Twentynine Palms, 2010 - June 16

 

Mojave Dawn

Two-thirty in the afternoon, sitting in the Hell Trailer, waiting out the heat.

Started early today, at 5:30am.

Sun not up over the distant hills, low on the horizon to the east, just yet.

Today Newt is having a guy come over to work on the “porch” he’s going to be building on the east side of the studio.

I amble on over to the house, and encounter Newt in the cool predawn air, coffee cup in hand, offering me a cup for myself.

Gladly, and with thanks.

Artful Porch

Room with a view

The place is different from before, and the porch on the west side of the house is mostly, but unfinishedly, enclosed with a whimsy of art and construction materials.

Sit in the chairs, and talk story in the morning cool.

Eventually, Steve Bowden arrives and we all amble over to the seriously stout lumber Newt has acquired and placed near the studio, right next to the concrete slab on its east side.

Last night, Newt and I talked of breaking out the Big Blue Reflecting Telescope I gave to him back around ’95, and have not so much as seen in the intervening fifteen years, and this morning the discussion revolves around maybe turning the new “porch” into something perhaps a bit more substantial that could serve to place the telescope, or a bed, or whatever, up on top of, in addition to shading that which dwells beneath it.

And as the conversation between Newt, Steve, and myself glances here and there, covering divers and sundry things, like the pitch or lack thereof for a roof line, and whether a telescope even belongs on top of a porch, and how things might be accomplished in the real world with tools and lumber, Steve eventually figures out that all I'm good for is introducing extraneous bullshit into the conversation and finally tells me to shut the fuck up, and I laughingly leave them in peace, more or less, and grab the camera while the light is still good, with a low sun and brilliantly clear air.

Is it art, or is it junk? Is it is, or is it isn't?		Newt, heading across the slab		Everywhere you look. Every goddamned little place

Everywhere I look, things catch my eye and ask me to take their pictures, and I oblige every last bit of it with pleasure.

There is no line between "art" and "nonart" out here so I don't worry, and anything and everything becomes fair game.

From the creosote, to the Hell Trailer, to Newt standing on the slab, it's all great stuff and all well worth my time.

Natural or man-made, I could not possibly care less and keep on grabbing shots.

What can I say? I just like this stuff, that's all. No further explanation is required, and none will be offered, either.

There's just something about the morning light hitting the surroundings out here, and I cannot get enough of it.

So I take a lot of pictures.

Too many, no doubt. Filled up a chip, 355 frames. It’s just how I work, that’s all. Did a full walk around the whole perimeter of the ten-acre tract, outside the fence, just me and the desert.

Newt and Cathy live in an exquisitely cool place, and if you want to know what it looks like out in the Mojave Fucking Desert east of Twentynine Palms, California, then this is what it looks like. Of course, you must always keep in mind that photographs are a lie, and fail miserably to capture any of the real ambience. You look at pictures and think you know, but you really do not. You have to immerse yourself in it personally, and even then you still don't really know.

It's not for everybody, and it's not for most people, in fact, but that only adds to the appeal as far as I can tell.

Your nearest neighbors are far far away, and you can do as you damn well please and who's to question any of it?

Splendid Isolation does not even begin to scratch the surface when it comes to describing this place.

And if you want to collect things you find in the desert, be they bones, be they golf balls, be they dead cholla, be they some woman's shoe, be they whatever, it doesn't matter in the slightest. Bring 'em home. Hang 'em on the fence.

The phenomenal volume of space out here is more than happy to accommodate you, whatever you might want to do.

And the desert has a way of insinuating itself into look and feel of everything, co-opting all, making everything its own.

Amid the vast sweep and scope all around, small things, tiny things, somehow take on a larger significance too.

But of course there's really nothing here at all. This place is nowhere, personified. Dirt, dust, heat, cactus spines, and rubbish blown in on the wind. You don't belong here. This land is barren. This place is a wasteland. The creosote does not want you or anybody else here. This is not the desert you're looking for. There's nothing to see here. Move along.

And if some fool with a camera comes along fatuously believing he may find a way to capture any of it, then a sneering, mocking reward is all he will receive by way of compensation for his foredoomed efforts. And it will serve him right, too.

-

Newt and Steve are going at it when I return, and I manage to make myself at least a little bit useful, dragging heavy objects.

Steve Bowden considers the idiot with the camera

 

 

Bonzo: Former Flying Torpedo Dog From Hell

 

 

 

Around eleven, the heat begins to fill in, and we depart to Steve’s to help him put his lumber rack on his pick-up truck, to haul a load of two by fours back out here tomorrow.

Newt and I head on in to town after that, and it’s very very pleasant indeed to be back on the streets of Twentynine Palms.

What the fuck is it about this place that draws me to it? I’m sure I’ll never know. Just is, that’s all.

Back home, sit on the mostly-enclosed porch, and take our ease.

And then, right around noon, the heat finally calls a halt to things, and I decamp for the Hell Trailer, wherein I have been ensconced thencefrom, giving Newt some time to himself and giving James MacLaren some time to write. Ok then, a little over three thousand words later, I do believe it’s time to set this keyboard down and go be stupid somewhere in the heat.

-

Last night, Newt offered me a flashlight to walk back to the Hell Trailer with, and I declined, figuring I’d find my way in the dark. It was late and he didn’t feel like belaboring the issue, and let me have my way in the matter.

Today, I found out what the deal was.

Sidewinders.

Apparently, this is one of their two mating seasons of the year, and there’s a place not so very far down the dirt road where Newt and Cathy walk, that has a sizeable population of them, and they’ve seen plenty, or, more accurately, heard plenty, and then taken another, closer, look, and picked out a bit of the pattern at first, and then the whole snake, exquisitely camouflaged to allow them to hide in plain sight.

And, being pit vipers, they’re nighttime hunters, taking full advantage of the infrared sensors that are what a pit viper’s pits really are. Sidewinders can pick up the infrared signal of the body heat of a small desert mammal at night, in similar fashion as you or I might pick up the visible light signal coming from a car's headlights at night. Kinda hard to miss, eh?

And so, as I’m ambling along in the dark, thinking I’m cool by not stubbing my toe, I’m actually very much uncool, and a fucking idiot on top of it.

No, I don’t think I’d like to go stubbing my toe on a rattlesnake in the dark, thank you very much.

So ok Newt, I’ll listen a little closer next time.

My bad.

-

Today, I passed the Barbecued Chicken test.

Came over to the house this afternoon to the delicious smell of barbecuing chicken on the grill.

But I have embarked on a weight-loss program, and I’m serious about this shit, and I’ve already had two bananas, a handful of nuts, and an avocado. And that’s it for my entire day.

And despite Newt’s gracious offer of very delicious chicken, I held my ground and refrained from eating any.

Tra la la.

Good for me.

-

Ok then, it’s just about nine thirty, and this day is pretty much over for me.

Not a whole lot went on, and that’s just about as fine and dandy with me as it gets.

Newt has departed for Palm Springs to pick up Cathy, and I’m in the hell trailer, winding down for the evening. Going to bed last night around midnight after a long day in the air, coupled with getting up this morning at five thirty, has pretty much taken it out of me.

Walked back here in the deepening gloom with a little LED flashlight Newt provided me, and I’m not gonna step on any goddamned sidewinders.

On my way to the trailer, I walked around the back side of the art studio away from the house lights, and stood and marveled at the deepening hues of late evening, a procession of stars filling in the blank places in the sky, and the crescent moon sharing the overhead with Venus, Mars, and Saturn along with a host of late spring and early summer constellations.

To the east, the steady light of a satellite in a polar orbit silently tracked from south to north, and the flickering lights of airliners gulping cold thin air in the stratosphere drew invisible lines in the sky toward Palm Springs and LA, far beyond the horizon to my west.

Probably spent another half hour with the sky as my sole focus.

Very nice. Very very nice indeed.

And now I’m inside the trailer and this narrative is trickling away to a subdued finish even as the softness of the bed beckons, and the cooling night breeze filters through the window screens and whispers in the tamarisk trees, just outside the door.

Good night.

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