Titanic Post

This weekend, I spent some time in the mountains. It was cool (literally) and peaceful and it smelled good, too. I need to go there periodically to keep my head straight and to put myself in a proper perspective regarding the rest of the universe.

Did you realize that planet earth is already in outer space and that we don’t really need space ships to explore space? This weekend my theme was materialism and how it makes me unhappy and dissatisfied and worry about money and things. I came to the conclusion that most people don’t really enjoy the material things they have collected, as they are too busy working and earning money for their future security to have much pleasure in anything.

I do buy things that give me pleasure. I enjoy my motorcycles. The things I do on a motorcycle give me pleasure. A bank account does not. Eating a slice of fresh mozzarella with a home-grown tomato, basil, and garlic sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper and live virgin olive oil gives me pleasure. Life insurance does not. Technically this makes me a materialist, but not a very secure one.

There is an interesting correlation between security and freedom. Actually they are inveresly correlated. It appears that the more security you have, the less freedom and vice-versus. Makes you wonder what our Department of Homeland Security is all about, doesn’t it? It makes me wonder, too, why we allowed them to do it to us again. By ‘them,’ I mean our political leaders, although I don’t really have a need to be led by anyone. I don’t follow other peoples goals well. I don’t even follow my own goals well.

In the mountains, walking along a pine covered trail, I realized that the trick with living is to live artistically, to be able to love, and be loved, while at the same time avoiding narcissistic loneliness, crippling addictions, or fanatical allegiance to some grand overlying goal.  I have just discovered a philosophy of life that allows me to go ride anytime I want.  And how easy it was!

Being home alone the past few days, I’ve had this wonderful feeling of lightness as though nothing in the universe could be wrong or out of place. There is ‘wrong,’ I know, but it seems to have no importance. Things are also out of place. I can’t find my sun glasses again. The ‘good,’ on the otherhand, means something. What—I do not know. It feels like I’ve never had a tooth-ache in my whole life or anything else that went wrong. Blissful ignorance, you might say. That or maybe I don’t really exist in the normal sense. I have no special goal in life, nor can I perceive a purpose other than for the amusement of anyone who knows me. No, I haven’t been drinking, it was just a good day and I hope you had a good one too! Anyhow, I wish you all many good days and good nights. love…

Hope, New Mexico: In the early 1980s, I saw a black and white version of the above photo over the bar of a pension on the outskirts of Biarritz, France on the Golfe de Gascogne. I blurted, “That looks like Hope, New Mexico!” The bartender smiled and said in only slightly accented English: “Yes I lived there for almost twenty years.”

Now Hope, NM is and always has been a small community on Highway 82 about 20 miles west of Artesia, which is on the Pecos River. Traditionally Hope has been a ranching area, think John Chisum whose ranch was to the North, now there are signs of oil drilling nearby. The story is that Hope got its name from two cowboys and a coin-toss. One of them said, “I hope you lose.” Anyhow the chances of running into someone in France who has lived in Hope are minute and the bartender, who was also the owner of the pension, had worked there as a sheepherder. He was a Basque, by the way.

I had met a second person from Hope, NM several years earlier in Sachsenhausen, Germany. Her name was Roberta and she was studying to become a pharmacist at the Frankfurt University. She was born in Hope and probably still has relatives there. I should have played the lottery after meeting the second Hopeian, because I was turning the laws of probability upside down.

It’s strange how life presents itself when you sit back and let things happen. All last week I had been feeling sorry for myself. My daughter was home sick and needed minor attention. It wasn’t much except I felt I should be there. And when I’m there, I’m nowhere else.

Yesterday my daughter was with her mother, and I took a ride on my blue motorcycle into the Sacramento Mountains. I spent several hours riding aimlessly about until I came to the turn-off to Apache Point in the southern Sacramentos. I turned in that direction. Apache Point is a stellar observatory (there is also a solar observatory nearby called Sunspot) and is positioned to overlook the Tularosa Basin to the South. When I got there I sat awhile looking out over the Otero Mesa. I could see Hwy 54 to El Paso, shining like a river in the sunlight and then disappearing into the haze south of Oro Grande. It was amazingly clear until that point. South of the wall of haze lies El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, too busy to worry about the air.

Did you ever shiver
Just because
You were standing
At a river?I sat awhile watching two big Ravens catching the up-draft off the hillside and getting tossed up into the wind doing some kind of acrobatic maneuver. Maybe an Emmelmann. They looked too old for that sort of nonsense.  On the way back to Cloudcroft, another Raven flew ahead of me for a short stretch, like he was making sure I wasn’t too old.  A little way before Cathey Peak, two adult wild turkeys ambled across the highway.  I slowed and waved, but they, knowing  that turkey season was long past, were too busy to notice me.

Going down the mountain, I stopped at Spring Mountain just before Mountain Park and had catfish and pinto beans with cole slaw, onions and pickles served with plastic utensils on a styrofoam plate. The master touch was a refreshing hot towel. A man was playing romantic songs on an electric piano and because I was sitting alone, I almost fell in love with myself, but stopped myself just in time.

Today I paid my dues to the IRS who hit me big time, because of some back payments I received last year. I wouldn’t mind so much, if I didn’t think the money would go to expand the Empire.

Indeed, life is like a sweet folk-song as it rambles down the road.