Momentum

Prose, including snippets (mini-memoirs).
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mnaz
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Momentum

Post by mnaz » December 22nd, 2015, 7:44 pm

(final edit on last chapter of my book-- unless someone who might happen to read this points out any place where I might have gone askew on this bit of prosetry fluff. I wrote much of this ten years ago-- can you believe it? Where'd the time go?)
--------------------------------

The engine drones, and layers of grime and salt grace the cab. Dwight Yoakam crackles on the FM ether, and slopes all taper to a single vanishing point under a hot pale sky. Weary of the droning motion, I turn off and rest beside a road sign shredded by shootin' irons: "A*ST*N 1*9 MI" . . . And I see another thin etching stretching from the road. Prospecting never ends.
......I should go scour the bluffs and shout contours; follow their brilliant or wistful shades as the sun arcs. If I made the far shore I could recapture the sunset and all dimensions of gold. I could head out into my interior, to long flats where one can hear thoughts; where they are sometimes deafening. Fit them together, but then release. Release them. Complexity is the devil out here, so wander in a child's eye too simple for its own good, with Uncle Zen always at the margins, ready to roll it all in a ball; simple and complex. The boundless desert.
......My boundless desert was a hunch; a vision I saw on a road to Vegas, but as I tested its reach and raised its dust I found limits. When I was younger it was wide-open, and then some of the roads closed. Some hit fences. Some ended beneath a peak in boulders, and star terrains ran out from there, from this lump of iron and silica spinning in black. The rock flies solo; only a silver moon in tow for company, like a range bum poet, or maybe a gambler up against flash and touch, alone in a crowd of stars. Home is in constant motion.
......What is home anyway? It's the next thin road out to land's end; the drone of too many miles; the great fire orb diving into a brick rim, boiling orange and fattening until it seeps in unexpectedly. Home is so much dust inside my truck that I'll never get it all out. Home is my own church of escapism, though I know in time I'll have no choice but to stop, to chop wood and carry water again.
......Until then I've traded neon for stars on a tailgate porch. Rock meets infinity on trails out past the the last feed store, past rusty radiators, engine blocks, fenders and bed frames dumped at the edge of town. I prefer nights with moon, although she hides stars. For awhile I thought I might find a place at the end of pavement, where I'd slip between worlds at will; a slumped hacienda missing plaster, with sand drifting in the lot and a badly-faded sign minus one letter on a rust-bubbled bent frame hit by Jim's pickup back in '62. I still might find it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my light years out of scale, I drift over flats and folds, but if with too much momentum it could shatter the effect. And now I've reached the edge once again. I came here with food, and lots of it; a jug of jerky and bag of bourbon. And I came with momentum too; I ran too far, too fast, and I wondered if it followed me here. But that was yesterday. The rock spun another revolution, to desert dawn, and things are clearer now. I notice more distant trails off to nowhere-- the ones that started the trouble in the first place-- but today they hold less sway.
......I sped across the flat and kicked up a chalk roostertail, but that was yesterday. Today I sit on the tailgate with a shot of rebellion and sip freedom in the unknown span. I slip from one solar play to the next, watching to see where they go, long on perception. I'm still finding roads beyond my first ends of the earth; always more etchings wandering off. But at some point I'll reach the edge and vow not go past. I'll repeat the same lie: "No more will I roam."
......Somewhere down the bright shore is an abandoned shack, where reality and imagination cross a rattlesnake porch and go through the same door to come in out of the sun. They eat lunch and hash out their differences, then retreat again into heatwaves that can't tell them apart. And on the bright plane a car flows and shape-shifts into boiling singularity. Or does it move? It's steering wheel vibrates, though no other evidence of motion. It flows toward a point that never existed, like those old ships toward the dropoff at the edge of a flat earth ocean, and comes to rest where it started, as things tend to do here.
......But there's no end to drama even here on the big bright empty; echoes of inner noise projected across thin air onto invisible entities of inner fears. At noon, jilted gods argue atop fuzzy tan above a plane of cracked white marble coveted by kings, and throughout the blinding desert moments like centuries, kingdoms rise and fall and make their cases, rattling and verbose; how the west was won; how the east was lost; how the south ignored them both. Patience ye kings! The flats and bluffs will hear your beefs in good time.
......I ignore the quarreling gods; they start to fade past the horizon. There will be lots of time for that, but not enough time for this. And I stare at the white marble with undue intensity, and stand up to preach at the sun. My view is clear; I'm the fount of channeled wisdom up there, spilling silky sermons like a fresh caress of dust from this aimless desert with soul. Entire worlds hang in the balance, but for an audience.
......But that was yesterday. The rock spun one more turn in black sheen and killed the last traces of sunburnt philosophy and undue urges to sermonize, and now there will be only this cracked white marble, fuzzy tan, light and space.

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mnaz
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Re: Momentum

Post by mnaz » December 22nd, 2015, 8:18 pm

Here's the chapter outline I ended up with:

(1) "Get Away"
A. Get Away
B. The Pines
C. Separation and Return
D. The Nevada Mission
E. The National Parks
F. Lines and Points
G. Moving Too Fast
H. Old Classics and Space Pads

(2) "Edge of Trees"
A. The First Thin Etching

(3) "Red Cliffs"
A. Great Basin to Wasatch Range
B. Capitol Reef
C. Burr Trail
D. The Hogback
E. Valley of the Gods
F. Glen Canyon
G. Cop Roadblock
H. Blanding/ Moab
I. Cartoon/Religious Cliffs
J. Great Salt Lake Desert
K. Radar Trooper

(4) "On the Playa"
A. The Pony Express/ Salt Wells
B. Rock Murals/ Dull Ocher
C. Gerlach
D. The Playa Muse
E. The Playa Canvas
F. Warned by Burning Man
G. Decision to Move South
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


(5) "September Tenth"
A. The Move South
B. Sept. 11th
C. Saint George/ Michael
D. Wolf Hole/ Arizona Strip
E. Rental Search/ Otis
F. Exit from Saint George
G. Beatty, NV/ Steve's Pass

(6) "Roundscape"
A. The Great Arcs
B. Chloride Cliff
C. Dub-rock Part 1
D. Gambling Machines
E. The Gold Strike
F. Vegas Interrupts My Road
G. Following Powerlines Out
H. Into Death Valley/ Eden
I. Dub-rock Part 2

(7) "Las Vegas"
A. Sprawl
B. Steely Mammoths
C. The Cool Part of Town?
D. Atomic Tiki Lounge
E. My Tiny Studio
F. Rage Camping
G. A Day on the Dry Lake
H. Moving on from Paradise

(8) "Nevada"
A. Orbit Decays/ Shot Out
B. Pioche/ Old West
C. Do I Take a Gun?
D. Toiyabe Forest
E. Tonopah
F. Numb Velocity
G. Gateways
H. Shootout

(9) "Horses"
A. Two Mustangs
B. Haunted Arizona
C. "Ghost Horses"
D. "The River"
E. Silence vs. Skull Noise
F. Ocean, Peak & Desert
G. Wild Burros
H. The Snaking Boxes
I. Up Tokop Road

(10) "The Blazer"
A. Short Return to Dark City
B. Lake Havasu City
C. Meeting Rick & AJ
D. Stomp No. 1
E. Stomp No. 2
F. Proper Desert Ruins

(11) "Back to Nevada"
A. Arizona Cop Roadblock
B. The Wash/ Insane Geology
C. Rainbow Canyon/ Caliente
D. The Hitchhiking Preacher
E. Rachel and Area 51
F. The Basin and Range
G. Tonopah/ Morton Mill
H. Back to the Black Rock
I. The Sagebrush Network
J. Guru Road/ Gerlach

(12) "Under the Grid"
A. My Wander has become Long
B. Getting Lost in Eastern Oregon
C. The Distress of Getting Lost

(13) "Drought"
A. Murk Descends
B. Cloud Geology
C. South to Cali-desert
D. Phone Calls to Ned
E. Introducing Ned
F. Salton Sea
G. My Cloud Cult

(14) "Ned and Sue"
A. Off to Texas Ned's
B. The Crazy Poet Site
C. Ghost Motels/ The Gideons
D. To Ned and Sue's Place
E. Totem/ Rain Maker
F. Harpo/ Tom Waits
G. Skatertrash/ Dmitri
H. Totems/ Wall of Books
I. Cabezon
J. Jemez/ Los Alamos
K. Navajo Woman
L. Exit 286
M. Back to the Mojave

(15) "Color"
A. I Rent a Tin Trailer
B. Too Much Scale in Green
C. Compare Oceans
D. Relentless Wind
E. Desert Color
F. Wilford Brimley
G. Dennis Parks
H. Mojave Green Invasion

(16) "Moving Rocks"
A. Ed Abbey's Ghost
B. "They Have What I Gave Up"
C. The City as a Whore
D. "There's No One Out There"
E. City Mile vs. Country Mile
F. Hounds of Reason
G. Moving Rocks

(17) "Jumping Rock"
A. Mountains Jump
B. Tobin Range
C. Puckerbrush
D. Lovelock
E. Carson Sink
F. Sixteen-foot Gap
G. "Get Small Enough"

(18) "Geology"
A. Fluid, Fallible Rock
B. Deep Time
C. Rogue Rock Tappers
D. The Six Days
E. Up vs. Down
F. Atmosphere!
G. Parallel Lover

(19) "Gold"
A. I Get a Job at Red's Old Mine
B. Arrival/ Jerry and Leeland
C. Ghost Stories and Biker Gangs
D. Way Too Many Dirt Bikes
E. Jerry's Rock of Many Faces
F. Counting Folds/ The Sportsman
G. The Underappreciated "Scrub"
H. Placer Mining/ Dry Washers
I. Mattie's Feud with Selma
J. Crazed Ice Bullets and Jarvis
K. Petroglyphs and Cloud Puffs
L. Scotty's Mine and Ruse
M. Red's UFO Encounter
N. Big Jim's Campout in LA
O. Contents of a Miner's Cabin
P. Sacred Mountain/ History
Q. "First Quiet Sundown"
R. The Raven Dance
S. Red's Yard vs. Modern Mines
T. The Endless Cold Cloud Bluster
U. Sudden Heat/ Small Creatures

(20) "Silver"
A. If You Knew a Secret Ledge
B. The Supergene Silver Rush
C. Reworking Old Mine Waste
D. Can You Go Through With It?

(21) "Lost Mines"
A. The Seekers' Trails
B. Why So Many Lost Mine Stories?
C. More Lost Mine Stories
D. Pegleg Smith
E. Shorty Harris
F. Shorty Borden
G. Dream Mine

(22) Elevation
A. Elevation Tricks
B. Lofty Peaks Give it Away
C. How High is Enough?
D. Earthrise
E. The Big Space Eye
F. Tumbleweed-burbs
G. Blowing Bubbles
H. The Capital Beast
I. Mega-Magnitude

(23) Momentum
A. A*ST*N 1*9 MI
B. Scour the Bluffs/ Uncle Zen
C. My Boundless Desert
D. The Rock Flies Solo
E. Tailgate Porch
F. Light Years out of Scale
G. No More Will I Roam
H. Reality and Imagination
I. Shape-shifting Car
J. Jilted Gods
K. Silky Sermons

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judih
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Re: Momentum

Post by judih » December 22nd, 2015, 11:16 pm

bowled over. wow. what a hefty and marvelous project

big bow and salute, mnaz sir

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mnaz
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Joined: August 15th, 2004, 10:02 pm
Location: north of south

Re: Momentum

Post by mnaz » December 28th, 2015, 8:45 pm

Thanks judih. It's the end of a long road, for sure.

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