Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Don't drink the Salton water

Desperation can be something to fear. Not only the actions that one's own desperation may bring about, but also the unpredictable behaviors of the desperate around you. I spent last night in Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea: home to heroin addicts, meth heads, squatters, lots of dead fish, broken homes (physically and perhaps in a familial sense too), and who knows what else. To clarify, I spent the night there, but I did not sleep.
Friends with whom I had dinner advised against my passing the wee hours there. My initial goal was to arrive prior to the sunrise, so I could get some long-exposure shots of the breaking dawn on the hypersaline stagnant body of water. However, on my trip south, I found that the moon had risen and nicely illuminated the stark desert around me. Also, I had already achieved my other photographic objectives (dinosaurs from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, statue of Sonny Bono) for the leg of the trip and I was too tired to drive. So I went to the Salton Sea.
Bombay Beach is a small town (?) on the east side of the sea that, among other charming qualities, has a collection of deteriorated housing and trash partially buried by the sand of the sea. The water level has since fallen, but the properties are well past any redeeming value. It is also known for methamphetamine usage, dealing, production, and so on. It was a bit nerve-wracking driving through the community in the dark, and there were many structures that would've looked great in night photos, but I didn't want to start shooting only to find that somebody was living there. Dogs barked on occasion and the train passed every 20-30 minutes, but besides that, the only noise came from the waterfowl.
I parked on the sand, under a moderately effective streetlamp, and sat for a while, wondering if this was going to be a good idea or not. I eventually got enough guts to go for it and grabbed my camera, a tripod, and the biggest knife I had (~11" dive knife)...just in case. I shot for a while, quite happy with the results, and at some point decided that I felt safer being awake and outside with a knife than sleeping in my car at the same site. Somewhere around 5 am, members of the community left for work and I paused each time I heard a car start or door shut, in case they were running in my direction. I didn't talk to anybody there for good reason.
That's pretty much the story. The reason why I'm running on 30 minutes of sleep. The Salton Sea region is a different world. To live in a town where everyone lived in broken-down mobile homes or shacks is foreign to me. I met a couple very nice, unique gentlemen later that day, but that's a different story for a different time. So, you'll have to either wait for the photos or the next post.

[Written in a Target Starbucks while charging my camera battery and laptop, but sent from a Starbucks I found across the street)

Transmissions from the desert

Wrap my arms around you and lift you to the top of the tree. This is not a home, it's a shelter and not much of one. I dread the sight of Spazier, for its name calls for you to leave me again. We creep past the scene and I can't help but think, "You never know, that could've been me"...but the moment passes like the steam off your breath, like the thoughts of turning back.

Every day I drive past the meadow expecting to see evidence of the wild. On the icy mornings, as the fog sits low, a family of deer stands proud. On the warm afternoons, a bear meanders across the grass. When I blink, though, my eyes remind me that there's never been anything there.

Never wait for the last. Enjoy each, savor every. Less likely to pause, more likely to share.

And as he flies past, you catch his head turn: a quick glance at what he's left and the millions of lost possibilities. I think I can see the monster looming in the darkness with its fingers of ice. The woodsman will keep me safe and alive.

And, like a plane into the clouds, I fade away.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Meet Brian

El Toro Brewing Company, Morgan Hill, CA

Meet Brian. I just did. In a way, I met him a few times, though during the same sitting. The fun part of bellying up to a bar (besides the obvious alcohol consumption) is the social potential created by your grabbing of a stool. My bar neighbor this afternoon opened the conversation with the traditional “Where do you live” prompt. Trouble was, I wasn't sure how to answer. My instinctual answer was Dallas, but I followed that with the caveat that my previous statement wasn't really true, or at least not just yet. The necessary explanation of my nomadic lifestyle soon had Brian caught up in the chat and he told of his past, describing geographic relocations, career changes, and troubles with John Law (“...it wasn't even my gun...”).

A life of manual labor and independent business practices, of which marijuana sales –and consumption – seemed to be a good part, coupled with military experience, concert photography, and what sounded like a lot of white lines to inhale resulted in a man who had, at age 52, new objectives in his duration here. He recently enrolled in undergraduate study at a nearby community college, yet had already changed his major 3 or 4 times. His current goal was to be a dietician (the irony of which did not escape me as we ate fried foods and drank beers) and to not just stop at the undergraduate level, but to achieve either a Master's, Doctorate, or both. He seemed very pleased with his newly discovered, spiritually-assisted clarity in life. I supported his hopes by telling him that I knew people in their mid-50s who had just received graduate degrees.

The sad part, however, is the inescapable character. He told me that he had been free from drugs for a few years and that he only drank a couple times a month. He had been through extensive PTSD therapy and had sold off his vehicles to cover for some bad investments he had made. I'd estimate that for 98 percent of our talk, he didn't make eye contact, oft looking down at the bar near me or off into the eyes of some distant person sitting to my side. The lack of connection didn't seem out of nervousness. He initiated our conversation and had no problem (trust me, he dominated the talk for most of the two hours) talking about his story. However, he couldn't keep a train of thought and he would tell me stories that I'd already heard minutes before. He was quite cordial and would throw in a nice “Thank you” when I would chime in with the thought that he had misplaced.

I'm pretty sure Brian was permanently fried: Not like the tasty ranch-dipped mushrooms sitting in front of us; more like the decades of pot he had smoked. I had a friend in college that was in a similar predicament, but realized it himself. Years of acid had left him with an inability to memorize the necessary biological material of our curriculum. He tried, but he couldn't concentrate in class and eventually dropped out of the sciences that he loved and pursued his artistic endeavours instead. I worry that Brian will find himself having the same issues. The good news is that he was able to retain enough homeopathic information that he could share much of it with me, but the idea of him making it through four, let alone seven or eight, years of schooling seems unlikely.

Was it the drugs, the military, or just his inherent character? A lifetime of experiences makes the person and a unique selection of experiences made my bar neighbor today.

-----------------------------------------------------------
By the way, El Toro Brewing Company has 24 taps of their own brews and I was happy with 7 of the 8 I tried.