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See the most perfect old cat sitting in the sun. She is always in the sun. See the photons and the ultraviolet radiation keeping her alive. You know what that means, don’t you. She is of this space and it sustains her. One with the old adobe where the kitchen plaster fell down Monday, one with the pack rats that hid her kibble in my boot. I just found that today but doubt it’s fresh. Tell me I’m not living through this just so I can write about it. What would happen if I wrote about a beach?

iPhone 6s Plus video, about 40 seconds. Be sure to bump it up to 720p!

Behold the Rio Grande deep inside its canyon! I shot this video a couple of weeks ago at the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument a few miles north of Pilar, where Native hunters used to camp. I love that I can learn these things and see the ground right there. The thing about the West is that it’s so huge, it hasn’t all been physically altered by development. One can actually find these places where the present and the past are side-by-side, sharing the same space.

Back in Maryland where we used to live, a utility company on the Eastern Shore accidentally dug up a several thousand-year-old burial site, complete with stone tools and copper jewelry. Everyone was amazed and mystified: it was as if the ancient chief or shaman had fallen down from outer space. There was a picture in the paper, and then we all forgot about it. No one is to blame here, it’s just how humans are.

I had a friend there, now deceased, who understood the history quite well, however. He knew where to look along the tidal rivers and recovered many artifacts whenever unusually low tides revealed old sandbars, oyster middens, and the like. I made rubber molds of some of them, including arrowheads, a broken axe head, and something called a banner stone, so I could make wax copies and eventually cast these things in bronze. I still have most of them, because they never sold!

The gas wall heater crinks and ticks its little shutdown song. A short time later it will come back with a woomp and heat some more. For this unusual mild, dry autumn, so far that’s been enough. An untouched mound of firewood sits beside the driveway covered by a rotting plastic tarp, waiting for the winter lockdown. I feel like a fifth columnist, rooting for the drought, and keep my true thoughts quiet. The local mantra, offered up if anyone complains about the ice and snow, is, “Well, you know, we need the moisture.” Maybe this time it will never come. I’m always disappointed when it does and everybody cheers.

A week after the election, I’m still afflicted with an aching gut. My moods swing sharply between fierce defiance and existential dread. Our institutions and society have failed us. It is a most extraordinary time. How appropriate that in a few days, the jet stream will drop south and swing the pendulum to bitter cold and howling winds.

The best take I’ve seen so far is here. The article is beautifully written and I hate to summarize, but its three main points are to take the haters at their word, survive, and refuse to normalize what’s coming.* As author Liel Leibovitz concludes:

So forgive me if these next four years I’m not inclined to be smart. When it comes to the task ahead, I’ve no interest in deep dives or shades of grey or mea culpas. Like my grandfather, I’m a simple Jew, and like him, I take danger at face value. When the levers of power are seized by the small hands of hateful men, you work hard, you stand with those who are most vulnerable, and you don’t give up until it’s morning again. The rest is commentary.

For all these days, I’ve thought of little else. Some time ago, however, I wrote an essay entitled “Three Centimeters,” now a chapter in my TAOS SOUL book, that spoke to me last night when I rediscovered it. The title referred to the news that New Mexico had had “bounced” or risen from a major earthquake on the other side of the world. The words were a response to rising ecological concerns and the discovery of a wobble in the rotation of the Earth around its axis. Why, you’d think the planet was alive. I’d already felt an energy or presence in the rocks and trees. Even back in Maryland, the barley and the corn exuded consciousness. The open spaces of the West arouse both overwhelming reverence and fear. There’s “something” there, all right, impossibly alien and ancient, that doesn’t need us…

The quickest way to put a stop to all we’re doing is to have an end with us. It’s no more than we do when biting pests invade the house. We shed no tears for dead mosquitos, after all. If the wobble turns into a sudden jerk, the only tragedy will be in the minds of those who manage to survive. Flies will buzz, scavengers will fatten themselves, and soon green grass will grow again where cities stood. Rivers will flow, and birds will sing. Here and there, eventually, a human child (but not too many) will watch a butterfly and laugh. And if there are no birds or butterflies or children, there will eventually be something else. Somewhere on a fertile hunk of matter orbiting a distant star, a being will dream of what we were, wake up with a start, and then forget. You know you’ve done the same.

“Well, you know, we need the moisture.” Maybe so, or maybe not!

I don’t know if this perspective helps you find a bit of refuge at a deeper level. It does with me until I read the news again. The danger now is very real—most people have no idea—my wife and I still need a home, and I will never stop resisting evil lies and bullshit. Winter is coming on. Do what you need to do and live your truth.

Mine is that I still owe this world, this Mystery, the best I have to give.

* Read Sarah Kendzior and Leah McElrath, follow up on whoever they cite, and scare yourself to death.

This year has been rough for me, to say the least, especially the last few weeks. Today was different, though. My wife was already up. I got my ass out of bed and we walked to the polling place past barking dogs, chickens, sheep and goats, dead cars, mud puddles and all. It’s in a room at the Llano Quemado Community Center and the process is always a hoot. When we get there, the abuelitas take our names, mark them off on a good old paper voting roll, and hand us the ballots. Usually we’re the only Anglos in the room, just like we were today: voters numbers 28 and 29, no lines, of course. I waited until I saw the machine had tabulated my ballot, told the lady, “Bueno!” and she grinned. It’s all so quiet and intimate, they even tell us goodbye and thank you on the way out. Now that’s New Mexico, and also the best thing about this neighborhood.

I’ll miss that when we’re gone. And no, I can’t say when that will be. We’re holding our own for the moment because God loves us so much. In fact, he’s given northern New Mexico the warmest, driest October on record. I still haven’t built a fire this season, whereas I’d usually be a full month into heating with wood by now. The romance has gone out of that activity, by the way. It’s just too much goddamn work and terrible uncertainty. I love a fire, but the time has come for central heat. I can’t believe we’ve lived this long without it, frankly. I also can’t believe the pack rats got inside the washing machine again, or that when it rained a couple of days ago, the roof leaked over the end of the bathroom where we hang our clothes. I caught a whiff of “dead thing,” too, probably a gopher on the other side of the bedroom wall in the abandoned apartment next door. Turns out God is quite the trickster!

The worst thing the Almighty did recently was have one of our neighbors attempt an amateur “fix” for the cratered dirt road. The thing has gotten so outrageously bad, my wood guy in his big tough truck complained. Anyway, the neighbor scraped a load of dirt—not gravel!—together and spread it over the holes. That did make for smooth though dusty passage, but I knew the next rain would turn it into gumbo. Which it did. The resulting bog is horrible and sent me into a soul-maiming fit over my apparent inability to make an instant million dollars and find us a better home. The only part I liked was figuring whom to murder and where to pour the gasoline to burn the house down before I headed for the gorge to jump.

My wife is an amazing partner in these misadventures and says the sanest things. “Just write!” is one of them. As I’ve just done so to the tune of about five hundred words, I’ll leave it here for now and find a blanket I can hide beneath. Take care, godspeed, and don’t read early exit polls.