Life and Death

Oggy, dressed as Butch Cassidy, overlooking the Colorado River

possibly a dead, frozen vole in Bryce Canyon

 This vole is a grim reminder that Oggy should get out of this freezing wasteland where hippies should not live in vans and play sad country songs as their fingers freeze.

another Oggy compliation

God Bless Us All

freezing Oggy-sicle

Panorama

Indian Scout eyeing the horizon...

I'm breaking my rules about posting photos of nice spots but the Canyonlands is jaw dropping. The Grand Canyon is a bit too much vista in one direction. A person can't digest it. But Canyonlands has diverse vistas in many directions because the mesa was carved on both sides. Maybe not as deep as the Grand, but deep; 2000 feet. So, I'm not in a position or season to go trekking for days in the back country. A casual day hike of 8 miles is plenty and then quickly get the charcoal fire burning. The snow arrived yesterday in the higher mountains to the east. They get 280 inches a year but a person must carry their skis up the mountain if they want to ski because the closest ski resort to Moab is Telluride, I think. Or somewhere to the east in Colorado.

Looking southwest toward the confluence of Green and Colorado rivers.

I hope everyone appreciated the supermoon. It's been 2 years since I went on a moon hike and this time it was in The Arches ntl. park.You gotta squint to see what I saw.

delicate arch in moonlight

I need a camera with a longer exposure to take scenery photos in moonlight, so these are the best that I can do.

hikers in moonlight

What would've been awesome is a panorama in the moonlight of the vistas. I'm sure it's out there if you care to hunt for it. Or else wait 30 more years for the next supermoon and by then the cameras will be awesome!

crags

$99/oz

jesus christ, I'm adrift in Colorado and there are abundant marijuana dispensaries and actually people smoking pot pipes openly in the Walmart parking lot and I looked at one pricing out of curiosity and a fucking 1/8th of the economy strain only costs $15. and an .oz of the best medical grade is $185. A PREMIUM OUNCE! FOR $185! And with medical script the OZ of Gold Standard costs $130. An 1/8th cost $65 in a medical dispensary in Venice, CA so it was like $500 for an ounce. I can't even get a bottle of ibuprofen for $15. $15 is almost Nicaraguan prices. Unbelievable how low the pot prices are and it is all because it is not shipped illegally through the land of beheadings (Mexico). And Colorado has a 10% tax on everything so there is no excuse to keep this shit illegal. these pot taxes paid for the nice rec center I took a shower in the other day. 

holy shit, Mass and Cali and even Nevada all legalized recreational pot recently. Finally this insane prohibition is going to end. I still get drug tested by the lunatic Texans who seem to believe the federal government has no say in what I do to my body but the state government, comprised of babbling zealots, does, so I can not indulge in order to quiet the demonic voices in my head but one day this insanity will end across the country and across the world and we can quietly get stoned and watch the world collapse. A pot smoker can almost drive across the country, coast to coast, and be carrying pot legally in every state he drives through. Only the theologian belt states are holding on to primitive Nixonian ethics because they love to make money off of drug possession fines while a place like Missouri is over run with Crystal Meth labs.

While I have your attention I will give you this message. remember, your butterfly flight through the virtual cupboards of the internet may have a deeper meaning, maybe you are searching for something other than the price of pot. Listen:
Truth is a very high standard. Truth is not a plaything. To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection. Truth is not unloading our opinions onto someone. That is not truth. Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways that we actually hide from truth.
Truth is much more intimate than that. When we tell the truth, it has the sense of a confession. I don’t mean a confession of something bad or wrong, but I mean the sense where we come completely out of hiding. Truth is a simple thing. To speak the truth is to speak from a sense of total and absolute unprotectedness.

Master of Melancholy

Leonard Cohen was honest. His lyrics had some poetic elements but most of all they were honest and he sang honestly. Maybe he decided to memorialize only the melancholy aspects of his life, or maybe he was always melancholy. Either way, he demonstrated that with honesty and a few chords then you can make some music worth listening to. Karen Carpenter can sing melancholy, but I think she faked it. She was a good actress and her voice can capture melancholy in a way that is perhaps more poignant than Cohen, but Cohen was honest and melancholy in the way Bukowski mostly told fake stories but did it in a way that you knew he was bending the facts for the good of the story, not for his own benefit. He was often the villain of his stories but only because the truth wasn't that interesting. Cohen was not as gifted a singer as Dean Martin or Bing Crosby and his songs are not up to Cole Porter's or Burt Bacharach's standards and his melodies are monotonous, but they always suit the words. Cohen had his finger on the pulse of the broken heart. I'd like to record a cover song from his songbook but he deserves his own voice. Go search for a video with him singing. Somewhere, angels have stopped strumming on their harps because the real artist has arrived. Cohen is not smiling, he sits down, takes his time, grabs his guitar, tunes it slowly, strums a minor chord, and sings something true.