Month: October 2013

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We read your beads without ever talking to you…

 

NewImageWe know you don’t belong here.

We don’t have to ask, all we have to see or hear is the way you race your little wanna be drifter car with it’s flatulent exhaust into our neighborhood.

We know you’re out of your element precisely because of your dark windows.

We smile seeing you lock up your brakes when the pavement runs out.

We know you’re lost, led astray by your GPS.

We see your confusion at being lost because you don’t understand the failure of your technology.

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I’ll give you a little hint… Mountainous terrain and the mineral composition of the mountains can, and often does introduce errors in the GPS signal.

If you’re depending on your phone to give you guidance you better hope that you’ve got a cell signal too.

Not that I care… I personally wait for the day when one of your morons goes flying up my street, and straight into the wash.

I don’t necessarily hope that you die but I’m a big believer in Darwin awards.

Not that any of you would understand what the above sentences mean, you’re dumbfucks and you deserve what you get.

To you, technology is magic, never wrong, and using your mind, or eyes, or the barest shred of common sense is a totally foreign concept.

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You’re lemmings, sheep, Prey… People like you are why Americans in most parts of the world are thought of as morons and easy marks.

Thanks for that by the way…

When you drive off the road into the wash and your little POS car is broken, there is no doubt in my mind that you’ll try to sue the GPS maker or the county or the local residents for your stupidity. Because after all you’re not responsible for your actions are you?

Believe me, you hit one of the local kids because you were going too fast, on single lane residential roads & your bleached bones might be found in the mountains… eventually… if your family is really, really lucky.

Word of advice…

Slow down, remember that in your haste to get somewhere you often miss the beauty of where you are…

BTW, your phones navigation system will most likely work better too.

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Ode to the wash

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I for one miss the little meandering wash of 20 years ago.
 
I miss walking the in it. I miss the little thread of water that was in the bottom of the wash almost year round and the way my dogs would find pools to lay in and cool off during our walks.
 
I miss the treasures of semi polished stones that could be sometimes be found in the wash bed.
 
We used to have coyotes come to the wash, morning and evening for water.
 
Geology students from local high schools and colleges would come here for samples and classes. The instructor teaching the class about the mountains, their relative youth and the minerals found here.
 
Then some kind of flood event happened or the wash became perceived as a threat.
 
Mitigation efforts began, and the wash became wider, deeper, filled with more loose soil eroding ever more rapidly and our little wash was suddenly, one Spring afternoon… gone.
 
It was replaced by a large grey dusty, dry, gaping wound most of the time. At other times is was turned into a raging angry torrent of muddy water and boulders that shook the ground. 
 
In the final mitigation project…  Stone, concrete, roads, barriers, and control demonstrate that sometimes it’s better to have left well enough alone. 

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The project goes forward 6 days a week. Rumbling machines, digging equipment, cement trucks, rock carriers, and all manner of big Tonka toys. (The rock trucks are a touch of irony they’re bringing rocks UP from the desert to reinforce the sides of the wound they’ve created.) Our little wash is being remade, reformed, conquered, dominated, dare I say raped?
 
I think all of us luxuriate in Sundays because we can sleep a little later and have a whole day where there’s nothing but the sound of wind and birdsong in the trees.
 
On Sunday, people come to the rim of what used to be a gentle little wash with water in it most of the time.
 
They gape at the canyon that now separates one side from the other, some shake their heads and go back inside their homes then draw the blinds on the windows facing the wash.
 
Others are angry and others still, are just sad.
 
I hope that as the work finishes and the trees are replanted the “revised” wash won’t be such a glaring permanent reminder of mans desire to dominate nature. 
 
 I have a feeling that the wound will be a very long time healing.
 
Time will tell if this flood project will prevent the roads from being washed out. I suspect that it will create pools of standing, stagnant water. That will no doubt require more “maintenance” from the county to keep the mosquitoes down. 
 
Our little wash was in reality gone the minute bulldozers rolled in 10 or 15 years ago.
 
They cut and gouged their way toward the mountain, each year going further and deeper.  Some years when the bulldozers didn’t come, the wildlife came back, coyotes, and bears, raccoons, deer and the occasional cougar or bobcat, and other critters.

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The balance would be disrupted again by the growl of heavy diesel engines and the wash got deeper, & wider. Eventually water didn’t flow and collect anymore so neither did the wildlife.
 
Through the years, we had hope that the bulldozers wouldn’t come again and the wash would recover.
 
It’s certain now that our little babbling wash is gone forever. 
 
With it, one of the reasons I chose to live here.
 
It’s not your fault, Mr Flood Control. You’re doing your job and your goal is to protect property, homes, and prevent roads from being washed out.
 
I get it, but I’ll mourn the loss of the shallow little wash behind my house; 
 
The wash with a few errant Mt. Mahogany’s growing in the middle of it. 
 
The wash where I took my Geologist father, who spent hours looking at the tailings. 
 
Finally he loaded up a fair sized backpack with actinolite, then handed it to me to hump out of the wash. Those samples he sent to his geologist buddies all over the world, because thats how geologists give gifts to each other.
 
More recently the wash was a place where a precocious little girl all of 5 years old pronounced with the absolute certainty only a 5 year old can have, that we couldn’t be in a creekbed, riverbed or wash. 

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When I inquired why, she pointed out that stones in creeks and rivers were rounded, therefore since these rocks were jagged this wasn’t a creek, river, or wash. 
 
She modified her conclusion when I pointed out how close the mountain peaks were and asked how far she thought the rock had to tumble to get smooth. To this day I don’t know if she believed me, but she took it under advisement.
 
See it’s not just a wash that sometimes flooded. To us, it’s a place of memories, wildlife, discovery, and laughter. 
 
Well… It was all of these things, when it was the shallow little wash behind the house.
 
To the people on the town council, the wash was simply an inconvenience when they had to take the long way out of town. 
 
To the county and flood control,  it was a potential hazard. 

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To the people who live along the wash, it was a neighbor who sometimes had a bad day or two, but a neighbor whose good days and benefits greatly outweighed the bad.
 
You see, Flood Control.
 
We were angry and are sad because we’re mourning the loss of a friend & the natural wildness we moved 90 miles away from Los Angeles to enjoy.
 
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The past couple of nights have been “Interesting”…

…The Insomniac theater of the absurd.

I wrote a blog sitting naked at my desk. It was long rambling, random, and well… Nuts!

I started taking an antibiotic that cautions it may cause dizziness. They should also caution about insomnia and insanity.

Probably not a good sales pitch though. “This antibiotic is effective against sinusitis and may also cause extended episodes of intense crazy. Use with caution when operating heavy equipment.“

I’d take an erection lasting four hours, but that’s not what this antibiotic promises or what it’s delivering…

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I chose not to publish the “crazy blog”… Probably for the best.

Last night I dreamt I was with Arlene in a psychotic TrueBlood nightmare.

I was offering her soothing words about her husband Terry having been ripped apart by a flatulent vampire. Arlene said, “I can deal with Terry being ripped apart… but what is that horrific stink?“

Just then Terry pulled himself back together and became a flatulent vampire who kept chasing us round and round Merlotte’s but was easy to avoid because we smelled him coming.

Lafayette put an end to Vampire Terry with a pot of chili and a can of lysol. “Bitch! I jus done cleaned this kitchen and you come up in here smelling like dat? Awww HELL NO!” 

I ask you… is this the kind of behavior you want from your antibiotic? I didn’t think so.

Then this morning, I was outside doing poo patrol in the back yard.

OK did someone put extra stinkiness in the poo, or have my sinuses started to clear?

Then it hit me one of the dogs must have been particularly gaseous last night which got incorporated into the TrueBlood dream / nightmare.

I guess you could say the past night or two has been shitty or at least gassy.

I do hope only the mind altering drugs you expect to cause delusions are deluding you, and that your antibiotics are just killing infections.

Have a good one