The desert is an ordinary place, but it is somehow extraordinary. With that contradiction, I am speaking of the monotony there, which is suddenly punctuated with some beauty. Life can be like that sometimes.

I was writing on automatic pilot for so long, and I still may be. There's no telling what I'm accidentally revealing about myself, if not merely that I am kind of simple. I can also be full of myself, which can be problematic, because there may be little of substance. I also scribble in a series of journals, where I sometimes think I am touching upon something profound. This blog seems like an ephemeral extra. Maybe my journals are ephemeral too, even though I can currently hold them in my hands, and physically put pen to paper. I have found such activity to be refreshing, and equally relaxing.

In the grand scheme of things, even the desert itself is ephemeral. Nothing lasts forever, or so I've heard, read, and been told. The universe we know will expand into infinity, leaving our little speck of dust even more remote and alone than it is now. In the interim, the continents will shift, and deserts may eventually become oceans. It is mind boggling, or at least it is supposed to be. I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't give it much thought. It is highly unlikely that any of us will live to see it, even with advances in medical science.

The desert can be such a dour place. It's a dry, unyeilding mistress, and the oases are few and far between. Here, I find myself in a time of life that seems to be akin to the proverbial crossroads. Unlike previous crossroads however, this one seems to offer more time to make a decision. Perhaps that is only illusion though. Time seems to slow down in the desert, while the rest of the world moves at breakneck speed.

Living in Kansas, years ago, life seemed silent and still. The pace was glacial, but that was an illusion too. Things were changing; time was passing. Kansas was once considered part of a Great American Desert, when the word, "desert", could mean merely a place that was sparsely populated. The rain was supposed to follow the plough, but settlers found that the plains could be very arid, after an initial decade of wet years.

You can't really plow the desert; you'll only be turning over sand. I did see small green fields, here and there, along the Colorado River, in Utah. Travel very far from that river though, and you are back among forelorn places. These places are essentially part of a vast flyover countryside. If only we could leap over the similar places, which can be found in the human soul.

Sunflowers in the Desert

The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwest, and while out in Utah a while back, I was a little surprised to see sunflowers growing on its banks. This was along a route that is part of the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway. Apparently, long extinct animals once roamed this area, and now it is full of interesting rock formations, formed over eons perhaps, and carved from ice, heat, and erosion.

Kansas calls itself "The Sunflower State", but it evidentally doesn't have a monopoly on those blooms. Eastern Colorado has a lot of sunflowers, and I remember seeing beautiful fields of them there. The ones I saw in Utah were few and far between, but perhaps their scarcity there added something to the experience of seeing a few here and there.

In Colorado and Utah, we would occasionally catch sight of rafters enjoying the river. In some places, there were also trails with bicyclists, and roads and rails were also represented. I often wish to go back out west, but to even see these places once can form indelible memories.

Too Much of a Good Thing

I am very tired; I've had too much of a good thing. I was up later than usual, enjoying an old tube radio I purchased a while back, and creating compilations of recorded songs. Those compilations of songs could be a soundtrack to these documents.

I was feeling very romantic, but not in the amorous sense. Instead, I was thinking about the etherial desert, and music, and old tube radios. The radio, to which I was listening, is one from c. 1958. It's case is made of hard plastic, and though it uses tubes instead of transistors, it has a circuit board instead of a chassis. Therefore, it is representative of the last generation of tube radios. I have another similar radio, from c. 1966. That one was made by a different manufacturer.

I enjoy the tones a tube radio can produce. For similar reasons, many musicians prefer tube amplifiers. Sometimes, I have a tin ear, but I think I can tell the difference between the sounds emanating from an old tube radio, and ones coming from a solid state model. I'd hate to do a blind test though, and be proven wrong.

I just like keeping old appliances in service, even though I am not adept enough to actually repair or refurbish old appliances. I would still like to keep them out of the landfill. I'm somewhat of a conservationist; I like to provide a home for things like old radios. I also like to buy old vinyl records. Recently, I purchased some old LPs, which were kind of dirty. I cleaned them up, and I bought inner sleeves for the ones which were missing those.

I try to rescue old radios and vinyl records, the same way some people rescue animals. Like some stereotypical cat lady though, I hope I don't start hoarding these things.

I am trying to start over with this blog. For some reason, I couldn't access it for a while, but here it is, in all its un-glory. There is a lot of un-glory in the desert; it goes along nicely, side by side with the more typically beautiful things there. Several places brought me here, not to the real desert, but to the desert between my ears. Oh, I've been to the real desert, and it didn't disappoint, but the etheral one in my imagination is hard to beat. It is borne out of a love and respect for the imagination. That imagination is the one that people once used to picture what was happening in a radio comedy or drama, years before television was in most every home. It is something Einstein once said was more important than knowledge. I'm no Einstein, but I respect the imagination.

An old song, called "The Shifting, Whispering Sands", was one of the major inspirations for this foray of mine into the desert. In the version I first heard, Ken Nordine, the inventor of Word Jazz, did the spoken parts of the song, and Billy Vaughn and His Orchestra played the music. Billy Vaughn was the most successful orchestra leader of all time, in terms of numbers of records sold. He also was an A&R man for Dot Records, back in the day. A song recorded by he and his orchestra, "Swingin' Safari", ended up on the soundtrack to the TV program, "Mad Men".

The desert is full of facts and figures, and trivia. There are abandoned knick knacks, and abandoned memories and ideas. The dunes shift to and fro, revealing what has been buried beneath them. These dunes are somewhat akin to the grey matter inside our heads, I guess. I'm always hedging my bets, and I notice a randomness in everything that is so pervasive; it begins to form patterns that seem almost recognizable. Welcome to my own personal desert. It may not be the stuff of which every dream is made, but I like it.

I'm having quite a time here. I just wrote a short, but inspired post, and then I accidentally deleted it. I'm not sure I can easily get back into that zone, and dredge up inspiration that quickly. It was a post about how the little things can sometimes make us happier than the big, fancy things. I talked about how inexpensive things can sometimes trump the pricier ones. It was a beautiful post, I thought. Now, it's gone. Maybe I'll try again later.

I started two seperate blogs by accident, a couple of years ago, and now I'm hoping this entry goes to the one I want. I have been continuing to write about the desert as some big metaphor, and this is really more of a test entry. I think I'd like to delete the less-realized blog, but we'll see what happens. I'm not sure my actual life is interesting enough for anyone to follow, but the vast, etherial desert seems like something to which more people can relate. Even if "my" desert is just some low buzzing between the ears, there seems to be something appealing about it. Neurons continue to fire during sleep, and dreams arise out of the grey matter. That grey matter seems equivalent somehow to the shifting sands and whatever secrets they have covered. Perhaps it's like the old song, "Synchronicity II", by a band called The Police. In the lyrics to that song, something's happening in one place, just as the Loch Ness Monster stirs, thousands of miles away, and occurances that seem unrelated normally have a connectedness to them. I doubt my writings stir any prehistoric monsters, but hopefully they will at least amuse someone.

I haven't been here in a while. That is to say that I haven't been to this digital desert; I have continued to write longhand, in journals. I'm listening to a Lyle Lovett recording on compact disc, and his songs hearken back to the old days of Texas Swing. I've only been through Texas briefly in the real world. Texas seems bigger than its actual piece of real estate, much the way God seems too big to fit inside any one religion.

My soul often wants to return to Texas and parts west, as I've seen them, and as I've imagined them. The desert goes on for miles and miles, and my imaginary digs there, alongside some etherial version of old Route 66, are a place I return to often, in my mind. It may be the closest I have to that "safe place" where hypnotists tell people to go to in their minds. I've heard of such a place in recordings that are supposed to help a person relax.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to mentally wander south to where Willie Nelson and Kinky Friedman live among the ghosts of Lyndon Johnson, and other famous Texans who have moved onto the next plain. I don't know why, but it all has some appeal to me.