Lacking the words [“didactics” in MFA-speak] to transform environment into “Environmental Art” we’ll just just call it habitat, twenty years of planting trees, building a life on the desert and now going broke trying to keep the water on.  Didactics can even make Political Science “Art” [though by now I’m sure a little political SILENCE would be most welcome] etc. etc. or declare painting boulders dayglo an “earthwork” as a branding opportunity for the local museum; all to the good. Me, I just make stuff while trying to keep the water flowing and let the meanings of meaning remain oblique,

intermittently at best on all counts,

[Even if there IS an Ian Hamilton Finlay silkscreen up on the wall at Wall.]

We get to Saturday, time slipping away. The afternoon studio radio drove me to the truck to dig out, Chicago thematic this week, the Butterfield Blues Band; oh yeah, that and reading the notes to “Highway 61 Revisited”, which have a peculiar prescient relevance this electoral week.

Meanwhile with everybody off cowboying the machines remained

as quiet as our duration piece out by the chairs, from which I wandered back through my personal Big Sage Wilderness.

Dark an hour earlier and flat light all day; not much to report beyond a cement rat, a scratch ditch…

and a quiet night; only one light down the highway during all of dinner [Friday, a busy one, there were six] but an anomalous flash above Phil siding was puzzling. Puzzling.

Monday comes up bright, hopeful [except for the swollen cheek], mild and sunny;

Twisto’s trailer, conspicuous a mile up the road all week, is gone when I get back from my walk, dunno where or why.

After breakfast, WOW,

which is to say Waiting on Willey as the machines sit idle for the third day…turns out AAA is gone, Willey’ll have to come do the grading himself once his cows are settled.

Election day pain in the cheek has me up bright and early to walkabout…forty degrees of clear

light. Clean house, soak swelling. Feel like I’m missing something.

But what?  Last day; watercolors, Twisto calls to say he went in to meet the internet guy who didn’t show up…outgoing email not working.

I take a run over to Parker in the ’82 to charge the battery

and up into the hills for old time’s sake; just that kind of day.

A last eve, awaiting our Fate, three lights on the highway and two came down this way; a lively night.

So anyway, packed and ready to go to Cali while the borders are still open; dunno who will be celebrated on tomorrow’s radio, but if it’s the former Secretary of State I hope she’ll think long and hard about why this and the primary were both so closely contested. Those were and are real grievances [way beyond the Secretary’s incompetence as a secretary in the digital age] on both sides, and important ones, goddammit.  On the unthinkable other hand, the alternative will be [in his own words] “Truly hawribbull’…and come back to bite everybody, big time.

So, off to bed to sleep…perchance to dream. But if Canada’s immigration website really crashed by 9:00 o’clock PST it ain’t lookin’ too good. The only certainty is that whether acceptance or concession THAT speech will not be gracious, no way.

And then what?

Well we’ll see; should be an interesting ride down da desert…

M