A World On A String

[pop_rocks]

yeah man!
i remember the cedear fires
i knew this guy who manned the site near palomar as a caretaker and he would make extra money selling wood he cleared out of the backcountry on the side
/buy it where you burn it
and there is nothing like the smell of a good cedar wood fire!

this was at the edge of an abandoned cemetery we found once in the desert
you coud tell someone maintained some of the sites but most of it was overgrown and forgotten
some of that chaparral has been there for decades
the best times to go hunt for cool sht is after a fire or a rain

 

[Jericho Mile]

yeah man!
i remember the cedear fires
i knew this guy who manned the site near palomar as a caretaker and he would make extra money selling wood he cleared out of the backcountry on the side
/buy it where you burn it
and there is nothing like the smell of a good cedar wood fire!

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some of that chaparral has been there for decades
the best times to go hunt for cool sht is after a fire or a rain
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this was at the edge of an abandoned cemetery we found once in the desert
you coud tell someone maintained some of the sites but most of it was overgrown and forgotten

I have not been back since summer ‘20. I’d not have left if it were not for the amount of humanoids who live in Southern California. Truly the best climate all way around in the world. A special place. Always home. I just can not do it anymore. Thought I’d never leave it. There was a time where I refused to live east of the 5 though…then ended up in the mountains once beach life turned destructive to my scene of brothers.

Most my old friends are gone now. That flow of juice ran its course. Misadventures. I’m not all sentimental about the past or cup hands of nostalgia….but occasionally you know that stuff flashes…how memory works subjectively based in emotions….then I come back to my more pragmatist perspective….and on I go. Like a machine. Like nature. Like the force.

The backcountry of San Diego County is where I had to reinvent myself. It’s where I started running mountains. Into my 18th year of this journey. I have left ashes on two of the peaks. People ashes. Blow away they did. I run on not thinking about anything much. High desert is my favorite terrain…the best place for me. Got to the point where I needed more of it. I ran my old mountains into the ground. The mountains knew more than me. They pushed me to go.

The Gila is magic. I trained…dedicated everything to get this far. I can not explain it to anyone. People talk about having to believe. I just don’t believe…I have to be shown…and that makes it a much more dedicated path. The climbs out of and descents into deep holes. Breathing that in. Suffering it until it stops being suffering and becomes something else. That’s magic. Those states.

^ On a fire on the Gila…holding the map upside down…fucking around living like kings…Laguna Hotshots…circa 2003

My dear brother would have been 57 today. No guts No glory

 

[pop_rocks]

the maps only upside down until you put on your goggles

hahahha!! thats a classic pic man
so you and your brother were on the same fire crew? thats wild and i bet you two shared a lot of good and bad times out there (you guys look like trouble! and add in dry brush)
nature is the best teacher and that kicks ass you got into back country running
i once heard the best medicine is salt water: the sea, sweat or tears will get you through anything
sometimes you just have to embrace the suck
/ but those are the times you remember them most

so are you getting any clouds in nm? its been raining cats and dogs here but its a nice change and we can sure use the water

 

[Jericho Mile]

Sister 11. Light flowers out of vacuum…jarred her up with a nectarine peel for a few hours…she filled back out. This expression was more grapefruity in aroma…tend to see her as tropical in nature. She didn’t have the best place in the screen…but I don’t think it mattered much…she would have yielded light in any position in that garden. I’m running on her this day.

^ State bird. The Greater Roadrunner. The barrio footprint is a part of its territory. I watched it eat one of my worms and then snails off a side wall of the house. In Spring it’ll be raiding Sparrow nests and killing lizards. They’ll eat anything they can swallow basically. Straight predators. Terror Birds. This one sneaks up on me often enough. Sunning itself on my rocks…killing shit when it’s not. Male of Female unknown.

Pruned up the Apricot Tree. I don’t like sawing from a ladder. A couple cuts I had to make from up in the tree. Not high off the ground but high enough to break me. These battery powered chainsaws are perfect for this type of limbing. Quiet and light. Beats the hell out of pull starting a 2 stroke saw up in a tree.

 

[Jericho Mile]

Required reading. The one book written in 2018 speculated that the Mimbrẽnos artists took inspiration from Datura induced trances. After reading it and seeing their process and evidence…I’d say that can not be ignored. Datura flowers in their life cycles…their main pollinators the Hawk Moth…and descriptions of the portals (indicated usually by white circles in the middle of the bowls/plates)….are represented often and through different artists in different periods in the pottery painting.

I am a child. Green Egg’s and Ham. It all starts there.

 

[Jericho Mile]

Americano down on the ranch. I’ve probably taken pictures of this ranch truck a 100X. It’s not mine. It’s my friend’s. Still sitting in the same place it was 3 years ago. He’ll never get to it. Guy is over in Tucson right now learning to fly. More projects than he can ever finish. I’d just get this mechanically drivable sound and leave it like it is.

Considering opening up the ranch garden again. Grow a fresh crop. I may not have the time…but I keep going down and looking it over and mauling the bones of desire. Takes a lot of work and time.

* Real World. I don’t participate in politics. Never have really. My views on politics have not changed since I was a kid in the Marine Corps (before that even high school)….government is authoritarian by nature…no matter an ideology. It’s not my friend. It’s a necessary evil.

Elections and Parties are just a dog and pony show for the citizens to aid in the illusion that they are not being farmed like livestock birth to death…or that they have real choices concerning the operations of the reservation. I’m just happy my reservation has a casino and is therefore affluent. Golden bars.

This time round it cost me the job I was going to take on in April with the Forest Service. The trimming of Federal Agencies has affected me. They cut the Trail positions on the Gila National Forest. I lost my job before I got started The agency pretends to cut spending by nixing a few thousand jobs nationwide. Standard Operating Procedure. Build a wall. Take a wall down.

O well….I didn’t lose my Fire job. I feel loved

 

[Jericho Mile]

Psycho the barrio bird. Visiting again. The snail had less than 20 seconds before being smashed on rocks and consumed. Might be a male…the roadrunner…because it enjoys showing off its catches. Runs right up to me just about then jumps a fence before smashing the snail up.

 

[Jericho Mile]

Trail to off trail to trail…keeping it mostly around the 7200’ contour. Some cool rock outcroppings…the normal sharp things….still no rattlesnakes even though temps are favorable on the south and west slopes…no rattles did I hear. I looked hard for artifacts. Found none.

^ Rat nest. Their defenses are severe. These wood rats are supposed to be good eating. They eat a lot of Juniper berries…guess the flavor transfers to the flavor of their meat. I can’t say I’ve eaten one though. I mean I would but just have not.

^ This rock I believe was used in somebody’s ritual…maybe a prayer circle. I speculate this because the rocks going around as a ring were placed there not naturally occurring. Some had been moved after…but where they had formed a ring is still obvious.

* the bigger rock in the ring was balanced on two smaller rocks so that it sat flush.

You may or may not be surprised to know people do wander out into nature to communicate with the whatever. I mean I was drawn to this rock just because of where it was. I notice stuff like that. It’s in a cool spot. West facing aspect.

** I was navigating off of that stout wind blown Juniper tree that you can see in a couple of the pictures. Getting to that tree took me to the bottle then to the rock. How it works

^ Before I found the “prayer circle rock” I found this bottle just like this. It’s a modern empty Olive Oil bottle that somebody brought way up the mountain and way off a trail. The bottle lead me to the prayer rock. I doubt the bottle contained Olive Oil when it was brought up. People practice all kinds of things in the privacy of the mountains. I can only observe and speculate.

Not easy terrain to navigate. Nothing is flat. Everything is sharp and loose footing. In summer (winter is the best season for this type stuff) when the grass is green and tall it’s sketchy due to hidden rattlesnakes in the grass. Climbing up rocks can put the snakes at face level…so I mean you have to really be on guard watching where your body parts are going. I do not see many people just busting out and going far from trails….hunters sometimes…but that’s about it that I’ve ever seen.

I like it. The coolest things to see are usually way out where

 

[Jericho Mile]

A collection of stretch push pull roll rotate….my sore state of everyday existence. Every day starts with a hobble gimp or limp

Weighed myself. 155 pounds. For years I was keeping it down to 140 deliberately through diet mostly. I didn’t run any more or less then.

The 2019-2021 camping years got me down to 135 pounds…existing mostly on dry storage camp food. Crackers and peanut butter…pickles…bread…tuna etc by then I was not solely on a plant based diet….i was on Eat Sleep Shit Run diet. Rinse and Repeat…get on it get up it get around it get down it

Now I put on winter fat weight…that would be me at 155 pounds…but with my enlightenment towards the bar workouts (the ones I talked of already) for over the last year I’ve kind of bulked up on my core. I have more power at a heavier weight…in the same way as say…a fighter has more power at a heavier weight.

What’s the trade off? More weight on joints? About it…doesn’t affect endurance at all. In my frame it’s good to have some storage concerning endurance.

I can tell when my body turns to burning fat reserves. There is a state of false hunger that occurs then reoccurs before it happens…it’s a mind lie…I know this because it hits when I am grinding up a long climb…and goes away when I top out. It’s the mind complaining about the grind. Happens too anytime I feel like I’m over a run…mind makes excuses. The body is not really deprived…everybody’s body has fat reserves to burn….but the mind will panic because the going is tough…and try to protect itself via false signals/lies. I’m offering a situational generalization here…but I’ve been far into body depletion many many times. I know what true body depletion feels like.

At 59 and still able to bulk up over the course of a year or so and maintain it even during heavy mileage weeks in hot summer season is what is important to me here. Means my body is not near used up yet. It still has the ability to be trained. It’s hammered on….yes…but I’d be disappointed in myself years terrain if it were to be…not. Hard living is hard living.

 

[Jericho Mile]

^ That’s a pretty wild night

^ Finished up this book. There’s a lot of this pottery out there in collections. Prolific artists. Here I am taking pictures of pictures. Books take up too much space.

…got this one to here. Over it. Stays where it is. If they have their way with me…they’ll go on forever…sometimes I have to walk away

My humanoids. They leave their shit everywhere.

 

[pop_rocks]

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^ That’s a pretty wild night


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^ Finished up this book. There’s a lot of this pottery out there in collections. Prolific artists. Here I am taking pictures of pictures. Books take up too much space.


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…got this one to here. Over it. Stays where it is. If they have their way with me…they’ll go on forever…sometimes I have to walk away

My humanoids. They leave their shit everywhere.

haha im loving it brother! that first pictograph is like you are reading my dreams
#2-#3 look just as wild and these things are priceless
so whats the deal if you are bucking brush and come across something? is it finders keepers or of you are on some indina land do you turn it over to the tribe?
once my sisster sent me a pic of a big old piece of turquoise they came across, and i was like sweet can i chack it out
they were like yeah its still in the desert somewhere
sometimes things are where they belong

i like the painting, is that sppray apint and oil?!

 

[pop_rocks]

i dont know where to post this so i will post this here! easy kine my friend!!

 

[Jericho Mile]

haha im loving it brother! that first pictograph is like you are reading my dreams
#2-#3 look just as wild and these things are priceless
so whats the deal if you are bucking brush and come across something? is it finders keepers or of you are on some indina land do you turn it over to the tribe?
once my sisster sent me a pic of a big old piece of turquoise they came across, and i was like sweet can i chack it out
they were like yeah its still in the desert somewhere
sometimes things are where they belong

i like the painting, is that sppray apint and oil?!

Anything you find on Federal land that is over 50 years old (I believe) is considered an artifact. Even a beer bottle. You’re supposed to leave it. Pottery pieces are pretty common and I generally leave them. I do have a few pieces but I know where I took them from and will eventually return them.

I know where there are old cliff dwellings..in certain parts of the Gila just about any cliff facing South with a water source near…you can find them. The government does not advertise those (except for the Gila Cliff Dwellings which is Park Service responsibility and set up like a Hollywood set for tourist to walk through)…..and I don’t mess around those…some of them are dangerous to get to.

The pottery shards/sherds I find are from the Mimbrẽnos people…those people are long gone. There is no tribe. Speculation is that a long period of drought forced the society to move. Further speculation is that those people integrated with other peoples to become something else. They didn’t disappear into the twilight. They moved on. Some went East to the Rio Grande some West into river country of SE AZ…a good many went South into Chihuahua river country…..the desert is all about cyclic droughts. You can trace it back 1000’s of years. That’s climate change.

Not Apache who came along much later and whose language shows they migrated from the North. Apache and Navajo are closely related. Hopi and Zuni are more related to the Mimbrẽnos people. The Zuni have a Rez North of here a couple hundred miles. The Hopi live on a Rez within the Navajo Nation (even though they are not related…the US government often mixed tribes into one Rez as a matter of convenience. Often those people did not like each other historically…even certain bands of the same tribes had big issues amongst each other)….anyway the Apaches were not farmers like the preexisting culture. They were mobile raiders. You don’t find big Apache settlements until they were forced onto reservations.

* this stuff I’m doing now is on paper using Sharpie markers. Sometimes I use Isopropyl alcohol to fade out/blend the ink for a watercolor effect. The one above has some of that effect.

I was reading my book outside in my driveway yesterday….had a woman drive by then drive back…rolled down her window to tell me she’d taken pictures of our painted trash can before and wanted to know who painted it. She said she had an art degree (whatever that means) and loved the work $10,000 it’s all yours! Send me to Nepal or Peru I’ll run for a year or so and paint you some more.

Silver City has a sizable art community. Like I’ve stated before : certain people would like to have a southern version of Santa Fe. Historically speaking Silver and a Santa Fe are at odds. Santa Fe being the State Capital and Silver City being far away from it….a bunch of politics. Ever notice how there’s often issues between the South and North all over the world? I know in Italy that the North is uppity towards the South. Kind of the same shit we’re the hicks. Santa Fe is aristocratic.

 

[pop_rocks]

i did not know that federal land 50y rule and i might have some treasures that i will need to return
i love scavenging around old places and every now and then you find something you just feel connected to
/that or its too cool to leave behind
these arent historical sites but when i was a kid i lived on the east coast for a while and we would find all kinds of cool stuff on old battle fields and places like that
im not too up to speed on which tribes lived where outside of my local area, we had coastal indians who lived in the san diego area but there arent a lot of artifacts laft outside of the museums
every now and then you might come across a archaeological site (easy to recognise from the grib strings they lay out) but i leave those alone out of respect for the science
me and the ex once wantd to stop by a plce called cloud city? (i would have to chekc with her on the location ) but because of covid it was closed
it sucks about how the gov treated a lot of native americans and some rez are just toxic places
ive never thought that alcohol would affect certain markers like a watercolor! that is rad
did she offer to buy the art piece (aka your trash can?)
i used to be somewhat artistic and had friends who would work in all kinds of mediums
one friend would make these amazing wire and paper mache sculptures that she would sell for $$$
here in cali its the opposite where the north are the hillbillies and the south are the glitterati
i sort of walk the line between the two but i can tell you this is not the claifornia i grew up in
if it wasnt for my mom i would move to the desert in a heart beat

 

[Jericho Mile]

 

[pop_rocks]

oh man! that is awesome and i love that you showed the evolution of the piece!
i really like the color palate and your work has lots of visual texture
the details exquisite and do i detect a taste of the south west in this?

 

[Jericho Mile]

oh man! that is awesome and i love that you showed the evolution of the piece!
i really like the color palate and your work has lots of visual texture
the details exquisite and do i detect a taste of the south west in this?

I look at the stuff on my phone as I go along. I can see things differently on the digital screen than in analog…yeah something like that. When I first started spray painting cardboard pieces a few years ago….the stuff is big and meant to be seen from a distance…that’s really when the phone screen pictures helped. To see it small…easier to stare at.

Smaller stuff translates the same as bigger stuff though…useful too…sometimes it takes me a while to find my way…looking at it on my phone in the middle of the night…maybe…yeah ok…I see where I want to go. About as much planning that goes into it. People are more used to phone screen these days. It’s understandable.

…and what I have available marker wise. I use up markers fast. Run out of colors or they are so wasted they just aren’t worth using. What’s on hand is sometimes what gets used…solely on availability.

Sharpies I can buy cheap in town. Color choices are pretty basic. Can’t really blend marker ink without alcohol (which so far I can only semi control)…and if I want art grade markers/graffiti paint I have to go online. I could spend all kinds of money in an online store any given day. The Bombing Science warehouse is a fantasy place for that shit. Nothing like boxes of colorful toxic cans of spray paint arriving at my door! Always loved the smell of vinyl, glue, marker ink, and spray paint. Gross I know. I wear a respirator and spray outdoors in the challenging winds that blow constantly here. Part of the style comes from local mountain winds.

But my point is….I’m just a jackass that uses what I have on hand. I need cardboard…I hit store recycle bins. Markers are at Walmart (the big evil monster…but I’ll say from being on the road hungry Walmart…Dollar General have been blessings when I needed dry store calories)……everywhere sells the most important color : BLACK Sharpies ….also art paper tablets can be bought at Walmart on sale often enough

…what? Yeah man from the ground up. I’m living like a pauper to live this lifestyle….or just a marauder taking what there is available….painting off the fat of land. Cheap or recyclable basic shit. Not planning or even thinking I’m going to sell art. I paint on cardboard not canvas. If it gets complicated I’m not interested. It’s like when I train….same…mindless places to go…the real world….all kinds of stuff comes out of that world. Like dreamland.

I tell myself all kinds of shit. I don’t know what everybody else does.

* I only started with the Sharpies and paper because I’m way low on spray paint and marker paint…and this stuff was around. Then I got into it because it’s different spins on technique and my style of doing things. I never ordered more paint. But I will come back to it…and bigger pieces eventually. Soon I won’t do any art. I don’t do it during summer.

Prolific or Compulsive: walls are covered…there are stacks of painted cardboard leaning on about any available space….I don’t know how many. This all started so we could cover our walls.

When we moved from California we gave away to friends or sold almost everything. Hotrod sold skate collection given away surf boards given away all furniture give away grow gear given away chainsaws/gear given away etc

The amount of shit (I’ll speak only for me not wife) I had collected over the years was over indulgence. I didn’t recognize it anymore. Things. Material bullshit things. Things money just poured into and became something else.

Fuck it all. Now it’s cardboard

 

[pop_rocks]

that is quite collection nmy man! and i see some pieces that catch my eye as well as other stuff i know friends would like
thats the thing about art, what you think is just ok will be a treasure to someone else
the urban art scene here in san diego is strong
i met this guy once (https://obeygiant.com/) and there was another guy who called himself ape that were super talented
some of it is just tagging or lame graffiti but you will find some sweet places where someone has obviously put time into creating a beautiful work of art in sometimes crazy places
/ill post pics soon
i hear you about how looking at something from different views can help with your creative process and its sometimes it can be hard to stop thinking this could be better of that could be this way
its art man and its all about expression
i am digging where you are coming from brother

 

[Jericho Mile]

Bars. I’ve worn a groove out in the last year.5 ….these things keep me sore. Not sure if I am any more limber than when I started…but stretching on them pops my entire body. Core strength exercises are the way to go. My day started here.

Marauder of Resources. I’m telling you. The power company is trimming trees by the trailhead to clear their lines. Chipping up Ponderosa Pines, Alligator Junipers, and Pinyon Pines and dumping the mulch in a horseshoe shaped turn out….ran past it today…then came back after my run and collected two bags of mulch. It’s a Bonanza strike !!!! So easy on this Forest to score everything I need to build the Barrio Footprint. Heavy ass bags after running two hours…plus bars…it’s an ass kicker. I didn’t score boulders today. Still need more of those too.

^ The Local Line Up…at 8100’…looking west past Gomez and Eighty Mountain Peaks…further past Bear and McComas Mountain Peaks….to the farthest ridge. That’s Mnt Graham in Arizona. No snow on it…that one is over 10,000’….we had no winter at all. Maybe two weeks total. It’s going to be 70 degrees here tomorrow. It was 60some thing today. Loving it…clear and in power sun. I have to have this. I love elevation sun

Somebody lost their hoodie coming off an old mine road. Probably in a side by side. I find all kinds of shit that falls out of those things. People drive up this road at night to party. A surfing hoodie in New Mexico. Well…I still run in cut off board shorts….so whatever

My neighbor…Fina made this for me. Green Chile…on corn tortillas or on anything…eggs in the morning. I eat spice about every day. Fina is around 70 lived on this hill all her life. Big family…although she lost her husband just over a year ago. She’s not in the best of health either…but the family put in new floor for her…and she talked to god and made chile. Christ knows how many pain killers she’s on…but she’s been making this stuff all her life. She went extra hot this round. Primo.

 

[pop_rocks]

me encanta! green chilis are awesome and that would be a great topping/ filling for just about anything
it sounds like she is a good neighbor
that is a cool hoodie and its always interesting what you find on the trail or around campsites
/like wtf, is there a guy walking around with one shoe right now?
that mulch looks like gold like you said, i have a big ol pick em up truck and would be loading up the bed
/im thinking of redoing my moms front yard
so i was able to find a couple pics on my phone of some of the urban art here
this first one is just nice tags, like you would see on the side of a box car

this one is more artistic

unfortunately i could not find the pics of the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow"
there is a shrine where someone was killed and i guess over time people have come and added to it remembering thier loved ones
there is another spot i know where there are some serious murals
and for shits and giggles, this is me in a painted cornfield off route 66 where they have those cars sticking up out of the ground

/i have pics of them but they are just sloppy confections of random paint now
im like who paints corn plants? but the pic came out ok and makes me feel like a rock star
/we all took pics here and mine came out the worst btw

im thinking of getting some thai food, i need something vegitarian and spicy as f'k