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For some strange reason, everything is just fine. I’m even having a good time. All at once, it seems, I stopped worrying about everything under the sun and got all excited about seeing whatever comes out of me next. Maybe if everybody knew how old I was, that would be a more impressive statement—you can figure it out if you like, and I don’t care. The point is, this is a perfect stance for an artist, and behold, it just fell out of the sky!

Stuff just does fall right out of the sky.

I’ve never been able to let go completely that way before. True, I always basically did what I wanted, but I continually worried about what other people would think and whether it would make any money. The questions are natural enough. It’s just a matter of weight and emphasis and what makes you light up. Whether you’re allowed to be driven by passion or not. You can get way off the track figuring out what’s wrong with other people or your situation: “What the hell is that? People pay for this? I hate his guts!”

That’s the way I was trained, and it sucks. Being the one people said that about is probably lots more fun.

Announcing a new design at Redbubble! I guess you can tell I’ve been having fun today. The whole point of this exercise was to come up with a new T-shirt for myself, but guess what? The Redbubble printing process won’t reproduce these bright colors for tees, so nobody gets one until I figure out a work-around. In the meantime, you’ll have to satisfy yourselves with tote bags, throw pillows, iPhone and iPad cases, posters, greeting cards (?), and some nifty art prints that look like so:

I wanted this up there for the New Moon in Leo, and it looks like I made it. Next you’ll be pestering me about what it all means. Available now at my Redbubble store, including a version of the above with added text:

“Feel the Earth Shake ✪ Risk Everything Now”

Not taken today, but that’s where I was. Similar but more grand. There was a large storm with lightning and heavy rain about twenty miles away on the other side of the gorge. It looked like a Portuguese man-of-war with horns and covered half the sky. I could see the rain advancing rapidly in my direction, but then it shifted east and north. You never know out here.

The vista was stupendous, too much for human eyes. Faraway storms covered most of the sky, save for a wide swath of blue edged with blinding while clouds. The sagebrush glowed green in the distance where great shafts of sunlight broke through and tumbled giant black shadows into the gorge. Best of all, I was completely alone, walking across the mesa in the middle of the Taos Valley Overlook with all this around me. All by myself in the middle of 2,581 acres. That’s four square miles. At three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.

Sometimes Taos itself is the dirt on my windshield. This is what it takes to feel okay.

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I swear I never saw these plants before in my life until a few months ago, right here. They’re incredibly tough. They made my Craftsman Brushwhacker cry. All I did was trim them some to make a path. Now they’re turning brown. There’s some outlaw septic tank drainage field work under all that, too, most expertly if accidentally disguised.

That’s the way it’s been this year. The back yard filled up with some kind of cute little green things that were completely new to me, and I’ve been in this location over ten years. They were so cute (and green), I left them alone for the longest time. It now turns out they produce millions of tiny burrs. This same plant also appeared all over the hillsides like some kind of invasion. I’d swear in court I never saw the things before. The cat’s fur is an unholy mess. Meanwhile, my wife complains of “sharp pokey things” in the rug, another kind of burr the cat drags in. I walk around barefoot all the time and never feel a thing.

“Life is tough all over,” I say nice enough to make her smile.

There’s no way to cut these weeds that I’m aware of. They’re like little carbon fiber trees. Not as if it really matters, though. Two adobes side by side in fatal probate, returning to the land… The property’s too small to qualify for a septic system if you knocked them down and started over. Whoever ends up with this place will have to wait until the sewer line gets out this way.

This is New Mexico, of course. I may not be dead yet then, but we will certainly be gone.

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