my land sailboat

I am reading with great joy a blog about two sailors, green mainly, one Polish and the other German who decided to take their small 25' sailboat to cuba from Canada. It is such pure joy and poetry (http://www.sailaway.us/index.html) that it brings tears to my eyes. Meanwhile, here in the New Mexico desert with my 10X20 portable tarp studio set out alongside this old rv gets to rocking in the wind at night and I dream of being on a sailboat again. In my case the most recent sail I had was on our 26' Tanzer that J, Hank, Lucky and J's brother B had taken from Seward, AK to Homer. What a journey, some incredible sailing and dangerous tidal currents that looked like white water at times... J's brother going psycopathic part of the way from lack of booze...The land we moored off so wild and that pure silence you can still hear in places like this...This is certainly a nice rv park and the people are very close and decent, tolerant of things other than the shiniest of rv's. As the owner Jon said to me recently, "Boy, these rv people sure like to complain..." This after coming up to the store dressed up like a bandit, scarf across his face and clothes wrapped up around him, weedwack in hand, where he has been trying his damndest to keep everything in perfect tidy order...Today Don, the camp host, gave me another ride into town so I could mail out some of my six foot rolled up paintings. He is a very nice person, old horn player but on our drive's in I can sense his wanting to know things about me, as every one does. Like, how in the fuck does a paint spattered unkempt fool like me afford to buy things every other day. I can see the other people in this park don't get me either and I can feel wierd things being said about me. Weird stares and such. "What does that guy do in there?" And now since this 16 year old kid, (stepson of Frank the Viking) keeps visiting me wanting to hear Metallica (who I happen to like) I sense more wierdness. Today in fact I went into the office for a lighter and Don said, "Well we have a choice of colors, Purple, pink, green, orange..." I said I would take the green one and he smirk laughed and said, "Yeah, wouldn't want anyone to think you were a fruithead, huh?" Fruithead, I said, no, I wouldn't want that, the word so funny I almost asked for a pink one. And I spent a few hours kind of paranoidly remembering a lot of questions about the woman in my life, J, over the last few days, taking warm baths every night and watching countless hours of L&O, CSI, and whatnot...So I'm glad Tom (a really good kid) didn't come by tonight. He is in that danger zone of joining a gang so I didn't mind him hanging around and even had him do a six foot painting that I put up on ebay. He seemed proud of that and he really is a down kid, having spent six months in gladiator school in Albuquerque, but now I see the haters around here, the ones who don't like to see someone living freely are beginning to formulate ways to expedite my leaving. Oh well, there are other places to go and see...

But if you want to be at a welcome place for awhile, and not among the creepy perfect rv people then check out Monticello rv park just outside of Elephant Butte. Access to fishing is incredible and as I said earlier the owner, a man named Jon is the greatest...

g'night all...

cups

You can see by the last post that I was hitting the juice pretty hard. I've eased that off so now it is the quiet New Mexico desert and me and you. This wonderful land is full of beauty and tiny colorful wonders and dangers. I have to walk Hank and Lucky carefully as the rattlesnakes are awakening. I am only a mile or so from where the Rio Grande is dammed into a strange and wondrous lake. But it's too long of a walk although I can see it's blue when I step out of the rv every morning to walk my dogs. My van is busted, probably just fouled plugs but it could be an engine that is ready to go so we don't get to the lake unless it is by someone elses carriage. The other day a new friend, Frank and his wife took us down and we sat around pulling from a bottle of ice cold seagrams discussing life, the water and the strange Indian ruins across the water and up in the mountain. Frank, full of scars, a big Viking (Swede/Norwegian) man had some binoculars so it was interesting to see this ancient dwelling up there and when I went swimming I floated looking up at it thinking no tangible thought except that the lake had strange icy currents that would suddenly envelope me. I was worried about cramping so I got out and we stood by the vehicle talking. I miss my sweet J who has moved into a house In Phoenix but we both aknowledge the need for space.

Last night I was invited to a party with my next door neighbors, some great folks from El Paso and we sat around doing shots in honor of someone's birthday. Mike was there with his wife. They are Mexican and he is an ex-cop for 20 years with a low modulating voice and great sense of humor. This is the second time I have had the good fortune to be in their presence. We feasted on all sorts of incredible things. Jon, the owner's wife is Korean and she prepared these delicious marinated chunks of meat cooked right over the fire, there were battered golden deep fried chunks of fish too nestled next to Hatch peppers...salsas...what a feast! My god you could not have such a feast in a restaurant. It is these little adventures that really make this worth it. Drinking shot after shot in honor of Bill's birthday we all laughed and made asses of ourselves. As usual I was one of the last to go to bed.

night.