XII. U.S. Highway 87. Dalhart.
Rita Blanca National Grasslands Exit.
Population: 6,854
Elevation: 4,000
Climate: Dalhart is perhaps the most southerly of the countless American
cities that claim only a barbed-wire fence separates them from the North Pole.
Topography: Very High Plains.
Historical Oddity: Originally part of the 3,000,000-acre XIT Ranch,
formed in 1885 by a Chicago firm, Taylor, Babcock and Company. The deal was a swap. The
Texas government gave Taylor, Babcock the land, and they in turn built the state capitol
building in Austin.
Telling Detail: Site of first wind erosion control project.
Prominent Amenity: Site of Rita Blanca National Grassland.
Category: High, dry, and cold.
Best One-word Description: Desolate.
Insight: Dalhart is closer to six other state capitols than it is to
Austin.
1. For that matter, our relationship with the present is also not linear (as will become
apparent soon enough), nor entrapping. "Immersion," repeated, frequent
re-immersion is closer.fn1
–Ramrod
* * *
2. We repeat the old, primitive mistake of geocentricity. Except
now we are "present"-centric. Damn, I wish I'd studied Latin.
–Mr. Snowtree
* * *
3. Before, without, to see and place the sun properly in our
perception. Now, within to properly re-locate the present, past, and future in our
perception and cultural practice.
–Tinfoil Seagull
* * *
4. I have apparently been impatient before, many times. So one
begins to unlearn arrogance.
–Fritz
* * *
4a. Course y'all know why Dr. Pepper comes in a bottle? Cause his
wife died.
–Mud Flap
* * *
5. The century of fame. The Famous Century. One wants the word
"imfamy" to use in describing more modest ages.
–Gulf Stream
* * *
6. It is far more and far better than any of us, especially the
cleverest ones, can construe. Be entertained, but never distraught, by the constructions,
especially those of the cleverest ones.
–Celia Celia
* * *
7. Nevermind the loss or the gain, nevermind the pleasure or the
pain.
–Mahalia
* * *
8. Whachou want? You just keep runnin you mouth. You some kinda
goofy dip-lip.
–Star Truck.
* * *
9. Simone Weil said patient expectation is the path of the
spiritual life. I say, spiritual arrogance is the reward of self-deprivation.
–Preacher Man
* * *
9a. What's long and hard and full of semen? A submarine.
–Sugar Britches
* * *
10. A Scotchman's gettin a blow job from a old street whore. He's
ready to come and he grabs her by the ears and says, "Swallow it all and I'll give
you a extra shilling." Just then she goes GULP and then says, "Wha'd you
say?" and he says, "Oh, nothing."
–Blue Devil.
* * *
11. Woe unto her or him who, in whatever century, thinks to find
more beauty, more insight, more verisimilitude, more is-ness in any contemporary art work
than in the Bayeux tapestry.
–Fritz
* * *
12. The tritening noose of tyranny.
–Ramrod
* * *
13. NO!
–Horny Teen
* * *
14. yes yes yes yes yes yes.
–Mahalia
* * *
15. Scientific theories are only lesser works of art. Thus,
scientists are merely so many esthetes manqué's.
–Fritz
* * *
16. You get between frequencies and you hear all kinda people
talkin.
–Rusty Nail.
* * *
17. Science as a consciousness network, overlaid on our collective
and individual sentience. The individual disciplines, then, as so many sitcoms, and the
various theories of the various disciplines so many premises–all subject to
cancellation, and all with laugh tracks, which are called "journals."
–Hard On!
* * *
18.
–What're you doin?
–Heck if I know. I'm still asleep.
* * *
19. Fame is real, but self-canceling. All who abet the amnesia of
the famous assume an appropriate degree of guilt.
–Horny Teen
* * *
20. Pornography is in the eye of the beholder.fn2
–Jack Flash
* * *
21. Identity is multiple, ultrachronistic, and eternal.
–Fritz
* * *
22. In an age of information, ideas become the true weapons of
guerrilla warfare. Blinded by the darkness of my time, I retreat to the light of mind and
entertain ideas.fn3
–McLoony Tunes
* * *
23. It is possible to be alone, but it requires years of work at
shutting off the vast input which is our birthright–and then it lasts only the short
time remaining until death begins.
–Beach Stone
* * *
24. The future will study the jerky, manneristic editing of our
movies and see, as we don't, a symptom of the primitive, dangerous discontinuities in our
consciousness.
–Wild Man
* * *
25. The future will be as baffled by our clothes as we are by
Aztec sacrifices.
–Horny Teen
* * *
26. In this age of compulsive transportation, "To go, or not
to go" ceased to be a viable choice.
–Tasmanian Devil
* * *
27. Standing on the shoulders of giants? No. No. No.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
28. Not understanding death, we understand absolutely nothing.
–Rubber Duck
* * *
29. Houston, my Koenigsberg.fn4
–Wild Man
* * *
30. Kant, my humorless jester.
–Celia Celia
* * *
31. Garters border obscenity.
–All Bricked Up
* * *
32. No age knows more. Each age is only a crest in a different
part of the ocean.
–Horny Teen
* * *
33. These three men and a woman got shipwrecked and they wind up
on this here desert island. Well, after three days, the woman feels so guilty she goes and
kills herself. After three more days, the three men feel so guilty they bury her. And
after three more days, they feel so guilty they dig her up.
–Rusty Nail.
* * *
34. The realpolitik of what is praised as maturity is only growing
adroitness at avoiding the question of pain.
–Green Montain Girl
* * *
35. This ol hillbilly boy was in Nam and one day he decides he's
goin swimming. He strips off his clothes and he's standin buck naked by this stream fixin
to jump in, and he suddenly falls over, out like a light. He wakes up in a hospital and he
says, "What happened, Doc?" The doctor looks at him kinda pityin like and says,
"Son, you was hit by a V.C. sniper. He got both your balls. It was such a clean shot
there wadnt nothin to do but just sew up the wound." The old boy breathes this big
sigh of relief and says, "Thank goodness I wadn't thinkin about my sister-in-law or
he'd a got my gun too."
–Instigator.
* * *
36. The surrealpolitik of what is scorned as criminality is...
–Lone Stranger
* * *
37. 1800 and thereabouts is endearing for all the talk about
imagination. 1990 and thereabouts is especially undearing for the lack of talk about
imagination. But then, it takes a special age to appreciate heretical mapmakers.fn5
–Orange Krishna
* * *
38. Are you re-arranging the furniture in the prison, or what?
–Prairie Dog
* * *
39. Paul Krassner and Boyd MacDonald: how refreshing even the
tiniest truths.fn6
–Billy Boy
* * *
40. I think I'll turn on my scanner and see who's killin who
tonight.
–Silver Bullet.
* * *
41. Remember: the bo-tree is everywhere.fn7
–Mercan Beauty
* * *
42. Remember: we are all always home free.
–Mercan Beauty
* * *
43. Remember: Time is holographic, while what contemporary science
calls nature ("the universe") is not. Act accordingly.
–New Adam
* * *
44. Remember: wei wu wei.fn8
–Mercan Beauty
* * *
45. He just sandbaggin.
–Falcon.
* * *
46. When you begin to catch fleeting glimpses of ghosts, you know
you are on the right path.
–Lorelei
* * *
47. The current road to hell is also paved with dayparts.
–Ken Russell, Jr.
* * *
47b. Who knows what marvelous syntheses, what wonderful
revelations await us within?
–Novalis
* * *
48. Carpe diem, carpe cunum, carpe penum. But then, who ever paid
any attention to The Fugs?fn9
–Half a Dollar
* * *
48b. People are much too careless with their memories.
–Novalis
* * *
49.
–Somebody say somethin.
–Somethin.
* * *
50. "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, weiß, was ich leide."
"Wer, wenn ich schrie, hörte mich?" Neti, neti. Tat tvam asi. Namaste.fn10
–Bullwinkle
* * *
51. No wonder the Arabs and the French are karmicly bound: both
delight in elaborating surfaces, the one group, for the palate; the other, for the eye.
–Rubber Duck
* * *
52. Terry Gilliam's Brazil: a remarkably accurate reading on the
present level of male sickness, and of female health.
–Smokestack
* * *
53. I practice what I preach. We all brothers and sisters out
here. Break break.
–Dr. Detroit.
* * *
54. Greed beside which that of the worst miser pales: the behavior
of a race, most of whose members have twenty or thirty thousand days to live and then die
bitter/angry/hurt/despairing that they have not more.
–Mahalia
* * *
55. Driver pulls into a Rest Area just horny as can be. He finds a
commercial lady right quick, but he's real scared of AIDS, so he puts on not one, not two,
but six rubbers, and they go at it. Everthing's fine. Till he comes, cause when he comes
he backfires and it plumb blows his balls off.
–Crazy Dave.
* * *
56. Sex is a dip in the primeval pool, which is why most religions
and societies fear it.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
57. He sounds like a hen that's gonna lay a egg any minute. I
think it's a square one.
–Mother McCree
* * *
58. Seek your daemon.
–UFO
* * *
59. Nine quests? Probably. Perhaps.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
60. All quests are from fear.
–Gray Wolf
* * *
60b. Most people have no idea how interesting they are, what sorts
of interesting things they say.
–Novalis
* * *
60c. Intelligence is creative. It forces similarities.
–Novalis
* * *
61. Boy, I hated that place.
–Gucci Vespa
* * *
62. Totems, familiars, homonculuses, sisters, brothers, guides,
whatever.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
63. Beware ages in which heroes sleep poorly.
–Hank III
* * *
64. The bivouac goes on. Rule 1: Leave the area nicer than you
found it.
–Mixmaster
* * *
65. Rilke asked, "Who, if I cried out, would hear me?"
Which pretty well sums up Western culture, science and all.
–Trail Boss
* * *
66. Tinily niched frameworks occupied by full stomachs and
sleeping minds, reaching to the sky but stopping far short of heaven–of this we are
proud.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
67.
–You sure he's not one of them pooper-scooper shovers?
–He might have a super-duper doo-doo scooper.
* * *
68. Read Dante. Between the lines.
–Jack Flash
* * *
69. I wished you'd go take a flyin leap somewheres.
–Crazy Dave
* * *
70. Most is habit, so you might as well form habits which please
you and those around you.
–Celia Celia
* * *
71. The heart is not a hunter at all.
–38 Special
* * *
72. Entwined souls.
–Sugar Britches
* * *
73. What you gonna do when you can't get no more Ripple?
–Road Runner
* * *
74. Kundalini. The second puberty. No easier than the first. (Gopi
Krishna's first book.)
–Wild Man
* * *
75. Contemplate Mozart's 37th symphony.fn11
–All Fingers
* * *
76. I ain't prejudiced, sure enough, I ain't. Them crackerhead
honkies, I hate em all the same.
–Hanging Judge
* * *
77. Beware those who consider the universe one; beware those who
consider the universe many; beware those who consider the universe neither one nor many;
beware those who consider the universe both one and many.
–Totaled
* * *
78. I'll put so many bullet holes in that truck you won't even be
able to see out of it.
–Crazy Dave
* * *
79. Love hangs.
–New Adam
* * *
80. Who pegged shame?
–Mr. Camp
* * *
81. Rilke worried about the angels. I worried about the children.
Where did it get us?
–Wild Man
* * *
82. America's O.K. as long as it errs on the side of mercy. The
earth is slower to forgive mistakes of might.
–Gamekeeper
* * *
83. Jetstream, timestream, nightstream, daystream, worldstream,
selfstream, itstream. The Great River flows here now always.
–Widow's Might
* * *
84. I think he's a play-like truck driver.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
85. Patanjali gives kinship. What a gift!
–Mercan Beauty
* * *
86. Houston is my secret.
–Wild Man
* * *
87. Computers teach nothing and forgive everything. You made a
mistake? Turn me off, turn me on, and let's try again.
–Pat Angeli
* * *
88. How dreadfully fast trees think we go.
–Mahalia
* * *
89. Good gracious alive. Long time no spoke.
–Mrs. O'Leary
* * *
90. Words to thwart your search for patterns here: columbine,
rivet, salination, ampersand, amortization.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
91.
–Tell him to get back under the porch.
–Tell him to get back on the porch?
–Tell him to get back UNDER the porch!
–Under the porch? What for?
–Just tell him. He'll understand.
* * *
92. Are compulsive hysterectomies the de-foreskinned little boys'
revenge?
–Fritz
* * *
93. Nobody carries no pistol in my boat. Not after I seen these
friends of mine boat after they got it out of the water. They was back in the river there
catfishin. He always carried his pistol with him, and they went under these low branches,
and this big old snake fell in the boat, and the first thin in his mind was shoot him, and
boy he was pepperin the hell out of that old snake, and he blowed a hole in the bottom of
his boat big enough to put your fist through.
–Spiral.
* * *
Dalhart Notes
1Ramrod often blamed his
lack of clarity on "bad dope." What he was talking about here, he said later,
was time travel.
2Old Jack ought to know,
he of the ten-incher, which carried him to above-the-title billing in several dozen
movies.
3Though it was often
difficult to talk to Mac (he claimed to have the world's largest stash of vintage, genuine
1967 LSD), I once suggested to him that the true wealth of people and nations is ideas. He
laughed and said, "Jeez, man, study Donald Trump's eyes, that's all."
4Kant's home town, from
which he never traveled more than 12 miles during his life.
5See Leslie Fiedler's
seminal little article, "The New Mutants."
6Paul Krassner, sometime
publisher of The Realist. Boyd McDonald, former publisher of Straight to Hell: The
Manhattan Review of Unnatural Practices.
7Buddha, need I remind,
achieved enlightenment while sitting under a bo-tree for forty days.
8The first line of the
62nd chapter of the Tao Te Ching. Literally: "action non-action," but it is an
imperative, meaning, roughly, "act without acting." The most poetic translation:
"Act in repose," though that too misses much of the meaning in the Chinese.
9The quote is from a song
by the Fugs, and is a play on the old Latin admonition, carpe diem ("seize the
day").
10For the first quote
see an earlier note. The second quote is the opening line of Rilke's Duino Elegies
("Who, if I cried out, would hear me?"). The two Hindu quotes, also see an
earlier note. "Namaste" is the standard Hindu greeting, meaning, "I greet
the god within you."
11Fingers is being
precious here. Mozart's symphonies run from No. 1 to No. 41. No. 37 is lost.
The Texas Tao
continues...
Back to Texas
Tao Contents
Magellan's Log
front page