School of Choss

School is going well. I think I'm getting slightly better at laying down the law with "bad behavior." I found out some kids really don't care about getting a D, but they do care if you make them clean the sink and not talk to their friends. One thing you have to watch out for is drawing a line between something that is actually disruptive or disrespectful and something that you just find annoying. Like sometimes kids will laugh really loud and long at some lewd joke and I think it really grinds on my nerves... but I try not to tell them to shut up if they are actually working when they're doing it.

We definitely need a new room, especially if I'm going to pick up another class next semester. My hope is that we'll have so much work coming out of every nook and cranny in the room, that they'll be forced to move us because it will be so obvious that we've outgrown the space. More likely we'll not move and they'll give any new space to something like Aikido or massage therapy.

Sometimes school is really funny. Walking into the building one morning I spotted one here-unnamed teacher playing a guitar in an empty class room.

"Oh, that sounds really good, I didn't know you played," says I.

"yeah man, I love playing. This thing's a piece of shit though." as she looks at the student whose guitar she is playing. "I got a beautiful piece at home--Yamaha. The action is so sweet, as low as it can go without buzzing. I wouldn't trade it for a Taylor."

"Right on."

"you play?"

"yeah, I been playing for a while," I says. She hands me the guitar and I try to repeat the blues licks she just laid down. The student leaves the room momentarily, leaving just the teacher and myself. My chops are louder and less rhythmic than hers, but she sees that I've got the premise.

"Nice man, nice. Do you sing?"

"yeah, but not very good. I'm a potter."

"oh... do you like pot? cause all the potters I know are into pot," she says.

"ha ha... well, not as much as I used to..." and I hand her back the guitar.

"Awesome man. I'm just an old hippie really. I love that shit. I just fuckin' love getting high and playing guitar." She starts to play a quiet and rolling blues cycle.

"..." I says. Awkward pause, I'm formulating an escape route.

"I do a pretty jazzy version of blackbird when I'm high. My voice is shit right now, but when it heals up you should hear me."

"yeah" I says.

"... ...I scat." The student returns.

"cool. Well, I'll see you later!"


Some days of class have been really fun. Through some miraculous combination of proper sleep, good breakfast, proper caffiene intake, good clay supply, and right music we manage to have some days at work where it really doesn't seem like a job at all-- days where we're all just digging in and taking jabs at eachother, laughing and making shit, talking pots (not pot). I'm sure that some of these kids have the pilot flame going strong now. If they don't continue with ceramics, they'll at least be bothered by it for a while. So mission accomplished for some.

One other cool thing is that we were given the oppurtunity to enter a pottery workshop here in town. Our principle agreed to pay for 5 spots in a workshop called Masters of Mata Ortiz, and the workshop organizers agreed to match another 5 spots. Mata Ortiz, faithful readers will recall, is a mexican town of 2000 about 4 hours south of Cruces. Beginning in the 1970's, led by Juan Quezada, Mata Ortiz emerged as a new center of ceramics--a new genre. I guess I don't need to say it, but it's not really easy to make a new genre, especially one with any lasting quality. Any ways, the first person that Juan taught was his brother Nicolas--Nicolas is teaching the workshop. This guy is a master potter, one of the founding fathers of Mata Ortiz. These people are poor as hell, no art school, no anything. They learned everything through trial and error, and Nicolas is well known as one of the most important innovators for the various technologies of mata ortiz pottery. Basically the guy is a bad ass. Last night was the first night of the workshop and he was really cool. Doesn't know a word of english. I'll write more later.

ta.

Organ Needle

Yesterday we climbed the Organ Needle, the highest point in the organ range as well as southern New Mexico. I got psyched to do this when I googled upon several detailed descriptions of the walk-up route. "Walk-up" it turns out is used very loosely with these blogging mountaineer types. We were chossed out to the max when we returned home, feet sore and minds numb. This hike requires smart preparation of body, mind, and supplies. We went up with a couple apples, some energy bars, a few nalgenes of water, and a pocket full of route descriptions and pictures.

We started the hike at 8:30 am. The hike climbs an old and crappy mining road for about 2.5 miles and 1000 vertical feet. At the end of the mining road the trail proper begins. At times it is very faint. We lost it several times and had to bushwack our way back onto it. The trail is marked multiple times along the route by little stacks of rocks called "cairns." "Cairn!" became our rallying cry.

Anyways I won't bore you with detailed route descriptions. Several people have already done that on the internet, and without them we wouldn't have been able to complete the hike. Basically you have to traverse south until you hit a large wash marked by the prominent "Yellow Rocks," turn uphill east and shoot for a huge cliff called the "Gray Emminence," follow the base of the Gray Emminence through a Juniper grove which ends at a large saddle, push through bushy trail near the top until you reach the hidden mouth of Dark Canyon, ascend Dark Canyon and arrive at Dark Saddle, walk around the southwest side of the summit block, complete 20 feet of "Class 3" scrambling (which involves the need for hands as well as feet), then hike another 100 feet to the small but level summit.

In the end we hiked/climbed nearly 7 miles and more than 4000 vertical feet. Double that when counting the descent. The summit is just above 9000 feet I think. The summit took us 7 hours and the return was 3.5 hours. On the descent, we reached the beginning of the crappy mining road just as all daylight was leaving and had to finish the last 2.5 miles to the car by only starlight. That was ok because that part of the trail is wide and made of light-colored rocks. But we had a tough time finding good footing and we were both thinking of mountain lions. Turns out mountain lions don't really attack humans, that there have only been roughly 100 attacks in the last 100 years, and that most attacks are on faster-moving bikers and runners. But shit! When it's pitch black and you're chossed out on craggy ground you can't help but be aware that you're not necessarily at the top of the food chain.

We took several pictures but I hesitate to include any of them. The pictures really look like we had a grand old time, frolicking about in mountain meadows, trotting merrily up the slopes. Maybe we can chalk that up as a virtue--it doesn't matter if you win or lose, only if you look good. The reality was pain, falling, cussing, thirst, sore feet, lost trail, sweat, and all manner of pointy and prickly flora. It was also beautiful and very satisfying in an empty Zen way. One thing the pictures definitely lack is the sense of vertigo, of being vaulted above the earth. They lack the incredible sense of volume contained between and within mountain masses. They lack the sheer sense of verticality, of physically climbing up and up. The weather was very nice--slightly warm in the sun, slightly cool in the shade, and virtually no wind, absolutely no clouds, and very little noise.



These are the Organs, seen from the west, facing east. The "Needle" (it's not a needle at all) is the highest point towards the right side--the rounded summit. The hike starts at the base of the mountians near the middle of this picture (not one of ours). The v-notch just to the right of the summit is Dark Saddle, the top of the hidden Dark Canyon, which is the key to the whole route.

I can easily say this was the burliest and best hike I've ever done. Any dear readers who are thinking of visiting are strongly advised to get their thighs and ankles in shape. I think the summit can be achieved by anyone with sound health and reasonable strength. The hardest thing will be the determination to pay the price of discomfort. And now that we know the route, we can avoid some of the bushwacking that Molly and I did. If I do it again, and I'm sure I will, I think it will be necessary to camp out at the trailhead the night before. That way we can break camp and be hiking just before sunset. I think this is the only way to get back to the car with any daylight. It's much preferable to hike in darkness at the beginning instead of the end.

So this all sounds kind of humorless... maybe I'll exit with a joke just you ya'll know the mountain didn't knock the funny out of me.

Q: What do you call a blind white-tail?
A: No idea.

One more note: the kitty nabbed a mouse the other evening. I found this out because when I opened the front door, a maimed mouse came hobbling into the house. I shshed it out with some newspaper and kittles fetched it back for me. She enjoyed playing with it in her teeth and tossing it back and forth in her claws. I put it on a shovel and brought it out to the weeds. The internet says that if the cat brings wounded game to the front door, the cat has a strong sense of kinship with you. They share game with their pack leaders. Apparently I was supposed to eat it and share some with her. I gave her good praise and a treatsys instead.

Fall Break?

That's right, Fall Break! We get two weeks in october because we're a year 'round school... but we also get two months off in summer, so we're not really a year-ound school.

I apologize to my regular readers (both of you) for last week's blog. I should also say that I don't totally hate the government, and I'm not an anarchist. I like national parks and recycling too much. I guess there's probably some other stuff I like about the government.


New media recommendations. Or new recommendations in the media because some of them are pretty old. I read All Quiet on the Western Front on Hurt's recommendation, who was recommended it from Nicka. That is a really good book, but in the sense of good where you hesitate to use that word due to the gruesome content of the work. Kind of like the movie Seven. Or Se7en. I have a couple friends who were thinking of joining the Forces recently (one actually did) and I would recommend they read this book before they sign anything. This is a book that does not in any way glorify war. Take a movie like Saving Private Ryan, which was actually a really brutal movie. There is still a little element of glorification or patriotism in there. Actually a big element. All Quiet doesn't have any of that shit.

Next came Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. We're going to read it in my English class after break, so I thought I'd get a leg up on that. This book surprised me a bit with it's cleverness and thin satire. Unfortunately its quality plateaued about a third into it and didn't move much after that. I was slogging through at the end, but still I have to say Austen is a witty and sharp writer with a certain gift for dialogue. And now I never have to read her again.

Music: Nick Drake, Bryter Layter. Kind of a sweeping and whimsical trollop through the daisies, except the daisy field seems to be in downtown london and it's raining? It's like Belle and Sebastian but less twee and innocent. Very pleasant anywho.
Velvet Underground, Loaded. The velvets sounding more like a band and less like a bunch of druggies that could barely pull themselves up to there instruments. I like both bands. This sounds more like the grateful dead but switch in coke for acid.
Beck's new album, The Information. Haven't had enough time to listen to this one yet, but so far it sounds real good. Nigel Godrich produced... very upbeat and slammin. Sounds like Odelay but with vocals more hushed and up front. I don't detect much Sea Change here, but I've read some of that in the reviews.

Events: Marfa Marfa Marfa! Marfa always gets what she wants! Marfa is a small town near Big Bend Texas. It is 240 miles away from Cruces and we got there in 3 hours. You do the math. This town is the site of a sprawling art foundation called the Chinati. It is the brainchild of sculptor Donald Judd. It is a refuge for minimalist art, a place where art and installations are stored/displayed in a large scale, permanent setting. No revolving exhibitions here, no "80% of our collection is in storage." They put out what they have, and they keep it there FOR-EV-UH. This place is a temple. It is very strange to see so much significance and space given to one piece of human work. Things don't share walls here. Actually most of the stuff is on the floor, but they don't share anything. This was a really exciting trip for me because it is kind of what I wrote my senior paper on, how these works of art freeze the space that they are in and thereby freeze the money that funds them.

The place lived up to most of my expectations. For one thing, the whole concept is very snooty. We saw plenty of that element all over town. This was the open house, so it drew art fucks from all over the country, but I'm guessing mostly from Houston, Dallas, and Austin. We were snubbed a few times. That's ok though it's kind of funny. Also we saw a funny interaction between a gallery gestapo and a girl who wanted to take a little rest on a bench:

"um... UH-UH! NO no. You don't sit there. That is a $500,000 bench you just sat on... haven't you ever heard of Gustav Strickler?"

"now my butt feels expensive."

Ok so it is really snooty. Just the concept of putting super high-brow art in the middle of no-where and saying that it's untouchable and it will never move and it deserves this space--that's a snooty concept. The people are a whole other branch of snootyism.

At the same time, the art was really cool, and after tramping around these grounds for two days I started to think this is the only way to do it with art. Each new building is like a new performance. Your focus has time to return to itself and you sort of wipe the slate clean. It's a much more sane and possible way to take in a lot of art in a short amount of time. I compare it to when we visited MOMA in NY this last memorial day. We were totally burnt out by the time we got through one floor. We couldn't do it; it's just a complete overload.

I guess it also helps that the set up they have at Chinati is totally beautiful and they did a really good job producing the whole thing. The buildings are some kind of recovered Army base and it's really interesting just to wander around the grounds and check everything out. It also really helps that the land is awesome and wide open. You can really hit the reset button everytime you exit one building and walk around until you get to the next building. The land and the pacing and spacing of the buildings and your movement through the grounds really helps facilitate the right dialogue with the work. This is minimalism so we're talking very few visual cues and changes. See molly's pictures of the cement structures of Judd's out in the middle of the field. Those look really boring right? And they kind of are, especially the first set that you walk to. However, after walking all down the line and looking closely at each one, there really is a huge amount of drama by the time you get to the last set. He really does sell it by the end. I think that's one of the most important aspects about this challenging work: do the artsists do a good job selling it, do they make it convincing?

An exception in my mind to this group is John Chamberlain. He is the guy that does the huge masses of car and truck steel mangled into gravity-defying sculptures. With his work you just get it right off. There is not a lot of digging that goes on. He is just obviously talented and important and it's right there on the surface and structure of the work. I love his stuff. But at the same time, the obvious goodness of it kind of prevents further digging, and it's a bit less satisfying when you get it than say when you get the installation by Robert Irwin.

Robert Irwin's installation is not easy to describe, and I'm glad we didn't take pictures of it because it would've looked stupid. Basically he set up the building with these fabric screens and you walked along the screens and through doorways in the screens from one end of the building to the end. Great right? To me though, it's a strength of the work, a testament to its contribution, that you can't really describe its quality in words. I know what it's about, but it's a visual/spatial experience, not a literary one. For example if I tell you that it's about solid vs. transparent, shadow vs. reflection, filters, non-hierarchical sculpture, and the limits of human perception, you may think that doesn't sound very good at all. But if I tell you those things and then you go into it and see it, you may split your skull. Or maybe you will ask the gallery attendants to shut the fuck up, you're trying to have a transcendant experience. See how we ride the edge of snooty and convincing?

That night there was a free meal and mariachi band downtown. Seemed like everyone turned out for that. Really great atmosphere, not so good food. I have to say this was the most laissez-faire large-scale event that I've probably been to, with the exception of the first couple years of the folkfest campground. At marfa, no one really told you what to do unless you sat on some Gustav Strickler bench or something. but there was no one saying, hey you can't drink that beer here, or hey don't have sex with that goat. It was very self-governed. There were no mega-phone warriors tooling around on golf carts, no clip board uptights shaking a pen at you. This was also kind of annoying at parts because there wasn't a great deal of organization in the way of signs or directions or where to camp if you didn't get one of the 12 hotel rooms in town and couldn't afford to have your yacht put on a flat bed and trucked in for the weekend. but we figured it all out with a "minimum" (wink, minimalism) of hassle.

After the dinner there was a free "rock concert" at this weird grain silo called the Ice Plant. The Dandy Warhols were playing, what a great named band to play an art foundation's open house. Anyways, I've heard of them but never really listened to them ("heroin is so passe/ hey-hey" was their single in the mid-90's). Turns out they really rock and the front man is really charismatic in a plaid suit and straw hat. The chick key-boardist was getting really wasted too. They played two kinds of "rock:" the first was this sprawling, aural, low tempo mind creeper in the fashion of sonic youth or my bloody valentine. That shit was really good and quite nice to listen. The second was this chunky and clever short pop form which was good but not as engrossing as the first. They had a couple songs that I didn't know were theirs, good tunes. The general permissiveness of the open house continued at the concert. No one checking the door, no security, people were bringing in bottles and coolers and it seemed like, why not? The band walked right past us, like right there, and no one bothered them.



I want to say why aren't more events like that, why can't organizers just trust people to govern themselves, but I also know that 9 times out of 10 something bad is going to happen especially if there is booze involved and probably something bad happened that weekend. but it seemed ok to me at the time.

For the first time, the marfa weekend, I think for molly's first time too, we slept outside, completely outside. No tent or anything, just a sleeping bag underneath stars "he would lie awake and count them/ and the deep sunset and the television set would never let him/ die alone/ remember to remember me..." sorry wilco non-sequiter. Anyways yeah, sleeping outside, what a trip. It started raining at one point and I freaked out and I was like, Molly, we gotta go to the car and she doesn't like waking up very much so she just grabs the edge of the tarp we're sleeping on and pulls it over us so now we're sleeping under this tarp and it's raining on top of us. Then the rain stops and I tell her to pull it back and she does without opening her eyes or even really moving at all. Then I hear this clop-clop clop-clop and I'm thinking now it's really gonna start raining, it sounds like god damned horses, and I look up and there's a god damned horse 8 feet away from my ground-level head. This was much scarier than the rain. Thus continued a train of 6 horse, coming from god knows where going to god knows where, walking not 10 feet away from my head and I think I gotta bolt then no no if I bolt it'll spook them and they'll rear up and crush my skull. So think ok don't move just don't even breath, like on Jurassic Park when they can't move or the TRex will see them. Wow. Then the sun rise began and I got up and got dressed and put my bag away and told molly to get up. As soon as she was up I gave her the car keys and walked to town because it's good to give molly some space in the morning, but it's also good to bring her coffee in the morning.

We spent the rest of that day looking at the foundation and eating their free food. It's like a potlach from days of yore. The richest man in the village throws a huge party with lots of waste and free things to show that he is indeed the richest man in the village and he has the power to waste. Except now it's like the richest man is actually a foundation and the person throwing the party is saying... what? Fuck you I'm talented, you will pay me to exist and you will pay for this party because I said so? Also, you will pay for this for the rest of eternity. Because this is a permanent installation. Who wins here? Do the shareholders and board of directors win because they get to show their power once a year and throw a snooty party in nowhere Texas? Or does the common man win because everyone can come for free and it's funny to see rich people mingle with poor farmers from Marfa? Or does Judd win because he got everything he wanted and he also gets to thumb his nose from the grave and say ha! you're paying for me even when I'm dead!? Strange times we live in.

There was a bumper sticker that said "I [ ] Judd"

Words I wont' use in my next blog: really, awesome, beautiful, interesting.

Joe Responds

This is a response to Ben's blog from 9/20, which was itself a response to my response of an original blog of his from 9/04. So if you're interested you can catch up there or just catch up here or perhaps ignore the whole bit because it's a bit silly. (If the links don't work for you, just search for Ben on myspace.) Join in if you wish.

Also, please excuse me if I seem to use a flagrant amount of verbosity or nimbly balanced clause constructions. You see, I am in the thick of reading Jane Austen and one does tend to turn a particularly flippant hand with English when one thither dallies. You try reading _Pride and Prejudice_ and not talking like this for a week!

The response is the following:

Ben you're no doubt more well read than myself on current affairs and policy, so I cannot hope to defend myself by generating the impressive news-item lists to which you seem so well disposed. Perhaps the best I can hope for is to defend myself on a sentence by sentence basis and perhaps fill in the details of the spirit of my cursory initial remarks.

"How do we know the enemy is as real as Bush & Co. say it is? They've lied about so much else." (me)

What I did not mean by this statement is that the US has no enemies. Undoubtedly we have many. What I am questioning is Bush's assessment of the enemy--his estimation of their special qualities. Bush & Co. are completely dishonest and untrustworthy. This must be the case of anyone who maintains that we are winning in Iraq and it was a good idea to go there in the first place. The administration's conduct during the last 6 years necessitates taking everything they say with a block of salt. This includes estimations that our enemy is everywhere, that they hate freedom, that they will stop at nothing, that this is about religion, etc. It's all baloney and I think the first step in fighting is a thorough understanding of your enemy. I believe the whitehouse, with their retinue of intelligence advisors, most likely does have an accurate understanding of their enemy. But again, the public only gets the spin that is most politically advantageous.

I tire already of this sentence by sentence business. What can I say? I have to use scare quotes around "war on terror" because I don't believe such a war exists. You must quote false titles. We are an empire. This war is about protecting and securing the empire. Iraq certainly isn't the "war on terror." We never went in there for terror. It only became as such months and months after we invaded. Now, with recent reports legitimizing what we all took to be common sense, the Iraq war is actually bolstering the "terrorists."

I don't even know where to begin with all this. It's such a huge fuck. A huge mash up. Bush is a liar. A big fat liar. And he's a buffoon. I'm not attacking him from a democrat's perspective. They're mostly buffoons too. Politics is completely corrupt and debased. Everyone in congress is either a buffoon, a rich asshole, or totally insane. The government doesn't speak for us. They don't serve me or anyone I really know. And now they're fucking up how our country is perceived around the world with their illegal war.

Concentrating on Bush as the crux of all this is not a distraction. He and his administration put all this into action. They invented the game. It's all been stewing for a while with various people adding ingredients to the pot--yes, including Orwell, and I'm not sure what you're insinuating with him. But it will be impossible to talk about this in the future without referencing Bush.

I don't need to be a total news junkie to understand a few things that are self evident: we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, we shouldn't be there now, Bush is a buffoon, something is fishy with 9/11, the war on terror is not what meets the eye, we are not being told nearly enough of what is actually going on, America is in a worse spot now globally than they were during anytime in the last 25 years, and there begins now a rollback of certain primary civil rights that represents one of the scariest trends in American history. Each of these things can be attributed more to the administration than I think it can be to protection from our enemies.

Also, on the issue of innocence. You say that no one is claiming innocence in this fight. I disagree. My conception of media portrayal and popular culture is that the prevailing attitude is that we are innocent. Why else don't they have a war channel, broadcasting nothing but footage from Iraq and various other US military operations worldwide? You know they have cameras shooting all that stuff. Why don't we see any of it? Why don't they show footage of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon? There are at least 4 other cameras that should have good footage of that attack. What is the security threat in releasing those tapes?

Beyond these two obvious examples is the greater guilt--why do people hate us so bad in the first place? It's not religion, because there is no more diverse country on the planet than the US. I don't buy that shit that people just hate us because of the way we are. There are a lot of countries that are way more like us than they are like the terrorists. Why are there no jihad videos saying they're really gonna fuck up new zealand or the netherlands (Theo van Gogh was not a terrorist attack) or Japan? This isn't about religion and it isn't about culture. This is about money. I don't know the answer to this puzzle, but I know we're not emphasizing the right questions. For example, why haven't we done anything with Saudi Arabia in all this? That is where Osama is from; that's where most of the hijackers were from. That is where Mecca is. That is where all the money is. Maybe that should be a focus. Another example: who profits from the invasion, from the """"""war""""""? Follow the money again--it goes to big companies.

I'm suspicious. I don't know what's what, but I know what some people say is what isn't what actually is what. Hmm?

Ok I better make a tasteful exit soon. This is clearly ramble shamble diatribe. Clearly I'm not as well organized. The debate is yours on that point. But hopefully I have raised (more like repeated) the "shadow of a doubt." Hopefully I have poked at least a small hole in the idea that this is all about "us" "fighting" our "enemy." Hopefully I won't drink anymore coffee today.