streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 3:53 pm on March 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: backpackers ( 2 ), flashpckers, Hardie Karges, hypertrvel   

  Time Travel: In Search of the Ultimate Sunrise 

   

  Probably the most beautiful sunrise I ever experienced was my first morning in Flagstaff, Arizona, back in February, 1987… first morning as a resident, that is. Lupita and I had visited before, naturally (I usually do that before making a move, though not always), but this was the Big Move.

  Of course if you’re a Flagstaffian, then you already know I was a neophyte or I wouldn’t have been doing it in February, not in Flagstaff. February in Flagstaff is risky, by definition. We made the trip from Berkeley almost without incident, too—almost, I reiterate—the California central valley, the Tehachapis, Barstool, the Desert of Death, the Big Ditch, Bullhead City, etc. Then came the Big Climb, almost sea level to 7000 feet in the course of less than 200 miles, about three hours, if you’re lucky. We weren’t…

  After ten straight hours of travel, fully loaded like the Beverly Hillbillies in sesarch of finery after striking it rich with crude, and making any stopover problematic, we decided to push on through the night, Flagstaff by morning hopefully, not so easy on the best of vehicles in the best of times, but this was a 20-year-old pickup strained to the limits of its endurance. It was a trooper, no doubt, having been to Guatemala twice and Mexico again only the year before, but still, this was Flagstaff in February…

  We almost made it, but that old pickup truck just died when it saw the city limit sign, five miles out of town. Just died. Wouldn’t start. Turn the key. Nothing. The rest is silence. Lupita pulled up behind me in her little cream-puff of a car.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.” When stressed out, I can be a real smart-ass.

  Then I looked up and saw that sunrise, purples and oranges in random profusion, clouds splotched around as vehicles for the color—oil not water—and that only, apparently. (More …)

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    13Studio 8:44 pm on April 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    That was a fun read Hardie… I like knowing the story of your first sunrise in Flag.

    Hope all’s going well in your world.

    Chris

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    hardie karges 8:49 pm on April 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    Thanx; you have a blog?

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  hardie karges 11:11 am on January 30, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: backpacker ( 4 ), flashpacker ( 2 ), Hardie Karges, hypertravel ( 12 ), Mississippi ( 3 )   

  INSOMNIA, POETIC LICENSE, & MAO’S LITTLE NOT-SO-RED CABIN IN THE MISSISSIPPI WOODS 

  

  I haven’t had a really good night’s sleep in thirty years, or thereabouts anyway, not since my last paid job as a carpenter, back in my seminal youth (accent on my little seamen, with their voyages of discovery), and defined by the sweet smells of patchouli, herbal essence, and decay, honeysuckle and slowly rotting newsprint, antique pickup trucks and low technology, the lower the better in fact, living in five-quarter-inch plank-wood cabin, rough-cut and left un-planed in makeshift sawmills, and toted by the truckload to the lower forty acres of uncut forest, lain fallow by then for at least two generations while the world went on without it, until I saw value where others saw only clear-cut profit, like my father before me, and so proceeded to put permanent erections in temporary top soils, me and quarter-sawed antique heartwood and wood-burning stoves and kerosene lamps and nature-lust and heartache, back when Coors was currency and non-conformity was criminal and planets were small and getting smaller every day.

    (More …)
   
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  hardie karges 10:35 am on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: backpacker ( 4 ), flashpacker ( 2 ), Hardie Karges, hypertravel ( 12 ), prostate cancer   

  PROSTATES & POLITICS… and 2012 in the rear-view mirror… 

  Dec. 29, 2011, approximately 4:30 p.m:

   “You tested positive for prostate cancer.”

              I tried to remember the old Seinfeld episode, but couldn’t remember the ending, so I was still positive (pun).  “That means I don’t have it, right?”

              The doctor smiles thinly.  “Next we’ll need to do a bone scan to see the extent of spread.  After that you can meet with the oncologist…”

              The words gradually sank in.  “Wait a minute; you mean I’ve got cancer (heavy on the reverb)?”

  The doctor nodded, then continued talking, but I was no longer listening.

  The say at the moment of your impending death your life will pass before your eyes, presumably in fast-motion if you’ve done very much, though anybody who’s ever used an old-fashioned crank-up 16mm film camera knows it’s just the opposite: to play back fast, you shoot slow, and vice versa. Think about it.  But I didn’t see any flashbacks, either fast or slow. All I saw were dollar signs, flashing before my eyes and out the window.  My life itself was like a frame of old-fashioned film stuck in an old-fashioned projector gate, starting to burn and tear, starting to smell to all Hell.  I’d just been told that I’m dying, the dreaded ‘C’ word.  But wait a minute.  Aren’t we all dying?  It’s just a question of when, and how… (More …)

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    kc 12:54 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    not too funny. you are lucky as can be. surprised they did’nt laproscropically do that thing. i do hope you made it through your treatments ok. do you have a clean bill of health? Can’t wait to get my book then get packing….

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      hardie karges 1:23 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Actually, “lucky” is not the first adjective that came to mind…

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    kc 12:55 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    you are brave and i am happy for you

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    hardie karges 1:25 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    “Brave” is not the first adjective that came to mind, either… so far, so good, will know more in a couple weeks…

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    ANNE KARGES 3:24 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    glad you are still around to give me something new to read. come home sometime.

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      hardie karges 3:37 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      When is Millsaps homecoming 2013?

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  hardie karges 7:27 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), Gun control ( 2 ), Hardie Karges   

  GUNS, GERMANS, AND STEAL: THE FATE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY 

  “Don’t fence me in,”… just give me a gun…

   The current debates over gun control in the US are nothing new, of course, and, in a way, have nothing to do with guns or murders or bullets or magazines.  It has to do with control.  We Americans don’t trust control of any sort, especially when it emanates from above or from the center, the central government, that is.  Nor is this predilection entirely an American thing, though we’ve certainly carried the argument to its logical conclusion.  It should be noted straight away that this is the same debate—not similar, analogous, or metaphorically mellifluous—that operates in any and all discussions of economic, health, welfare and other forms of policy. 

    (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 5:33 pm on December 31, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Hardie Karges, hypertravel ( 12 ), New Year ( 5 ), Thailand ( 76 )   

  สวัสดีปีใหม่ Happy New Year! To reflect is humane, to shine is divine… 

  Ten years ago—to the day—I was lying in a bed somewhere in northern Thailand, attached to it in fact, in a sort of makeshift traction best accomplished with metal frames and waterproof members, making up in utility what it lacked in esthetics. Ironically it’s the same bed my wife’s grandmother had just died in, the same one I’d seen her in for the year-and-a-half of my marriage, she lying there comatose, oblivious, waiting to die, I can’t remember why, though it didn’t seem to bother anyone too much, being a natural phase I guess, relatives coming in to check periodically, sometimes even cracking jokes above her head, like swatting flies mid-air that couldn’t even be seen by the one victimized, she reduced to rubble, ashes to ashes and dust to dust no more than a scarce few weeks before. So what was I now doing in that same bed, just indulging in a little macabre fun? I wished. Here’s what happened. (More …)

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    kc 8:29 pm on December 31, 2012 Permalink | Reply

    well told tale my writer friend

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    hardie karges 1:28 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    thank you

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    kc 4:25 pm on August 24, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    well a happy new year to you, now at the middle of the year. yes, losing consciousness for however long is like dying a little bit. maybe dying for a short while but dying just the same is that time you spend blacked out.

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      hardie karges 9:11 am on August 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      There are some Islamic references to each night being a “little death.” If that’s the case, then what is dreaming?

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    kc 11:49 am on August 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

    dreaming is simply a rehash of our real life and days we spend in it. i think that little death was used as an analogy to orgasm and shooting heroin

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  hardie karges 10:07 am on December 26, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Christmas ( 11 ), Hardie Karges, hypertravel ( 12 )   

  Tis’ the Season… to Avoid Depression: FA LA LA 2U2 

  Tis' the Season… to Avoid Depression: FA LA LA 2U2.

   
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  hardie karges 9:52 am on December 26, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Christmas ( 11 ), depression ( 6 ), Hardie Karges, holidays, hypertravel ( 12 ), New Year ( 5 )   

  Tis’ the Season… to Avoid Depression: FA LA LA 2U2 

  I have my own Christmas traditions, developed over decades and continents, usually wherever I happen to find myself on the blessed day, either for lack of imagination or some rogue inspiration, none of which places can usually be considered ‘home,’ as the concept seems to have largely eluded me over the years.  If stuck at ‘home,’ I find that the day can even make me extremely depressed if I don’t deal with it pro-actively, because even though I’m extremely put off by the commercialism of Christmas, that doesn’t mean that I can entirely dismiss it.  I know; I’ve tried. (More …)

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