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Little Girl at the Carnival

This is a picture of Mary Alice Muncy (at the time), later to be Mary Alice Greenwood, my mother. From what I understand, it was taken at a carnival. The shy, pensive look doesn't appear to be of someone having fun at a county festival. Possibly, she had already developed an inkling of the tough life that was in store for her. I've played with the print a little. It was a cheap black and white they probably purchased for pennies. I can see the family resemblance, because, haughtily,  it looks a lot like pictures from my own youth.

She and her family were "Okies" who came to Socorro country from Lawton, Oklahoma. She had trouble collecting social security, because her birth certificate was destroyed in a courthouse fire. When she tried to obtain a copy, she discovered that it simply said "Baby Girl Muncy" because she was a preemie, and her parents didn't name her right away, because they weren't sure if she'd live. Many premature births didn't in the early 1900's to poor families. They swaddled her and placed her in their wood stove (no incubators for their likes) to keep her warm enough, and she pulled through to become the oldest sister in her family and later our loving mother.

As a person ready to retire, she had to find several older Socorro matriarchs who could sign a document of identification and testifying to her age and such.

She was a simple farmer's daughter who saw that we were always loved---and that is stated on her tombstone in the Tatum cemetary. She was a humble person and a Bible verse that stuck in her mind and she spoke of was Mathew 24:40---“Then there shall be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left.

Being a humble person, she always felt she would be the one left behind in the field. But I know, if such a time came to pass, she would not be abandoned thus. She lived her life to earn the place as the one who would be taken.

Just sayin'.

 

 

A Tree Grows in (Hobbs) Brooklyn

A tree apparently marked for removal outside our classroom at the high school.

Most of us have taken biology and realize trees add a growth ring every year, so when sawed down one may count the rings to see how old the tree is. Some trees grow quickly and have soft wood. Some grow slowly and are sturdier. Rainy seasons are revealed through thicker rings. Sparse seasons of drought by thin rings of struggle. Soon one may peer down at this stump and estimate how long this magnificent one has poured a shady sanctuary over this campus spot.

One can only imagine the teens and teachers, parents and visitors that strolled, walked, paused below its welcoming shade in summer or stared at its stark branches in winter. The happiness, sorrow, pride, anger, fear, joy it witnessed in its anthropomorphic stead. The squirrels and birds that scampered or nested in its branches. The leaves released each fall for maintenance workers to rake and janitors to sweep from the nearby sidewalks.

Little fanfare will mark its demise. It sprouted from a tiny seed not much larger than the biblical mustard seed compared to man's faith. It grew, weathered the ages, and eventually revealed the infirmities of age and disease that left it marked with its red X.

Just another reminder of the temporality of life. Its lived a long time in our imagination. Scant time in the llano's scheme of things.

One might pause and note its presence before it is only seen in former campus pictures or a brief remembrances to those who leaned against its bark to study or chanced to kiss beneath its leafy arbor. Pause and note the trials, tribulations and moments of splendor that, like this tree, will soon be only past whisperings.

Alonzo's Bosque

Alonzo’s Bosque

            Alonzo surveyed his cabin, worried about the impending impression it would make on his returning family. He cursed, because he hated “putting on a dog and pony show” or bribing his kids and ex-wife to visit the farm. At the same time, he wouldn’t stoop to accepting pity just because he was dying. People should take him for what he was, even his long missing children.

            Yet—maybe he could sacrifice this once… He intended to convince someone to stay here in New Mexico on his bosque homestead. He didn’t have long to convince them either, because doctor Mills had only given him a couple of months. Oh, they’d put him on the heart donor list, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d never get one in time. 

            Inside his cabin, he had washed the hills of dishes, the mountain of clothes and carefully swept the faded linoleum floor of the accumulated dust.

            He nodded. Best foot forward. That was simple enough. 

               

Excerpt from a short story included in a book of short stories about the oil field and the southwest that I hope to publish in the coming year.

Upcoming Lea Co. Writer's Coffee House Readings

Bottomless lake temporary sanctuary...

A scene from Bottomless Lakes west of Roswell on a summer day a couple of years back. Salt domes caved in below and then filled with groundwater. There are several lakes averaging about 100 ft. deep, but that would seem bottomless to all but a decent scuba diver. The largest lake, further south is said to have a Model T resting on the bottom. Supposedly, driven over the edge long ago.

When the Goodnight Loving Trail went through here, cowboys had to keep the cattle away from these because the water is beautiful but brackish.

I stopped here and took this one day riding my Honda back from the motorcycle repair shop and enjoyed meditating beneath a salt cedar. The stillness. The summer sun. My refuge on the shore gazing out at this body of water nestled here on the edge of the Caprock.

An excerpt from Mordake

“He’s captured it, sí. But mythical it is not.” He pulled up his sleeve to reveal marks that looked as if a tiger had mauled him. Old marks, healed now, like a hideous brand, claimed by a hideous master. “No, I can say no more. Just leave me. I wouldn’t return there for all the gold in your Fort Knox, or all the putas in Ciudad Juarez.”

“Harold would take me. If he could.”

“Harold is crazy.” Joaquin twirled his index finger around near his temple. His bottom lip was a fat worm and trembled when he spoke. “What has he told you?” He seemed genuinely curious. He pulled his black silk shirtsleeve down. The walls of the Joaquin’s dressing room oozed a dull yellow color that one could have listed in a descriptive catalog as oppressive. Two mating flies crawled clumsily down a nearby wall. Joaquin brushed a larger one away from his drink-glazed brown eyes.

“Not enough. Look, I can make it worthwhile, money wise. Name your price. My father’s a rich American son-of-a-bitch.” Joaquin’s eyes narrowed. He scratched the side of his cheek with a dirty fingernail.

An excerpt from Mordake a novel in progress.

Retirement...

Everyone asks me what I'll do when I retire from teaching.
Read.
Write.
Contemplate.
Meditate.
Sleep late?

In Indian culture, it is the time to enter Vanaprastha.

Fort Davis

                                                                    Chapter One

                                                 West Texas Plains Near Fort Davis, May 1870

     Captain Easton mounts a brief rise and squints at the burning stagecoach. “Apaches,” barks Sergeant Kennedy, as both survey the vast stretch of gramma, cactus, and yuccas. Overhead a May sun flattens the smoke into a splay of drifting, feathering gray. Mary’s stage? Kennedy loosens his Springfield from its scabbard and leather creaked and the carbine flashed and galloping they soon overtook the smoke. A bullet sings by Easton’s shoulder and he mutters a good luck oath. His horse whinnies—jerks its bit—and its teeth scrape under flared nostrils.

Opening paragraph of my western novel, Fort Davis.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who has checked out my blog. I've had an amazing number of views and I appreciate all who have taken the time to peruse my meanderings.... PEACE

Pending return of the swallows to "Capistrano".

Please excuse the pic being a little blurred. I'm not the greatest wildlife photographer and did not want to get too close and scare our previous young neighbors. Barb and I wait, pensively, every year for the safe return of our feathered friends who chose our home to rear their young. Hopefully, they'll be returning soon to produce several new broods of offspring. A delightful reminder of spring and the renewal of life.

A Memoir Excerpt

One project I've been working on for awhile is a memoir put together as poetry vignettes. Most of us are not famous, but we all have a story to tell. Each of our lives is a different tale in the myriad stories of the lives lived by each and every individual from the beginning of the world's scheme. This is one poem from that memoir.

           Four Room School House

In the mid-sixties, before Socorro consolidated it schools,
I attended the four room, gray school house in Lemitar, NM.

With teachers like Mrs. Otero with her matronly hugs—later
I would drive her poor husband crazy in high school—karma
that has definitely been returned to me over my over twenty years
as a teacher myself—

Mr. Luna and Mr. Saiz with their wisdom.
The lunchroom ladies with delightful, nutritious, “home cooked”
meals. I ran through the whole series of the “I Was There” or was it
“You were there” books that were written from the point of view
Of someone involved in a particular important event like traveling with
Louis and Clark or being involved in the Manhattan Project.

This is where I was when Mr. Luna sent us home after word was released
that president Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I remember walking home
by myself, uneasy—reacting to the event that for many of us Boomers
first made us realize the fragility of our world.

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The Safest Place

I used to use this exercise with my students sometimes to get them writing. This was my example:

The Safest Place

          When I was growing up, the place I used to feel the safest was in this little camper trailer in the back yard of our house on Neal Street in Socorro. Our house sat about a block from the campus of the School of Mines where my friend and I used to go gather golf balls that errant golfers sliced into the ponds.

            That little camper was so cozy in the winter. It had that small kitchenette that all those campers have and smelled of cooking and closeness. I would take a book one time I remember it was LORD OF THE RINGS and snuggle up on the mattress in that tiny little camper and read in the dim light that came through its windows. Maybe that’s why I need glasses today. I feel comfortable and safe in dim light. Why would that be?

            I also liked to take Sam with me. Sam was our Dachshund. He liked to eat and sleep, so he looked like a sausage that was over-stuffed. Anyway, Sam and I would snuggle down in the little camper in the back yard on Neal Street and read about hobbits, and elves and wizards. In that camper, I didn’t have to worry about school bullies, or homework, or fitting in. I could escape into a comfortable world of my own where I ruled. Tolkien took me there snuggled in that little camper in the back yard on Neal Street in Socorro, NM.

Praire Fire on the Llano

                                            Prairie Fire on the Llano

The summer of drought brought the summer of prairie fires. One
stretched to sixty-three miles of flaming yellow-red teeth consuming dry grass,
leaving scraggly black fingers of mesquite, advancing smoke billowing
from a distance like God stirring floor sweepings with a giant prairie broom

Jake clears a firebreak with the backhoe, its bucket like an awkward
golden pelican, while Sanders hoses down the feed barn nearest to the fire’s                       

                                                                                            imminent edge.

The town’s only fire truck hoses down the inferno’s shoulder
like a child pissing on Hell.

Man gets awful cocky sometimes: stringing barbed wire, blading roads, overgrazing. Then the prairie bucks up and warns him not to get too
                                                                 cozy.

Comments encouraged...

I said earlier when I started this blog I was still learning. I believe I've adjusted it to make it easier to comment.

Thanks to those reading and following.

Time is Relative

Oh, by the way, Daylight Saving's Time began this morning at 2:00 am. Einstein reminds you to set your clocks ahead one hour. More proof that Time is relative.

Flying kites shouldn't be just for children

Windy day. On a positive note, kite flying day.

As a youngster, in Lemitar, New Mexico my friend Leo and I loved to build and fly kites. We made them from newspaper or grocery sacks, paste, salt cedar twigs for ribs, and rags for a tail to provide the kite with stability. The kite's flight something magical considering the combination of materials. Oh, and kite string crochet string---actual kite string was too expensive and short. Lots of yardage on Mom's ball of crochet string. A kid could control this magnificent, man made object sailing the sky, catching the wind in its breast. Sometimes, they flew so high they were only a speck in the sky, oft times they crashed. All in a day's work kite flying.

All is temporary

At the time of his death, Basho had more than 2000 students.

In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die.

Basho, Matsuo. (1644-1694)

The cicada spends years nestled underground developing from a grub into a winged creature clinging to the trunk or branch of a tree to sing its brief song, to add its vibrating anthem to the music of the spheres. (awg)

After surviving for untold years, these Buddhist statues were destroyed by the Taliban because they were not in accord with their dogma. Only proving Buddhist thought: all is temporary.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Persian: بت های باميان – bothā-ye Bāmiyān) were two 6th-century^[1] monumental statues of standing buddha carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, 230 km (140 mi) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,200 feet). Built in 507 AD (smaller) and 554 AD (larger),^[1] the statues represented the classic blended style of Gandhara art. Wikipedia.

The Regular

                       The Regular

He started eating breakfast at the Taosueno
after Abuelito died in her late eighties.
Wanda can set her wristwatch by him:
6:45 A.M. and he needs no menu. She dries her hands
on her gingham apron and pours a cup of black coffee
in his mug, she keeps it stashed behind the counter:

A tourist cup tattooed with an outside Zia symbol
and with a bathtub ring of coffee stains lurking
inside the crockery lip. His cheeks rub against
their cheerful eye pouches when he sips his Joe.

Eyes twinkle to friends and acquaintances

with an open sparkle that was once reserved
only for Abuelito. Intermittently, his gaze saddles
a farmer or Highway Dept. employee, possibly
even a distant primo, into joining him for a time.

Most daybreaks, he eats alone. His tobacco yellowed fingers
grip his knife and fork like surgical tools, scalpel and curette
He slides his dentures back and forth in his mouth
waiting for Wanda to pour more scalding coffee,

then smiles and anticipates the morning special.



...................................................................................

We are all human...

What may be added to this?

Genealogy has gained popularity with many, especially with the ease of research provided by the internet. We are curious of our roots.

Whether one believes in evolution or in divine intervention for man's appearance on earth, one accepts the premise that if we trace people back far enough we are all related. We may have had our appearance altered by our environment, or actions by our culture, our spirits by out indoctrinations and discovered beliefs, but we all are human and interconnected despite the isolation many groups would wish to inculcate into our situation.

And thus our present conflicts, chaos, and pathos as we try to maintain that false premise of difference with anger or indifference.   

Bus Stop

Driving home from school today I spotted a friend supervising at her school's bus stop, waiting for the yellow dog to come and pick up her kids. The students were doing teen things: laughing, dancing, arms and legs this way and that, teasing, packs swinging, smiles, playful rough housing. Smiles from them and her. From a distance, unobserved by them, I enjoyed the spectacle of pure happiness. A teacher sharing her time outside the classroom making sure her charges loaded their bus for their homeward journey. Open, honest, joyful faces on both adult and children. A candid moment that will never be charted on any test result for the state or job evaluation from her principal. An honest moment of charm and caring ...a delight to clandestinely observe on my way home.

You have the right to remain silent

In our society, how are you doing should be answered with fine. Most don't want to go into the technicalities of how you really feel, especially if it's bad. It's just a standard greeting.

Answer honestly, sometimes, and your statement will be chuckled off like rain off a sloped roof. You get one answering sentence. Make it positive! Anything after that is often ignored as they proceed onward satiating their own ego.

Alternate Universe

Don’t tell me there are no accidents, when the only reason we live is the fact

that ice (through an incredible metamorphosis) is lighter than water
allowing earth to support life.

 Alternate Universe

In another universe
you crossed the street
successfully.

I held out my hand
and you grasped  it.

That other place must
(exist)
relatively somewhere—
                  for
those who must visit
the past and see what
happens    if--  they created
a historical paradox,
if they squashed
a butterfly
      and changed this world.

D. Koontz wrote: if fate doesn’t exist,
it should.

My God:              if we left this all

                 to chance,

who would grab your hand?

A Missing Brick

Meditation

Narcissus

One sees posts from people berating others, or other, for not doing enough for them, or that "one thing they needed". Narcissus has crept into the hearts of many, nowadays, and it blasts out of a lot of social media posts. Some of it is society's fault. We have been in a phase of building people's egos up believing that helps to create a better, confidant person. But it might be more important, from day one, for each of us to realize we are not the center of the world. That we do not live in the Truman show. The world has been around eons longer than us. We a mere grain of sand on a beach, which is a mere speck of star dust in a universe, a cosmos, a galaxy, the mind of god. 

Narcissistic individuals love the pronoun (I). To please the self-centered, one must accept them with all their warts, but you may have none. You did not do this for me! You did not do that for me! But what have we done for them? A seesaw takes two to make it work joyfully. Only a slide is play for an individual, and it only travels down. Occasionally, and ironically, some narcissists even detest themselves. Believe even their own spirit is unlovable and tear it down with self loathing, unlovable actions, miserly deeds. There must be realistic self love, personal respect? If you truly believe no one cares about you, how much have you cared about yourself or others?

Narcissists see everything filtered through their wants, needs, and desires. Others merely exist to keep them comfortable, loved and happy. We are all bit players to enhance their starring role. They don't seem to realize that, to be loved, shouldn't one first love? It bares repeating and is. If they would occasionally put other's wants, needs, and desires above their own it might come back to benefit them, if only in the satisfaction that they have helped another. Is there any greater satisfaction?

All of us would benefit from performing a background check on ourselves. Do we contribute more than we partake? Do we love more than we are loved? Do we utilize other pronouns besides I, me, mine, and myself? Do we judge? Are we right in that judgement? Were we put here to enhance all life, or merely indulge in narcissism? It's something to meditate on...

Black Mesa

This is Black Mesa south of Socorro seen from west of the river. The town of San Marcial once existed near it until it was washed away in a flood. Long before it, an ancient Native American village grew crops and lived out their lives here. 

The Rio Grande runs along the west side of the mesa. Oñate pushed his troops up through here when he entered New Mexico to retake it after the pueblo revolt. Years later, Confederate troops marched up river engaging the Union troops at Fort Craig which lies in its shadow. Then a little over seventy-five years later from that battle {where Confederate troops still had lancers (men armed with what were basically spears)} not far as the crow flies northeast of black mesa on White Sands missile range the Trinity project scientists unleashed the first atomic bomb as a test before using two more in WWII. Three keys events centering around this one geographical region in southcentral NM.

Looking out at it now, it's hard to imagine any of that transpiring here around this black table of volcanic rock. The river still meanders slowly buy. No trace of the Conquistadores path remains. The battleground where men fought and died in the Civil War consists of a few crumbling stone walls and  a surrounding trench the Union hastily dug before the approach of the Texas volunteers---the remains of Fort Craig. The tiny village of San Marcial has crumbled back into the desert. Only the silence of the Chihuahuan desert remains: breezes blowing through the greasewood and broom weed, the occasional bird call, at night possibly the howl of a coyote.

We believe we reign so important in our present moment, but time and history flow on just like the Rio Grande. Our self importance sinks into the desert soil for future archeologists to investigate and try to piece together the happenings we felt, in our time, so important.

A rediscovered apple tree

I did not even remember this picture. This apple tree died years back and is now a stump with a bear sculpture sitting on it. Life truly is change. A deadfall apple. A sprig pushing up through the soil. A flourishing apple tree with fruit. Crab apples so they were just thrown to the neighbor's goats but they enjoyed them. The goats gone now also. Now that stump that will eventually decay and rejoin the soil. Earth that was once likely trod by bison less than two hundred years ago. When I'm through with my occupation the land will still be here serving some future purpose.

Together alone. Alone together.

Lots of change going on right now globally, nationally, statewide and personally. It can become overwhelming for all of us. Trials and tribulations. The stages of life keep showing themselves. Birth, life, death. We all have problems to the extent that sometimes we focus on ours and forget others are probably trying to stay afloat themselves.

Trinity site with the tower completely blown away after the blast

This is a picture taken at ground zero at the Trinity site. A Second Dawn's setting is the Socorro area the summer of the Trinity blast. The first atomic bomb was ignited here that July. This site is just about 18 miles as the crow flies from my grandfather's farm in Louis Lopez and less than eight miles from my great-grandfather's store/post office in Bingham.

A poet meets his audience

Fortitude

Perseverance. To have the fortitude of this slight flower. A dandelion seed lands in a sterile sidewalk crack. It bides its time until enough moisture and nutrients inspire it to send down a slight anchoring root which it garnishes with a few stubby, sturdy leaves. One has to look close. It doesn't shoot skyward but manages a single yellow flower, steady in its purpose. Against the odds, a mission is accomplished to small praise.  

Change

May You Live in Interesting Times

An old Chinese curse that some might believe pertains to them more than others at any particular moment.

Dogen, the 13th century Zen master, said, “Impermanence is a fact before our eyes.”

All things in the universe are temporary, transitory, and constantly changing. This may not always comfort. We become accustomed to "things as we imagined they were" as we became familiar with a particular pair of shoes or just right suit but forgot they had that one smudge or stain. Then an influx of events seeks to alter the mindset of our emperor's clothes. We feel unanchored--thrust forward to face the future in uncomfortable, unaccustomed attire. This might--may overwhelm. We have grown enamored in nostalgic feelings for a snug past. A former existence fashioned painstakingly with one main goal: protecting a deceptively armored self confidence from our own (and Hamlet's) slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.