Snowflake Kisses

Gone Analog - Part I

December 2

Carlsbad New Mexico, The Stage Coach Inn

Newsflash ..---. --.

I've landed in Carlsbad New Mexico for the evening. Some little hole in the wall called the Stage Coach Inn.

The big news on the sign in Harper, TX is "Welcome hunters, poinsettias for sale."

The suicide rate for the deer population is way up this year as evidenced by their lifeless bodies scattered along the highways. It seems to be a seasonal phenomenon, tied either to hunting season or Santa and his reindeer pageant. Statistical surveys are still being conducted. Data to be analyzed some time after the Christmas bills have been mailed.

Date: December 3

Satellite Motel - What can I say - drawn to flashing neon signs.

Split off in Fort Stockton and went up through Pecos and cut over at Artesia. I always find things to do in Artesia and this morning was not an exception. I passed a feedlot and made another U-turn. Asked to shoot the cows and they were thrilled. Anyway, got some interesting close up work and learned all about the twenty four hour a day big business that dairy farming has become.

The dust has been horrible since I left yesterday and still is. I went and bought some more canned air to clean out the equipment.

It looked like it was going to rain or snow as the front made its way in. The drive through the mountains was gorgeous. I made myself sick on Mc Donald's coffee and was going to just go to Al's this afternoon and chat since the weather was so blowy and dusty and cold. Once I began walking around I decided to go ahead and do "A LITTLE" and was there until the sun was ready to dip behind the mountains at the horizon line. My favorite van is still there and I saw some other great images. FUN, FUN, FUN.

I am going out to eat Mexican food in a while.

Date: December 4

Snow and all the news that is fit to print

Would you believe that it snowed here last night? Anyway, I don't know how I slept through the whole thing. The roads are clear but the cars are covered. Will have to warm my car up to clear off the 1/2-inch or so of the stuff. Must look and see if I still have that thing in my car for such situations such as this, a scraper, I think.

Anyway, I am making a cup of tea. I have a microwave and a refrigerator (handy for film) so I can do whatever I want to here.

Al's should be quite a treat this morning.

Oh well. Tea is done.

Glad that I brought all the hats, gloves, heavy long underwear, boots and all that good stuff.

Love and snowflake kisses are in the air.

December 4

Chains

bicycles chained together like lovers in a final embrace

a broken artichoke petals lofting to the ground on autumnal winds

air damp with heavy winter clouds smells of fire and decaying wood

I reach out to touch the most perfect snowflake I have ever seen

oxidized paint from dreams interrupted detours and good-byes

cars scissored apart like tins of food shopping lists and toys forgotten

piles of hoods and seats and doors and trunks and wheels

a car is a car is a car even when it ceases to transport dreams

who left this ironing board here

rust

December 5, 1999

Perfection

Sitting down with a hot cup of ginger tea, organic of course and some incense burning in my new soap incense holder that I have quite handily made for myself

I don't really know where to start this tale.....so here we go. I practically had to dynamite myself out this morning. Feeling caffeine lag or Texas Prairie Schooner lag or jet lag or some other reason my behind was dragging. I think that I got out of town around 9 or 10ish.

I don't like doing the same thing too often, preferably never most of the time. I looked at the map when I got in the car and tried to decide where to go. I love Carrizozo, the name alone just does it for me. Just below it is a place called Three Rivers Petroglyphs. Now, since I am in process on a series of petroglyph images I decided to take a look.

Being the laggard that I was feeling like being, maybe it was a Sunday thing or something I drove past the petrogylphs and decided to check out the campground further up the road. On my way to the campground I saw a sign for a church. I went into the church, which happened to be open and unoccupied at 10 am this particular Sunday morning. Debate taking some pictures. Not too much of interest. Had been there since 1911 but so many weird things had been added on that the feel of the place was fairly bastardized for me. I did wander over to the cemetery. They had some beautiful granite walls. The stones were rounded from an eternity of tumbling in the streams of the Sacramento Mountains and the lines were lovely. Found some very pleasing shadows and bits of snow to work with and decided to go back into the church and look around again. This place is so completely out of the way that it had been many miles since I had passed any houses. There were a couple of tiny travel trailers around but they seemed to be unoccupied. I decided to shoot the handmade light fixtures but every time that I began to focus the camera, I could see someone at the window in the corner of my vision. I looked outside to see if anyone was there and I couldn't see a trace of any living soul. After about three or four of these visions, I decided to leave. I walked out and closed the door to the church and walked through the gate. As I was closing the gate I heard a car coming up the road. I passed them as I was leaving.

I headed on up to the campground. I met the host and we talked for a while. He gave me lots of maps and printed info. He told me that his girlfriend sings like Patsy Cline and that they had just had four inches of snow with this last storm. We shook hands and away I went. Took a couple of pictures and headed on back down the road.

It was time to go to the petrogylphs. I signed in and paid my $1 fee and put the ticket on my windshield. The next thing I know this lady is zipping towards me on one of those bright red new fangled farm chariots that cost big bucks. She wants to make sure that I have posted my fee receipt properly and she wants to be sure that I sign the guest list. When I sign in for one she looks at me strangely and says that she didn't know that I was traveling alone. I tell her that I usually do and I swear to god that she cackled a cackle that would make any witch happy. I asked her a couple more questions and each one evoked another cackle. Too many happy pills for her.

With a backpack full of lenses, cameras and film I was in for the best stretch I've had this trip. It is still so cold here that I'm wearing a fleece hat, scarf, gloves, jacket, long underwear, wool socks and boots ad nauseum. Anyway, I am prepared. I even have some water and sunflower seeds. I walked about 300 yards to the head of the trail. You pass through a gate and then before you is a hillside covered in rocks that have been burnished a reddish blackish brown by the sun forever. When you knock them together they sound hollow, like a piece of high fire ceramics.

As the trail begins it ascent I noticed that the ground was littered with petrogylphs. Everywhere that I looked, there were rocks covered with pictures. At the first turn in the trail I found some of the most beautiful work that I have ever seen. With the snow-covered Sacramento Mountains in the background, I photographed these beings over and over again. The lines, the movement - truly alive. When I returned here later in the day as the sun was descending it was even more incredible. I found myself lying on the rocks, sticking my head into a crevasse without first inspecting it. Needing the right angle, the avoidance of the long shadows that are cast late in the day. Shadows that become magnified by the wide-angle lens.

I hiked and photographed for hours. I found something special. Two stylized clouds spiraled together like a yin yang symbol. There were faces, rattlesnakes, gods, clouds and purely geometric designs. Little pockets of unmelted snow hiding in the shadows.

When I arrived there the birds were mostly silent. When the sun became golden and began to set the air was lyric with their songs. They seemed to travel in pairs and had the sweetest sound that I'd heard in a forever.

I felt as though no time had passed and I was probably there 5 or 6 hours. I sat on a bench just outside the gate and watched the birds as I sorted through my film. I took a roll of self-stuff that I am beginning to fit in on my travel work and just enjoyed being.

Life is an eternity because that is all there is. I am willing myself to stop the what ifs and all of the other prognostications. If people carved these beautiful images 600 years ago and I can be enraptured by them right now, how could it be any better? So, I'll take this moment right now as my own. I'd prefer to live with gratitude rather than fear of the unknown.

So back to me sitting on the bench doing my self-portrait photos. It has gotten chilly and I am putting clothes back on now as I cool down from the walking. Why does it feel so good to hike up rocks and mountains with all of this stuff on my back? How keen is my balance when I am perching, shifting from rock top to rock top? I am never more free than at this moment.

I wander back to the car, empty my pockets of the film wrappers and drive on down the hill. I decide to stop in at the store at the highway and see if there are any postcards. The search was fruitful and interrupted by the biggest cat that I have ever seen in my whole life. I may have even rudely declaimed how fat he was. I know that the owner was upset at my reference to his vast overabundance. Her voice almost quavered as she told me that he was not fat but just had very big bones. Big bones he may have, but he also posses ripples of fat that are wavelike. I found Gerry simply irresistible and asked permission to photograph him. I meandered out to the car to bring in the RZ, always an impressive camera. I got my light meter and took a couple of readings. No more interior lights available. I just happen to travel with flash and hot lights so I decided to go the glamour route with this big fat puss. He was lying in a chair covered in some sort of lamb wool, fake or not I do not know. Anyway, he thoroughly enjoyed the session and was most cooperative. He has these two sort of funny fu man chu whiskers that curl up on either side of his face. He was a little unhappy that I turned off the light. It did give him a little extra heat, maybe helped him conserve a calorie or two.