I forgot to get this posted a couple of weeks ago — gee, I wonder why? — but here it is.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize elements of previous blog posts assembled into a new whole. Not quite like building Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, although related, and with much better results. This was just published in the August edition of Horse Fly. What’s more, the publisher thought it was so good, he paid me extra, a thing possibly unprecedented in the history of writing. At any rate, you can read it now without coming here to buy a paper:

JOHNNY & THE HORNED TOADS

Years ago in Texas (sorry), we called them “horny toads.”

I’d just turned 13 and didn’t know what “horny” meant, outside of the context of the critters — adolescent urges notwithstanding — but you could find the lizards everywhere, even in town. Back in junior high school in Abilene, in those glorious pre-air-conditioned days when just surviving until the final bell was an accomplishment, the reptiles were a God-given source of distraction from the heat of study hall.

We sat at actual wooden desks with inkwells and lids that opened up. Nobody used fountain pens or had any ink, so dipping pigtails wasn’t an option. But you could grab a “horny toad” at recess, lightly scratch its scaly belly to put it to sleep, and set it gently on its back inside the desk where Peggy Sue would sit. After everyone had taken their seats and study hall had settled into a sodden stupor broken only occasionally by yawns and sounds of shuffling papers, the animal would wake up and start skittering around. The victim usually opened her desk to see what was the matter, and you can guess the rest. This trick only worked with girls, of course, because they screamed so well. The perpetrator generally came to the rescue while his comrades smirked, scooping the lizard up and dropping it out the window. (Why this reminds me now of Homeland Security, I’m not sure, but see what you can do with it.)

Three years ago in Llano Quemado, I missed the photo of a lifetime. I’d taken a walk without my camera — guaranteeing at least a miracle — and sure enough there was one. About halfway up the dirt track on the mesa, something wriggled in the road 20 feet ahead and then sat still. As I approached, I saw it move again: a horned toad trying to get traction in the fine brown sand. But what was that on its right hind leg? Good Lord, a baby horned toad riding on its mother’s back! I honestly couldn’t believe it. The lizards froze when I squatted down beside them, and then I saw a second baby in the dust a couple of inches to the rear. The baby on its mothers back was spotted just like she was, while this one matched the color and texture of the ground it sat on. The mimicry was perfect. The late afternoon sun illuminated the camouflaged tableau with golden yellow light. My camera, if I’d had it, would have been 18 inches from the horned toad family, who held their position until I stood.

* * *

This summer, for whatever reasons, I see horned toad hatchlings all the time, and I’m amazed. There’s just a twitch, a thing that might be real or not, like a floater in your eye, and there they are, fully formed and no bigger than a thumbnail! Yesterday I took my camera on a hike and finally got a close-up shot: the piñon needles on the ground are longer than the tiny beast… They must be like Fritos for the magpies. How ever do they make it?

Try to find out anything about horned toads, and you’ll encounter contradictions. They’re disappearing, or they’re not, for one thing. The young receive no parental care, supposedly, although I saw differently here in Llano. New Mexico writer S. Omar Baker, who died at the age of 90 in 1953, once wrote,

“The horny toad, ill-graced but harmless
Is thought by some to be quite charmless
At least he helps eat garden ants up
And does not try to crawl your pants up.”

The easy familiarity with something few see or take notice of today disturbs me, even as I smile. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving down a twisty, rocky lane. The air was sharply cool and damp from the previous night’s rain, the warm sunlight welcome by comparison. Halfway down the hill I stopped, incredulous: sitting in the road looking up at me below the open driver’s window was a HUGE GREEN BULLFROG the size of a cantaloupe! We stared at each other for a long moment, and then I drove off, checking in my rearview mirror that I hadn’t seen a mirage.

Sometimes I feel I’ve won the lotto on another planet, and then I wake up, remembering I’ve always been right here. What happens in the in-between, though, and where did everybody go?

Oops, fell three days behind again. Now fixed! Almost done with the Arizona trip now. Next up, Los Changos del Mar (“New Mexico’s only extraterrestrial, psycho-surf-punk, spy-billy, harem conjunto!”) at Taos Plaza, then a custom car show. Heh.

When last I typed that title, I told how I’d decided to let Helen do whatever she wanted…

The old woman wouldn’t budge and wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t fool a social worker. Never mind “the voices” and losing $2,500 in cash. Never mind paying too much for an awful trailer she didn’t need with 50 grand she needed to keep. Never mind the permanent reduced breathing capacity and a history of “minor” strokes. Never mind that she’d moved from a beautiful home with room for live-in help to a pathetic dark hole where nothing would ever work. Never mind that she was living out her own worst nightmare but had no self-awareness. Never mind, never mind. She could live on stale fig newtons if she wanted, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t believe how far gone she was, and that her doctors wouldn’t help me.

It seems so bloody obvious. She can hardly walk, she wets the bed, her dentures are worn and make her look like hell. SHE HEARS VOICES. SHE GETS BATSHIT CRAZY MEAN WITH RAZOR BLADES. She thinks she has things fixed up “just the way I want them” when someone else’s pictures are still hanging on the wall, and she can’t take a real bath ’cause the tub is way too small.

If she wouldn’t accept help, though, there was no way for her to have it. I was letting go, and in this found a measure of compassion. Hopeless or not, maybe her wish to keep her “independence” rated more respect. Giving it up had to be a horrendous prospect, even if her material circumstances would be much improved. Maybe she had a right to go to hell in front of everyone and die unhappy. She’d be unhappy (or much worse), no matter what. Maybe there was something deeper going on that I was meant to watch and learn from.

At any rate, I finally went to see her. Her house was locked, and at first she wouldn’t let me in. I could see her sitting on the sofa while I knocked on the glass, and after a minute or two, she relented and let me in through the kitchen door. I got her a glass of water and sat down next to her on the dead man’s sofa.

“WHY DID YOU COME?” she asked, loudly and bitterly (the high point of the visit).

I told her I was deeply sorry for raising my voice against her the day before and trying to make her go into a nursing home. I told her she could stay in her trailer as long as she wanted, but that all five of her children believed she should be somewhere where she’d be looked after. I told her how worried we were and how much we cared. I told her she had taught me a lot about growing old,and I meant it.

“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR THAT MUSHY STUFF!” she shouted, livid with rage.

Amazingly, I was still detached and told her how my brother and sister in Austin had found a couple of very nice nursing homes she might like. I said I wanted her to come to Taos, but I knew she wouldn’t like the cold, and that we all thought it best if she would move to Austin.

“WHY WOULD I GO WHERE THERE’S NO ONE TO VISIT ME?”

Patiently, I pointed out my two siblings and their spouses in Austin, enough that someone would be able to visit almost every day.

“I DON’T WANT THAT!”

She then proceeded to excoriate and damn every one of my siblings. She said we’d never come to visit her in Tucson (not true), that no one cared, especially me, and that I never gave a damn about my father, either. I was witnessing a breathtakingly alien torrent of anger and hatred. There was nothing maternal at all to this entity, whoever or whatever it was, inhabiting the almost 87-year-old body of my mother. The dark wild thing was now off my shoulders and fully manifested in her. I felt released but in great danger and suddenly rose to leave. “I’m going back to Taos tomorrow, Mother,” I said.

“GOOD!” she snapped. I bent down to kiss her on the forehead, then opened the door. As I walked down the steps, she shouted after me, “I DON’T NEED YOU, JOHNNY!”

I drove back to her old home where I was staying, literally shaking from the impact of what had just happened. My solar plexus was throbbing. I called my wife and paced for two hours until I calmed down. In 63 years of relating to Helen, I’d never experienced anything this stark or clearly dangerous, but I also felt a hint of something unmistakably good. After all, my conscience was finally clear…

The elation I’ve felt since is not unlike the newfound appreciation for life that welled up some days after watching my father die some 20 years ago. It washed over me at the time like a healing flood. The energy is similar now, only deeper, and this involves release.

I couldn’t believe how beautiful the stupid rutted dirt road looked when I finally hit the last turn before our house. I couldn’t believe how stunning my wife was or how perfect the air felt. I couldn’t believe how happy I was to be home.

My honey says I’m different. I’m still disoriented and exhausted, but basically good. I may be standing straighter, and I’ll bet I’ve lost a little weight.

The old woman is circling around the flame like a demented moth.

What drives her now? Is it Death? No matter what we call it, there’s nothing I can do about it. Her lungs are a pneumonia-ridden mess. She’s probably had it for a long time, low-grade, and now her chest is filled with secondary crud and blockages they can’t get to without opening her up. She’s almost 87 and doesn’t want the pulmonary surgery. Maybe she’s not so crazy, after all. Except that she is, of course. Word is she can focus on some things and seems to understand, but then forgets, and now she’s paranoid. Hears mocking, threatening voices.

The hospital is actually discharging her tomorrow, too, surprising all of us, even my 50-year-old baby sister (the nurse!), who’s come out from Los Angeles. My mother has to have some sort of IV in her arm at home, antibiotics for the pneumonia, and someone’s going to come by every day to check on that. My sister will stay there with her for most of the day and see how it goes. It’s come to this, then, helping with meals, getting the old lady to the shower — if she’ll cooperate — and keeping the IV going when she tries to pull it out. I can’t see this working out. It sounds more like a play instead of real life.

I was going to rent a car and shoot down to Tucson tomorrow to help my sister line up a nursing home, but that isn’t happening, not yet. The old woman would surely put up a fight, and who would take her in such condition anyway? I think the hospital is sending her home to die. I just wish someone would tell us straight, “a week or two, she’s going…” But they hardly ever do. And when it does happen, they’re usually wrong! When my mother-in-law was in bad shape, the doctors told my wife her mother had a week to live, at most. She’d stopped eating and drinking, and that was that. Then something happened and she ate a little bit. Suddenly she “got better” and lived another year — with raging dementia that stripped her of her dignity, but she lived a while. So there’s just no way to know.

Home care won’t work for Helen very long. She’d get abusive or inconsolable. No one could stand it, not even my sister, the brilliant registered nurse. If a nursing home is out, and she’s impossible to care for, something else is going on. Circling around the flame, all right. I’m beginning to realize that that’s the Plan, that nothing else is going to work.

She’s going to make me come see her, I know it. (This is even bracketing my birthday, right?) She’s going to hang on until I drive down there to hold her hand and watch her die, just like I had to do with Dad. I’ll walk in the door, and 10 minutes later she’ll be gone. You could take that to the bank, except we never know. Not really. But that would be just like her… She even has a fucking discount coupon for cremation! “Burn one, get one free,” or something like that. Probably picked it up when Dad died.

(Tighter circles now, wing scales popping on the pass…)

Thanks to everyone who’s left a message or sent me one!

Yes, it’s here, the actual calendar anniversary of my birth long ago in the wartime summer of 1945 in Bryan, Texas, YE GODS!!! And here’s a picture of me (look hard) with my mother, pretty young Helen Masson from Middle River, MD, taken a short while before my unveiling as first-born son. Take a good long look: this is the woman who’s now 86 years old, lying in a hospital bed in Tucson with her pneumonia-ravaged lungs filling up with fluid and only two days ago diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s — and I’m in there somewhere:

WWII is winding down…

And this is me, 3.5 weeks after popping out. Doesn’t look like I’m all that glad to be here, does it? Maybe it’s the fact of being born on Nagasaki Day… I tried to find an early picture of me smiling and drooling, but they don’t show up until a few months later. Guess I was really pissed.

That is one powerful set of brows

Finally, just because it’s my birthday, I want to play some music for you. You have to click on it, though. This is my new god, Slim Doucial, one of the forerunners of what we call Cajun music today, recorded back in the late 1920’s. Listen carefully! There’s a washtub bass in there, I swear, though it might just be a wonky low string on the guitar. The song is “Chere Yeux Noirs (Dear Black Eyes),” and I think it’s positively transcendental.

[audio:Slim_Doucet_Chere_Yeux_Noirs.mp3]

In a very real sense, absolutely!

Today is my “actual” birthday (from AstroDienst), with the sun lining up precisely with where it was when I was born in 1945 (!) at 9:25 p.m. tonight, rather than tomorrow, my calendar birthday. This has to do with the imprecision of the numbers, things slipping, the impossibility of our wretched artificial calendar ever truly reflecting the orbits of the stars and planets or the alignment of the galaxies. Not that precision really matters in this instance though. For my birthday, it’s more of a general field of energy with the needle pegging in the night:

Today is your astrological birthday, even though it may be different from your calendar birthday. As would seem appropriate with this transit, today is a day of new beginnings, and the influences you feel today will affect the entire year to come. However, this does not mean that the whole year will be disappointing if today doesn’t work out exactly as planned. You are receiving a new impulse from the energy center within you, as symbolized by the Sun. Therefore any new venture that you start at this time will ride the crest of this new energy and will very likely come to an acceptable conclusion. Whatever you do or begin today will bear the stamp of your individuality more than anything else. This is the day to assert yourself anew.

Detonated over beautiful Nagasaki on the day I was born

So I may do anything today, and that covers a LOT of ground. Actually, I’ve already thought of a couple of “new ventures” to launch. No, they don’t involve climbing Mt. Wheeler (13,151 feet). That was my intended birthday ritual, but what happened was that a couple of friends wanted to have a dinner party for me tomorrow, and I realized it was stupid to turn down such a friendly and generous offer. The mountain isn’t going anywhere, and I can try that next week if I don’t have to go to Tucson to find a nursing home for my mother or pick up her ashes from the funeral home. Life is strange, is it not?

One thing I’ve thought of involves writing more openly and matter-of-factly about intangibles. This could be tricky, because of all the ridicule it provokes and because I already have a deplorable tendency to manipulate and preach. Wow: just from writing that, I can already feel the self-censorship wanting to kick in — the thing that always holds me back — but what’s more important than personal truth? That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do in my life, to be as clean, clear, and true as possible, without conflicts, to go through life like a dophin without leaving a wake… And believe me, I’m all too well acquainted with the opposite.

Probably my favorite milagro

It strikes me that this is all about heart. Listening to and following my heart. Not about politics, economics, the environment, making a living, finding a home, what my old friends think of me, or what that lump is on the back of my neck. There have been times during the past couple of years when I’ve felt inexpressible joy and unity with all creation. Occasionally to the point of tears, like I was consumed by cosmic love and acceptance. NO SHIT! Hell, that happened once last week.

So Happy Birthday to you all, and we shall see what we shall see.

A slightly different version of this and one other at FotoFeed. That’s from early yesterday afternoon, taken five minutes south of town looking roughly north.

Rio Grand Gorge w/ storm over Lobo Peak

Here, try this:

[audio:John-John.mp3]

Well, that was a night, all right. That’s “John-John” by the original Zoo Pilots at our one and only paid gig — funded by a Kent County, MD Arts Council grant, if you can believe that — at Washington College in, uh… [ponder] 1984? ‘85?? It says right here at my audio page that this is from “the early Eighties,” but don’t take that for granted. It was two sets of originals by me. I even had a crazy lady recite her poetry in between! There were about a dozen of my friends in the audience and a few curious students. Not a big crowd, but we were in a big room in the basement with tables and a bar. At least I think it was a bar. Maybe it was a snack bar. But I had a good time, and I still have the recording.

Hang on.

As for John-John, he did it again on Sunday night, and I woke up at 4:00 a.m. this morning from a dream in which I beat him bloody. I mean that literally, and he deserved it. Then I had to get away so he and his hoodlum buddies wouldn’t kill us in revenge! Nightmare city, boys and girls, except this one is a gift, offering up about as clear a vision of the shadow as anyone is going to get. I’d been wearing him like a suit and couldn’t see, you see. That’s what dreams are for, especially when things are down to the bone when you drift off to sleep.

You may call this bi-polar. You can call me Ray. What blows my mind is that all those years ago, I instinctively pulled this out of my own psycho-drama and nailed it without having any inkling of what it meant. The song itself is a transmutation of something like a breakdown into a rock song, with just one verse and chorus, repeated over and over. I remember that the lyrics and the chords just fell out of my head, especially on the chorus. Over 20 years ago, and there it was, right in front of me. Who knew this stuff would take so goddamn long?

There’s something here I have to own up to. I even tried to, in the dream (as in the song). I went up to him while he still looked like hell, all sullen and battered, and said, “We gotta get straight with each other.” Trying to defuse the situation, you understand, effecting mutual acceptance and respect.

When I reluctantly got up at 4:00 a.m. to write down the dream while the pictures and emotions were still fresh — if I do this, I keep my eyes half-closed and don’t turn on anything bright — that’s when things got really weird. There was the light and the dark at the same time, and I was neither, nor anything else I’ve ever been. It didn’t feel exactly human, or maybe that’s the thing that needs expession in a whole new way. It also scared the shit out of me, but I think that’s all right. I mean, it just wasn’t anything familiar, and I felt a panic to return. Even feeling awful can be cozy.

(See, this is what I do instead of watching talking heads on Sunday morning or working in a hardware store.)

Tonight was different, though. I have no idea why, because all day long I was ready to snap. Instead, I washed the car before the sun set and stood outside swatting mosquitoes (which we don’t have here in New Mexico) in the dusk, admiring the gleam of clean white fenders. When I came in, I got out my instrument and played rockabilly bouzouki standing up beside the kiva fireplace to amplify the sound. And ohh, what a noise. Beats that mp3 up there all the hell, it does. Just you wait a little bit.

Tomorrow it’s off to Sandy Feet (Santa Fe) to take the stitches out of my gum. No, really. The dental implant thing. Have a greatl day, don’t worry about the election, and I’ll be right back.

I’m slowly catching up, still a day or two behind, but there are four more to see.

Meanwhile: here, for your viewing pleasure, is a baby horned toad. Yes, I finally “caught” one. This is a telephoto shot from about four feet away, cropped in Photoshop to bring it even closer. That’s one reason it’s a little blurry. The other reason is that I was in a hurry, obviously. And those are pine needles it’s clambering over, which should tell you something about the size (less than one inch long):

I’ve seen even smaller ones, too!

Things like this never happen when I have my camera with me.

Yesterday my wife and I took our exercise walk up the mesa. On the way back we saw two baby horned toads! These were two separate incidents, amazingly. And when I say “baby,” I mean tiny, about the size of my thumbnail. I took this relative abundance to be a good sign. After all, how many folks have ever seen a baby horned toad?

A couple of years ago I saw two babies riding on their mother’s back, one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever witnessed. She froze in the middle of the dusty trail, giving me a good long look as I stood right over them. This was extraordinary enough, to see the three of them, but then one of the little ones crawled off and walked a few inches away, onto a patch of sand that was much lighter in color than his (?) mother’s back. And then he changed color to match! I mean, in no more than a second or two. I didn’t even know they did that, but this one sure as hell did.

So today I walked up there by myself, and of course I took my camera. Hah. Nary a horned toad to be seen, naturally.

Run away, run away

But I did run across a piñacate beetle, otherwise known colloquially as a “stinkbug.” I’ve run into these before, and they deserve the nickname. It was the only animal I saw on this walk, but I had a good time anyway. I think I would rather just “be” out in the wilderness than do almost anything else in this world, even if all I see is a stinkbug. It has to do with the universal quality of consciousness arising from no thought.

I worry less and less these days. I know that’s odd, considering my history of apocalyptic rants. And by the way, did you know the Germans are preparing for a huge crowd in Berlin for Obama’s speech?