Monday, March 26, 2012 - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM
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Untitled, City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM, March 25, 2012
Raw material for a series.
These Milkvetch* pictures I've been getting the last few days, with and without their attendant insects, seem to bring out a creative editing streak in me. And I have hundreds of pictures to work with. You may see a few more of the better ones show up here over the next few days. This creative license bit is fun.
* not Crested Milkvetch as I thought. This is another of the many many Milkvetches but I'll be darned if I can figure out which.
Night camp
Site 2 Canes Venatici - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM
- Verizon cell phone service - fairly good signal - best on west side of the park
- Verizon EVDO service - faster than many places I've camped
- Go to City of Rocks State Park website
- Locate City of Rocks State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
When Hope Dies
When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die. And there's a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you're dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no.