Dubuque is a fascinating old city with lots of character perched high on the limestone bluffs overlooking the mighty Mississippi. (The river is quite high now, too.) In the image below, you’re looking north from Eagle Point Park. The opposite bank is Wisconsin. While we were standing there, we saw three pelicans fly by. Yes, pelicans. They migrate through here, and on other visits I’ve seen large flocks of them.

That is one BIG river, folks!

The only “incident” of the day occurred while I was out to dinner with my wife, her sister and brother-in-law (the superintendent of schools in Dubuque), and her brother and his wife, who’d driven up from Atlanta. In response to a perfectly innocent question from the brother about whether “Santa Fe is still growing” — he works for Georgia Power loves to go on about such things — out of my mouth came:

“GROWING?! Growth is OLD. It’s finished. Growth is so… so 20th century!!!”

[silence]

No one said a thing for a good 20 seconds, I swear.

Maybe I was speaking in tongues, receiving a communication from the Universe, or maybe it was the alcohol. I’m not even sure what I meant, although I admit that the frequent references to how this or that place has “grown” so much tends to drive me bonkers, because they’re never delivered with regret. I can’t help it, I guess. Whenever conventional wisdom starts looming over me like a giant wave about to break, I just snap and have to fight back. He didn’t mean anything the least bit aggressive or argumentative by asking me that, of course, but my buttons got pushed. THE COLLECTIVE IS INSANE, you understand, or maybe you don’t. More power to you, though, if you’re immune to the perception — living with it all the time as I do is something of a chore.

My own fault, ultimately, but this came after a detailed discussion of my wife’s nephew’s new home in Georgia. Why any two people need a two-story, four bedroom house is none of my business, but it grated on me. It’s always a shock to get out into the world (America) and find that normal people think nothing of living in homes the size of aircraft carriers. At this very moment I’m sitting in a living room with three big sofas, four upholstered chairs, a baby grand piano, desks, coffee tables, and I don’t know what all. I swear it’s bigger than our entire house in Taos. Hell, the storage room here in the basement is bigger than where we live. I’m not jealous or envious in any way, but it seems so crazy.

The awkward moment at dinner was very telling, of course, because I violated orthodoxy. How dare one utter a dark, sarcastic word about the American Way! No harm was done, fortunately, and I soon regained control. But welcome to Dubuque, you might say.

(I really do need to get out more, too…)

I can hardly believe it: my wife and I have a chance to get away.

People tell me you have to get out of Taos every so often, for reasons that would never be apparent to you unless you stayed here over an extended period of time, and they’re right. This is Taos, and everything else is the world. They’re not the same thing at all, which is exactly why I’m here. I sensed that for the longest time before we ever showed up, though I never knew how true it was until I’d lived it. (My old friends probably think this line is arrogant. Not so!)

This is exactly why anyone who comes here to retire is insane — not that we did, I can never “retire,” and pretty soon, neither can you. Ah well. What matters most here is a level of personal freedom that includes way more of the freedom to fail, you might say, than any place I’ve ever experienced. There are no limits of the sort sanctioned and created by social or government safety nets. This is a HUGELY WONDERFUL THING, but it takes you into realms you would not otherwise inhabit, and that’s precisely what will drive you mad unless you’re an artist or love to surf the sea of marginalism. Still, one has to get away, and in a few days, we’ll be heading north to visit my wife’s siblings in Dubuque. Talk about antithesis!

It’s a glorious time of year to travel. As we head north, we’ll pass drop down in altitude and encounter more-developed springtime. The small towns of Nebraska and Iowa are a fabulous antidote to the forced self-examination of living on the edge, though I expect $5 per gallon gasoline will start breaking minds soon enough. On the way up there, we won’t have much of a chance to take the back roads. That happens on the return trip.

But we do have a truly inspiring drive heading north from Taos. I wish everyone I know back East could take this route up to Colorado, through what I call “Rand McNally white space” all the way to Brush, where one finally joins the Interstate. How many of you can even imagine driving all day long and seeing fewer than a couple of dozen other vehicles? After having nothing but pronghorns, prairie, and mountains for companions, hitting that divided highway is a total shock: suddenly it’s rolling semis, country music, nothing good to eat, and designated places to pee. THE WORLD!!!

Sleek, fat teenagers with television eyes working at McDonald’s, unclouded assumption of the right to exist, a landscape of the mind… but also things I do remember fondly, like the comfort of the herd, and pavement! (We have a real car now instead of just a truck, reminding me that asphalt has its uses.) If I keep my hair tied, I can pass. I used to live there, and it was mostly good.

There will be pictures and audio recordings from the road. Stay tuned…

Off to Santa Fe and Albuquerque today with a couple of gents to visit guitar stores, pawn shops, the Apple Store (in ABQ), a dead cow restaurant, and possibly a bar. I trust everyone here will be able to get along without me for a few more hours.

Into the canyon, hi-ho! And south to Fanta Se…

This is another plug: Raging Universe, which I’ve mentioned before, is an ironically rather quiet blog that frequently talks about the astrological background of the presidential campaign, among other things.
A short while back the author (a woman) more or less predicted the kind of race we’ve seen over the last few weeks, particularly as it relates to Obama’s recent “difficulties”… which as we’ve seen, are anything but. She also predicted that!

No matter what you think of astrology, you may find it interesting. This is almost astrosociology, or astrophilosophy, with a little Jungianism on the side. I like her quality of mind.

Amazing. I went to the GMAC website two weeks ago and set up automatic payments for the new Vibe from our savings account, and today was the day for the first withdrawal. What do you know, it worked. Now we only have 59 more payments to go!

It always surprises me when these things actually function the way they’re supposed to. These automatic electronic withdrawals have always scared me, but I realized that this is the easiest way for me to handle the payments. That’s a good thing for a lazy guy, as it reduces the chance of screwing up: all I have to do is make sure that particular account stays above a certain level, and we’re covered. For someone like me (the Mother of All Procrastinating Fools), this is just fabulous. I can even transfer money into the account online. I have to have some, obviously, but all this voodoo happens with the MacBook I’m using now. Fun with computers, not “paying bills.” Not bad at all.

The entire car buying experience has been rather like floating down a wide, languid river. First we drove off in our new car without writing a check, thanks to zero percent financing and no money down — that was surreal enough — and we’ve been enjoying it for six weeks without having to make a payment of any kind. Oh, and guess what? The damn thing is getting almost 35 mpg in town.

Now we’ve paid the first installment, but I didn’t have to do anything: General Motors just stepped inside our savings account and took it. You’d think I would absolutely hate that, but I don’t. I’ll never have to write a check and fill in all those numbers, which is actually rather kind on GMAC’s part. No painful emotion involved, as in “My God, are we paying THAT MUCH for this heap!?” That’s because the transaction remains abstract, so long as I toss a couple of checks into the relevant account every month.

This probably relates to why everything is to be going to hell in the world at large. I suppose I should get out more, but having only recently partaken of the Great American [fake] Free Lunch, I’m still grinning like a happy idiot. (The characterization may be apt, since we’ll soon be upside-down on the auto loan for the duration.)

The car, by the way, is a total delight. I never knew it would be such fun to drive.

I am 62.5 years old. I haven’t had a physical in over 10 years. We have no health insurance. But aside from a little flabbiness around the belly and other atrophic inconveniences, I’m in excellent health until they start looking, right? Well, my hearing sucks — genetics and too much rock & roll — but everything else works fine. You would kill for my blood pressure, for example.

The way I was raised caused me to postpone or avoid many of life’s potential accomplishments, yet I have a heart and a soul that seems to be quite strong. I’ve used them and Jungian analysis to go deeper into my own guts than I ever imagined was even possible, all this in the effort to understand and heal. I may be old and ugly, but I’ve never felt better inside. You do it your way, I’ll do it mine. This is the only path I’m aware of, so it must be the right one.

Writing is both an expression of my art and an illumination. Especially when blogging, something that happens almost instantaneously and often rashly, I quickly see my own complexes and neuroses writ large and clear. Afterwards, that is! This would scare a sane person away from the endeavor, but it dovetails nicely with the rest of my personal quest to open myself to love and giving. I’m learning more every single day about how reality works (the effect of thought and projection on the quantum field), and it’s about time. I have no idea what other people do with their lives, and living without producing a family of my own has left me often so self-absorbed that I end up hurting thousands of innocents along the way. Something else to be aware of and write about, no doubt. We all do this, of course, to one degree or another.

Finally paying attention to my wife’s needs (it’s only been almost 30 years!) is an entirely new area of life that’s opened up to me. My own “needs” are almost laughable by comparison. After all this time, all this suffering and joy, I feel a little lighter most of the time, like discovering some kind of glorious gift I didn’t know was there. I’m beginning to feel that absolutely everything is in my hands, and I never felt that way before in my life.

Maybe you have. If so, give yourself a pat on the back. Some of us take longer to bake!

All right, enough of this. It’s Sunday morning, I’m sitting here by myself, and this has been an unguarded moment of reflection. I trust it finds you hale and hearty, and now onward with the day.

Okay, I’m happy we bought a new car. But something else is going on, something bigger. I swear I feel the energy building.

What if these are powerful times, not only desperate ones? I’m beginning to think they could be ultimately happy and productive, too. Yes, this is me speaking. I see pillars of the Giant Cockroach Culture crumbling all around. One could say the things that are breaking down either deserve to die or else are happening to slap us silly. Either way, we clean up in the long run, right? The short run is probably best avoided, but not many of us have our own islands. On the other hand, just think of all the excitement you’d miss.

I have this sense of libido rising, like good things can really happen. Do you have any idea how SCARY this is to those who fear they’ll lose their “identity” by letting go? It damn sure scares the pants off me, I tell you what, but my goal is caving in, eventually.

First you must ask yourself, do I know this person? Does she know me?

If the answer to either of those is yes, then you simply must not argue at all, certainly not about anything that arouses self-righteousness and indignation. She will always be right, in her way, and you are a cad or a fool if you persist in trying to “win.”

The only way to argue with a woman, then, is to pick one you’ve never seen before and have a go. But keep it short! As soon as she reads your emotional field (they ALL DO), she’ll be right, too. In her way…

We men act as if thought and logic exist in a pristine realm of their own. They do not, and women have this truth encoded in their DNA. Just remember, there is nothing more inherently and potentially stupid in all Creation than spermatazoa! (If that doesn’t bring you up short, just shoot yourself right now.)

Hold that thought, and you will find your way home.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo turns 39 today. He’s written a beautiful statement on how his young son has changed his life, and I think it’s something every son who missed out on a solid connection to father love from his own dad should read.

Guys like Josh are carrying the ball for the rest of us, you know. That’s why it’s so important.

Hah! That should be the title of every post.

As some of you may have noticed in between the incautiously welcomed End of All That’s Wretched and the funny stories about New Mexico, I’m a man who tries to watch himself. I don’t mean “be cautious,” I mean observe. You know, accept responsibility for shifting subtexts, learn to find my center. Since most of us were raised by farm animals, I figure it’s not necessary to go into why this is important, right? And those of you who grew up on love are certainly excused, because why bother looking for what you’ve always had.

What I’ve slowly come to learn, however, is that we all “grew up on love,” only some of us don’t know it. It’s like there’s this one giant vault that holds this stuff, and when you’re born, your parents open an account for you. Failing that, the only way to get some is to try to bust your way inside. No, that doesn’t work, but never mind: it sets you up for things that do.

If anyone’s still with me, what I want to say is that no matter what, even after all of that, you’re still gonna get bit! With sufficient effort of spirit, however — we might call this will or conscious attention — you can pry the python off your neck. Each time you do, it gets a little easier. A little, I said! And yes, that’s supposed to cheer you up.

Works for me, muchachos. And on its deepest level, life is good.