May Day at Gooseberry Creek, Wyoming

Nobody I know has ever done justice to Wyoming, and nobody ever will. The place is at least one million years older than anything a tiny brain could possibly imagine; in fact, Wyoming could be two million years in the future for all I know. 

I had breakfast in the Wyoming town of Worland this morning at Maggie's Cafe, then I started driving for home, stopping at Gooseberry Creek to see how far Wyoming is ahead of me.

Gooseberry Creek, Hwy. 431, between Worland and Meeteetse, Wyoming. Early afternoon, May 1, 2017.

Billie Holiday

There was a restaurant in LA where I used to eat breakfast.  I'd get the corner table and, if I didn't have a business meeting, I'd spread out the morning newspapers just like I did at home.

I didn't have to order, I always ate the same thing. The staff–whoever was on duty, usually a woman named Kathy–knew to bring coffee, orange juice, and a dish they called, Eggs Wolferman.

I ate breakfast there for years. I came to know the staff and they me, each about as much as each of us wanted to be known. 

One morning, I asked Kathy for an espresso instead of my usual coffee. “And would you mind turning down the music,” I asked.

“That's Billie Holiday,” Kathy said. 

“I know it's Billie Holiday,” I said. “I like Billie Holiday a great deal, but not this early in the morning, and especially not at breakfast.”

Snowstorm, Northwest Wyoming, 4 a.m, April 28, 2017. 

Not as bad as it could be

Snow falling off the roof in chunks by 8 A.M  

Headline in The New York Times (on-line ed) 'It Could Be Worse.'

They're hauling the President's new tax proposal up to Capitol Hill sometime this morning, and no one involved appears to see the irony.

The poet Rilke disliked the ironic and refused to employ it in his writing. 

Cabin deck, Wapiti, Wyoming, 8 a .m., April 26, 2017. 

Springtime in the Rockies

First it's snowing, then it's rain, then it's snow again. I've called the office and told them I'm not coming in.

The weather here in upstate Wyoming is not unlike reading a novel by A.Trollope--you realize while reading that all the shit that's happening now and all the 'types' that are making it happen have all happened before. This is oddly comforting for some reason.

Table Mt., otherwise known as The Hall of the Mountain King, as seen from the author's bed chambers, 8 a.m. April 25, 2017.

A line by Stevens

It's supposed to snow today. 

'The imperfect is our paradise.' 

Sunrise sky over Cody, Wyoming. 6:30 a.m. April 24, 2017. 

The Gorsuch era

Could it be worse? I suppose it could be worse but I don't know how it could be, I don't have the imagination, I don't have the requisite dystopian chops of a writer like Atwood, I'm far more Trollopeian.

Literature lately has become more and more of a coping mechanism, but even Whitman doesn't seem to help all that much: 

'I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy...'

Wife of Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch packs his lunch, gives him a peck on the cheek, and sends him off to Court. "Have a great day on the bench honey," she says, "make sure to tear down that wall between church and state, stand tall for bigots, Bible thumpers, and the extraction industry. Meatloaf for dinner. See you at 6."

Gorsuch’s had his early morning jog around the suburb. He's full of righteous endorphins, old Eagle Scout pledges, and the strict constitutionalism of his predecessor.

Nominated to the highest court in the land by none other than Donald Trump, his nomination approved in a hijacked Senate, 54-45, Gorsuch now wears the black robe of a Supreme Court Justice: Gorsuch is fitted to a t. 

Article on Simone Weil, from The New Criterion, summer 2010, found in the Wapiti, Wyoming cabin of the author of this minor note, April 20, 2017.

Impeach Putin

Lea Ann, who's much smarter than me, said this morning, "o, I see what they're doing—they're privatizing The Presidency." 

I happened to be reading an article in The New York Times about Ivanka Trump, special advisor to The President, and the expansion of her fashion line: her company's now filed 173 trademarks in 21 foreign countries. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, another special advisor to The President, have an estimated net worth of $740 million.

We shouldn't be afraid of Putin, we have our own little Putin, Lea Ann said.

Clay pot, from the Lea Ann Roddan Spring Collection, April 19, 2017.

Western Lands

A friend asks of a photo I've taken, “is that up or down?”

I don't really know or have forgotten, having sent him the photo a couple of days ago.

He's in Berlin, I'm in Wyoming.

Perhaps the photo flip-flopped on its way overseas. I don't know.

I should say, “it's Heraclitean, Fred, up is down and down is up.” He'd understand.

”And down below on the plain beneath the tree, Fred, is the same river you can't step in twice,” I could have said.

Tree struck by lightening, near China Wall, Wapiti, Wyoming, April, 16, 2017.

The reading list of Ivanka Trump

To the list of novels that can be read in one night–from the sublime (James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice") to the ridiculous (Margaret Drabble's "The Dark Flood Rises")–I add a third, "The Heart Goes Last" by Margaret Atwood. However, Atwood's novel proved to be unreadable and I bailed on it about halfway through, though I'm pleased to say I gave Atwood a try.

Acknowledgements page, "The Heart Goes Last" by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese, 2015.)

In the old days movies were called 'the pictures'

Sometimes literature is a question of who gets there first.  The thought of W. C. Fields reading Trollope as a child explains a great deal about the evolution of American comedy, which ends in the death of Buddy Hackett and, more recently, Professor Irwin Corey.

One thing leads to another in a good murder mystery, as unnaturally though as the leaves fall from the tree, and pretty soon as leaves keep falling you have as good a writer as James M. Cain or Jim Thompson.

In the old days folks read books. Words filled up the time that wasn't filled up with work. On Saturday night they'd go downtown to a picture show and really let their hair down, seeing everything up there on the silver screen they'd read about in the book they'd just read. One of these folks might have been named Hope Read, the picture perfect name for a reader.

Bookplate for "The Postman Always Rings Twice" by James M. Cain, Knopf, 1934, First Edition, in the collection of The Park County Public Library, Cody, Wyoming. 

Rabbit on a stove

Civilization is the most fragile construct known to man; every time it's imported from one country to another the people lucky enough to have it foisted upon them go crazy and elect an ape for govenor.

Take the paint company's logo--Sherwin-Williams, "Cover the Earth"--and pair it with their graphic symbol of a bucket of red paint pouring itself over the globe, and you get the corporate equivalent, first of "America, Love It or Leave It" and then its corollary, "Make America Great Again."

For the first time in a long time (The Civil War?) we are living in a country where we can't believe what is happening is happening.  Even those happy with what is happening, can't believe what's happening.

Civilization's the little rabbit, hiding beneath sagebrush, shivering, its fur catching the gusts of prairie wind, one eye on the monster who's watching it, and one eye on the hole where it will soon go to hide.

Tea kettle in shape of a rabbit; cabin, Wapiti, Wyoming, April 12, 2017, 

When microclimates collide

What you see here is the full moon rising just enough to keep a high pressure system from encroaching on a remote mountain-top, with the possible intention of pulverizing the little mountain towns in the valley down below.  The full moon acts as a ball bearing, lessening the friction between the two opposing forces, in much the same way that tectonic plates operate in land mass dispersions. Stars don't understand the process, and consequently feel under appreciated. The wind blows all night, creating a chimney of sound that sounds like a prarie of frail elk being protected by a small man with bad teeth who lives in an ill-fated master-planned community that's gone belly-up, drives a big white pick-up truck and likes to tell lies.

Moon over Carter Mountain, Cody, Wyoming, 7 p.m. April 10, 2017. 

The poets endless apprenticeship

I think of Kendra, waitress at The Wyoming Rib and Chop House in Cody, Wyoming, who writes her name with a blue crayon upside down (to her) and right side up (to me) on our table's paper tablecloth.

That's amazing, I say to Kendra. There's no way I could do that, not in my wildest dreams. Sometimes I can't even read my name when I write it out right in front of me.

It doesn't come naturally, Kendra says. Believe me, I have to practice over and over and over.

In the hall of the mountain king

A woman once said to me, "I'd really like to see where you do your work." 

"There really isn't much to see," I said to her. 

Ptarmigan Mountain, Wapiti, Wyoming, April 2, 2017, writer's cabin in foreground.

Dr. Strangelove in upstate Wyoming

Watching Noam Chomsky on "Democracy Now" just now, talking among other things about the Doomsday Clock–that symbolic clock maintained since 1947 by members of the Atomic Scientist's Science and Security Board at The University of Chicago to represent the measure of danger humanity faces from nuclear war, and now from climate change–and how the clock is now set at 2 1/2 minutes to doomsday, one of the most precarious, alarming settings in recent history.

In regard to the present leadership of the US, the best I can do to make sense of it is to see it is a reenactment of the Cold War. The leadership is nostalgic, having no more than a 5th grader's worldview, informed by the times they were told as 5th grade students to dive under their school desks if and when Russia dropped the big one. All grown up now and in power, their relationship with Russia is certainly different than it was back in the day, much more friendly, cozy even, and so other enemies must be found to fulfill the satisfyingly familiar notion of American superiority.

Thinking of present leadership as re-enacting a sitcom of the 1950's is somewhat comforting, as the memory of Kubrick's film, "Dr. Strangelove", is not.

Nor is something Chomsky said when the present leadership first assumed power, January, 2017: "The Republican Party is the most dangerous political organization in history." 

Trial run for nuclear winter, Hwy. 14, between Cody and Wapiti, Wyoming, 20 miles from the East Gate of Yellowstone National Park, April 1, 2017. 

Wyoming diptych

The Christ and the anti-Christ.

Jesus of Nazareth and Rimbaud.

Having this one thought about these two people is all I can manage this morning.

View from cabin at dawn, Wapiti, Wyoming, April 3, 2017.

Snow job

I asked the lady librarian at the Cody Public Library if she was worried that library funding would soon be drastically cut in her state.

Yes, she said, unless things improve dramatically in the extraction industries. 

Oh, I said, I thought it was more a matter of the new administration slashing federal budgets for things like the arts. 

She looked at me as if she truly believed I was fascinated with her idiocy. 

Snowfall, 9 a.m., April 2, 2017, Wapiti, Wyoming. 

More jobs for cowboys

Make America Great Again is junk language, a greasy fast food lapped up by those most susceptible to its poisons.

So when The President came on the radio today and said he was signing an executive order that would create more jobs for coal miners, I substituted "cowboys" for "coal miners " and got pretty much the same meaning.

Highway 120 between Meeteetse and Cody, Wyoming, 6 p.m., March 29, 2017. 

The University of Science Fiction

Here in Salt Lake City the line between religion and commerce collapses as if it never existed. Being Mormon is just part of it, being Human is the other part.

As I study Christianity it becomes another team I can't root for, and so I'm down to three--Buddhism, Hindu, and atheist. Studying each, each seems less preposterous than Christianity, Islam, or the seventh great world religion, New Age.

Mormonism, it turns out, is neither Christian or a cult. It's a mountain of wildernesses to be wandered through without the water required to stave off delusion. 

University of Science Fiction, Salt Lake City, Utah, March 28. 2017. 

Red state

I am traveling from the time when it was first assumed that anything coming from outer space was alien, thus to be feared, to a time when planetary science leads me to believe there's water on distant planets, therefore life, and life is a good thing, hypothetically.

The challenge, as one moves from a state of despair to one of hope, is not to become one of those people who are always disappointed in everything they encounter, even when discovering themselves.

Hotel room ceiling, Fillmore, Utah, March 27,  2017.