When ain't no one watching, ain't no one judging

“I live in a survivalist compound populated by wives, concubines, slaves and wild beasts. At any given time no fewer than two people are restrained and forced to orgasm while humiliated by the jeers of onlookers. This is our culture. You have no right to judge us.”

This was the opening to a gallery I stumbled upon last year.  I edited a few of these to make them vaguely appropriate for Slap Bookleather, but honestly thinking about what I’ve already queued up for the year I’m not sure what’s appropriate at this point.  In the context of my end of the year thoughts on escaping civilization for solitude and meditation it rings… oddly in my noggin. 

What do people get up to when no one is looking?  Probably not just meditation.

Is this the kind of tomfoolery you should expect this year?  Maybe. 

Welcome to 2024.

Staring into the Campfire

At the end of the summer this year I spent almost eight days camping in a patch of desert called Salt Flat, TX.  Every morning Mrs. Slap and I got up just after sunrise and cooked breakfast; when it started to get hot we went up into the Guadalupe Mountains to hike; towards sunset we found some shade, made dinner, then watched the nightly dance.  Sunset in the mountains to the west, Milky Way spiraling overhead, full blood red moon rising over the mountains in the east.  On a busy day we might see five other people.

What passes for reality set in with work, crowds, politics, inflation, family, war, plague all crushing in as we got back to civilization.  I wasn’t right for days.  Weeks.  Months.  I miss it.

I think often about a pair of conversations in the film Jeremiah Johnson:

Bear Claw Chris Lapp: [Seeing the striped military trousers Jeremiah's wearing] Missed another war down there, hmm?

…and later…

Jeremiah Johnson: How does the war go?

Lt. Mulvey: Which war?

Jeremiah Johnson: The war against the President of Mexico.

Lt. Mulvey: Why, it's over.

Jeremiah Johnson: Who won?

No one wins.  The war in Ukraine is going to drag on into another attritional trench war for years, or someone is going to have to decide to cede the East to Russia.  The war in Gaza is… I have no idea where that was going.  Anyone with sense can tell that Iran pushed Hamas into attacking with a bunch a crazy “hail mary”s hoping to provoke an over-response from Israel that would pause or cancel the impending Saudi-Israel formal alliance that was in the works.  I doubt anyone thought Hamas would get as far or do as much damage as it did, or that Israel would have to save face with an endless shock & campaign followed by a ground invasion.  This is the Iran-Saudi cold war turned very hot, and it’s bringing in resources from all over.  Including every American’s tax dollars which are going to munitions fired into Gaza.  All because someone in Tehran got a smart idea.  And people are going to forget about the 1,200 deaths and innumerable attrocities in Israel as the body count goes well into the tens of thousands in Gaza.  No one wins.

And then there’s Trump, who might still be President again despite it all.  The average life expectancy for a male in the US is 77.28 years.  Maybe nature will play the odds and clear the slate.  I’m still holding out for a Romney-Manchin 3^rd party run. 

Via con dios, pards.

Breckinridge Elkins, Robert E. Howard's comedic mountain man

Good grief, there is a Breckinridge Elkins web comic!  To be honest, I probably knew about this in my first time pass through this blog, but I had a chance to give it a good read lately and I really enjoyed it.  Not sure what else this guy has worked on, and it's amazing that the site is still up after a decade.  

Breckinridge Elkins is by far my favorite Robert E. Howard character, more so than Conan and Solomon Kane.  His mountain man stories are where Howard really started to come into his own as a writer and folklorist, and where he put most of his efforts in the last years or his life.  The Conan stories (the originals, not the pastiches or stories adapted into Conan stories) read like man managing his bipolar disorder through writing.  By the time we get to Elkins, it felt like he had passed a rough patch and was enjoying his professional life.

Then his dog died, his mother died, and he put a .38 in his own brain.  He was 36.

Breckinridge Elkins is a reminder that adversity can be overcome, life can be good, and it can also be fleeting.

Enjoy.

Metrosexual Mountain Man

I woke up today and went on my customary morning walk.  Since it was the first cold day of the year I had on a heavy Cabella’s sweatshirt over an Eastern Mountain Sports t-shirt and a pair of well-worn flannel lined jeans from LL Bean.  As cold weather and my scarred up chest don’t get along well I decided it was time to break out my new LL Bean clover sweater vest for work, but still struggled to figure out what it matched with.  I settled on slate dress slacks and a Joseph A Banks light grey/green shirt.  Before heading out I checked the mirror and moved my just shy of too long hair and beard into place, and laughed at the notion that my management never knows if I’ll come to work in khakis and flannel or displayed like a peacock.  No wonder I am so enamored by the Rawhide Kid.

Meditations of a Mountain Man

When I close my eyes and take a deep breath I often find myself high in a forested mountain with fresh, clean air.  Sometimes it is in an ashram1, meditating in lotus2, senses turned inward to my breath and heartbeat, third eye3 blazing.  Sometimes it standing near a beaver pond, senses turned outward, listening for Bugs Boys4 or Old Ephraim5, with my trigger finger on my Hawken6 ready for the chance to make meat7.

Inside me there is a vegetarian yogi who practices pranayama regularly and is concerned about his meditation, because sometimes it’s too easy to get lost in the Atmamya kosha8 and hard to come back.  He’s often at odds with the big bearded buy who reads and writes westerns, romps around the woods, kayaks and runs and knows way more about guns than he should.

Yesterday I left my weekly advanced yoga class, where I really started getting the hang of handstand and arm balance basics, and walked out to my car9 barefoot and blissful.  When I started up the radio came on and this was the song that was playing:

For once, the two sides got along great.

And now for the footnotes:

1- Forest academy, a place for spiritual or religious contemplation

2- Cross legged seated position

3- Place of focus related to the pineal gland

4- Blackfoot Native American tribe

5- Grizzly bear

6- Muzzle loading rifle favored by fur hunters

7- Hunting for game

8- Inner veil the reveals connectedness to the universe and all living things

9- Subaru Forester, of course

Eau de Mountain Man

Up until a few minutes ago I stank.  Really, really smelled.  I like to think I came by that smell honest.  I spent three days living in tents with some friends, spent one day hiking, one kayaking, and cooked three greasy meals over a campfire (although I am still a vegetarian, I made tons of burgers and bacon for my friends).  On the long drive back home Mrs. Slap & I both found our mutual stanks to be completely egregious.  I type this freshly showered, but there is still a patina of grease, dirt, and pond water that is sneaking its way into my nostrils. 

If I smelled that bad after three days in the woods, what the heck did mountain men smell like after a beaver season?  What about buffalo hunters in the killing fields?  Mrs. Slap often says that it’s a good thing movies don’t include smell-o-vision; seems doubly so for Westerns.