drought (revised)
Posted: March 5th, 2011, 10:37 pm
kind of a "companion piece" of sorts to "exit 286" (preceding it).
So you leave concussive Arizona and run to drought-plagued El Paso. Except lead-gray rain follows, the same indelible mud you disowned. The locals thank you, buy you drinks. Must be a trick, though you take the offer. It will take a mighty effort to break this drought. If it rains in the Dark North it's par, the long, cleansing pall. If six winter weeks pass without rain, talk of "drought" begins. If it rains in the desert, it ceases tomorrow. If tomorrow, it ceases the next day. If next day, then next week. If next week, it's personal. No drought over your head, only a cloud cult. You command it to multiply on the nearest reservoir.
"Don't begrudge us a little rain, tree dweller," Ned says. He is painting a tall canvas when you show up, a fantastical, interwoven stream of souls and shapes. "What is it?" "A totem." "Didn't recognize it." "It's upside-down." He is on a surge, and his bunker is strewn with unfinished canvases, sketches and notes. "First rain in almost a year. I should buy you a drink." And smudges of gray and warm beer start to seep in. The desert is self-sufficient and lean, annoyed by this embarrassment of riches, shed clumsily in torrents at the bottom of nameless arroyos.
"I make rain," you told Ned. "I should turn pro." "Raise the shaker and do a dance, is that it?" "No, it follows me." You're drinking the bell curve, but not over the top; no need to turn drought into a flood. But thoughts are coursing, like radar swirls on the weather channel, streams and blotches, melted fractals, a Pollock throwdown harmless at a distance, except when the war special comes on, and a sandstorm pounds tank columns caught by wind in excess of blind faith. Desert rain follows. You will bring this drought to its knees.
At the height of your powers you turn back to Nevada, realm of a million variations on tan, but your cloud cult got there first. You note a few changes when they break. Not sure what to make of butterflies and tandem power dives. Flutter has surprising velocity. You never imagined burnt rock as alpine wildflower meadows, orange and blue, paintbrush and rue. Only vague, far hills resemble a hard desert revisited. The road is washed out so you gush, resort to obvious metaphor, your fair and bare earth as a woman, her curves into other states. She is under the weather, blushes unhealthy green, threatens to break up a marriage of bleached tan and casino tintinnabulation, two altered states made for each other.
Too much relief, too much scale in green. That was the point here, lack of scale. It was about crude mountains, a bad sketch, or clumsy crayon splotches. But you still have an ocean that defies reference, one that bends baselines upward, can take you up a two-thousand-foot arc before you catch the ruse. Ocean? The flat blue is even more wide open. It has a peculiar ability to stack miles over itself, negotiable to denizens with unbreakable pressure plates at the bottom, many still unknown, reliant on contracts with fiery fissures. If you had a camera down there, the feed might resemble your first desert dawn. Rock, and spiky shapes, intense space, shaded differently.
Compare oceans. You'll take a two thousand foot arc over a forty foot swell. A desert ridge could give you a hundred-mile view, and the blue ocean gives a twelve-mile horizon. But they both share a degree of wonder, or wanderlust, even despair, the only entities capable of filling that much open space. So where to now? The angle of Interstate 15 in your window, red lights stuck to the eave. There's no point to this wander, yet you had one when you left, now lost in a golden sweep swept past to get to another one, and the map promised more. But you're always halfway up a desert road, give or take, and Zen is a lesser road to ruin, need to pick one. Caught the forecast: cloudy. Where you were between roads, between thoughts. You miss that drought.
So you leave concussive Arizona and run to drought-plagued El Paso. Except lead-gray rain follows, the same indelible mud you disowned. The locals thank you, buy you drinks. Must be a trick, though you take the offer. It will take a mighty effort to break this drought. If it rains in the Dark North it's par, the long, cleansing pall. If six winter weeks pass without rain, talk of "drought" begins. If it rains in the desert, it ceases tomorrow. If tomorrow, it ceases the next day. If next day, then next week. If next week, it's personal. No drought over your head, only a cloud cult. You command it to multiply on the nearest reservoir.
"Don't begrudge us a little rain, tree dweller," Ned says. He is painting a tall canvas when you show up, a fantastical, interwoven stream of souls and shapes. "What is it?" "A totem." "Didn't recognize it." "It's upside-down." He is on a surge, and his bunker is strewn with unfinished canvases, sketches and notes. "First rain in almost a year. I should buy you a drink." And smudges of gray and warm beer start to seep in. The desert is self-sufficient and lean, annoyed by this embarrassment of riches, shed clumsily in torrents at the bottom of nameless arroyos.
"I make rain," you told Ned. "I should turn pro." "Raise the shaker and do a dance, is that it?" "No, it follows me." You're drinking the bell curve, but not over the top; no need to turn drought into a flood. But thoughts are coursing, like radar swirls on the weather channel, streams and blotches, melted fractals, a Pollock throwdown harmless at a distance, except when the war special comes on, and a sandstorm pounds tank columns caught by wind in excess of blind faith. Desert rain follows. You will bring this drought to its knees.
At the height of your powers you turn back to Nevada, realm of a million variations on tan, but your cloud cult got there first. You note a few changes when they break. Not sure what to make of butterflies and tandem power dives. Flutter has surprising velocity. You never imagined burnt rock as alpine wildflower meadows, orange and blue, paintbrush and rue. Only vague, far hills resemble a hard desert revisited. The road is washed out so you gush, resort to obvious metaphor, your fair and bare earth as a woman, her curves into other states. She is under the weather, blushes unhealthy green, threatens to break up a marriage of bleached tan and casino tintinnabulation, two altered states made for each other.
Too much relief, too much scale in green. That was the point here, lack of scale. It was about crude mountains, a bad sketch, or clumsy crayon splotches. But you still have an ocean that defies reference, one that bends baselines upward, can take you up a two-thousand-foot arc before you catch the ruse. Ocean? The flat blue is even more wide open. It has a peculiar ability to stack miles over itself, negotiable to denizens with unbreakable pressure plates at the bottom, many still unknown, reliant on contracts with fiery fissures. If you had a camera down there, the feed might resemble your first desert dawn. Rock, and spiky shapes, intense space, shaded differently.
Compare oceans. You'll take a two thousand foot arc over a forty foot swell. A desert ridge could give you a hundred-mile view, and the blue ocean gives a twelve-mile horizon. But they both share a degree of wonder, or wanderlust, even despair, the only entities capable of filling that much open space. So where to now? The angle of Interstate 15 in your window, red lights stuck to the eave. There's no point to this wander, yet you had one when you left, now lost in a golden sweep swept past to get to another one, and the map promised more. But you're always halfway up a desert road, give or take, and Zen is a lesser road to ruin, need to pick one. Caught the forecast: cloudy. Where you were between roads, between thoughts. You miss that drought.
