Once, not so long ago , I somehow found myself disenchanted with my life.

But what to do?

- Join the French Foreign Legion?

I determined to do what I do best. Run away.

The appointed moment came and went and found me immersed in coffee and newspapers, like a bee in flowers.

Do bees get drunk on pollen? I don't suppose so, but there must be some compensation for the hard life of the bee. Perhaps Paradise awaits the bee.

Do bees ever load up on so much pollen that they become unable to fly and have to walk home? Or call a cab?

I recall seeing those 18-wheelers of the bee kingdom, big fat bumblebees, laden with pollen and cruising at knee level so slowly that their droning was in the bass register. A tiny basso profundo.

I leapt from the platform of certainty into the void of the unknown world as the sun was going down.

Crossing the Klamath Marsh a little black snake wriggled across my path, past 4 black ourobouros of my tires. There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not. One of those things is the way of a serpent upon a rock. (The others, according to the proverb, are the way of an eagle upon the air, a ship upon the sea, and a man with a maid.) The little snake is an omen to me to not rush past everything.

The vagrant snake seems like liquid motion, no part of it is static, it provides no place for the eye to focus, to fuse it into the landscape. Likewise the traveler, while in motion, sheds his identity.

Moon

Waxing

Gibbous.

Each night I am disturbed by grotesque and guilty dreams. I so rarely recall dreams - is this why?... are they all like this?...has travel jostled my mind like a deck of playing cards dropped, or a harried waiter who lets the contents of the things he's carrying spill over.

A hitch-hiker tells me about a giant serpent he saw once. It was as if the entire horizon had come alive, writhing and shimmering in bands of heat. Perhaps the end of the world had come at last. Eventually, though, he realized that it was just a distant train rolling across the desert.

Among the 19^th century graves of Eureka , Nevada. Silver miners were shipped over from the tin mines of the United Kingdom. "Carbonari" (charcoal burners) from Italy. It seems odd and sort of romantic to think of coming from so far away, so long ago, to live and die in Eureka, Nevada.

In the Masonic Cemetery;

Frank G. Lang

Born in Chester, England

October 5, 1819

Died

August 9, 1881

Death rides on every passing breeze

And lurks in every flower

Each season has its own disease

Its peril every hour.

Drove past a place I call Burning Engines, Nevada.

Awoke in Coconino County (home of Krazy Kat), Navajoland. Walked between strange little volcanic hills and bathed out of a small plastic bucket, which improved hygiene only slightly, but it was pleasant to be naked in the desert sunshine.

Adversities and wonders reciprocate like two sides of a whirling coin. My emotional state cycles rapidly, without fixed reference points. The little snake represents craziness.While traveling, little blessings and catastrophes follow closely at one another's heels, just as they do ordinarily, though now in more rapid succession.

National Parks and Monuments are fine, but the best times for me come from just wandering out into the desert from wherever I've found to park the car.

Indolent stars usher me across the desert, valves clattering like castanets in a drunken flamenco. The slow, hypnotic, stroboscopic effect of streetlights dotting the jet-black night, the soft desert air and the lazy black ribbon of pavement...vultures...coyotes...roadrunners...I pull over and off of the highway some little ways, hidden from view, engine fluttering like the heart of a frightened dove.

This will be home for a while.

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