Pletka's lithographs and Erin Holscher Almazan's paintings.  The lighting in the museum is unusually good -- maybe they used museum glass in the frames as there is almost no glare.

Sources offered that the Omnia Gallery was the place for contemporary work. I went looking and found a co-op gallery, but never did Omnia.

The Farmers' Market was setting up as I arrived around 4:00 p.m. A vendor advertised goat meat! Rare to find, its flavor varies far more than the bred-for-growth beef, even the organic stuff.

Their ranch was a few miles west of Montrose, she said, about an hour's drive. We talked about the slaughtering and the requirement -- if it was going to be sold -- of an FDA-certified facility. This meant the goats had to be transported...a traumatic process that, we surmised, induced hormone release that could/might affect the flavor.

She told of a customer who was coming to kill "his" goat in the meadow (sheep and cattle graze in fields....goats in meadows.); she offered to let me do the same. I considered it. Last year I'd chanced upon a freshly killed coyote on the side of the road and took its skin; my skill was still intact. But the thought of killing the goat was intimidating; I'll do in the mice that take up residence in Phoebe and the roaches one encounters indoors in Albuquerque, but I have a soft heart for spiders and most other animals.

Hotel St. Regis bar -- buy by the ounce, self-serve. I got two ounces of milk stout. Just enough to make the hike back to the car entertaining.

Mutual Friends Skateboard store is more of a gallery than a skate shop. We had an interesting conversation about how in a town of 62,500 there are, maybe, two thousand skateboarders. Of those, two hundred are serious...and of those maybe half have any money to buy boards and/or accessories. And OF THOSE maybe only 30 want what the shop offers. Thus, the analogy with a gallery. The owner has a job that provides the means to keep the shop going.

Purple Marble and Fred Ginnis at High Desert Authentique

My phone rang just as I was about to go in. Out front was one of those metal chairs with the scalloped back you'll recall from your childhood; everyone had them. I settled in and we spent the next 40 minutes catching up.

Once inside, Fred let me stroll about unmolested. Eventually we got to talking art and how he'd found a valuable piece in a thrift store and recently sold it for an undisclosed amount WAY beyond the price he'd paid.

It's a fine and eclectic collection and as I was sloooowwwwly making my way toward the door I spotted the marbles. 





Other exciting events from that day...

Dragons Milk at Fruita Liquor and free five-pound bag of ice.

Beautiful campspot overlooking the Steppe.

Life Inside - ABQ arrival 9, November

A large, double-paned window offers a view into the carport. At its opposite end is a door into the laundry room. To the left of that door is the one into the living room. Three small bedrooms, one bath, for a total of about 1,100 square feet. The houses on either side are maybe 12 feet away. It was perfectly adequate for the "working years."

Nowadays, I usually step out into several thousands of acres and totter over to a hole I dug sometime before. If there's a breeze, I'll orient myself to take advantage.

This morning, I flip the switch for the light and the fan and reach down to rotate the heater's timer. It's a leisurely activity and I've brought coffee and a book. I remind myself to buy another pair of reading glasses to leave on the edge of the sink. I compare the posture to my usual squat and wonder how soon my hips and knees'll grow stiff from just sitting.

The fan sounds like an idling jet.

The stench wafts past Mr. Nose on its way to be "ex-hausted."

The heat is a pleasant assuagement for the other details.

But then there's the mirror when I move to leave. How'd I get so old?! And PHAT!




It's wonderful to lie next to her, caressing her face and arm, but it's been 15 years since it's gone any further.

She's able to drive if she needs to, but she thinks it's the driving, from cat-sit to cat-sit, for ten years now, that's the primary cause. The sciatica is so painful she wants to avoid doing any until she can be seen by the specialists, next month, and get some professional advice. I'm here to chauffeur while her brother takes another international jaunt, this time to Egypt.

He'll be back in two weeks; he likes the "overview" tours and has been to many places around the world. We avoid crossing paths. He's available to resume the driving when Phoebe's ready (she's getting a whole new drivetrain), but he's no good for lying next to or reading bedtime stories. And he hasn't the least idea of how to do nothing...something Michelle and I are both highly adept at.

But it's odd how doing nothing out there takes on the dimension of nothing to do in Albuquerque. (As a geographer, I'm qualified to say: Albuquerque has more Walmarts per capita than any other city in the nation; it exemplifies the "culture.")

Last night (I was away a mere month this time) we got out found objects and tubes of paint (she did serigraphs back in the day) which, apparently, doesn't go bad, and started a project. I drank rum to fend off the barking dogs, sirens, roar of the >1,000,000 refrigerators within the metro area.

Commitment has the echo of quid pro quo. There's none of that here; it's love, pure love.

But outside's a wasteland; a hell.

TOMS

Mike Kelsey, canyoneering adventurer non-pareil, recommends carrying some camp shoes. After YEARS of discomfort, My Hush-puppies finally began to wear out. I struggled on as the insoles went to tatters and the lacing around the edge, they were moccasins, came undone. It took more years to find their replacement, but just the other day, when Ms. Cook and I were in Taos, I found a pair of TOMS for $2.00. The toe of the left one maybe got tetched (tetched - a Southern term. Def #2: mildly crazy) by bleach.

They were at the Community Against Violence (supporting survivors of domestic & sexual violence) thrift store.

Course, vee must not go out innen zee public; vee vood be acyoost uf cross-dressin'.  Das ist ein Voeminz shoe!

Leev No Trase Now, Yuh He'ar!

There's a stretch of BLM land on the east side of the Rio Grande that runs north and south alongside Socorro. It's called the Quebradas National Backcountry Byway

and there're a few spots where a nimble vehicle can camp. Mostly creosote, it's so over-grazed it'll evolve before it'll recover.

On the morning of 9, November, 2019, I took these photos to document the management of our public lands. And THIS...a NATIONAL Backcountry BYway!


Watch yer step!

Glazed (with frost) Cow Shit in Morning

Fire Ring with Mountains

Old Pipe with Tabasco Bottle

The bottle is upended in the smaller piece of pipe.

"Grazing" livestock out here is cruel & inhumane; there's nothing to eat.

At the north end cattle guard they added this sign. 

Somebody chewed the upper left corner; the lower right has the agglomeration of small holes from a shotgun.

I have to laugh. The area is almost exclusively Hispanic. The syntax is unique and you can almost hear the final word they left off...Pendejo!

Journey's Place

On the access route to Quebradas NATIONAL Backcounry Byway is Journey's Place. They don't open on Saturday until 10:00 and it was only 9:13 when I stopped by.

It being also on the the way to Escondida Lake & Park (Take the Escondida exit and go east. Once past the ninety-degree turn to the north, it's about a mile.)



I have no doubt of their success. It looked so insouscient!

Ristras & a Pumpkin-Motif Table Cloth

THURDAY!!

It Came frm Ms. Cook

She's put up with me for over 25 years.

Last year, in anticipation of my demise, I twisted her arm to "inherit" my social security, five times more than what, as an artist, she'd get, and we entered into a legally binding marriage (so quaint).

See: https://newmexnomad.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-squidges-get-married.html

But it's stuff like THIS, that she finds and sends, that keeps me enthralled!

Carrots & Cats

In my youth I attended a school in Boulder, Colorado for high-school dropouts. One of my classmates, the son of Vivian Mercier, a scholar of Waiting For Godot, introduced me to the play.

There are many interpretations of the scene in which Estragon asks Vladamir for a carrot. After Vladamir gives it to him Estragon takes a bite. Then, while dangling it by its greens, he comments, "I'll never forget this carrot."  When Estragon asks, "How is it?" Vladimir replies, "It's a carrot."

For the next 25 years (I was 16 when I first read it) Vladimir's answer served as the existential answer; it is what it is. (Much has been made of the homosexual inferences which, blatant as it is, had to be an expression of Beckett cynically proffering a titillation factor.)

Regardless, my next iteration was to the carrot-and-the-stick. As THE PRIME MOTIVATOR, the idea contributed to the naming of my art dealership: IAC Contemporary Art. IAC stands for It's A Carrot. The carrot in this case being: Contemporary Art. It was, for nearly ten years, my raison d'etre and livelihood. It still serves as a major source of delight.

Later I did away with the stick and just saw the carrot as floating in the cerulean.

So you can imagine my response when I pulled into an RV park and saw this vehicle.

And on the back...

They said they had some orange paint and somehow the idea came to them. They also have five cats that roam free when they're camped.

It's a Jungian thing....perhaps?

It Happens - A Campground!

It was nearing dark as I left Silver City and it was raining. I picked a likely-looking spot off the map a few miles north on highway 60. As I turned off highway 180 I noticed the sign for City of Rocks State Park. It was pitch dark & raining hard. I wussed out and went to the park.

But the goddess was watchin' over me. She showed me a spot that was facing AWAY from the incoming traffic. You'd have to be leaving or look over your shoulder to see us.

Their apology for NO HOT WATER didn't help get the scum (swimming in stock tanks), grease (role-playing as wagon-wheel greaser in Olden Days Theater), dirt (rolling on ground in ecstasy at being outside) and filth off my body (being in city).

I called The Dept of Energy & Minerals, the folks in charge of New Mexico's State Parks, to see if they're gonna install a tankless water-heater. I called nearly 20 minutes ago. Now 2:49 p.m. and still no reply.

We don't need no stinkin' picnic table.

Hopefully it won't happen again too soon. $10.00 and NO HOT WATER!

Animas to Lordsburg

It's a county road, don'chya know? CR-A009 connects Animas with Lordsburg. Top speed was a hair-streaming-in-the-wind and, at times, a tad frightening, 22 miles per hour. At one wash crossing I had to use my shovel to make the slope a bit gentler so Schvoogie's lower lip -- air dam -- wouldn't get torn off. I used the dirt to fill in the trench cut by water.

Mostly flat with creosote, the highlight was the highwater mark on these two, the ONLY ONES, trees.

Through the Chiricahuas to Portal

It's a bit tricky; we've had a couple of hard knocks when we missed seeing the rocky protruberance. But the views are spectacular!

Unfortunately, all I have is my phone camera.

Ascending the west side.

The east side...

Rough Edges...

Somewhere along the way

I wish you could've heard the symphony this moss was humming...

Cave Creek Canyon

Chiricahua Natl Monument

Perfect weather. Boondocking 4 miles from the Y where left goes to Natl Mon & right goes to Natl Forest.


Rhyolite.

Patina

Creekside Tableau

Balanced

Among the oaks.

Intolerable Cruelty

I'm unfamiliar with other state laws about leg-hold trapping, but I was completely disgusted when I attended a meeting of the New Mexico Game Commision and saw their apathy first-hand.

It's hard to believe this arcane and cruel method of hunting is still condoned. Please take a moment to write your game commissioners, Governor and/or other representatives to express your opinion.

See:

https://mailchi.mp/ff431abd2404/trapfree-new-mexico-releases-map-of-trapping-incidents?e=ea9823b06c

Tyrz Madder

I subscribe to this blog and have been enjoying its enthusiasm.
https://www.truckcamperadventure.com/review-of-the-cooper-discoverer-at3-xlt-tire/

I'd noticed the Cooper XLT on a Comcast truck in Kanab, Utah the other day.  I figured Comcast had probably vetted many others; they looked as if they could handle it.



Great image at top of Cooper Tires website!

The perfect Bud Lite, Big Tires "look."
http://us.coopertire.com/

Singing Gate

It's delights such as this that add to the pleasures of the day.

And the evening before there'd been the slimmest paring of moon.