AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

late state


dreamcatcher – foto by Smith

Home Alone

Wife in bed sleeping.
Cat sleeps on couch all sprawled out.
Siren in the night.


sweet dreams – foto by Smith

brüno borat


kiss me – foto by Smith

Saw the movie Brüno. Wanted to see it because Sacha Baron Cohen’s previous film Borat was brilliant, socially aggressive, edgy, and outrageously funny.

With Brüno, he goes beyond the edge, is aggressive, mean spirited and unfunny. Many of the scripted skits are outrageous, but weak; many of the unscripted scenes are slow, awkward, embarrassed and embarrassing. More shock than substance.

It is an amazing performance art piece, and he’s fearless and in actual danger when he mocks Hasidic Jews on the streets of Israel or taunts an overtly testosteroned homophobic fight audience by making out with his male assistant inside the wrestling cage. It’s audacious and outrageous, but not funny.

And it has a mean heart, feels a bit like beating a dead Baptist with a broken dildo.


Baffle Bar – foto by Smith

mutant haiku, senryu and pete seeger too


New Mexico – foto by Smith

~ ~ ~

New Mexico

Driving through mountains
White clouds and rain threading set
Heart’s calm majesty

~ ~ ~

Nebraska

Day slinking sunward
85 miles per hour
Corn field after field

~ ~ ~

Oklahoma

Clouds, more same, and rain
Endless distance, dust, mundane
Long time dirt bowl blues

~ ~ ~

Colorado

Cornhusker highway
And mile after mile of corn
Ain’t Kansas no more

~ ~ ~

Texas

Flat, brown, dust, wind, dry
Heat beating down from big sky
Mirage water road

~ ~ ~

Flow Go

White lines whistling past
Limit of 75
We fly at 90

~ ~ ~

Hypocrisy’s Oafs

Driving through Bible
Belt we see “Jesus Is Lord”
“Adult Super Stores”

~ ~ ~

63 Years of Wear & Tear

Pain walking, pain not
Pain sitting in pain pain’s lot
Pain sleeping, pain knot

~ ~ ~

Little Boxes

Pod hive in high rise
Houses pods hives apartments
Pod hive pod hive pod

~ ~ ~

Little Boxes
written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962
recorded by Pete Seeger in 1963

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes
Little boxes
Little boxes all the same
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

And the people in the houses all go to the university
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers
And business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children
go to summer camp
And then to the university
And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same
And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same

There’s a green one, and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same


Nebraska – foto by Smith

doubt don’t do


New Mexico rainbow – foto by Smith

Second day at rainbow, July 4th, there was to be a mass circle prayer for world peace at noon after 6 hours of silence, and we were all gathered in ever larger concentric circles in the main meadow waiting. At 11:45, the skies opened and poured forth great waters. Prayer Circle became mud central as 50 folk or more shed their clothes and bounced about in the mud in a great circle cluster.

We went back to our tent and used the rain and thunder to mask our own celebratory rites.

After the couple hours of falling water stops, I hobble over to the homeopathic free clinic trying to get help for my torn groin muscles which have been bothering me ever since 2004 when I tried to pick up my overweight mother who’d collapsed on the floor due to bacterial infection in her blood. It had never healed, and since I’ve neither health insurance nor money, I’ve just lived with it. Our world travel had kept me mobile because for 31 months we walked everywhere, and the exercise kept me limber – as had the massive amounts of marijuana (an anti-inflammation drug) in Mexico, and the 23 cent a day pill of Flexiver aka Meloxicam, an anti-inflammatory I was buying over the counter at the Mexican pharmacies (on my doctor’s advice).

But once we came back to the States, I walked way less due to having a car, couldn’t afford to buy grass to ease the swelling, and found that a) I needed a prescription for Meloxicam and b) they didn’t sell it in the U.S. anyway. That makes sense seeing as how cheapness and efficacy is directly against the ethics of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.

Our days of driving and our night sleeping on hard ground had aggravated my injury and I was having trouble walking. Didn’t think the herbalists could help, but they gave me a pain-killing mixture of tincture of wild lettuce that gave me a minor buzz and immediately made me feel less pain, and a trauma oil made from St Johnswort, arnica, valerian and oils of wintergreen, tea leaves,vitamin e and extra virgin olive oil. I rubbed it on and could immediately walk a wee bit better. Effects lasted for about 2 hours.

By 4:30 we’d discovered our tent was leaking slightly, and we both admitted we couldn’t face another sleepless night due to my bone/muscle pain and Lady’s freezing, so we packed up and hiked out. Got a 9 mile ride to our car and were told we were lucky we were leaving early because more rain was on the way and tomorrow thousands of folk would be leaving at the same time so we probably would have had to walk out.

Got to our car and found someone had parked in front of us, blocking us from the road. I walked through the woods scouting an escape path out while Lady wrote a nasty note pointing out the inconsistency of their Rainbow beliefs with their actual actions, then I drove at 5 mph through the woods out to the road.

We got a whole 83 miles down the highway before we both were too tired to drive. I looked up in the sky at the largest rainbow I’d ever seen and decided since we’d just left one Rainbow and were now beneath another, here is where we’d sleep.

tried to make it home over the next two days, but Monday’s 15 hour drive covering 872 miles left us 242 miles from home when I realized I couldn’t do it anymore.

We drove 1,901 miles back through New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. I drove most the last half while Lady by myself. As I drove, Lady read out loud from Breaking Trail – A Climbing Life by Arlene Blum about her troubles breaking into the male dominated mountain climbing world of the 1960s. Back then men said mere women were too weak, too soft, too temperamental, and bled too much to ever be able to climb the world’s tallest mountains. Arlene most definitely proved them wrong. What a fantastic tale of a life.


100 gallons of gas – foto by Smith

Lady felt bad coming back because the trip was so rushed and cost near $100 a day for the seven days when you add in the new tent, sleeping bag, rest stop food, 5 motels, etc. She wondered if she’d been foolish. Gas alone was around 100 gallons at an average of $2.50 per gallon, even with our 40 miles per gallon trip average it all added quickly up.

Told her no – that she’d seen country she’d never experienced before, I’d had my attitude about the Rainbow Tribe refreshed for the good after the unfriendly encounters with the European Tribe, and that it was important to do mad, crazy things every now and then just to keep the heart alive, the mind wondering, and the spirit soaring. I told her not to doubt herself because, “Doubt don’t do”. Make a great tee-shirt or bumper sticker.

Besides the generosity and friendliness of the Rainbow Tribe, the thing I like and remember most is the constant drumming. Except for 6 hours of silence before the July 4th noon prayer circle, there was the sound of constant drums, many drums, every second every minute every hour of the day or night. You’d think they’d be irritating, but the sound is soothing, relaxing, ancient, mystic.

There’s more, but I tire of the tale. We went. It was good. We returned.

Now what?


my Lady love – foto by Smith

day 1 rainbow sample


out our tent, Jemez Mountains, New Mexico – foto by Smith

After 1,771 miles and two-and-a-quarter days hurtling through Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas and New Mexico, we turned off to start the last nine miles to The 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes at Parque Venado in the Santa Fe National Forest, and instead of empty dirt road we saw tents, parked vehicles and hundreds of people milling about playing music and tending fires.

We tried to keep going but were stopped by a dreadlocked dude who said “I can’t tell you what to do but it’s a mess up there. Already 12,000 people and the parking’s full. You might want to think about parking here and shuttling in. Up to you.”

We parked, unpacked, badly repacked, shuttled in, then hiked another mile or two up hill under sun with heavy packs, set up tent. Went down to main meadow, sat in sun and watched dogs run free amidst drummers, jugglers, dancers, singers, gypsies, yogas, old hippies, new hippies, punks, alternatives, dead heads, phish heads, musicians, vegetarians, children, babies, elderly, handicapped, nudists, wiccans, artists, folkies, pagans, jewelry makers, holistic healers, high schoolers, hard partiers, old alkys, the curious and curiouser.

Lying on our blanket in the sun I think, “This is nice, I love to people watch, and there are certainly a lot of friendly, fascinating people, but is this what we do for 3 days?”

Then they called the 4:20 Family Council Circle to order. We were curious what they might have to talk about, so sat just outside the circle of a hundred or so. An elder man turns and asks if I smoke grass. When I say yes, he says “Well then you need to be in the circle” and moves a dozen people further out so Lady and I are in. Turns out it’s the cannabis culture’s “4:20” which is the cult time to smoke grass after school or work. They pass a coffee can around asking for marijuana donations so they can roll a bunch of joints and pass them out so hundreds of Family can all smoke at the same time. I got one toke in the first round. Then a dude walked up to the Dubliner on my left, handed him a joint and said “You look like you could use this.” Joints are generally passed to the left. He looked at me and said, “If I start this, you won’t get a toke, so you start it.” I did. The previous toke didn’t do much except make me happy for the symbolism of it all, what with my purposely leaving my smoke home and reality magically getting me a taste anyway; but the second toke was sweet, strong and acrid. One toke got me buzzed – so the magic went from symbolic to actual.

There are paths everywhere in all directions off the meadow, and each path is crossed by other paths, and all paths have dozens and dozens of tents bleeding off both sides up and down the mountain. And each camp [ ie, the LGBT camp, the Yoga camp, the Jesus camp, the Anarchists camp ] had its own kitchen and latrine. Everything was handmade, the water filtered and run through gravity pipes, the latrines holes and trenches dug in the earth. Everything had to be carried in, so there was a fantastic cleverness in doing much with little, like making a swing set for the children from a couple tied-together trees.

The food from each of the 20 kitchens was free. So was the coffee, tea.

Everybody seemed open, friendly, accepting, curious, helpful. Their standard greeting was a smile and “Welcome home.”

We walked up the market lane and once I saw the hand crafted merchandise available only for barter, I understood Lady’s attraction – this was tribal, the market the same feel of those we’d wandered in the small villages in Morocco and Mexico. We were no longer in the Corporate-Rat Race.


Magda of Poland, Africa, New Mexico – foto by Smith

Part way through the bazaar, we heard a shouted “Lady” and looked down to see our friend Magda whom we’d first met in Poland in 2006 and last saw in Africa in 2007. She lead us to her husband Blue, an artist and film maker who’s also the leader of the garage avant-garde cabaret rock n roll band The Urban-Jellen Test and who had given us our first poetry gig in Krakow by having us open for several of his concerts.


Blue7 of Poland, Africa, New Mexico – foto by Smith

Then to sleep, my tired body pained bones on hard ground, Lady freezing in insufficient old sleeping bag. Much tossing and turning. Little sleep.

But a cool day.




Rainbow – foto by Smith

let’s get this road on the show



Gateway Arch, St Louis, Missouri – foto by Smith

Lady wanted to attend the 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering in the Rocky Mountains north of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’d first gone to the 2005 Gathering in West Virginia, and it had changed the way she thought and looked at herself – showed her she was too closed and negative.

It made her want to go again, so soon after we first met, we forgot about promoting the publication of my final issue of ArtCrimes and left the U.S. a month early so we could join the European annual gathering in North England in August 2006.

This meant we pretty much lost the entire $4,000 publishing price for ArtCrimes 21 because we wouldn’t be around to promote and sell it. But this wasn’t much of anything new because I had the uncapitalistic habit of paying 100% of the publication price myself, giving each contributor a free copy, and then giving away most the sellable copies. I lost $20,000 on 21 issues over 20 years. But ArtCrimes made my underground rep here and abroad, and it’s in the hands of thousands of artists world wide and in University collections, so it was money well used. It’s the greatest and perhaps most expensive calling card in the world.

England was my first experience with the Rainbow Tribe, and it was an unqualified disaster (except for the rabbits). A Dutch Rainbower had promised to loan us a tent and sleeping bags for the occasion but forgot. With backpacks far too heavy, we bused to Northern England and walked forever up tortuously steep hills to the high fields where they were camped. With no equipment we tried to sleep unprotected in the shit-filled sheep fields and I started freezing. I had no idea one could freeze in August, but the high hills get real cold. Some group took pity on me and let us into their tent, but I still went into hypothermia, shaking uncontrollably. Lady found some blankets and covered me with her body after I’d put on every piece of clothing I had in my pack.

We’d failed to get much of a welcome from the self-superior stand-offish European Tribe, had no equipment, were miserably cold, so we waited until first light when we could see to side-step the sheep shit and left. This part at least was magic for as we walked down gorgeous mountains in the rising dawn, we saw thousands of rabbits bouncing through the fields and running across the dirt road all around us.

We trained down to Burley-On-Warfdale and spent way too much for a week in a Bed & Breakfast. It was good, but not what we came for. At least there we got to walk the moors, which made me re-read Jane Austin’s Wuthering Heights with much greater appreciation.

So, understandably I was less than enthusiastic about driving 1,800 miles in 2.5 days, camping 2 days and driving 1,800 miles back in 2.5 days just to be with the Rainbow Tribe. Tried to tell her it was too fast, too long, and we’d be too tired to enjoy. Not that I thought there’d be much to enjoy – who cares what a bunch of old and faux hippies do? I say this having been with but not of the hippies in the late 60s, though I did like the hippies then and like the survivors even more now.

She was adamant, and I cannot deny her (even if I tried, I’d fail for she is rock and stone to my ethereal flow). So July 1st we jumped in the car and took 2-hour turns driving 70-90 miles per hour for 11-12 hours a day. First day got halfway across Oklahoma. Second to Santa Rosa New Mexico. Third day, 3-4 hours brought us to the camp at 9,000 feet in the midst of the Rocky Mountains.

This is not the way to travel, though hurtling across country at high speeds does have a certain Kerouacian cool madness, for as Jack Kerouac says, ‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”’

Will go into greater detail tomorrow, but the highlights of the first two days were the Gateway Arch across the Mississippi River in St Louis, Missouri (It stands 630 feet / 190 meters tall, and is 630 feet / 190 meters wide at its base, making it the tallest monument in the United States), the incredible jumbled dark painted cloud skies of Oklahoma, and Cadillac Ranch just outside Amarillo Texas.




Oklahoma – foto by Smith

The good part here was Lady had never seen how vast this country is, or what vistas there are. Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado were amazing eye-openers to her – but it was New Mexico that was especially beautiful with its buttes, mesas, deserts of greens, reds, browns, and endless horizons.

Now I have to find a way to get her to the 4-corners (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah), The North Dakota and Montana badlands, and the Grand Canyon.

Here are some fotos of Cadillac Ranch. Cadillac Ranch is (according to Wikipedia) “a public art installation and sculpture in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. It was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm, and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of early Cadillacs; the tail fin) from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The piece is a statement about the paradoxical simultaneous American fascinations with both a “sense of place” — and roadside attractions, such as The Ranch itself — and the mobility and freedom of the automobile.”

When I saw Cadillac Ranch my first two times in the early 1980s, the cars were only minorly grafittied, you could still see most of the original car surfaces. Now they are totally buried under endless coatings of paint.








Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo Texas – fotos by Smith

we’re baaaaack


Santa Rosa New Mexico morning – foto by Smith

We did a seven day 3,672 mile drive out and back to attend the 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering in Parque Venado in the Jemez Mountains north of Albuquerque.

Left our computers home, so no on-line intercourse or news for seven mind relaxing days. Left my smoke too. Figured if reality wanted me to get high, reality would stone me.

Going out the southern route, we did daily drives of 770, 786, 215 miles; camped 32 hours, then drove back the northern route with daily doses of 83, 704, 872 and 242 miles in a little red 1994 four-cylinder Honda Civic Ex, not the most comfortable touring car but a great little driver.

Saw a lot, thought a lot, burned two quarts of oil and got a $25 ticket for not wearing my seat belt this morning courtesy of an Indiana State Trooper.

I’ll download my fotos and read my notes to see if I brought anything worth blogging about back.

If not, we still had a fascinating, wonderful time.


on the way to Rainbow – foto by Smith

bane brain


art detour – foto by Smith

Need braaaiiiinnss.

Must jump-start brain. Going to stay offline for a week. Going to do actual stuff, work on some writing.


glow flower – foto by Smith