2 FINGERNAILS 2: Edge O'Cliff, New Mex.

Gorgeous!

I saw Mr. & Mr. Madison last night @ Anna Nicole's house.
I said, "Was I kidding about S'tanley's back porch?"
"No, you weren't kidding".

40 story drop to oblivion.

Looking down, looking up... they also flipped out on the megawatt stars.

The first time I came out here and saw the Milky Way I screamed.
I thought something was wrong with the sky.

Oh S'tanly, I just sat down to add my little bit and ...remember when you hosted my birthday party a few years ago and we set up a very tribal-sounding Siouxsie & the Banshees b-side to play on a continuous loop at the door? It's called Sunless, and it's very New Mex, instrumental and all percussion. Well, it just came on as I began to type and it's the perfect soundtrack to remembrances of our visit, as you've already captured above. I must say I felt kind of witchy out there. I always have such a terrible sense of direction no matter where I am, but in New Mexico it was as if I just knew the way. It was odd. Trite as it sounds, I felt a real connection to the land there.

Maybe that explains how, when we were hiking around the mesa, and I was marveling at all of the incredible rocks underfoot, I had just asked S'tan if anyone ever found any crystals among them, and not five minutes after her answer 'no - never,' there appeared on the ground before me a chunk of quartz with three gorgeous pristine crystals growing up out of it.

I had my reservations about S'tan making a full-time move to The West, at first. But now I see that it's perfect for her. The first word I thought of on seeing the limitless horizon was extreme. It's an exceedingly extreme place, in its isolation, in its light, its wind, its primevalness, its horizontality. It's sort of the anti-New York and its artificial verticality. We had never seen such an incredible play of light, as the sun and clouds caused a constant change in the landscape. The same view looked different with each glance.

S'tan's home and surrounding cliffs were the real highlights of the trip, but we also fell in love with the canyons along the Rio Grande on our drive to Taos. And Taos of course has its own magic, though we didn't hear the "Taos Hum"-the unexplained low sound that many people there claim can be heard if you really listen. The prevailing theory is that it's a sound caused by the grinding of the tectonic plates that gave New Mexico much of its breathtaking beauty. We had a tour of the Millicent Rogers Museum there, which was full of native pots, jewelry, tools, and icons. My favorite piece there was a Spanish death cart c. 1900 (see below picture), which had been used in Day of the Dead celebrations. The museum's director told us that a black scarf was meant to adorn her head, but they would come in each morning to find it on the floor. So eventually someone replaced it with a piece of gold lace, which the driver seems to prefer -- it stays on! The superstitious director also showed us a cabinet of spooky kachina dolls. She claimed they dance around at night!

A very magikal trip. We'll be back to do it all again S'tan: the arsenic & iron baths, the milky way, the perfect rainbow.

How's this for an amateur photo stitch of that perfect rainbow:

the death cart

views from S'tan's 'back yard'

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Our S'tan, Marchesa of the Mesa, at the Mable Dodge House in Taos

S'tan u look great!!

What an AMAZING place it looks ...well... unreal I think the word is!

Had to post a closeup of our friend in the death cart, resplendent in her gold lace

and here's Madge of the Mesa, with David, climbing to the sky

I climbed up there too!
It's fantastic.
Gave my wife a heart attack.

Yay Madgely... thanks for the compliment Anna!
my hair went burgundy...
that Death Cart Lady is also someone who wanders around at night... Picking up the wandering souls of people who had their keys taken away at last call.

Empress sat in the back the house shivering while Daddy danced all over the cliffs. From the distance, it looks like one is walking along on a vertical surface! An old Carlos Casteneda hoo-doo trick: "How is that witch-doctor WALKING ON AIR?"

Happy Summer Solstice Sisters
Daytime it's already grilling, in the 90s, with cicadas' electrical sparkle in the air... Cats like to munch the crunchy bugs... Now it's night-time, the crickets take over from the cicadas, a more feminine drone in the cold night...

Happy Daddy's Day too!
Planned as usual to bury Daddy's ashes but then just could not. I think he likes it on the altar with his giant-size Bud... not admixed with the cliffs (volcanic ash)... I spent the afternon working on the Daddy novel, typing out this demented bio he wrote ofor himself at age 57.
"For no apparent reason, Bob Sellers was born on December 3, 1925..."

Daddy might want Binky to Come Home... Binky's been in the cat hospital for 2 days with a very mysterious bacterial infection. His little brain aflame with a high temp. I get to bring him home I hope tomorrow.

Please send beams to Binky!

Sending big beams of healing love to Binky.

Love to the ailing baby Binky, and to you S'tan..

I had such a bad feeling about this vet... I got Binky out after 48 hours and $700.
You won't believe this...
I was cleaning up Binky and saw, underneath some gucky stuff I thought was KY or something...
a GASH the size of a nickle on his back... !
obviously an OLD WOUND, maybe made by the beak of a owl? or barbed wire?
that the bloodie vets hadn't seen in FORTY-EIGHT HOURS of 'treatment." Coming up with every kind of exotic explanation.
MEANWHILE he had a WOUND that was INFECTED end of story.
I just called them and screamed....

Binky is lying on his side purring as I tend to his wound with golden seal
and am closing it up with my fingers and gauze.
... I mean a flap of skin went back, I could see his fat and tissue!!

HORRORS!
But thank you to the powers that be that I decided this AM to be my own/Binky's curandera!

Thank you for the beams, it helped, it helped.

Many beams to further Binky's recovery. In addition to the Golden Seal, if the rotten vet left you with antibiotics, keep giving them because cat-skin in an extremely unusual organ and prone to abscesses from wounds. It should not be sutured and kept bandaged to keep his tongue away... I have also heard that the same neomycin and triple antibiotic ointment that we use is also good for them. Change the bandage daily too.

And do keep him indoors till it's all healed!

Awww poor babe... u both must be really stressed. The one thing I loathe about the medical prof. both vets and human is the fact that its $ driven (cue Michael Moore SICKO). But so many times when i had cats i spent a fortune on vets bills for many things I too felt were rather unnec. I've also had the same experience with human doc's, it's almost 'upselling' wanting u to make more visits for more $.
Wish you luck as its tough that Binkey can't talk! (YET).

unbelievable!

Binky is better today! He sat under his favorite bush this morning looking for mice. I am getting him to eat, too, and he ate alot of oat grass which I grow for them!

The doc said (as Hatches mentioned) cat-skin is very unusual as it will rupture into abcess in an attempt to expel infection. (All the years I have had cats I never heard of such a thing!) So apparently it was NOT an old wound... at least I don't have to imagine ABUSE on top of his illness.

Maybe I should not have let him, but he is licking the abcess... and it looks fine. I trust in cat saliva more than I do antibiotics.
(no they didn't give me any extra antibiotics...)
Thanks to all my pals for putting up with me flipping.

He is just now trying to eat some of my Lindt chocolate and went strolling outside.

TRUST IN NATURE!

It's been a very quiet summer, esp. since none of my usual suspects could visit me! Being a stop on a cross-country road trip is now an issue, because of over $3.-a-gallon gas prices, and your on-the highway cheapie hotel now costing close to $100. a night! Neither the Goodie girls nor Jackie Bigelow could swing it this year...

At least I will be in New York in October to see their faces!

My big excitement is the Marilyn Manson-Slayer concert in Albuquerque next week. Can you believe I bought 2 tickets and not one of my wussie friends here want to go. Such lame Satanists!
I can break out my black and maybe meet some interesting freaks since I'll be stag.
Maybe get some use out of the hotel in Albuquerque... we cannot drive home 3 hours orangina'd.

Well we don't have the Jean Genet Prom, but we DO have the Hot & Juicy NUDE GEEZER Weenie Roast in Madrid...

http://www.geezers-illustrated.com/

Click on "PAUL" to see Brown Paul as a 'Nude Geezer' (with sunflower leaf) and buy the calendar for your kitchen.
Especially if you are on a diet.

Paul came up to Fingernails to visit yesterday, and as we were walking around the property with his pretty friend Heidi, we stumbled over a pile of pot shards, revealed by recent rains... I went out this AM and dug up an entire ancient Anasazi pot! Grey clay with black stripes, dots and something that looks like a leaf...
These things are over a thousand years old!
Thanks, Geezer! Leave it to him to find thousand-year old pot.

I knew Indians had once lived up here but never had found a thing until now. It's right near where I plan to dig a kiva swimming pool. We'll probably dig up a city.

Driving down to Albuquerque now to go to the Manson concert, including local heavy metal bands. It should be very weird. Tonight is a full eclipse of the full moon in Pisces. See Crowley's Tower card for insight...

Wednesday I meet a new client at the Mineshaft Tavern in Madrid, take him out Fingernails, and leave him outside, tied to a tree, for about 6 hours. I'll tell him about the Indians... make sure he chants the whole time, otherwise the unquiet spirits may scalp him. He'll have to pay extra for that, as well as the possible torrential downpour.

[...Ed. he absolutely LOVED the downpour!!!]

What is a "Kiva" swimming pool?

A kiva is a round bowl dug into the ground, with steps going down.
The Indians created kivas as a church of sorts, or ampitheatre. Sometimes they are enormous, other times small, some are only for men, some just for women.
I think the shape helps you commune with the earth. Think Roman ampitheatres, but dug into the ground.

I thought a round pool in this design would be very a propos. Already one of my neighbors is whinnying at me about having a pool, they are against pools out here because it's so arid but I don't care, I have my own water supply. Besides it will be enclosed (a natatorium.)

The Manson concert was interesting but I have to say SLAYER was better! More authentically Stanic. Manson seemed decadent and pose-y, and kept flopping on the floor to hang out with the fans. He'd do an elaborate costume change and tear it all off in one minute.

I appreciated his little stall at the side of the stage full of waiting groupies. Every chick was so decked out and super pretty... saw an 18-year old version of our famous beloved Diva, and the same of the Falon!

I have to say -- seeing the youth of America, Hispanic version, screaming "SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!" and giving the forked-finger sign was very inspiring! Gives you hope that all is not lost in this country.

I love your posts from Fingernails....God how much more interesting it is than whats doing here in NYC! BELIEVE ME!

I was thinking of Manson, and was reminded that my ole Hubby, he of ole 8th St Pat Fields store (daddy u know him) used to follow Manson aroudn when he was playing lil gigs - mainly at the Limelight. And, at that time he used to plop his pinga out on stage and get head from the boys and the girls on the front row... ahhh bless.

Hie Miss!
Have to say though that your Jamaica thread recently took ALL the cake!
The costumechanges were gorgey, never say die to fashion even in a crisis... Esp. the last lines... sitting at your office desk, wearing the business suit.
Amazing you got out of there without ravagement!

If only there was just ONE nightclub here or one thing to do at night. Star-gazing the real stars has to beat 'les vedettes' as they say in France... THe other night I was at work (I work 7 PM - 7 AM) and watched the moon all night, and the Milky Way...then at the slight lightening at dawn a chorus of cow, horse, quail and nightingale began. That's my nightlife.

Love, S'tan

PS: Hope to see you in October when I'm visiting. I'll be staying part of the time with Madge.

I'm dreaming of a Black Xmas...

What's the news...
Binky killed me a two-foot-long Birthday Snake...
(some say a bull-snake, others a rattler.) Its tail was all chewed up, brrr...

Obsessing over
The Curse of The Subject Matter... watching 'Infamous' in re T. Capote, what an excellent film. 'In Cold Blood' eminently cursed...

I'm mixing up concrete and plaster and creatively swirling over cracks and crevasses... before I leave this place to the elements.

I'll be in Manhattan on Nov. 4th...!

Flying vacation for the behds Esme and Ethelbert, they're going back to their Father-Bird-Man in Madrid. He hatches babies all year long, and they fly all over the house...
Binky, Pearl, and Beauregarde go to the swanky Santa Fe kennel. They'll be caged, the little monsters.

I'm flying to DC to avoid the alleged hideous traffic at the NYC airports. Then training up... See you around the neighborhood.

Well S'tan, would you believe those muslims still have not finished putting up that building on the old shack's former site? Its sitting there with the top seven stories incomplete and its been that way for about one year now. Some juju at work there I think. -Maybe a loose boa constrictor on the premises?

Anyway, the olde towne could certainly use a dash of your charisma, welcome back.

Yesterday on Fingernails Mesa it was snowing so wild and blowing too, I got home after 3 days with my 'ladies,' and Thanksgiving with the hippies at the Mineshaft Tavern... free food for the whole town!

While driving home I'd smelled something strange.... the Lancer's wheel-wells were full - to within a centimeter of the tire - with ice! Can your wheels actually lock on the ice and stop spinning? Egads.

The parakeets and cats were toasty inside the adobe after 3 days away, no heating element except sun! The magic of solar gain.

It's strange but I am over being shocked by NYC changing and fucking itself and being a bank-vault instead of a home. What can I say. Skyscrapers are what they are... great arras of hubris. (NB the plural of arras is arras!]

Now NYC's like Paris for me. I get a little room, blow money buying pretty things, and see my favorite friends who live there. Then I run back home to run free... except today, I'd glissade off the mesa on the ice-drifts.

I even liked the New Museum, esp. since all the old stove-stores are still there. Apparently those guys have all decided to hold out against condo-ization. The Museum looks like a messy stack of cardboard boxes. Maybe some artistic bums will be residing therein.

Up here in prehistoric-ville, they might be shooting a 'comedy about the Bible,' as it was described... The scouts came up and hung out the other day, and were all excited. (What will they think of my 666 phone number.) Oh well Hail Satan man, I'll take some of that Hollywood lettuce. Maybe I can be an extra... a crone in a toga or something.

Here's the snows of 2006... the Mazda will not venture out in bad weather

i love bank vaults (provided of course they're lit by phosphorescent jacklights)...

so howdy neighbor... it's been ages since i've wandered about gorgeous madeira stones atop brooch-facing-sky

i wonder if that pylon of petrified ash (the flintstone drive-in) yet stands?... or have the erosion divas grown tired of its upright-ness what with their petulent regard to permanence

so-well-anyway... i miss it all and simply must revist soon

kindest regards... robert

Oh hie! The 'Flintstone Drive-in" clued me in (that's a butte shaped like a tablet...)
No it still stands... the divas of erosion have been forestalled. Tonight we are showing Alain Delon in Les Samourais, and the divas of the bonfire will be on hand.

How are the 'naked dogs'?
(... pretty hairless creatures that require sun-screen.)

Your closest neighbor is still Alex with the black adobe and I am linkng onto his satellite reception soon. We went from no-phones-at-all to wireless in a ten-year span.

later

the naked x-quintlis continue to flourish...

got three more since my big blonde hellen said bye... such wonderful creatures... i love them gliding about my feet as they do

don't remember alex... just that controller chick down over the other side

i must say your mesa posts are so fine... they've made me feel so in "touch"... and how 'bout your finding an anasazi pot for god's sake??

i'm bound to venture there soon... need to stand on that highest point again and just gaze... it's my fave

robert

Yesterday sunny warm and springlike and today cloudy like it's about to snow. Must conserve the solar...

Had the birds outside yesterday and ESME flew away! Parakeets are fast flyers and they never come back once they're out. Well I captured her in a garden at the Hell Hotel. She was meant to be free ... Maybe she's making it south by now.

Speaking of fast flyers alot of RACKET this AM - MacLoon's blue helicopter flying around the valley. Looking for new spirit guides which as we all know really respond to helicopters.
and egad last night AT LEAST 10 cars back and forth on the road! What an annoyance. I think she's having parties to celebrate book number 567 or something.

What is the name of the dog-breed? They are beautiful.

fly FAST esme-budgene!!... it gets cold up there

my pups are xoloitzquintlis... got two blondes: beauregard (bobo) and titus atlas hudson... plus a jet black one: teddy-lee

interestingly i picked up bobo after my last trip to the mesa (back in '94 was it?)... good GOD!!... bobo's an ANCIENT !!!

i sympathize what with those damned cars rounding the bend there... and oh those hellish helicopters so mindless of the quiet populous below!... over here those damned incubi will hover at 3am spitting fierce beams upon overturned cars (or whatever mess they can find) for HOURS

keep warm... !

One of my white cats is named Beauregarde!

Those dogs are amazing...
http://www.dogguide.net/xoloitzcuintli.php


farewell, I am signing off for two weeks, I have to come back East *again* for a funeral.

Will I ever have a happy xmas again...
when I get to just stay home?
lots of love
S'tanf

PS: friends, I decided not to drive.

hello again...

wishing you (and the kindred beau) the best for the new year in that kingdom you call "fingernails"...

had torrential rains for one night last week and it was glorious !!!... to actually have some weather out here "beyond the west" brought total chaos for a few hours... just splendid !!

my little naked satan worshippers of course hated it enraptured as they are instead by the hot and the dry...


kindest regards... r

QUEENDOM, dear... did you know this Valley was known as the 'Valley of the White Owl' and was infamous for harbouring witches... along with areas of Canones.
Did you ever wonder why there were mostly women up here on the Fingernails Mesa... and Shirley too of course. And why all of the men who have ventured up are mated... (except Alex who is a web-geek and impervious.)

Did you sell your land up here? I hope not.
Anyhow you can come and pitch a yurt.
I am looking for a goatherder. yah I know you don't qualify.

Marsha Mason is selling her big farm/ranch at the bottom of the mesa. I heard she bought something in upstate NY. It is just too hard to farm here, the growing season is only mid-May to mid-Sept. and the wind blows all the time.

It is so bloodie freezing here since weeks and the snow from December is still not melted. We are getting more tonight. At least it's sunny and bright. Unlike yours truly.

Tell us more about little naked satan worshippers.