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.

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.

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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.

The world happens under this striped sky

"There's been an accident"

Sit in one place long enough and you're certain to witness a full spectrum of events regarding human lives.  The circus is designed to entertain, to amuse. Most have expressions of joy, awe, happiness. That, however, is not all that happens here. Children can be scared by that designed to please, much as Santa Claus does.
The other day a woman excused herself from the show briefly because she was nauseous. In talking to her outside, I found that it was not physical malady that induced such discomfort, but rather the fact that she was attending the show with her future ex-husband -- a man that decided to move past her after 39 years.
Yesterday, I was standing with two women outside the tent who appeared to be waiting for another member of their party. Just before I approached them to inquire, a coworker hurried up to them and said,

"There's been an accident"

This is a vague statement that can bring the worst of scenarios to mind when a family member is involved.  Judging by their immediate frightened looks, this is just what happened.  As it turns out, the person they were awaiting had a seizure while rushing between the box office and the tent. I've no idea how things concluded, but there were paramedics on site (we always have at least one EMT at all times).

I wonder what else I might witness while doing this. Will be there a child born here? Would the parents be cruel and name it "Ovo" or "Guy" (after Cirque's founder)?

Borders...not the book store (no apostrophe!)

Each time I cross the US-Canadian border, things go less than smoothly. It seems that my choice of a nomadic lifestyle is aggravating this situation. Yesterday, I came back from Quebec, Quebec and, because I had passed through one of the primary border inspection stations (Derby Line, VT) the previous day, I decided to go through a more remote location (Beecher Falls, NH -- which looked more like a pull-through gas station than a national border crossing) just to see two different routes. I had passed through a heavy thunderstorm along a soft dirt/gravel road (another story, another time), so it might have looked like I was trying to sneak across. He searched my car trunk, handed my passport to his coworker who took it inside to check out, and looked really annoyed after closing the trunk because his hands were now quite dirty.  The interrogation went a bit like an Abbott and Costello routine. The whole event took about 10 minutes, but it's not like we were holding up all the imaginary traffic that goes through at Beecher Falls.  I now attempt to recreate the highlights as accurately as possible:

Officer: Where do you live?
Me: Boston these days.
O: Where are the car plates from?
M: It's registered in Oregon.
O: Is this your car?
M: Yes.
O: But you said you're from Boston.
M: I'm living there for two months. I change states every two months for work. I'll be moving to DC next month.
O: How long have you been in Boston?
M: A little over a month. I'll be moving to DC next month.
O: I don't get why your plates are from Oregon.
M: Let me show you my driver's license (Oregon). Does this help?
O: Not really. Where are you from? [I think he asked this because my passport is California].
M: I'm from CA, but I moved to OR in February for four months. Then I moved out here and change states every two months [I explain the whole Cirque business].
O: So the car is from Oregon?
M: No, it's actually from California, but I re-registered it in Oregon.
O: Does the job pay well?
M: Not really.
O: Then why would you do this?

A quote for Monday

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your stuff, that idea of home is gone."
-Andrew Largeman

Get's you thinking .

Crrrrraaaacccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!

In case you were wondering, the title of this post relates to the sound I heard just after clocking in for my first show day with Cirque. The sound in question happened to be the thunder resulting from a lightning strike hitting the big top (or Grand Chapiteau, if you will) shortly before the media preview/dress rehearsal.  Fortunately, power was lost only briefly because each of the tent's masts are grounded lightning rods and there are multiple generators on site. Cirque is a self-providing city. Upon arrival, they hook into the telecommunications and water lines of a city. Everything else is handled within the compound.

In other news, I discovered last week that the term "soccer", whose usage will out you as an American instantly is actually a British word.  Just as "rugger" is slang for someone who plays rugby, "soccer" was slang for someone playing association football. My apologies for the large text. I was hoping to underline, but couldn't find that feature.  Association => Assoc => Soccer

There you go. That's your lesson for the day.

We've been trying to steer clear of animal vs animal discussions here, since they no doubt end in laughter and pointless arguments, so here's your four-part question of the day (which was our QOTD yesterday):

When you hear the word "dragon", does your mental image present an Asian dragon or a European dragon? Which would you rather have as a pet? Which would you rather fight? [And the inevitable] If battling each other, which would win?

We can't seem to avoid those questions. Oh well, more laughter must ensue.