Silver Hill's blues

walking through the wash
past the cemetery
with bouldered graves
I am awash
with words
weaving and waging
in my mind
the impermanence
of time
of timeless laughs
in greetings and parting
Silver Hill
solid and symbol
of what comes and goes
old cowboys old miners
old cars old Indian wars
and one day
I awash
with words

 From the glamor of Hollywood to the Old Historic Route 66. At first still maintained but then fallen to the wayside.


Present Past and Future is the slogan of Route 66...

 The Best Western in Bartsow with a view of the trucks going by on the I 40. Imagine the joy of a road all to oneself... In Ludlow there is a new coffee shop, its fate uncertain.

House -garage - gas station -
Ludlow café -
all derelict
publictés fanées
faded billboards
fallen by the wayside

a good life
with a real house across
at the east direction
nobody took
all went west

and needed shelter
repairs
gas
sustenance
courage for the crossing
but NO CHECKS CASHED


neither is anybody responsible
for fire or theft
of ones dreams
on Route 66.
How long before new Ludlow resembles the old
before the desert has taken back its space
before a new generation builds
a fresh watering hole for the thirsty and weary

More Grand Canyon

Take your time give it to the Grand Canyon, avoid the over populated places. The first time I visited the canyon I went to the visitors center, saw the movie, read the warning signs and was totally bewildered at what it meant: take two gallons of water per person , wear sturdy shoes - while I saw people on flip-flops without water venturing down the trail. Understanding the desert so many years later, I get what the dangers of the canyon are. Extreme temperatures, high winds, steep ravines, slippery paths. Yet the beauty of survival and death, weathered trees is breathtaking.

Who or what is responsible for all this: Father Time, Sister River, Rains and droughts and winds, frost and snow, heat and dust... and the pitter patter of feet en hoofs and pats, the elk, mountain lions and chipmunk all contribute to the slow splendorous decay of a high plateau which used to be an ocean.

Life & Times of Michael K

Life & Times of Michael K by JM Coetzee is all about the voyage, the road, the process, never about the result. The quest is more important than the finding. And finally it is all about the stories…The point if view of the teller is the story is first the all knowing author and then the care taker of Michael K. trying to know his stories, treeing to save him and in the process being a changed human being. The book ’The Life & Times of Michael K.’ is a fundamental anti-war book. The other protagonists are Time the flow of it and Freedom. A must read.

Quotes:

* Now surely I have come as far as a man can come; surely no one will be mad enough to cross these plains, climb those mountains search these rocks to find me; surely now that in all the world only I know where I am, I can think of myself as lost. p66

* But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as yielding up of himself to time, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over he face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids.

* He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around quietly minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand.

* At last he spoke: I am not in the war.