Tag Archives: personal

La Cantina

Posted on December 21, 2012 by | 12 comments

Hi readers.

La Cantina Entry

A man who reads this blog sent me an email a while back offering to allow me to hook up and park mi casa where he lives in far-west Texas a night, or more if we found ourselves simpatico.  So after the WalMart parking lot in Midland, we trucked up there and said hello.

La Cantina bar

Eddie and Val, their names are.  Fine, fine, fine people.  The Coincidence Coordinators blessed me once again with an unexpected shot of reminder I’m the luckiest man alive.

I’ll digress a moment and suggest you notice the birdnests on the vigas and the droppings on the orno below.  This is the entryway into the section of their home Eddie built where they evidently spend most of their time and entertain guests.

La Cantina Fireplace

I spent a few days parked in their yard, hours of every day submerged in conversation with Eddie, Val, various relatives and neighbors, digesting my life, the flood of new learning I was doing, and a lot else, thanks mainly to Val, who was forever worrying whether I could drink some more coffee, eat some more of the fare she constantly provided, putting more wood on the fire.

La Cantina deer head

Val’s an ex-school teacher, biologist, and interesting lady.  Eddie’s an electrical engineer who spent much of his lifetime travelling all over the planet, first as a private contractor, then in a corporate capacity, then decided screw-it.  I ain’t doing this no more.

La Cantina hatrack

I met a lot of interesting people, heard a lot of intriguing world-views in that cantina while the wind howled outdoors.  I’ll be telling you more of that later.

But one question I was asked over and over during my stay.  “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Soaking it up,” is the only answer comes immediately to mind.

Maybe I’m working up to continuing wossname, John Ernesto Hemingway Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie – The Brave New World For Whom The Bell Tolls.

The New Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Three cats and a hat overgrazing the gas stations

Posted on December 17, 2012 by | 16 comments

Good morning readers.

I’m not going to furnish you with an image.  I’m not even going to regale you with all the tales came into my mind as the cats and I travelled across west Texas.  We talked it out, mainly in loud meowws and decided there was a lot worthy of remaining unsaid until the dust settles a bit.

We’re in Andrews, Texas, after spending the night in a WalMart parking lot in Midland.  Took the Andrews Highway out of Midland after daybreak because the cats couldn’t wait to get back on the road.  Strangely, the Andrews Highway out of Midland doesn’t go to Andrews.  Goes spang to wossname, Odessa, instead.

So the cats and I asked a guy pulled into a gas station with a truck carrying a large piece of machinery I didn’t know what was and he cleared the matter up.

This trip is beginning to feel a bit like Travels with Charlie if wossname Ernest Hemingway’d written it instead of John Steinway and three cats instead of a dog.

The S key on this thing is being a Communist, but it’s only to be expected.

More later.  Stay tuned.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Animals, Libraries, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Old Dogs, New Tricks and Kick Starting Pesky Realities

Posted on December 12, 2012 by | 10 comments

Mechanized Morton Salt

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

My friend, Rich, is going down to the jailhouse in Gastonia, NC, today with Lisa.  That’s where they do weddings in Gastonia, which I think is fairly cool in its own way.  I might be tempted to marry again my ownself if I could do it in a jailhouse.  But the places I’m likely to be they probably do it someplace else.

At least I hope so.

But I’m tickled pea green for old Rich, and Lisa too.  Good people kicking holes in the future, driving new tunnels into places neither of them could have gone by themselves.

When I first became acquainted with Rich I’d have never dreamed something of this sort would emerge among his lifetime pathways.  He was an angry, bitter man carrying around all manner of rages left over from the Vietnam War jungles, losing a son in an accident a decade-or-so earlier, a wife working up to dying as a result of environmental issues.

As nearly as I could tell, Rich was a cauldron seething with more things to be angry about than a person would be likely to turn loose of during whatever he could squeeze in as a rest-of-his-life.  Rich and I would talk on the phone for hours at a time and during those first years after he became a widower the experience was dizzying for me.  At times he teetered on the edge of a depression I was concerned he mightn’t climb back out of.

After I’d hang up I’d have to run through more-than-usual gratitude affirmations, forgiveness affirmations, grab a cat to scratch behind the ears, and in a pinch, do an EFT-like tapping ritual to get my feet back on the ground where I wanted them.

But gradually Rich pulled himself into a different place and the rage slowly dissipated, peeled away in layers, seemed to me.  I suspect gratitude affirmations might have been part of how he did it, but taken in time-lapse head photographs within my mind it seems both unlikely and profound.

Then he met Lisa and bubbled up into being an old codger so happy with himself and his life maybe he belonged in the jailhouse.  Anything makes a man that happy is almost certainly illegal in the US these days.

So here’s me, shooting some gratitude affirmations to the Universe for Rich and Lisa.  And hoping they don’t keep them inside too long.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Burden of Guilt – “When It Rains It Pours”

Posted on December 11, 2012 by | 12 comments

when it rains

Hi again readers.

One of the things I like least about Christmas is the fact it brings out so much dialogue about how we ought to devote ourselves to making it better for those less fortunate than ourselves.  Got an email just a minute ago someone posted somewhere talking about it again.

I agree entirely with the sentiment, but it’s a killer for a man [the only one] such as myself.  I’m the most fortunate man on the planet.

So how the hell am I supposed to go about doing it? 

Everyone on the planet is less fortunate than me.  Should I start by figuring out a way to make life better for wossname, Donald Trump?  The Dallas Cowboys and those who watch them?  The American Association of Non-RV Owners?  The Federation of Human Beings Alienated From Cats?

I ain’t giving what few cats I have left to someone, no matter how unfortunate they might be.  Okay, I’m a stingyguts, but there you are.

I’m at a complete loss here, and the guilt is overwhelming.

Old Jules – Headed for the finish line

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Human Behavior, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Brother of Invention

Posted on December 11, 2012 by | 7 comments

Humane gunfighters

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Life’s so full of happy surprises here it took me a while to remember to be surprised when I awakened warm, still parked where once chickens scratched and pecked on mornings such as this.  Then I remembered what it was I ought to be surprised about – that I’d expected this post to be made on a fast WIFI connection somewhere out where it’s probably colder than it is here.  Which is plenty cold enough to satisfy the needs of the feline population, I’m informed.

I thought it was the money situation keeping the delays coming hot and heavy, but when I managed yesterday after the temperature dropped to 20 degrees F, to get the propane heater working in the RV, I knew a new reality had dropped in to flex its muscles.  That heater had to be why the Universe kicked in to impose good sense into my activities.

I don’t know how I fixed it.  Maybe just pulling things apart and putting them back together, tapping on things, testing, and taking them apart again was what did it.  Or maybe it was my genius brother, Invention.

So this morning I woke someplace warm for the first cold morning in at least a couple of years.  I hope today I’ll be changing the oil on the RV, wrapping up a couple of other details, and try to round up the cats to hit the road before the end of the week.

But it’s not easy to feel much dissatisfaction with life when there’s warm out there to be had.  I’m going to have to kick myself with some determination to impose a sense of urgency into my intentions.

But I’ve digressed.  I’d planned to tell you about that truck I saw parked in front of the Humane Society Thrift Shop new construction area.

Can’t recall now what I was going to say about it.

Instead, here’s wishing all of you plenty of warm.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Animals, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Nature, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Searching for The Lost Granfalloons* – Mine

Posted on November 20, 2012 by | 10 comments

FAST-GROWING SUNSPOT: Barely visible when the weekend began, sunspot AR1619 has blossomed into a large active region more than three times as wide as Earth.  So far the growing sunspot has not produced any significant flares, but the quiet is unlikely to continue if its expansion continues apace. Fast-changing magnetic fields on the sun have a tendency to reconnect and erupt. NOAA forecasters estimate a 20% chance of M-class solar flares during the next 24 hours.  http://spaceweather.com/

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been watching SS 1619 and wondering what the hell is going on with Old Sol. Likely you’re wondering, as I am, why he persists in blessing us with all those weird smiley faces with Errol Flynn mustaches.  Wondering what he’s got up his sleeve.

I have the advantage on most of you because I’ve been messing around with rare earth magnets, glueing them behind cabinet doors in the RV to keep them closed.  So rapidly changing magnetic fields are fresh on my mind, along with the wrinkled, crispy fingertips acquired by fastening them in place with super glue.

Which has created a loose granfalloon Old Sol and I both belong to.

But I’m what most people would call a real cool guy, full of compassion and sensitivity for all you who aren’t in a granfalloon with Old Sol right now.  So I’m not going to arouse your fears and spoil your Thanksgiving holidays by telling you what he might have up his sleeve.

One of the shortcomings, in fact, with granfalloons is that it might be anything, anyway.  Your guess is as good as mine.

But I’ve digressed.  My main purpose in posting today is to tell you about some other granfalloons of my past are cropping up hither thither and yon in my sinookas**.  For reasons I dassn’t speculate about, a good many of them involve a search I used to do for a lost gold mine.  Strangers from hell to breakfast are sending me emails wanting to talk to me about it, hinting around that, though they haven’t been within a thousand miles of that country, they know where it is.  Or might be.

Some granfalloons just don’t let go once they get their teeth locked into your leg.

So maybe  all this busy, busy, busy*** going on around here right now is about me going out and searching for the Lost Granfalloons – Mine.

Not that I plan to bank any money on it.  I’m spang out of money until my SS pension check arrives.

Old Jules

* granfalloon – a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is “Hoosiers“; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so they really share little more than a name. Another example is a Cornellian, a student or graduate of Cornell University.

**sinookas – the tendrils of one’s life.

***Busy, busy, busy” – what a Bokononist whispers whenever he thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

10 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Prospecting, Relationships, Science, Senior Citizens, Social Security

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

TimeWarp Jokes

Posted on September 1, 2012 by | 5 comments

Being a person left behind by the passage of time probably leaves me out of sync with understandable concepts of humor.  Or maybe mine was always too oblique to find the intended targets.  Maybe that’s why Playboy never bought any of my limericks.

Fact is, I still occasionally chuckle over two jokes I first heard half-century ago.

1]  A guy walked into a blacksmith shop where the blacksmith was pounding out horseshoes, the one he was working on glowing orange.  While he waited, the customer noticed a horseshoe that had cooled just enough so’s it was no longer glowing.  He picked it up and immediately flang it at the wall.

Blacksmith looked up grinning.  “That wasn’t hot, was it?”

“No.  It just doesn’t take me long to look at a horseshoe.”

2]  Guy sticks his head into a barbershop.  “Bob Peters here?”

Barber frowns.  “Nooo. We just cut hair here.”

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 1950's, 2012, Communication

Tagged , , , , ,

Turning Imagination Loose on the Future

Posted on August 19, 2012 by | 9 comments

Hi readers. 

You people who stay excited about things all the time and are forever racing around doing the things you’re excited about probably won’t be impressed with this.  But suddenly having a gate open in front of me has this old 70 year old mind reaching out caressing all the damned things it didn’t even know it was missing.

One of the joys, just having the possibility where it wasn’t before, is that I might get to attend a performance at the Santa Fe Opera one more time before I die.  [ The Horror of Discovering You Love Opera] Maybe more than one if the Coincidence Coordinators allow for it.  When the thought of it sneaked into my head I broke out into a grin and found a cat to scratch behind the ears while I went on imagining it in detail: 

Parking that old RV up there, sitting in a camp chair watching all the dressed-up people pulling up in their BMWs and Mercedes with bow-ties and fancy dresses.  Sipping a cold suds and smiling to myself while I eavesdrop, then sauntering in to lose myself in something I haven’t done in almost two decades.  And didn’t even discover until ‘way to much of my life had passed, opportunities missed.

But there’s also crawling around Hueco Tanks at least one more time.  Maybe spending a night at Monahans Sand Hills State Park.  I think the cats would love that place.  Camping up on the Mimbres Divide, climbing to the top of the ridge where you can see all the way to Dallas or Somewhere, flashing a mirror at all those city folks on the Rio Grande scurrying about their lives.

Maybe setting up my little CB radio hock shop across from the Sky City Casino, listening for truckers who lost all their gas-money inside trying to sell everything they own for enough money to get fuel to California or Denver.

I din’t even know my brain was going dead here, but it’s been so long since even thinking about that sort of thing had a smidgin chance of happening, the grey matter went to sleep.  And now it’s beginning to awaken.

Uplifting, uppidy, peeling years, decades off my brain and my life just on a promise.  I need to go outdoors and lift something heavy to get my feet back on the ground.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Senior Citizens

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Naked City in the Sticks

Posted on July 30, 2012 by | 21 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I’ve resisted posting a blog entry about this incident a couple of days now.  Felt I needed to allow it to settle in my mind enough to think calmly and clearly about it.

I’ve explained before that the nearest property line is almost 1/4 mile away from here.  No line-of-sight to the nearest dwellings.  Woods, rough roads and rough country between here and the nearest neighbor.  Aside from Gale, no reason whatever for anyone to be anywhere near here, and Gale rarely comes, never without honking his horn at the top of the hill. [That bluelike speck right-of-center in the pic is the roof of the cabin.  The barely-visible white loop’s the turnaround.]

Sooooo.  A couple of days ago I’d just finished my afternoon solar shower, poured a couple of gallons of water over my head for a soapdown shampoo and rinse out in the driveway.  Went inside to towel off and stepped back outdoors onto the porch to let the sun finish things off.

“DAMMITTOHELLSHIT!”

A cammie 4-wheeler with two people aboard was creeping by about 30 feet from the porch.  I jumped back inside to throw on some trousers and by the time I got back outside it was gone.  Not a sign of whomever I was wanting to throw rocks at and shout lectures about respecting property lines and the not-to-be-aspired-to human trait of nosy intrusion.

Because that 4 wheeler wasn’t coming down the driveway.  It came from the direction of the chicken house.  Nothing in that direction for another quarter-mile to the north property boundary fence. 

Even though that new neighbor’s got 90-odd acres for himself and his family to fart around on knocking down trees and blasting away with every caliber firearm ever invented, 90 acres just isn’t big enough when a man’s richer than 18 inches up a bull’s ass.  Got rich early enough to get thinking he could run over everyone in reach, bluff whomever he couldn’t buy outright.

When he was coming down here trying to get me to go on wages working for him I had a vague suspicion this was the kind of thing he had in mind, ultimately.  Getting a leverage in place so’s he could do anything he pleased.  He’d already described every property and house within sight of here in enough detail to suggest he’d explored already what was none of his business.  Described it without blushing, as though it was a given.

Sometime during those visits he was making down here I asked permission to haul water from his well up beside the driveway, and he’d given permission.  His water’s nearer than Gale’s from here, and the road’s better.  I’d done it once already.

But after this incident I’ll be going back to hauling water from Gale’s.  And the only thing I’ve got to say to him about what happened the other day:

“Stay the hell away from this part of Gale’s property and keep the kids and grandkids away from it when they’re visiting.  One of the rare positive stereotypes about Texans is that they respect property lines.  Where the hell did you grow up?”

Says he reads this blog.  I hope he does.

Old Jules

21 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Parents, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Surveillance, Texas

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Illusion of Urgency

Posted on July 25, 2012 by | 16 comments

Lying in bed last night distracted from sleep by gallons of sweat pouring off my body I found myself wondering just why the hell the Coincidence Coordinators seem to be throwing so many obstacles in front of me and the cats getting the hell out of here, one way or another.  It just oughtn’t be this difficult if I’m not chasing a wrong path, or am avoiding one I ought to be chasing.

I take this stuff seriously [and honestly don’t give a damn whether anyone else believes it’s insane for me to do so].  Seems clear to me in moments of insight the function the cats serve in my life is that of an anchor.  The weight of my contracts with them keep me from taking the easy way out and living in a tent, a cave, somewhere I’d rather be.  Somewhere the humidity’s not so high and the heat’s more bearable.

On the other hand, I’m not certain I’d find life worth living at all without these damned cats.  That’s another feature of my life a lot of people might find insane, and another feature of it I don’t need to explain, even to myself.  It’s good enough just riding the satisfaction I get sharing my life with them without demanding sanity out of it.

I think I’d do just fine without them if they exited my life without my having violated my contracts with them.  But violating the contracts as a means to drive my life somewhere I’d rather be would cut just about everything I value in myself off at the knees.

Of course, there’s this damned project over there dancing around in the wings waving its arms around demanding a particular uncertainty principle be dismantled, provided the Coincidence Coordinators continue providing the means to pursue it.  Which, thus far, they’ve continued to do.

So where’s the urgency in it all, thinks I?  Where’s the source of the fire I’m building under myself to provide a driving ‘need’ to be in a tent or under a bridge?

Physical discomfort, thinks I, must be a big piece of it.  Cripes, I think of myself as immune to allowing that to influence my life, but there it is. 

And of course, I allowed a number of expectations to creep into my mind, demands on a future I’ve no reason at all to believe will come to pass.  Things involving smelling pinon burning beside a stream, looking at rocks through a magnifier.

Enough of all that was still lingering in my mind this morning to get me asking the I Ching about it.  He ain’t always all that helpful, but “any port in a storm,” eh?

Consultation on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 8:04 AM.

Present: Hexagram 61 Centering in Truth

Question:  What about just blowing it off and going to live in a cave or under a bridge somewhere?

Truth involves establishing an aware relationship between your inner core and the circumstances in your life.  Centering in truth involves the ability to perceive a fundamental wisdom, reflected within yourself – and also in others.

Truth is transformed into power when you disperse all prejudice and make yourself receptive to the world as it really is.  This power can be a remarkable force indeed – yet is rarer than generally imagined.  It can be maintained only by cultivating a genuine openness to things as they are – a willingness to see, rather than merely look.

Whenever your inner life is clouded, your influence in the world is under a shadow.  If you are fearful, you will be attacked; if you cloak genuine mysteries in dogma, opportunities for new insight will be lost.  If you vacillate in upholding your principles, you will be tested.  Yet, when you are firm and strong, the power of truth can break through even the most stubborn minds.

In any debate, the power to perceive the truth in the other side’s argument is essential to achieving success.  It is possible to influence even the most difficult people, or improve the most difficult circumstance, through the power of universal truth – for truth is something to which all things naturally respond.  Get in touch with that part of yourself that is aware of this universal force of truth.  Cultivate this inner resource, and you will become adept at using it to bind others to a common purpose.

The condition of things in the present is fairly stable. There are no specific changes indicated right now.

———————-

Guess I’d better dig out John Richard Lynn and read the judgements on Hexagram 61.  Otherwise I might get thinking it matters whether I’m crazy.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Country Life, Free, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Survival, Texas

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,