Doing the Work, on Historic Highway 80

hello, stranger –

it's morning here in Bisbee, and i just came down the other night on a sudden invite from my publisher to spend a few days.  i was just beginning to dig into the big project back at the office, but i can never refuse a quick getaway when one comes up and i had nothing urgent pressing, so i packed up my office bag and a few overnight things and headed out for a couple of days.

it was actually Saint Paddy's day on Monday, which i'd kind of forgotten about.  most people had gone out and sham-rocked it out over the weekend, but i was feeling too run down from a combination of bad weather, professional disappointment, and borderline alcoholic behavior to go out and celebrate anything.  instead i rearranged my yard and cleaned my house and did a laundry list of chores i neglected, and let it all slip by unnoticed.  i didn't care.  i was in the mood for getting shit done, and Saint Paddy's day out here always just ends up making me homesick anyways.

and as for the aforementioned professional disappointment, it was nothing new or anything major – although it felt like it at the moment.  people are what they do, not what they say they're gonna do – that's a quote by Carl Jung, and i've really been trying to learn to take it to heart, although i still get caught by surprise from time to time.  and the end result in this particular situation is that i just have a lot more work to do to get the project to the next stage, and it's going to be a much more lonely climb.  so be it.

in any case, i didn't have Saint Paddy's day on my radar at all when i headed out, so when i stopped in Tombstone for a beer i was surprised to see it so busy, and with so many people wearing bright green shirt shirts and hats and outfits.  i ducked into the Crystal Palace and took a seat at the bar, because it seemed like there was a little more room to breathe and be normal in there, and a two person band was playing country music on stage while wearing their green faux Celtic wear - the perfect place for a quick pit-stop.

the lady sitting next to me had a shamrock on her shirt, with some sort of loud, in-your-face phrasing on it that i can't recall at the moment.  she and her sister kept yelling things up at the at the band, who they obviously knew.  when the dishwasher kicked on behind the bar we could feel the jolt and the hum of the machine through a subtle but noticeable vibration through the top of the bar.  that set off a series of jokes and innuendos that they cackled over with other friends from a few stools down.  they were having a great Monday night, and it was only 2:30 in the afternoon.  next up, they said, they were going to go get tattoos.  i couldn't tell if they were joking or not, but i found out later that they weren't, when i saw them sitting on the bench waiting outside a tattoo parlor.  before they left though the first lady invited me to come to her bar sometime - a real local joint, by the sound of it.  The said air wads called Buddy’s, and i told her i would.

they seemed like a good enough bunch, but i was a tourist there, and very much playing the part.  and especially these days it's important to keep your guard up and navigate the waters carefully when talking to new people.  there’s always been a wold array of cultures in this country, of course, but on the ride in through the desert country into the town "too tough to die” there were a good amount of MAGA flags and Trump signs that seemed serve as a reminder of the times.  that put me on guard, and i think with good cause.  i generally try to approach everyone and everything with as much of an open mind as possible, especially on travels like this.  but it would be a mistake to forget that not everyone necessarily shares in that same mindset.

***

… and now it's the following evening already.  ha!  that's part of why it's hard to do a proper drifting trip with anyone other than just yourself – finding the time to just sit, and be still and put pen to paper without interruption always seems near impossible.

not that it's anybody's fault but my own.  i'm just always so prone to getting caught up with whatever’s going on at the moment, especially if what's going on is out on a road trip, and people are partying.  which they tend to do.  and so a quick trip down the highway for a low-key hang out on Saint Paddy's Day turns into the tail end of the week where i'm back home, trying to catch up with things and stay on top of my schedule the best i can.

schedule?  or self imposed prison sentence?  it’s been hard for me to tell the difference sometimes – at least in my heart.  i set out to do this project – whatever the hell it ends up as - one way or another, and free myself of it’s chains once and for all.  it’s been like like being haunted by the ghost of an unborn child for years now.  but free myself to what, exactly?  get more clients, do better work, build a better income or find a steady job, move to a cooler part of the country, find love, marry, settle down, have kids, buy a home, deal with a mortgage, and debt, and drama, and get old and feel stuck, all while wondering what might have been had i tried a little harder or not given up….

time enough left for that to-do list, i guess, so might as well do it without the wondering part.  and i already feel stuck enough as it is, but at the same time completely adrift.  not like i've been before though -  there’s been a shift of some kind.  i’m living with massive uncertainty on multiple levels every day, and am somehow learning to be good with it.  everything from where my next project is coming from to whether or not we're all gonna be on the wrong side of World War III is a big question mark every day.  the waves just keep coming in from all angles, so i’ve just been focused on not letting myself not get carried away.  in fact, there’s a odd sense of guilty reassurance that has come with all the chaos, as basically everyone seems to be freaking out about at least one thing or another, once you get them talking.  it’s nice to not be alone in it at least.  it’s even given me a chance to shine on occasion, as well as a beat up old lunching bag for stress can, i guess.  someone asks how it is that i appear to be managing along as well as i’ve been, and i generally just shrug it off with the attitude that there’s still a lot in the tank, and a long way to go.

of course, those people don’t see the sleepless nights, or the moments of regrouping like this one.  it’s just getting dark out, and it feels like a good time to tilt a glass of wine back.  it hasn't been nearly the productive day that i'd hoped it would be, but still – the night is young, and the air is cool, and i've got the only three words i need right now burned into my brain.  “do the work.”

***

it's a simple enough statement, to be sure.  and one that was hiding in plain sight the whole while.  but what we're looking for and what we see aren't always the same thing, and sometimes it takes a while for our eyes to get into focus.  and sometimes – as it’s becoming more and more evident to me – it's the act of doing the work itself that is exactly what brings that focus.

that was the thought the struck me on the way to Bisbee anyways.  it was stuck in my mind, i guess, because after being served up yet another round of disappointment i was forced once again to come to terms with the scope of the project, and the reality that i was very much alone in it.  the idea from the beginning was for it to be a group project – with the possibility of it eventually building into more – but had eventually boiled down to just an army of one to haul the load alone.  in fact, as recent events pointed to, i couldn't even pay someone to help with it.  un-fucking–believable, was my initial response - and i think justifiably so.

but it was also – i'm sad to say – not exactly surprising.  and in fact if you were to look at my total record of business partners and creative colleagues through the years, it was nothing if not on par for the course.  it may have taken me a hot minute to pivot and readjust and fully accept the added scope of work that i was now going to have to take on alone, but once i did and wrapped my mind around it things began to take on a different tone.  an enthusiastic one, even.  for years and even decades – it seemed to me – the universe had kept sending people into my orbit who - on one level or another - could talk a nice enough game to get things excited, but in the end fell short of actually delivering.  and now the question seemed clear – could I?

and it slowly dawned on me that maybe that was the point of it all, and always had been. regardless of what was to come out at the end of the road, it was the journey and what type of person it helped build along the way that mattered.  if you want something done you just gotta be the type of person who makes it happen.  that was it – full stop.  and since i've been intent on breaking out of the ruts of the past and building up some muscles i never really had before, i was beginning to feel like not only was i finding the right amount of “fuck it” attitude when it came to obstacles getting in the way, but also a pretty hard “hell no” when the idea came around of any interference.  i was going to do this thing, one way or another, and i wasn’t about to hand over the keys to anyone else.  in fact, if anything it was time to grab the wheel a little tighter and hit the gas.

***

i got to Bisbee later in the afternoon, and was disappointed at first that the address didn’t lead me into Old Town.  i'd imagined sitting in the sunshine of the patio some old hotel and drinking a beer while scribbling out ideas in my notebook.  all in due time, i guess.  but for now i had to go past the cluster of charming little shops and restaurants, and on down the highway a little further.  the road hugs the side of the huge open pit mine after that, and i took it to the more livable neighborhood of Warren, where – as my phone informed me – my destination was ahead on the left.

i pulled in smiling – as my publisher friend noted – to this two story, bungalow style home with a chain-link fence and a gravel yard, right on the side of the main road.  it was definitely on the lo-fi side of things, but pleasant enough and affordable and seemed to fit the bill perfectly for her and her little family for a couple of days.  after a quick tour we sat out in the chairs out front and poured ourselves a few round of vodka sodas, while the sun began it’s descent in the sky.  the neighbor across the street had a flag flying with an illustration of a shrimp on it that we found that intriguing - and oddly reassuring for some reason.  but besides that there was nothing particularly remarkable about the setting for anyone used to having drinks on beat-up lawn furniture by the side of the road, with the sun sinking towards a giant copper mine off in the distance.

after a while we made our way over to Old Town, and parked and headed into the Bisbee Grand Hotel.  i immediately felt the solo traveler in me tapping on my shoulder and wanting out of his cage.  to register into the hotel – my friend informed me – you need to check in at the bar, an old saloon–style bar room with ancient floors in a high ceiling, and the well worn but comfortable feel of an old baseball mitt that you would never dream of parting with.  that's how those kind of place is strike me, anyways, and for a moment i could almost smell the leather of it, and just wanted to wriggle my way onto a barstool and dig a little deeper into the story here, and maybe even leave my own little share of it behind.

but there were the four of us, and we needed a table.  and despite the instinct to hop the fence and charge out onto the field, my friend's mom and kid were good company to have, so there was a big part of me that was happy to not be there alone as well.  we sat and ordered food and drinks, and the wings were good and i settled into the idea that with the right company it's okay to be in the balcony seats for a while.  plenty of time to get into that show later anyways, I figured.  and besides, it seemed like a place that needed a hell of a lot more than an hour and a half to get the real flavor of.

we went to the brewing company after that,  down the little stretch of buildings called “Brewers Gulch.”  this is an old mining town – which is not something i would've given much thought to before moving West - but the fundamental characteristics i would ascribe to it are: old, steep, and isolated.  that might not sound like much, but in my experience it’s part of what makes mountain towns some of the coolest, most unique and irreplaceable places i’ve been to.  and even though i'd never really thought of Bisbee as a mountain town before, i think that's just because i was always comparing it to places i’ve been in Colorado, or Montana, or other places up north.  but this is mountain country too, everywhere you look – just with its own sort of flavor.

the flavor i'd always taken away from Bisbee was an almost European one.  there's old buildings and narrow, winding roads, which seem to have no rhyme or reason to how they’re laid out, other than things were just built for fitting into whatever the landscape gave you to work with.  and there’s a feature here, not a bug.  this little town isn’t efficient.  it’s wedged in a canyon, and doesn’t have room to sprawl out and grow, not in the commercial sense that most people think of anyhow.  there’s not much room for a fast lane of any type here, and not the kind of model that one would want to pick pitch to a board of investors.  but what that leaves is a sense of content and calm, which – although i'm sure does not extend to everyone, and has its own limits – i’ve always seemed to notice extends more prevalently to the people of the mountain time zone than anywhere else i've been in the country.  there’s a combination of isolation and ruggedness that seems fuel a sort of independence of spirit which feels like you can almost breathe in, and makes you aware of – if at least on a subconscious levels anyways – how much other stuff you've been aching to breathe out.

***

after Old Town we headed back to the house and topped off the night with a couple more drinks in the yard, just shooting the breeze about work and goals and the overall state of things.  it’s almost impossible to sit around and talk with anybody at this point and not have the conversation almost immediately turn to the stuff that was going on in the news.  the headlines where a shotgun blasts on a daily basis – hourly even, sometimes – and it struck me as we were sitting there that we were all going through some shared, collective trauma, and relying on one another – to one extent or another – to play the part both of therapist and fellow patient.

fortunately, we had the comforting and completely uncontentious subject of religion to turn to, after we all agreed with the conclusion that the crisis the country was facing was not so much a political one as it was a moral one.  we discussed each other's backgrounds and upbringings and how much they shaped our beliefs into what we carry with us today.  when my friend asked me what i thought about of it all - in terms of God and heaven and all that - i shrugged and told her the same thing I told my buddy at the campsite in Patagonia, and had been kicking around in my mind for a while now:

“i guess the best way to explain the way i imagine it is if you picture the relationship between a radio and a radio station, right?  so your body is like the radio, and your spirit is like the radio waves.  without the radio the radio waves can't be heard.  and without the radio waves the radio is pointless.  but even if the radio breaks, or gets worn out and falls apart – which it inevitably must do – that doesn't mean the radio waves aren't still there.  they're still being broadcast from the great radio station in the sky, which is actually the cosmic soup that's all around us.

so there's basically just about an infinite amount of frequencies being broadcast, that we all share to one extent or another, and are being joined and shifted together and split apart and reshaped yet again, that make up our own unique signal.  and how we tune into them determines who we become as people.  all those frequencies are available to everybody, and are what constitutes what most people would refer to as heaven and hell.  except there is not one or the other, just a limitless rainbow between light and darkness from where all the frequencies emanate.

that's why shitty people tend to broadcast those shitty wavelengths outwards, because that’s what they're tuned into.  it just the easier thing to do for them.  weakness and evil are basically just different forms of the same thing.  they'll always exist, but it's own our jobs as humans to tune them out and broadcast something better.  and for various reasons it’s just easier for some than others.  that's the problem with what's going on these days – the ones with the most power don't seem to be interested in that at all, and in fact doing the opposite.  so do I believe in a soul and afterlife, and heaven and hell and all that?  yeah, i guess in my own way i would say so.  but i just think that whatever it looks like or whenever it is, we're actually in the experience of it right now.”

i liked my little theory about the universe, as clunky as my delivery may have been.  i'd been thinking on it a lot the last couple weeks, and felt like it hit the sweet spot between all the things i'd learned about the various religions that made sense to me, and left out all the things that didn't, while at the same time leaving enough room to not have some sort of abrasive collision with any one particular faith or another.  flexibility is the key, in my opinion, to the sort of thinking that could truly illuminate a view of things that could really bring a sense of understanding to things, rather than just push someone else's narrative, no matter how popular or ingrained in culture it is.

and besides, it made as much sense to me as anything else, and we all need some kind of operating system i guess, so i figure why not go with that one.  my only rule of thumb when it comes to theology is that i don't really care what faith the idea comes from, so long as it’s in service of opening the mind, rather than closing it.  and since my friends were generally of the same mindset, it was fun batting those ideas around into the late hours of the night.  i wasn't exactly expecting any converts to my view of things, just like i knew no one expected me to change mine.  but it's enjoyable to bang around some ideas a bit and see what sticks when it's thrown against the wall - even when you're half in the wrapper and no one will remember much of it anyways.

***

the next day was extremely windy, so we decided to take a trip down to Douglas.  that was fine with me, as being in the passenger seat of the car was just about my speed at at that point.  before going to bed my friend had given me a gummy that she said was CBD and helped her sleep like a rock.  and it was only about 15 minutes after finally crawling into bed that i realized i’d made a mistake.  i tossed and turned for a while, and began to notice my thoughts getting weird and scrambled, and oddly hyper, until my eyes finally popped open in the dark of the strange bedroom i was in, and realized that accidentally gotten pretty high.

i didn't mind so much except i knew that it was the last thing in the world i needed if i wanted to get some sleep.  i tend to react strongly to THC, and in both the mental and physical level it's not always the most pleasant sensation – certainly not relaxing, like some people experience.  my mouth and eyes go dry, i always feel like i need a shower form some reason, and it seems like one part of my mind goes 1,000,000 miles an hour, while other parts slows down to a crawl, like there’s two gears that are totally out of sync with one other.  too much of the wrong stuff and there’s a rodeo going on in my head where my normal thoughts should be.

which has its place under the right circumstances, but in this situation all i wanted to do was get some sleep.  and then i realized part of the problem was the blanket i was under was paper thin, and i was freezing and needed another.  i couldn't find the light switch so i turned on the flashlight of my phone and crept over to the little closet on the far wall.  i hadn’t noticed before but the floors were bare plywood, and then i saw that the doors to the closet had strange metal lions ornamenting them.  i felt like i was sneaking around in someone's attic. when i opened the doors there were some quilts folded up on the floor, but also strange garment hanging from the rack.  i pulled the string on the little fluorescent light and it flickered on with a buzzing sound.  the garment was a leopard print suit of some kind, made for a quite small person and out of a plastic-like material.  and the fluorescent light flicked on and off with a horrible buzzing sound, like some kind of horror movie lighting set and i sat there a while, trying to figure out what to make of it, with my paranoid, scrambled mind completely transfixed with the scene in front of it.

eventually i pulled out the extra blankets and turned off the flickering light and shut the doors to the closet, completely convinced that there was some stuff going on with this house that i just didn't want to know.  but as i was putting the quilts on the bed, the sound of a helicopter began outside.  i thought it would just pass by, but then i realized it had stopped about 40 or 50 feet above the roof, and wasn't going anywhere – just waiting for something.  i crept over to the window and got on the floor to peek through the blinds like a criminal trying to avoid detection.  between that and the closet i obviously didn't know what the fuck was going on, but i knew my head wasn't in the right place for dealing with any of it so i just tiptoed back to the bed in my underwear, crawled under the covers and left it all to pass.

the next morning i shared with my friends what i’d written in bold, chicken-scratch letters in my notebook as i lay in bed from the night before.  “weirdest closet ever - i think these people are psychotic – wtf helicopter? – i think this room is fucking haunted.”

they laughed at me and reminded me of the nearby hospital to explain the helicopter - a fact that I had thankfully remembered sometime after it landed.  and they didn’t believe me about the haunted closet.  but regardless, my sleep had been short and spotty at best, so i had no objection to taking a passive role in our day’s adventure, or any disappointment that we weren't going to be trying to make much more of it.

***

we took the trip down to Douglas - unknown territory for us all – and enjoyed the peaceful ride along the way.  when we got into the town we drove around a little bit until we found our way downtown to the Gadsden hotel, a vintage and extremely posh hotel from yesteryear.  the interior lobby is loaded with brass and marble and stained glass, and enough elegance to make you feel like you're really stepping back into another era.  the bar was closed but we had lunch in the café, and then browsed through the little museum in the back on our way out, which surprisingly was more about World War II veterans than anything else.  clearly there was a lot of sacrifice being honored within those walls, and i wondered why this particular corner of the world had been asked to give so much, or if maybe they were just particularly good at paying tribute to it.

it was hard not to be impressed with the hotel, and i wanted to come back.  i wanted to come back to Douglas in general, and get a real feel for the place.  it's a sizable town, and there were things to see, but just like so many places these days there was plenty of evidence it was struggling just to make it.  the hotel itself was like a miraculous time capsule, so upscale and cosmopolitan that it almost made me feel bad walking around in it in jeans and a hoodie.  but it was impossible to imagine enough rooms being booked on a regular basis to pay for the upkeep let aline sustain a profit, and we guessed that this must be some wealthy person’s labor of love, and probably used as a tax write off.  and thank God for that, because it hurt the heart a little to even imagine it being replaced by any of the crappy, featureless things that businesses tend to build today.

on our way out of town we drove around a little to check things out a little bit.  it was a weekday and during the working hours, so the streets were pretty quiet – but even so, i got the sense that they were probably didn't get that much busier too often.  we drove down the street to the actual border - a particularly militarized portion of it - with a double wall and razor wire.  it reminded me of a prison, and stretched on as far as the I could see.  on the other side was Mexico – and Mexicans - but we couldn't see anything of it, or them, through the wall.

***

we left and would spend a quiet night at the rental, but on the way back it was brought up how Highway 80 had originally been one of the first trans-coastal roads in America.  this section of it stretched all the way to New Mexico and beyond, and i started to get the hankering to see every mile of it.  i began to formulate a plan in my head on the best way to do that, and the next morning when my friend and i went to breakfast i shared it with her.

“i want to take a few days, roll through slow, stay at a few places.  try to get in some some real photography,” i said.  we could use it for the magazine, and some of our advertisers, i explained.

an old timer with a gentle way about him brought us out our breakfast.  i'd asked him to surprise me between the hash and the chicken fried steak.  i would've been fine with either one, but once i saw the steak and eggs and gravy all together on the plate like that i liked him even better.

the magazine didn’t have the budget for an all-expense-paid trip, of course, but that's not what i was proposing.  mainly i just wanted a reason to take the trip, and the green light to go.  there were hundreds of miles on Route 80, dozens of spots along the way that we did business with, and i had a truck and a camera, – it was a good excuse to use them as any any i could think of.

“sounds good to me, go for it,” she said, as there really wasn't any reason for her not to.  it'll probably take some planning and a good bit of your time, she noted – then adding it might end up being more work than you think.

i nodded in agreement.  but the good news was that there was nothing stopping me.  and as we sat there - enjoying our breakfast on this beautiful morning in this funky section of town, perched along the side of a giant mining pit - a quiet but really pleasant moment passed by like a break in the clouds, as it sank further in that there really never had been to begin with.