29Palms - Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Good Morning

Full metal jacket

Another slowish day, but we got a little work done this morning anyway.

Today was “Drive Cathy’s tree to Palm Springs day.”

Newt and Cathy got the tree into the truck and were ready to go before I even knew what was happening this morning. And once that part was done, it’s hit the road and away we go.

Cathy in her Toyota, and me and Newt in the big boxy rental truck, tree and tree-stuff in the back.

Heading downhill toward Palm Springs

We headed west on the Twentynine Palms Highway “down the hill” to Palm Springs.

New territory for Jimbo’s eyes to drink in.

Not far away, just a few more miles

Palm Springs is tucked against the base of a respectable mountain, and along the way there, the road takes you through some places where any mistake in missing a turn, or just drifting off the pavement, would be met with a severe, most likely lethal, penalty.

Hard-ass desert the whole way, but there were towns and various densities of inhabitation pretty much the whole way to Palm Springs.

Palm Springs itself has far too much in common with Palm Beach, for my taste. The whole over-manicured, hierarchy of assholes, gated-community thing. Republicans, and Republican wannabees at play. I’m not sure if money is symptom or disease, but it’s for sure that there’s a strong correlation between money and fucked-up-ness. Travel as far from home as you like, and wherever you wind up, you’ll see that money makes people all do the exact same thing for some reason. The stuff creeps me out worse and worse, the more I see of it.

When will Big Oil finally figure out a way to buy the wind, parcel it out by the cough, and further engorge themselves on money in the process?

It’s all about clutching, grasping, holding on to, along with locking out, excluding, and hiding behind.

Life inside The Steel Bubble.

These fucks just sort of wall themselves in, and do their dead-level best to cause the real world to disappear, and replace it with some kind of god-awful simulacrum of living, completely bereft of any real life, soul, breath, or heartbeat.

I’ve seen far too much of it over the mounting decades of my life, and the older I get, the less I seem to like it, approve of it, or want to have anything at all to do with it, or the people who embody it.

So when we finally got to the Palm Springs Museum of Art, I’d already had enough.

Palm Springs Museum of Art

Fortunately, Newt is of a similar mind, and we got the tree unloaded, and got the hell out of there pronto.

I saw no need to take so much as a single picture of Palm Springs, and instead shot just one frame of the inside of the men’s room at the museum.

As men’s rooms go, it was a very nice one, tastefully done, but still letting you know what kind of town you were in. But there wasn’t a damn thing that Palm Springs, or any of the people who live there, could do to make the plain fact that it was still a men’s room disappear.

Back on the road, and me and Newt both were just as happy as could be to put that shit in the rear-view mirror and keep it there.

Reversing the journey, it struck me as how the town of Twentynine Palms is the End Of The Line. It’s houses, stores, realtor signs, and all the rest of it, in varying densities and degrees, from Palm Springs on in. But once you cross the rise immediately east of Twentynine Palms, everything stops. Almost as if somebody drew a line that once crossed, places you in a completely different zone.

The Zone of We Can’t Care. Out where Newt lives, what few people are sprinkled around, very obviously can’t care what their neighbors are doing, and they for sure as hell can’t care what anybody might be thinking of what they are doing.

And Newt, sly dog that he is, has located himself eight miles deep into the zone, and placed not one, but two rises between himself and town. From here, you can’t see town, and town can’t see you.

Just the way things oughtta be if you ask me.

///////

Well Bonzo finally got me, and I suppose it had to happen. He’s gotten Newt several times since I’ve been here and my turn was overdue I suppose.

Bonzo is Newt and Cathy’s mutt that they got in the pound, and he’s not all there in the head, I don’t think. He’s not quite a year old, and still has a little bit of growing to do, but he’s mostly done by now I’m guessing. Middle-size dog, not big, not small. Coloring seems to favor a fair bit of beagle in there somewhere, but what the rest of him is, is anybody’s guess. Not built anything at all like a beagle. Non-descript build. Basic, generic dog. Got a funny stumped-off tail, and Newt informs me that it grew that way and wasn’t cut. Helps add to the overall weirdness of this critter.

Bonzo has a pretty good case of A.D.D. going. Maybe even more than just “pretty good.”

He likes to jump up on people. Really likes to. Newt and Cathy are forever attempting to get him to stop, but it’s a futile effort and the dog just doesn’t get it. Newt’s been accidentally scratched to bleeding by Bonzo’s claws more than once. Pisses him off when it happens, and he yells at the dog, but it’s like yelling at the wind. Don’t do no good. None at all.

I’ve learned that if I studiously ignore Bonzo when he’s starting to bounce around in my vicinity, it will usually cause him to lose interest and go somewhere else and pester and jump up on either Newt or Cathy.

I guess this evening I finally got paid back for my grievous lack of consideration.

We were sitting out behind the house, admiring a spectacular sunset. Ripping good sunset. We sat and watched the whole show, until the lights had been turned off and all of the golds, oranges, and reds had faded from view, just leaving cloud silhouettes against the glow of the western sky.

Bonzo will get loopy at similar times during the day, and evening is one of those times.

The goofy mutt will just start racing around, bounding over, through, and around stuff as if he’s just been given a stiff jab of methamphetamine. You need to see it to appreciate it. Crazydog. Running around like a deranged bullet ricocheting off of anything and nothing, never slowing down, at full sprint speed.

Well this evening, I was sitting on the couch that sits against the back wall of the house, and Newt and Cathy are in chairs over by the edge of the porch when Bonzo suddenly lights up and begins a crazed looping sprint in the area all around us.

And at one point he started coming back in, on my right side, like a comet returning toward the sun, heading for perihelion at an ever-increasing speed.

I’m watching this out of the corner of my eye, none too concerned. I’d seen it all before.

But this time, as he arcs back in toward the porch from out in the creosote, he takes a path that brings him right along the back wall of the house, headed unerringly in my direction at warp speed.

So me, being the reasonable person I am, I figure he’s going to weave between us across the porch and head off toward the outer solar system on some hyperbolic curve or other.

Not this time.

As he crossed the edge of the concrete slab that defines the porch, I could see, at the last second, that he was not veering off.

And in the blink of an eye he was airborne, and instead of sensibly jumping around me, he just came fucking flying directly into me, at about four feet above the porch, like a fucking kamikaze or something.

Boom! Direct hit!

Caught me on the right shoulder, neck, and side of my head.

And kept right on going after the impact!

Fucking dog’s nuts.

Just completely nuts.

The impact knocked me pretty good, and any normal dog would have wound up on the ground, stunned and yelping, but not Bonzo.

Nope.

Just kept right on going as if banging off of me in mid-air like a soccer ball was the normalest thing in the world to do.

Ok Bonzo, you win.

I’m not sure what the contest is, but you win, no doubt about it.

For myself, I required a couple of band-aids on my left arm, where he dug his claws in for traction as he maintained full speed and kept right on going.

Cathy got me cleaned up and put together in the back bathroom, and now I’m all better.

Bonzo’s little crazyrun went on for a few more minutes, and then he settled down like he always does, as if nothing strange had just happened at all.

So I walk back over here to the Hell Trailer, and of course Bonzo’s my best friend, and on his best behavior, as the two of us cover the distance together, best friends forever.

Fucking dog’s crazy as a bat, I tell you. Crazier, even.