Sunday El Norte Report!

by JHF on February 7, 2010 · 2 comments

in Taos

A report from El Norte!

In the last 90 minutes, we’ve had clear blue skies, a blinding snowfall, sunshine with snow, and now mostly clouds–an appropriate place for someone who feels so different from one day to the next.

Yesterday an email message from a reader made my day:

Unfortunately my wife decided to divorce me if I move from Berkeley to Taos and the decision has been made. Plates have been broken, pictures torn apart, bank accounts are separated. She read your saga…

Now the question is this: Don’t you want to start a “lovebird connection service” in your site so I can get to Taos, and find a beautiful mate even before I get there? That would be awesome. Someone smart, politically correct, dark skin, black hair and doesn’t need to be a virgin.

Here I go: Brazilian, 50, very good shape, 175 lbs- 5′ 10″, business school, Brazilian jazz guitarist/singer/composer, trotskyite, atheist, honest, sexually active, broke, great cook, long brown hair, trilingual, plus some other great qualities. The victim just has to google _________ or my Brazilian jazz band ________.

Give me permission, amigo, and I’ll fill in those blanks. Always glad to help a fellow cliff diver! (Watch out, though: around here, holding your wallet while you jump is a cottage industry.)

Taos Mountain with clouds

[Excuse me, momentarily distracted by the above.]

Judging from his request, he won’t mind my quoting his email–which I dig for the attitude–and it sounds like we have a few things in common. Recklessness, perhaps. However, as I replied immediately (so as to catch him in time), “Remarkable. I’ll get back to you. But have you ever BEEN here???”

Compassion swells my high desert heart, because besides no ocean, no jobs, crappy expensive housing, and a level of weirdness that blots out the entire known world, I am reliably informed that most single women in Taos are lesbians!–the men, too, for that matter. I think it is the altitude. In any case, I look forward to his arrival and can point him toward a few lunatic guitarists or a bus. Heck, since he’s broke now, it’s like he’s already here. Oh, I kill myself. Fortunately, it is a good day to die.

None of this is my fault, you understand. Just like Obama, the inexplicable dearth of good American punk, and TEOTWAWKI. The only thing is, most people move here first and then get divorced. Oh well. But if that mountain calls, you’re just completely fucked, and something’s bound to happen. That’s the long and the short of it. Get ready, though: you might as well fall out of a plane over Uzbekistan, albeit one with a damned Appleby’s.

And now, back to grooving on clouds…

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The Discovery of Air

February 5, 2010 Featured Posts
This image denotes selected living planet mystery tales...

First the breathing:
Ever since I started pouring warm salt water into my nose with the Neti pot, it’s like I’m finally breathing through the goddamned thing. My nose, not the pot. (I must have been stopped up for decades.) Tonight I told my wife, “Hey wow, I can actually take a deep breath through my [...]

3 comments

Take a Break

February 4, 2010 Taos

It’s time for another one of these.
No story this time, just something to enjoy. This is a telephoto view of part of the Talpa valley, on the other side of the Rio Grande del Rancho, with the usual splendor in the background. I took this about three weeks ago. A wider view would [...]

4 comments

Yellowhammer Farm Hippie Special! “My Daddy Knowed Who They Was”

January 31, 2010 Featured Posts
Thumbnail image for Yellowhammer Farm Hippie Special! “My Daddy Knowed Who They Was”

My God! I was frozen in place. The warm, still summer night was charged with absolute terror, at least for me, hiding behind a tree. All I could do was watch as what was now obviously a police car of some sort slowly approached a lane that would bring it right into the clearing in front of my tent. Suddenly I had a stupidly happy thought: maybe it was just the sheriff, checking up on us. He’d been around once before and seemed friendly enough, if a bit suspicious. Please God, let it be the sheriff, I thought. The car was almost at the lane! As it passed through a patch of moonlight just below me I could clearly see the big — blue — PLYMOUTH! An Arkansas state trooper!

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Hitler & the iPad

January 29, 2010 Technology

This won’t make sense to the masses, ’cause it’s an inside joke in the Mac community. Knowing German makes me strain to understand the actual dialogue, which is pretty intense, and that kind of gets in the way of the comedy for me. But check it out in any case, and see further below for [...]

2 comments

New Day on the Range

January 28, 2010 Personal

This is really big and changes everything. Yesterday when I walked to the mailbox, I didn’t think of any other life or place and just walked to the mailbox… It was so incredible. People like me never want to be tied down and always have an “out” down deep or churning in their preoccupations. But this time I just walked to the freaking mailbox, listening to the sound my shoes made crunching on the snow, and breathing that cold dry New Mexico air that gets you stoned. What? NEW MEXICO?! Yes, I’m here. I made it, and I’m here.

4 comments

Taos Easy

January 25, 2010 Taos
This image denotes selected living planet mystery tales...

It was 3° F (-16 C) when I went to bed last night. The ice still covers most of the inside of the windows in the living room this morning at 8:00 a.m.
Just now when I went outside in my mangy bathrobe to pour the birds a couple scoops of sunflower seeds, my ancient [...]

2 comments

Taos Hard

January 25, 2010 Taos
Thumbnail image for Taos Hard

“I know you like to be scared,” she said, “but I don’t!”
She went on to share what she called a “radical thought.” As I listened, I thought, good Lord, has she been reading my blog? Because what she told me wasn’t radical at all and echoed what I’d been wondering lately, too–namely, what about living [...]

2 comments

What the Hell is Wrong with Us?

January 23, 2010 Ram the Jet
Thumbnail image for What the Hell is Wrong with Us?

I woke up to a good half a foot of heavy wet snow with more falling, straight down, like the stuff was poured out carefully high above and shaken through a sieve.
The first thing was, I built a fire. Sometimes there are coals enough to set a couple of aspen sticks on. If so, I [...]

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BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico – Part III, Chapter 3, “Day of the Coyote”

January 21, 2010 Buffalo Lights
BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico, by John Hamilton Farr

What a scene: wind-driven snow, brilliant sunshine, clouds and sky now allowing a view across the open spaces, and in the middle of the snowy pasture, the big black beasts snuffling around ignoring it all. A few minutes later the clouds closed in again around the setting sun, the snow tapered off, and I was standing there watching one lone vaca negra about a hundred feet away in the adjacent pasture, looking solid and alert in the deepening gloom.

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Terrible Beauty of Taos

January 19, 2010 Nature

Okay, I think it’s time for one of these. I shot this today.
I was going a little crazy again, trying to understand what was gnawing at me. I also had to decide if something I’d been attracted to recently was a great idea or suicide in disguise. For better or worse, I went out walking [...]

2 comments

Heebie-Jeebies

January 19, 2010 Ram the Jet

Oh, I got dem heebie-jeebies, all right. All day, today…
The spot on the back of my hand must be cancer. My knees are a-rattlin’ inside when I walk. There’s colder weather on the way, Lord in heaven. I went out to get more sunflower seeds and found there weren’t any. I just LOVE driving [...]

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