"Jill"

[dune]

I head past Vegas, I'm past Vegas, north to Overton, and stop for a beer at a bar with a fish on the sign; cold beer is a spiritual revelation in desert heat. Two dust farmers are jawing about inflation as Jill the bar queen glides in from nowhere . . . "In-flaation!" she says. "Like my head when they tell me I'm a pretty girl." She has a natural talent for satire and dirty blonde hair spilling into her impish brown eyes, and I instantly fall in love. I used to want an intellectual goddess with auburn hair who wears cool reading glasses everywhere, and I still do, but mainly my girl, if I ever find her, will get the natural absurdity of all things; she might even suddenly glide out from a door behind some small town desert bar.
......And she's toying with us, the two cranky dust busters and an aimless stray in a pickup truck. Is she the reason I came out here for no reason? But I never stick around long enough to answer these questions when they arise. I tell myself I'll come back when I figure things out; I'm squandering this freedom. I head out and roam a trail through a gap out to a spiky jumbled peak at the edge of the Mojave, swathed in dark whiskey amber as another breathless dusk sets in, then it's back into town, but by then Jill is gone.
......The next day I head out to the mesa, where I'm buzzed by an airplane roaring down, twenty feet over the truck. Was that you, Tony? I follow the cliff above Virgin River's thin marsh and mangled badlands, into another long, bright drift-- until a massive trench appears out of space and heat. Then I see another one, directly in line, notched in the far side of the cliff rim's concave bend. And I sit awhile, utterly mystified, and take a pull of whiskey. Blink several times.
......How to explain this spectacle? Someone came out here and excavated thousands of tons of rock and soil for no good reason whatsoever, deep into the sun-blasted ground. And as I ponder this crazy vision, I'm convinced it could only have been born in the Nevada desert-- the only zone with the right combination of unfenced space and raw sculpture to such massive proportions that it inspired this massive exhibit of its negative . . . the Anti-Sculpture. I try to picture how it looks from ten thousand feet up, like some big sky cleaver came down to notch a random desert ledge in perfect symmetry. Makes no sense and seems about right.
......Back in town it's a madhouse night at the bar with a fish sign. Jill is back, working the loud scene with two other harried servers, but I hardly recognize her; the noise changes everything. I try to get in a word, but catch some drunken heat from a guy wearing a muscle shirt beside me. I'm not sure what he wants; his speech booms and slurs, semi-coherently, so I slip out into the hot, dry night. I can always come back later when I figure things out. Except I never do.

[sasha]

really really like this vignette - so real, so mundane, so human - the little details, the guy in the muscle shirt (tattooed up the wazoo, I'll wager), the image of the cool redhead in reading glasses, the desert landscape - yep, fine stuff. Bravo!

[dune]

Thanks sasha. True story too. Even the part about the airplane ('Tony" was a roommate of mine in Vegas for awhile, and he had his own plane).

I learned later that the massive trenches I found on the mesa were a work of "land art" by a Nevada-based artist named Michael Heizer (and crew) called "Double Negative."
http://doublenegative.tarasen.net/double-negative/

Bizarre... Couldn't believe my eyes.