The Quiet that Followed

This, Carlsbad Caverns, was the only territory that I retraced on my way back east. I couldn't resist the chance to stop at the yawning chasm in the beautiful, sparse desert to the north of the Guadalupe Mountains and El Paso. Looking on as I made the drive on the familiar road, I tried to see myself on this same road a year ago and I wondered what I would tell myself. Keep your foot on the pedal was all I could come up with.

I ate Texas in decent fashion and the light switch flipped just past Cisco and West became East which is your actual continental divide. Springtime green showed freshly and a tunnel of oak, maple, and pine soon cut away at the sky and left a ribbon of blue to point the way. I was shocked to find my mother's famous azaleas already in striking red and pink blooms. Hopefully the ones at Augusta National are under refrigeration tents because the Masters is still not until next week. Great to be away from the superhighway but I do miss the wide open two-lane blacktops cutting through the ghostly sunsets of Wild America. I think Neal Cassady would be happy with the effort.

Hail, Me-Sir!!??

Mostly dime to the occasional quarter. The hail, that is, that pelted my auto outside the Motel 6 here in Carlsbad, New Mexico. It blew up from the south just at dusk tonight as I was returning from Sonic because there was a flood between me and other establishments. In light of the fact that I did not choose the joint as much as it chose me, the food was excellent and those good people have a return customer. Anyway, this biblical storm was bearing down like Exodus just as I hit the room. I was lucky to make it in here with barely a drop on me today during my drive from Lordsburg which was one of the scariest places I've inhabited and I've been all around this world. Tornadoes came out of this exact cell ten miles up the road. I'm a lucky feller. The drive has been smooth and I am blessed with a good car.

I could have easily wound up between flooded highways since the rain is pounding and the desert has no where to keep it. Ever tried to sleep in a Miata?

Tomorrow under ground again...

Vasquez Rocks!!

What a delight to walk in the footsteps of Captain Kirk, the Gorn, Bela Lugosi, Cecil B. Demille, and hundreds of others. I tried to imagine the perfume of Heddy Lamar still hanging in the air and how the bright sun would have looked on Shatner's yellow tunic. These are Vasquez Rocks, tucked into the San Gabriel foothills above the San Fernando Valley and they've been the background to scores of movies, TV shows, and commercials. Hell, there was a film crew there when I took this shot, probably one there every day. It was a great place to frolic and boulder, what little I could was encouraging anyway. Shit, if Shatner in a girdle can get up there then I guess I can make it on one gammy leg, Jack.

It was a day of beginnings and endings as winter wrapped and the equator centered between heaven and the inferno, meaning spring had arrived in the evening. Now on the first full day of the season I look to the east and seek the red earth of Tara for strength and inspiration. May my escape precede the crumbling of the Tower...

Show me the way to go home

The sun is on me freshly and I will carry it on my face as I make my way to the east. The Richard Jeni hysteria has died down and my video has been viewed about 225,000 times. Kinda nutty. Anyway, the last few details are being crushed in a slow cycle of destiny that seeks to undermine my own sanity. Good luck. The road beckons in a Gamera-like fashion and I am drawn to that giant, flaming turtle. As I travel east, I attempt to create a new role model that holds validity in this absurd society where fate plugged me. A farewell fandango for the desert until the next trip which could always be sooner than the ordinary can bear.

Jonny Cat, as can clearly be seen, is pointing east, guiding me to her. I'll soon be knowing her warm, vibrating embrace yet again.

Early Death = Value

This painting was a little hard to photograph because of its whiteness, kinda like me. My death may indeed send the value of this one through the roof. Take today's tragic suicide, for example. I found out that Richard Jeni had shot himself when my email inbox started to fill with comments from my YouTube account. Two months ago I posted a routine of Jeni's from the Johnny Carson Show where he gave Jaws 4 the royal treatment. (the video clip was preserved thanks to Clay Croker) Check out my videos under maltedfalcon on YouTube. Anyhow, in the comments I found out about his death which made me look up the early details. People must've liked him because in the two months that I've had the video up it's been watched 3500 times. Tonight the count is at over 46,000 and that's happened in just about ten hours. Strange to be swept into this, in a weird sorta sense.

One more Sabbath Night Live
With a future to craft
Paint thinning in my veins
Moving my chess bishops
Zig zagging cross country
Past wide-eyed villagers
Looking for my people

Brick by brick

One by one, moments click off and are replaced by the next adventure, punctuality be damned! Gillette tells me to behold the power of Phantom and I wonder if that isn't a little over the top. However, if the good people of that company feel fit to send a sample of their product my way, I'll be happy to give the Phantom a fair treatment. There should be a bigger thrill to find out there in this wide world of sports. I'll keep one eye open, looking for that sign.
Quiet days have settled upon Smyrna as the moon wanes and wanes and Lucy 'splains and 'splains but she cannot do the show. Same old stuff, you see. Yesterday I biked 20 miles, all the way to Lost Mountain Road and back which made my scrotum leathery. All part of the transformation into a sculpted modern mountain man as we wait for the equinox. The royal we, of course, because who doesn't long for the sweet embrace of springtime? Who has time for such rhetoric? Where did Cain get his wife? I asked this question of my pastor as a thirteen year-old. His answer wasn't located in my memory banks. Nice guy, though.

Druish Princess

Perhaps this one is a down payment on the future spring and summer to follow. Or the new cruelty could continue but we adapt as a species. "We learn as we go," opined a dour Fred Gwynne in The Cotton Club, playing a character named Frenchy, no less. Our favorite Frenchy launched a majestic home run a few days ago in all the glory of spring training and it stoked the fires within me for the first time this season. Spring cometh, and there's not a thing anyone can do about it. Nor should they.


A knifey wind cut through the sunshine today, making a false front that kept me inside to mingle with my thoughts. In a day or so, typical stability will return and I'll find a way to resist. That's the pattern, anyway. Some times a man's own testicles got nowhere to be but in the way. It's the burden we bear. Some of us more than others.
It's almost time that I experiment with the outrageous once again and a cross country scramble, Cassady style, should stir the pot. Kick this ass for a man, all right?



Here I look west. Each day is sharper than the last. Soon I will cut myself on my own image. The kiss of youth has not faded from memory. I am still capable of tremendous emotion.