macrame as money; or doing what i always wanted to do

so, i spent today in prescott hanging out in the old town square. making macrame. i relearned to make necklaces, making 3 in about two and half hours. i would like to get it down to about a half hour per necklace. i was just enjoying the weather and environment, hanging out. kind of waiting for food not bombs, but mostly just enjoying the day.

i made two basic necklaces and one fancy one. while i was making the fancy one, a lady came up to me and chatted me up. she wanted to know if i knew where she could buy a hemp bracelet. i pointed at myself and smiled. i quoted her $5 for a bracelet. she seemed pleased with that. i gave her my number and she said she'll call tomorrow.

so then i started making bracelets. bracelets are very quick and easy. i can probably do 4 and hour. i made two and set up ten more. while i was working on the second on another person walked up and asked if i would make him one. i told him that i sell them for $5 and he asked if i would be here tomorrow.

of course i would. why? because there is some craft fair going on tomorrow at the square and later on a square dance! heaven calls. i love square dancing. now i will just need to find someone to dance with... confidence be with me.

so, tomorrow i will probably do more of the same. i have 10 more bracelets set up and ready to be knotted and i think 9 necklaces. so, hopefully i get dont with most of that tomorrow and sell at least the two that were spoken for. sweet. maybe i can sell more at the craft fair.

i guess, for explanations sake, i will tell the story. when i first came out to oregon i was making necklaces and bracelets (i called them necklai and bracelai, respectively, at the time). i had a cache of about 20 of each, and i would regularly go down to the saturday market and the waterfront with the intention to sell them, but i could never work up the courage to lay out my wares for people to judge. i was way to critical of myself and petrified of someone making fun of my stuff.

now, i think that i am over that. i can just sit in my chair and have my stuff on my little table. let people come and go as they please, buy as they wish. i think that i could make some money doing this, and for that i am happy. we'll see what happens after tomorrow though. i like this place.

the way to prescott / phoenix sucks

well, tucson is now just a recent memory. i left this morning around 9am or so, headed for phoenix. i had done some research online this morning and found an infoshop in phoenix and a free guided nature walk. so things were looking up. from tucson i got on the expressway just fine and got to phoenix in record time.

phoenix was large and sprawling, i wasnt into it from the start. i went to the first place i knew to in the city, the infoshop. the infoshop, called "the tribe" was just a small brick house on a real busy street next to an ace hardware. there was nothing on the exterior to make a person believe it was actually an infoshop. there were two cars in the driveway that had the sunscreens on them, as if they had been there a real long time. it was discouraging.

i circled a couple of times and then assumed it was dead. so then i was stuck. no good info, no people known, and a big hot city. i drove around the city a bit, got lost, and then found some internet. there i confirmed that phoenix wasnt for me and decided to head out. i went to the nature walk that was a bit outside of the city. i got there and the counter person said that the free guided tour had been canceled but i could pay $7 for a self guided tour. wha? i thought about sneaking in, but i was the only person there and i had already given myself away. discouraged with phoenix altogether, i left.

i headed toward the living history pioneer museum, it sounded interesting. and it was only a couple miles north of the nature walk place. i got there and my god it was dead! living history my ass. there was no one else there and it was just some adobe walls with wild west saloon scenes painted on them. again, discouraging. i turned around and got on the highway.

which highway, carefree highway, headed toward wickenton or something. i am a sucker for things, so when i saw the stanton ghost town turnoff, i took it. i would love to see a real abandoned town, a ghost city like fort ord. it was about 20 miles from the highway on a dirt and gravel road. and when i finally got there? tons of people! it wasnt a ghost town at all, there was a small community of rv folks that lived there and panned for gold. i walked around the "old" buildings (they had all been refurbished and people lived in them) and it was free to stay the night there if i wanted. i thought about it, but just left.

i was on my way to prescott. steev and greta told me prescott would be better, it would be cooler (in temperature) and cooler (in general). i got my hopes up, and so far they havent been let down. it is a mountain community, that reminds me of portland pared down and crumbled together with crown point indiana. i went to the downtown square where a lie band was setting up and got some wifi right there.

the infoshop is just a block or so from the downtown square, so i walked to that. it was closed but looked wonderful. it had a free porch outside and a little stage outside, a bookstore and infoshop inside. they had an information board and and sheet of resources for free food, shelters, and other resources! how great. ecstatic i walked back to the square.

there i just walked around for a bit, the band was still setting up. i got a free weekly paper and then just sat and breathed it in for a moment, enjoyed it. then i got back online to find a bar! or something else to do tonight. i found a place called sundances place. the only punk/dive bar in prescott. tonight is 80's night and they have cheap beer and wifi.

i could like this place. since i bypassed phoenix, and this place seems nice, i will try to stay here through the weekend. try to slow down again, sit in the park and catch up on knotting cord. hang around the infoshop, maybe catch a show this weekend. the weather is nice, high 70's for the next week or so, and it just seems real laid back and nice.

yay.

tucson.

as i drove into tucson, i put on a desert rat cd "trickle in the canyon." the music is all about his time living in tucson and things that took place in tucson...probably in the mid-90's. it is some pretty good music and i dont listen to it enough. i wish that i had more of his albums on cd.

anyway. this is my second day here, i came in and called my friend steev who i am staying with. he was working when i called so i went and checked out the botanical garden. i have become pretty good at sneaking into botanical gardens. three for three.

and it was pretty amazing there. the various fruits that can grow in this climate is amazing. grapefruit, oranges, pomegranite, figs, and more i am sure. they also had mulberry trees, and a vegetable garden with squash, tomato, tomatillo, beans, and other things. it gave me some hope for living in the desert. something i have been toying with, and will extrapolate on later.

then i went downtown and walked around a bit. then steev called me and i went over to his house and we chatted for a bit. i dont know steev that well, we met around 2003 in portland and were friendly toward each other, but never really hung out. so far it has been pretty nice catching up with him and his partner, greta.

later we rode bikes! it was the first time i had been on a bike for quite awhile, and i was riding an extracycle. apparently they were created here. it was also a cruiser, and it was nice. we rode to a mexican fo place where we got some burritos and chatted more. then he and greta had things to do, so i went to the hip area and had some beers at the sultry wench.

this morning steev and i went hiking in the sonora desert. i like hiking, it is something i will try to do in many places. we left around 7am, to beat the heat (it was already around 80), and got to the trail head around 7:30. then we just hiked up through this wash (a wash is a dry river bed that floods during the monsoons) called kings canyon trail. we saw lizards, and deer, and ground squirrels. we heard locusts.

near the top of the trail we saw and went up to an abandoned mine shaft. apparently they are all around this place, but it was sealed off rather well and we couldnt get in it. oh how i wish we could have. we had been out an hour by that time, so we turned back on a different trail.

the trails and the desert are odd things. it isnt like a forest. there are a number of different cacti (some growing up to 30 feet tall and living for an average of 150-200 years) the names of which escape me. and there are some small trees and other bushes, but it is rather sparse. you can blaze your own paths very easily because most things grow low to the ground so you can see far in front of you. but the wash was like walking on the beach, and that isnt the easiest thing.

cacti are really amazing things. something i didnt know is that the saguaro cactus (the typical cactus that you think of) produces fruit. and people eat it! they make syrup and wine, and apparently they are very good. there is a bunch of stuff around the desert that i never knew about things that are living and producing, the things that people lived off of still exist. it was really amazing to see that. (unfortunately i forgot to take my camera today...)

anyway. i am learning alot about this part of the world and the desert in general. i still dont think i could live here, but it is nice to learn that it is possible. then we came back to the city and had some iced coffee's at revolutionary grounds, a neat little coffee shop. and then steev went to work and i went off to explore on my own. unfortunately it was too hot to do very much, i walked around downtown for a bit. and then sat in a park for awhile knotting cord.

now i am chilling out indoors for the heat of the day, wiling away the hours. i am planning on leaving tomorrow, headed for phoenix. i probably wont stay there long...

of fences, cops, and imagination

so, something that i havent been mentioning at all is the border control. the fence. the checkpoints. i havent been mentioning it by design, i felt that it would deserve its own post and a bit of a spotlight.

when i came back from tijuana the line to get into the united states was about two hours long. there wasnt a line to get in. the line for cars looked to be about the same, again, no line to get in. the fence at the tijuana border was monstrous. it was about twenty feet high, and had barbed wire at the top...just in case someone made it there.

after leaving san diego, on the two lane highways as close to the border as possible, i started seeing a lot of cops. at least i thought they were cops. the cars looked like them, the pickup trucks looked like mini-jails. it was the border patrol. they dont pull you over for speeding, i learned that quickly, and it doesnt seem they do much of anything else but stir up dust and congregate at local businesses.

i mean that literally. some of the pick-up jails were towing behind them four old tires chained together, and it seemed that the only reason was to stir up dust and shake anyone from their migration path. at random points i would see congregation of ten or so vehicles just sitting on the side of the road, whenever i went through little towns all of the restaurants had congregations of border patrol vehicles outside. randomly in the middle of nowhere a border patrol vehicle would just be sitting empty, as a deterrent.

i also had to go through a "checkpoint" somewhere along the way. it wasnt much, the idea had me on edge. i am alone in a pickup truck and you cant see well into the back, and what you can see is a bed and other living things. i felt for sure coming up to it i was going to be searched. but when i got there, i was just waved on through, with barely a second look.

all of this smoke, the dusting, empty vehicles, congregating, and at the one point where the border patrol people can actually check the vehicles, they are just waved through, everyone that i could see was just waved through. what a job.

and then there is the fence. i wanted to travel as close to the border to see it, i was sure it had been built and i wanted to see the monstrosity, i wanted to write about the new wall, the new symbol of fascism. but i didnt see it for a long time, i was expecting the twenty foot high tijuana wall, but when i did see it, it was just off it the distance, it looked like a low lying snake. from the road it looked to be about two feet thick, black, and about six feet tall.

but i wasnt very close. the road is far from the border, and i think that is strategic. the southwest is all desert. constructing the road twenty miles from the border makes it that much harder for anyone trying to cross. there is probably some official only access road right along the fence, but i didnt see that either. i did see, dotted along the side of the road, blue bins with large flags that apparently held bottles of water for migrants. i thought that was nice. later i found that the border patrol doesnt pay for those, border activists provide those for the people that need water.

when i did actually see the fence, when the road was closest to the border, it was high desert. it was sand dune desert that you see on the planet tattooine. and i am sure it is epicly hot. once when i was visiting indiana in the summer, i walked on a lake michigan beach barefoot for about 200 feet. when i was done i had huge blisters all across my feet and i couldnt walk for two days. first degree burns for such a small place far from the desert.

i couldnt imagine the hell that a person must endure to make it across the border. but there are alot of people that try. and that just makes me wonder about the hell that exists just across the border.

and it makes me wonder about the border in general. it is just an imaginary line, something that doesnt really exist. it was created in 1853, it is barely 150 years old, and what purpose does it serve? american companies have been moving factories to mexico for cheap labor, and mexicans have been migrating to the us for better jobs. it is a paradigm, something that fences and border patrol will never solve.

i have seen the future.

ruins on the roadside

last night i caught a glimpse of the future, this morning i realized it. the future is casa grande, arizona. or generally, perhaps the american southwest. there are numeruous factors that are driving this future, they include: globalization, water scarcity, biotechnology, global warming, and fear.

last night i was trying to find a place to park and sleep. the landscape out here is flat, aside from distant mountains and clear. there are very few trees, and most of them are under 20' tall. it is kind of a barren wasteland. dotting the two lane highways are burned out homes and businesses, shells of places that were once inhabited.

what exist out here are strip malls, gated communities and desert wastelands. so, i was looking for a place to sleep and i just kept seeing these long walls of gated communities. i would drive to the entrance and see the gate closed, a guard at the gate. i would have to drive on. eventually i gave up. there was a walmart amongst the strip malls and they allow rv's and campers to use their parking lots over night.

another ruins nearby

i went to it, but this one had signs at every row saying "no overnight parking." so i had to leave and keep looking. eventually, behind the home depot, i found a walled community without a gate. i drove into it, but it was hard to distinguish if you could park on the street. there werent very many cars parked on the street and instead of lawns they have rock yards that blend into the sidewalk and sloping sidewalks that blend into the street. that, and it seemed every block and a sheriffs car parked out front.

the one community not gated was the community that all the cops lived in. great. i found a decent looking place just off of a cul-de-sac in that community, i parked and jumped in back. i put up all my "curtains" so it would be harder for anyone to see me. and i slept. not very easily, but whatever.

a jet plane engine?

when i got up in the morning, i dressed and did some hygiene, then left. it was about 9am when i saw the first temperature of the day: 103 degrees. at 9am. it was 107 degrees at 5pm yesterday. then, as i was driving out of town, i got past the last strip mall and there was a field of green, then a field of desert, then a field of desert, the irrigation channels all dry. and it continued to be desert for the next 19 miles. one or two green fields maintaining.

i dont have much hope for the world. the temperatures are rising, what once was green will turn to brown, what once was water will turn to desert, everyone that can will live in a gated and guarded community, and all those people will be businesspeople managing the assets that used to be here but are now in india, china, mexico, wherever corporations can exploit people.

and then there will be the rest of us. scorching in the desert heat, trying to find some shade under a bush, eating ground squirrels and agave nectar, slowly plotting and planning a way back.

magnificent journey part two: june / heading east

well, this is kind of a big deal, the next part of my journey, where it starts to become a little more real. when i left portland my intention, what i told people, was that i would head south and then east. that was my plan, there was no point south at which to turn east, but i knew that the south part would be the easy part.

i lined up two people that i was pretty confident would like to hang out with me in california, which is a pretty easy state as it is. i took my time, enjoyed most of it, and progressively got better at this traveling thing, because i am rusty.

with bradley i was only there a night, i was too hung up on the idea that i was imposing on him. i randomly dropped in and his place was small, i felt bad. even though i am sure he would have loved to have me stay and be able to help me. it was something that i had to get over.

with tiffany, three days and i was feeling pretty good about it. la was too big for me to really feel comfortable, but i felt very welcomed at tiff's and not at all like an imposition. it was cut short because she went to texas. although she did offer for me to stay at her house while she was gone.

ricky was the icing on the cake. it wasnt lined up and i stayed for four days. at no time did i feel like i was burdening them and that was wonderful. there, i felt that i finally had my sea legs and could venture from the shore. although in this analogy the shore is really the ocean and the sea is the land...you figure it out.

and after that i turned east. the practice round is over, i have my game face on, and i am trying not to let my self get in the way of my experience. i worked a whole lot of symbolism up in my head about the importance of turning east. unfortunately i am not able to transcribe it right now...because i have forgotten most of it.

but, now i am on it. i am in arizona for day two. i am doing a better job of moving slower and finding things to do in between people. today i took it slow on the two lane desert highways. it was eerie. i was the only car for miles and miles. i was driving off the road a bit and was stuck in an old lava field for 27 miles on a dirt/lava rock road. i was running low on gas but kept on, willing the truck to the petroglyph monument just so i could find out what a petroglyph was.

things like that. then i sat in a park eating pickles and knotting cord for a couple hours, just to try to pass the sun away. unfortunately that didnt work. when i got back to my truck it had just sucked up all of the sun and the steering wheel and shifter were too hot to touch!

i dont think i could survive down here for a very long time, the heat is simply too oppressive. if it were this hot and there were some trees around, maybe, but this is just desert. i am very glad i never took off to try to live in bisbee when i was younger.

also, my mind is moving faster than my ability to type.

finding my groove, my fun, my life

my new life

so, this journey is supposed to be opening me up to new experiences, the alive me turning off the dead me. part of that is breaking out of habits, giving everything another chance and just really going with the journey and not stunting myself. when i first went to san diego i was only going to stay for a couple of hours. when i saw ricky and we hung out, a couple of days. i talked to steve and he gave me the advice that i should live my life and not hold myself back.

and so i took it.

it turned out to be a great thing. originally i didnt want to stay for this block party, because i felt four days would be too much imposition. but i did stay and it was great. we went to the party, the block party, around 3pm. there wasnt so much going on then, but we bought some cups and wristbands for $10. that ensured you access to the kegs all night long, you just had to stand in the ever growing line. i did that about 3 times, and then had to urinate. the lines to the port-a-potty's were twice as long, so i just walked the two blocks back to the house.

ricky's neighbor and his friend were walking back at the same time, for similar reasons...plus one. to smoke pot! duh, this is ocean beach and this is apparently what happens here. i was invited back to his house to smoke with them, and for whatever reason i followed. if i was going to say no to the pipe, i should have just not gone in.

the last time, before tonight, i smoked pot was november 2003 in miami florida. some people will remember that as the night i came out of a self imposed exile from my family and friends. that night i called my father and made contact for the first time in about nine months, apparently it was a big deal. this time, not so much.

but it was okay. i only took two hits and it was still early enough that i was able to function and get over it. at this point i switched from beer to vodka, and we walked back to the party. there we enjoyed some loud and out of place metal music, a liquor luge, and a swelling crowd.

the liquor luge

let me pause for a moment on the liquor luge, because it is something i have never seen before. it is a block of ice on a wooden stand that is tilted downward. paths are carved out of the top of the ice, from the top to the bottom about an inch deep. party goers go to the liquor luge and one friend pours x amount of liquor from the top and the other friend waits at the bottom with an open mouth. it was a more hilarious thing to watch people try to drink from it, as the night wore on the luge carved deeper and deeper. i never used the luge, but seriously considered it.

more partiness ensued from there, and it all kind of beomes regular party with hazy memory. there were some bands, metal for some reason, and then the last band was reggae. i had my drink on by that time, and my smoke had been on, and i just grooved with the music. i was actually dancing a bit and being in the crowd and not being so self conscious. it was really a good feeling. i dont even like reggae that much but it worked with the moment and i rolled with it. becasue thats what today is all about!

goodbye ob!

then it was 10 and the block party was over. we had to disperse. we went back to the house and ate some food, drank some more beers and then walked off to find the next party. eventually we ended up at a fishbone show on the main street. it was $12 to get in and they had already started so we stood by the back door for awhile and listened. i almost snuck in that way, but i was caught by a bouncer.

then the few of us that remained walked down to the beach around 12:30 and just watched the water roll in, enjoying the night air and the beach and everything. we were there for about an hour and then it was time to call it! we went back to the house and i got out the computer to start typing this but i passed out in the middle of it. then i picked up writing it again today, and my memory of that night is complete. cape mayhem, ob, i will not forget you!

san diego is now a memory.

i spent about 4 days in san diego, never once seeing the sun. the weather was portland winter like without the rain. i drove about 30 miles into some mountains and all of a sudden i am in the southwest. it is like 110 degrees and the heat is pounding down so hard you cant even think.

its crazy.

now i am in calexico, catching my thoughts. leaving san diego wasnt the easiest thing, because i had a great time there. going into it i wasnt sure, had some reservations, and by the end of it i wasnt really ready. everyone there was nice, super nice people, very open and giving, supportive and caring, it was amazing.

after being in the northwest for a spell it really is a shock. the northwest is very pretentious. i didnt really think it so much while i was there, but i always knew. here is a quick round up of some things from san diego that i have thought and may or may not remember. i will have another post later detailing my foray into marijuana and the block party. thank you ricky and amy for being very gracious hosts!

i love cats!
there were tons of random cats cruising around the neighborhood i was in, i was loving it. all kinds of cats just milling about casually walking across the streets and some seeing each other some just passing through, i loved watching them. when i was walking back from the beach one time i saw the cutest thing: a cat playing in the sand. it was driving its head into the sand and pushing, then it would pop up like it found something, bat at it and do it all over. i called it and it starting rolling in the sand and i couldnt help but pet it.

the ob minute.
the airport in san diego is positioned right in between ocean beach and downtown, and for whatever reason the planes all fly over the beach. they are still so low to the ground that it completely disrupts conversations, thats the ob minute.

may gray / june gloom
in most of the rest of the places i have been may and june are the preludes to summer and the weather is just starting to get nice and starting to turn. in san diego may and june are the dark months apparently. i was there for the height of may gray, the portland sky transplanting to the beach.

parrots?
i am pretty sure that there is no such thing as a wild cow. i am open to being wrong (and i could just as easily fact check) but i have never heard of them. so too, i thought, parrots were a domesticated bird and didnt really live in the wild anymore. i am sure if i sat to think about it ever it wouldnt take much to realize how crazy it would be to completely domesticate a bird, but whatever. there are flocks of parrots that just cruise around ocean beach, i saw about twenty, up to five at a time. they are so loud! the tropical rooster is what i would call them.

i think that is all the thought catching i had planned, stay tuned for more details of my time in ob (plus pictures). for now i am sweltering in calexico and headed towards bisbee. the plan then is to head north towards colorado territory, then back south again. we'll see how set those plans really are.