Back to the Mountain

It snowed in the Sandias the other day for the first time this season - you might say my third "saison en enfer" - and, although I had just shot some mountain photos over the weekend (above and after the jump) well, I had to drive back. It is, after all, both my mission and my pleasure (emphasis on pleasure).

Speaking of which, and for the record, I'm holed up in a motel again... attempting to recuperate from a respiratory infection that's been going around as of late. It's one of the hazards of the road. More human contact = more human contagions. Can't get around it. 

The good news is that I'm sleeping in a real bed again. (Ah, the luxury!) And, for this brief respite, I have a benevolent cousin and her husband to thank, who (graciously) contributed to the "cause" (i.e., my survival) this Christmas; thereby prompting me to amend this statement from my previous post: "because, quite literally, it is my friends, and only my friends, who are currently keeping me alive." In reality, family members, too, are a portion of our human equation. You'll have to forgive me; no longer having an immediate family, I forget this at times.

On the other hand, for the sake of accuracy, perfect strangers sometimes arrive out of the blue, too, lending a helping hand when least expected. For instance, at one of my lowest points earlier in the survival game, a man I never met nor even saw before suddenly approached me while I sat in my vehicle in a department store parking lot, handing me $40 (!) and saying: "Homelessness can happen to anybody." I wouldn't take his money at first, but he wouldn't take no for an answer, briskly getting in his car and driving away before any of this could register. Later, I wondered, could this have been an angelic encounter? But, no, I'm fairly certain now - despite his timely (but unwarranted) generosity - he was, indeed, a human. It took some time for me to process the information, but, well, there you have it. Humans can be unbelievably kind with no ulterior motives at all. File that in your memory banks for a rainy day...

As for the mountain, well, it has holistically filed an infinite number of organic "data bytes" into its vast molecular structure. From time to time, it's moved to let off a little creative steam  in the form of one of its vast repertoire of clouds... kind of like those thought balloons (or bubbles) you find in cartoon strips. Okay, well, that's my hypothesis anyway. For example, the clouds present in the photos (above) literally emerged one morning when I wasn't even looking. That is, when I first aimed the camera at Sandia Crest, only a few wispy clouds were drifting along the blue horizon. I just started snapping photos blindly because the blazing New Mexican sun was directly in my eyes (as it often is). And, it must've been at exactly that moment when the mountain artfully slipped in its latest orchestral composition. So, imagine my surprise when I uploaded the shots to my computer and discovered this darkly romantic array.

The mountain is an entity in its own right. It is the master of the land surrounding it for miles and miles; all else is subordinate. If you take nothing else away from my mountain posts, well, at least run with that. Last year, when New Zealand legally granted the designation of "personhood" to Mount Taranaki (see the addendum at the end of my previous mountain post), it may have done so for political reasons, but for the Maori people it meant the (long overdue) formal recognition of a family member.

Regarding the snow, well, I've never seen more than a light frosting on the Sandia surface, and this snowfall was no exception. As you can see by the photos (above and below), what detectable snow appears as little more than lace-work beneath a dense cloud... delicate lichen-like patches of ice that will evaporate by the following day.

Meanwhile, no snow fell on the rest of Albuquerque... which, for me, was something to be grateful for. Snow has terrified me for years now. Having lived utterly alone for well over a decade, I always imagined if I died outdoors during a snowstorm, they might not find my frozen carcass till after the next ice age.

Backing up a bit, the earlier shots (introducing this post) were taken before the snow... on a Sunday morning... a day in which I mostly curl up in my car seat, basking in the sun and reading the day away. My latest reading material? A wonderful ghost story by the Scottish author Margot Livesey: Eva Moves the Furniture. I mention it here because it is one of few (if any) recent literary "paranormal" offerings which spare us the (bogus) "evil" and horror hack writers never fail to provide.

I also just finished "Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century" by journalist Jessica Bruder, published last year, which recounts the lifestyles of Americans who, like myself, discover that the "American Dream" has become  a Disneyland envisioned by Hieronymus Bosch.  For these individuals, "Home, Sweet Home" has morphed into a wandering, untethered vehicle crawling stealthily across the American landscape.... carefully avoiding the hazards (and financial burdens) of its ubiquitous underlying grid.

What's amazing is that there are so many... all passing under the radar... and, possibly, under your noses... right in your hometown. And, this has gone on for the past 10 years... with bands of travelers - mostly in RVs and vans - gathering together every now and then in out-of-the-way places in the American Southwest. In fact, there may be a gathering taking place right this very minute (and, regretfully, I may be missing it).

In her final analysis, Bruder makes an interesting statement about the nomads, comparing them to what biologists refer to as an "indicator species;" that is, "sensitive organisms with the capacity to signal much larger shifts in the ecosystem."*

In other words, the nomads might be the new pioneers... and, there is always the possibility that, instead of retiring comfortably in the Bahamas (under a beach-umbrella), you may become one of them. Not that it's really all that bad a thing...

Go ahead, ask the mountain...

...  just don't ask it during a snowfall.

* In addition, via her discussion of a "deepening class divide" (which is "already happening" due to the alarming disparity between the incomes of the top 1% and those of the average American) Bruder also adds a quote by scientist and writer, Stephen J. Gould (1941-2002), which is marginally off-topic here but worth repeating:

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and

sweatshops."

_________________________________

"The Traveler," a novel by John Twelve Hawks

The Traveler  by John Twelve Hawks.
On Amazon.

"The book is set in the near future and lays out a world where the real power lies not with people or governments, but in the hands of a secret organisation who call themselves “the Brethren,” but who their enemies refer to as “the Tabula”. The Tabula are a centuries-old secret society who believe in the importance of control and stability, making them in essence advocates of a kind of extreme Utilitarianism. Influenced by the ideas of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham the Tabula wish to enforce a Virtual Panopticon: a society where all individuals become so accustomed to being watched and monitored that they act at all times as if they were being observed and are as such completely controllable...

The Travelers are individuals with a special gift, often but not always inherited, which allows them to detach from their bodies and journey through elemental barriers (water, fire etc.) to other realms. They do this by detaching their “light” (internal energy seemingly analogous to the soul but found by the Tabula to be empirically measurable) from their body. Travelers’ experiences and gifts (they can view the world around them with greater speed and clarity than normal people) can lend them great charisma, wisdom and vision. Many Travelers become religious prophets, or opponents of the Tabula, and the random element they add to societies makes them enemies of the Tabula who have hunted them almost to extinction."

- Excerpts from the Wiki entry for John Twelve Hawks' The Traveler, the first book in his science fiction series Fourth Realm Trilogy.

"The only information one can get on John Twelve Hawks is that he is living "off the grid". This means that he is invisible to the network of surveillance and authority. He has no fixed home, no bank account or internet connection, and John Twelve Hawks is not his real name."

- Another excerpt from the Wiki entry for John Twelve Hawks' The Traveler.

"Children defer to adults because they’re older, bigger and stronger. But it’s also because children believe that adults have reasons for what they do. There was nothing magical about the Pied Piper of Hamelin’s flute. The Piper acted like he knew where he was going and the children followed him into the dark mountains where they were never seen again."

- An excerpt from John Twelve Hawks' Against Authority: Freedom and the Rise of Surveillance States, 2014. (.pdf)

“I spent my time drinking and staring at a television in the airport bar. More death and destruction. Crime. Pollution. All the news stories were telling me to be frightened. All the commercials were telling me to buy things I didn´t need. The message was that people could only be passive victims or consumers.”

"Half the things you've been taught in school are just convenient fictions. History is a puppet show for childish minds."

- Two quotes from John Twelve Hawks' The Traveler found on his Wikiquote page.

***

Speaking of "off the grid," in the earlier days of my adventure, I once googled the word "traveler", which is when I discovered the existence of a mysterious author known as John Twelve Hawks. This is not to say that I immediately ran out and bought The Traveler (and its sequels) or even ordered it from Amazon.* (I can only read books I get for free... and those which wedge comfortably between my car's windshield and dashboard.) But, certainly, the premise of the novel is attractive... and relevant in a most timely way: the individual versus the surveillance state and the "culture of fear." After all, as in the tradition of the best science fiction, there is nothing terribly futuristic or fictional about its theme. Twelve Hawks himself admits that all of the technology in the book "is either already being used or in the advanced stage of development." **

Cause for pause.

Of course, what also interested me is that - as in the case of Alan Moore's Jerusalem - a female character (Maya) has a prominent role. It is she who is called upon to protect what may be the last two Travelers in existence. And, it's so refreshing to find females in central roles in science fiction... specifically, in the tradition of the best science fiction.

Meanwhile, it looks like Warner Bothers bought the rights to the Fourth Realm Trilogy. And, as it happens, John Twelve Hawks is no longer entirely off the grid these days; that is, unless his current website is bogus.

* Good news! I found a paperback copy of "The Traveler" in a Goodwill store the day after I wrote this post. Thus far, I'm on the 5th chapter and am enjoying it immensely!

**  On the topic of a surveillance state, remember this from 2013?

And we thought it was a joke...

"… Washington, D.C., is rocked by leaked documents showing that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting massive amounts of data on the phone calls, emails and other electronic activities of millions of American citizens. An NSA spokesperson insists that this program is vital to the fight against terrorism, and that Americans “have absolutely no reason to fear that their privacy is being invaded, or that there are tiny government video cameras concealed in every low-flow toilet in America.” The spokesperson adds that “as a totally unrelated side note, you people need to increase your dietary fiber.”

- 2013 - Dave Barry's Year in Review via The Miami Herald.

***

I posted the above quote on Post-Mac Blues at the end of 2013, thinking it was hilarious...

Alas, from 2018, we find: Bathrooms are getting smarter, for better or worse - The most private place in your home is being invaded by cameras, sensors and virtual assistants.

Well, it's for your "own good," you understand.