We Have Seen the Lights: The Marfa Ghost Lights

One of my verily ancient podcasts-- #7 in the 24 podcast series "Marfa Mondays"-- has been whipped and snipped into shape as a stand-alone guest-blog post for my amigo, author and Metaphysical Traveler John Kachuba. Herewith that article which will, in one form or another, end up in my book in-progress, World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas.

WE HAVE SEEN THE LIGHTS:

THE MARFA GHOST LIGHTS PHENOMENON

C.M. MAYO

If you've heard of Marfa, you've probably heard of the Marfa Lights, which are sometimes called the Marfa Ghost Lights.

If you haven't heard of Marfa, let me fill you in on the basics. Named after a maid in a Dostoyevsky novel, it's a speck of a cow town in the middle of the sweep of Far West Texas, part of an area the Spanish called the Tierra Despoblada, and, later, somewhat frighteningly, the Apachería. Even today with the railroad and the highway, and the recently internationally famous art scene, not many people live in Marfa. But it seems almost everyone who does has seen and has a shiver-worthy story about the Marfa Lights.

When I first visited Marfa in the late 1990s, I made an arrow for the Marfa Lights viewing area, a pullout on the highway between Marfa and the neighboring town of Alpine. About 9 miles out of Marfa, it was just a parking area with, as I recall, a couple of sun-bleached picnic tables. There was an RV parked to one the side and standing on top of one of the picnic tables, a burly man in shorts and a T-shirt, his knees bent like a quarterback about to grab the football. There was no one else there.

It was still light out, though the sky had paled and beyond the expanse of Mitchell Flat, the mountains to the south, the Chinatis, loomed a dusky purple. I don't recall that man turning to look at me, but he must have heard my car pull up behind him, for as I opened the door, he pointed toward the mountains and began to shout: "OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. OH …. MY… GOD!"

As I set my shoe on the dirt, I saw that it was surrounded by a scattering of something silvery: quarters. I have found many a penny on the sidewalk, and few dimes over the years, but this was several dollars worth of quarters. I gathered them up.

"OH MY GOD!" The man was bellowing. "OH MY GOD!!!" I would have thought him barking mad except that, I too saw the lights and they were unlike anything I had ever seen. [...CONTINUE READING]



> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.
> Listen to the podcast
> Read the transcript of this podcast
> View Mitchell Flat from the Marfa Lights viewing station (No lights, alas)

"Marfa Mondays" continues... The latest podcast in the 24 podcast series is #20, an interview with Raymond Caballero about Mexican Revolutionary General Pascual Orozco and Far West Texas. (Number 21, on the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts is in-progress, and the topics for 22, 23 and 24 have been assigned to Sanderson, María of Agreda, and then, to conclude, back to Marfa.) Listen in any time to all the posted podcasts, plus, on this blog, the super crunchy Q & A with Paul Cool on his superb history of the El Paso Salt War, Salt Warriors. You can also find a batch of my reviews of books on Texas, the border, and Mexico here.

P.S. I'm teaching the one day only Literary Travel Writing workshop at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland on Saturday April 16, 2016. 

Q & A with John Kachuba on The Savage Apostle

From the Writers' Carousel: Literary Travel Writing

Nut Country: Right-wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy 

by Edward H. Miller

CLICK HERE.

Mexico: Sunlight & Shadows, edited by Mikel Miller with Michael Hogan and Linton Robinson (Cover Painting by Erick Ochoa)

A shout out for Mikel Miller et al's new anthology, Mexico: Sunlight & Shadows, Short Stories and Essays by Mexico Writers which includes a cornucopia of works by Mexico-based English language writers, including Yours Truly with an excerpt from "Bahía de los Ángeles: Bay of Angels," a chapter of my book Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico. 

I'm also thrilled to mention that the cover features the painting "Demon and Angel" by Todos Santos artist Erick Ochoa. I met Ochoa an age ago through my amigo, Michael Cope, a brilliantly accomplished painter, Ochoa's teacher, and owner of Galeria de Todos Santos. (Miraculous Air has a chapter dedicated to Todos Santos and much to say about Cope and other artists in Todos Santos.)

+ More about the anthology edited by Mikel Miller et al

+ More about Miraculous Air (available in paperback and Kindle)

+ More about Erick Ochoa and Michael Cope and the Galeria de Todos Santos

+ More about Blue Demon

P.S. It was just after I'd written Miraculous Air that I happened upon the then little-known Far West Texas town of Marfa, which seemed to me a doppelgänger of Todos Santos, and so sparked the idea of writing another travel memoir. I didn't start my book about Far West Texas until more than a decade later, however (a novel and a biography of sorts intervened). It's a work in-progress, and I'm posting podcasts as I go — mainly of interviews. 
+ Listen in anytime to "Marfa Mondays" podcasts here.


***UPDATE: A glowing review by James Tipton for MexicoConnect

Avram Dumitrescu, An Artist in Alpine (Transcript now available on-line for Marfa Mondays #4)

Transcript now available for 
ye olde podcast #4
Avram Dumitrescu, 
an Artist in Alpine

The Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project proceeds.... as those of you who follow this blog well know, the most recent of the projected 24 podcasts is #17, an interview with Texas historian Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis. 

Meanwhile, I've been working my way back to the beginning, posting transcripts of 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and now... drumroll.... 4, Avram Dumitrescu, an Artist in Alpine. About his chicken portraits, Dumitrescu says:

"When we moved to Alpine, our landlords had about 30 chickens. Patty and Cindy, they're on the west edge of town...that's where I had my first experience being around chickens, because until then it was just stuff I'd eat. They're basically mini-dinosaurs. Every time I go in, I'm always worried if I fall, and they start pecking me to death like in some horror movie... because they see red, they run to it and attack it. They're very interesting characters, and I think what really made me laugh was Patty and Cindy had named them after characters from "The Sopranos." 


> Read the complete transcript of this podcast or, better yet, listen in to "Avram Dumitrescu, an Artist in Alpine" (on either podomatic or iTunes, both free).

> All Marfa Mondays Podcasts (and most transcripts)

> Your comments are always welcome. The newsletter will go out soon; to opt-in, click here.

Lonn Taylor's Texas People, Texas Places

Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America by Richard Parker

Q & A with "Listen Well" podcaster Margaret Dulaney

"La Chora Interminable" on Marfa and the Gonzálo Lebrija Show at Marfa Contemporary

Well, Marfa's made it to Vanity Fair, 60 Minutes, Martha Stewart's Living, and now... drumroll... La Chora Interminable. ("La chora interminable" means, more or less, "the never-ending yadda-yadda.")

LA CHORA INTERMINABLE
José Ignacio Solórzano Pérez
and
José Trinidad Camacho Orozco "Trino"

If you don't speak Spanish, dude, fuggedit. Anyway, it's not easy to listen to but, well, I guess you could call it "chido" (that's Mexico City slang for "the bomb"): "La Chora Interminable" radio show's episode on Marfa, Texas. 

> Click here to listen to these guys on iTunes

It starts out with a chipmunk-goes-alien thing and if you can get past that, which you might not, you'll hear a couple of middle-aged Mexico City guys going on about Marfa, e.g., 

"Nada más son cowboys and hipsters" (it's just cowboys and hipsters"); 

"parece como pueblo fantásma" (it seems like a ghost town);

"Shopping, no hay" (No shopping, pronounced chopping-- sorry, I found that hilarious. Ditto the "whatsappazo"). 

So who are these guys? Two of Mexico's best-known cartoonists: José Trinidad Camacho Orozco, aka "Trino." (Uf. Trino is the bomb.) And: José Ignacio Solórzano Pérez, who is also philosopher and conceptual artist. The latter went to the inauguration of Mexican artist Gonzálo Lebrija's show at Marfa Contemporary, "La Sombra del Zopilote" (The Vulture's Shadow), and in this eposide, in between a lot of chuckling, he tells Trino all about the town.

GONZALO LEBRIJA'S INSTALLATION
IN WHAT USED TO BE THE PIZZA FOUNDATION,
AND BEFORE THAT, A GAS STATION,
NOW "MARFA CONTEMPORARY"

More out-takes:

"Es como un lote baldío chic... rasquache cool" (It's like a vacant lot that's chic... skanky cool); 

"viene la snobeada del mundo de arte" (the Snobdom of the Art World comes here);

"me gustaria ser el cherife de Marfa" (I'd like to be the sheriff of Marfa);

"un día si no me vez, estoy en Marfa" (If one day you don't see me, I'm in Marfa).

Yes, I am still, in my turtle-like fashion, working on my book about Far West Texas.... Check out my podcasts, the comparably sedate (OK, maybe even a little nerdy) but super crunchy "Marfa Mondays," here.

> Your comments are always welcome. Tweet @marfamondays

Marfa Mondays Podcast #17 Under Sleeping Lion: Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis

From the "secret historians" to the Propeller Man to the Filippino restaurant: you'll learn about a myriad unexpected people and stories of the Big Bend and Marfa, Texas in my interview with historian Lonn Taylor, the "Rambling Boy" columnist for the Big Bend Sentinel. Recorded in Fort Davis in March 2015.

> Listen in anytime right here.

> Read the transcript

"Everybody kind of has a stereotype of Marfa either as the cattle town where they filmed “Giant” or a contemporary art center. I like discovering things that don’t fit into that stereotype. "                                                                --Lonn Taylor

> Marfa Mondays home page with all 17 podcasts (of a projected 24)

> Your COMMENTS are always welcome, and you are also most welcome to sign up for my newsletter which goes out every other month-ish.

Mary S. Black interviews Yrs Truly about the Marfa Mondays Project

Marfa Mondays Blog

Casa Piedra Rd (C.M. Mayo's video, 1 minute)

Book Review: Richard Parker's Lone Star Nation

Cyberflanerie: Rock, Mural, Street and Bathroom Wall Edition d'Not Art

"THIS IS NOT ART"
AND, IN SMALL PRINT BELOW,
"DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS"
(Translation: No littering, dude.)

So who painted this oh-so-Texan trash receptacle with the Magritte-esque slogan for the Marfa Visitor's Center? A 4th of July cyber-sparkler to you, whoever you are, dear artiste. (At least it was plum-obvious where to deposit the bottles and snack wrappers that had been accumulating on the floor behind the front seat since El Paso.) The question for today's little foray into les mystères de l'art is, would I get arrested were I to spray pink sparkly foam paint all over it? Hard to say. The Marfa Vistor's Center is, after all, walking distance to El Cosmico, where you can rent the yurt and, round about when I was there, sign up for an herbal remedies class-- and I would not be at all surprised to catch some ukelele playing going on at one their "happenings." I mean, Marfans do seem whimsical or at least mind-your-own-business-relaxed when it comes to art-- or, this is not art qua art. 

"MANOS ARRIBA"
BIG BEND RANCH STATE PARK

But then-- Madam Mayo plucks a few bees out of her bouffant-- what is "art"? 

"Manos Arriba," or "Hands Up," pictured right, is an approximately 1,000- 2,000 year-old rock art site in the relatively nearby (by Far West Texas standards) Big Bend Ranch State Park. Never mind that hypothetical can of pink sparkly foam; you touch that rock art and the ranger sees you, boy howdy, you're in a poke of trouble. Carve your name and a date into the rock with your penknife? Seriously illegal. And if you did that back in, say, 1887? Well, you'd be dead by now so much as the ranger might like to, true, she couldn't do anything.

Voyez l'équation simple:

+ Really old man-made marks = Art. Approved response: From a reverent distance, take pictures.

vs.

+ Relatively recent marks, including those made as long ago as 1887 by nonindigenous people = Defacement. Approved response: Express dismay.

Bloggable Graffito, circa 2015
Ladies Room, Plaine coffee shop
Alpine, Texas

Not that I personally don't feel sincere reverence for rock art-- (and may my podcast interview with Greg Williams, executive director of the Rock Art Foundation, bolster my case). I am simply sayin'.

Voyez l'équation étonnante:

+ Writing on coffee shop bathroom wall that evidences childlike yet articulate whimsy referring to marine life = Bloggable.

vs.

+ Writing on coffee shop bathroom wall that evidences childlike and inarticulate whimsy referring to just about anything and everything else = Ick. 

Where does the hypothetical sparkly pink foam paint come in? I don't think it does. 

Once home in Mexico City I encountered this street art mural with a hand appearing to reach for a grape-purple grenade with feet:

Mexico City street art

I have absolutely no idea what it all means. The word BOMB to the left often appears in Mexico City graffiti, why I know not.

Madam Mayo pronounces this Very Fine Art.

On a more high-toned note, here is a small section I snapped of one of the murals by Víctor Cuaduro in the Government Palace of Querétaro, Mexico, of the three monarchists executed on the Cerro de las Campanas in 1867, Maximilian and his generals Mejía and Miramón. If you were to apply anything from a spray can to that-- let's say you wanted to make a stencil of your hand, as in "Manos arriba"-- I'll bet you a million pesos that you would be speedily tackled by the several security guards.

P.S. Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator. I typed in 12345 and got:

With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive perturbation of the spatial relationships brings within the realm of discourse the distinctive formal juxtapositions. 

+ + + + + + 

But seriously now...

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands have been much on my mind as I am writing a book about Far West Texas, and one of the many compare-and-contrast items from my previous book, Miraculous Air, about Mexico's Baja California peninsula, is the rock art. So far I've visited a multitude of sites in the Big Bend (most recently in the canyon that runs north-south alongside the western flank of the Solitario) plus the Lower Pecos Canyonlands sites at Meyers Spring and Eagle Nest Canyon at Langtry, which drains into the Rio Grande, that is, the US-Mexico border. And this May, just a scootch east of the Pecos, I plan to visit Curly Tail Panther. Did I mention, Lower Pecos Canyonlands rock art is spectacular?

Apropos of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, a recent and delightful discovery is that my fellow Women Writing the West member Mary S. Black, an expert on the Lower Pecos, has published a novel, Peyote Fire: Shaman of the Canyon, about the Archaic artists-- to my knowledge, the first historical novel about these people. I'm looking forward to reading it, as well as her guidebook to the region which is in-progress.

> Listen in anytime to my interview with Greg Williams, executive director of the Rock Art Foundation, which offers tours to important but very remote rock art sites, many of which are on private land. 




> My brief video of the first part of the hike into Eagle Nest Canyon.



> Check out these photos of a storm in May 2014 with massive flooding in that same canyon-- it gives an idea of how the caves were formed.

***UPDATE*** For more jaw-dropping photos and archaeological updates, check out the blog: Ancient Southwest Texas Project-- Texas State University 2o15 Expedition to Eagle Nest Canyon

> Your COMMENTS are always welcome. My newsletter goes out on Monday with new podcasts, articles, and upcoming workshops; I welcome you to automatically opt-in (and opt-out anytime) here.

Cyberflanerie: Digital Economics Edition

Enter Airbnb and a little far West Texas town starts turning into... read Rachel Monroe on housing trends in Marfa, TX

Robotenomics-- excellent new blog

Seth Roberts says Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin

(more bitocoiniana here)

Amazing prices for organic crops (Gene Logsdon, the Contrary Farmer)

(He's the author of the hilarious and profoundly insightful Holy Sh*t!)

How to Borrow Ebooks from your (USA) Local Public Library

Oh! It was this easy.

Free Getty Images (Bloggers Take Note!)

Hat tip to the Publicity Hound

Moneyless World

More anon.

Previous Cyberflanerie highlights: Sound & Noise; Bajacaliforniana; Camelmania; Selections from Gregory Gibson's Bookman's Log 

COMMENTS

A Visit to Swan House: Presidio Texas' Unique Adobe Teaching House Inspired by the Legacy of Hassan Fathy

My article for Cenizo Journal, winter 2013, is now available on my webpage.  (I read this and did a Q & A for PEN San Miguel de Allende, listen in anytime here.)

I first spied it from a Jeep on Casa Piedra Road: a huddle of oddly shaped brown buildings baking in the sun. I'd arrived at its modest gate after a mile and a bit of crunching over gravel up from the Rio Grande near Presidio on the U.S.-Mexico border. What interested me then—I was just starting my book on far West Texas, focusing on the probable route of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the would-be conquistador of Florida who got lost—was the landscape. Such raw, open vistas were easy to imagine seeing through that ill-starred Spaniard's eyes. From a cloudless dome, the February sun beat down on the rocks and tangles of mesquite and clumps of prickly pear cactus, and ocotillo that stretched on for what must have been, for anyone on foot, a merciless number of miles. To the northwest loomed the bulk of the Chinatis, to the east, the jagged and lavender Bofecillos, and into Mexico, the Sierra Grande.

..."That's Simone Swan's house."

...My guide, Charlie Angell, brought down the window to show me the object, until then mysterious to me, of our detour. He'd been showing me the sights along the Rio Grande- the Hoodoos, Closed Canyon, and the narrow shallows in the river at Lajitas where Cabeza de Vaca, then nearly eight years into his odyssey, may have waded across. Even today, in many places along the river, you could walk right up to its bank, pitch a stone, and it would thunk onto someone's alfalfa field in Mexico. Coming up Casa Piedra Road, we'd seen no one-just a flash of a jackrabbit. Already Charlie was making the U-turn back to Presidio.

..."It's Egyptian," he added.

...This, in a land of décor inspired by what I had come to think of as Ye Olde Cowboys & Indians, struck me like thunder. Well, was it like the inside of a Disneyland ride? Did she worship Isis? Once home, I Googled.

...Simone Swan, it turned out, is an adobe visionary with a distinguished career in the arts, including many years with Houston's Menil Foundation; her house, not Egyptian, exactly, nor a whim, but a work-in-progress used by her Adobe Alliance, a nonprofit for teaching earthen design and construction. And the Egyptian influence? Hassan Fathy.

...Not Fathy as in "Cathy," as an Egyptian acquaintance was quick to correct me, but Foh'tee.

...Another Google search bought up his book, published by the University of Chicago Press in translation from the French, Construir avec le peuple, as Architecture for the Poor. When I got my hands on a copy, I learned that Fathy was Egypt's greatest 20th century architect, renowned for rescuing ancient architectural features and techniques for building with mud brick, a material he passionately advocated for as abundant, and, when used appropriately, comfortable, ecological, sanitary, and beautiful.
...
...In his photo, he might have passed for an elderly Mexican lawyer with his halo of gray hair, mustache, red turtleneck and poncho-like burnouse. He squinted from behind his glasses in an expression at once pained and kind—entirely understable once I learned of his battles with the Egyptian bureaucracy, then enamored of Soviet-style steel and concrete housing, and his nonetheless unyielding commitment to building housing for and with the fellaheen, the peasants who lived in abject poverty.

...Born in 1900 into a wealthy family in Alexandria, Fathy did not set foot on one of his own family's many farms until he was in his twenties, and when he did, the wretchedness of its workers' houses shocked him. His solution, in part, was to build with better design and mud brick. Mud could be dug up easily, bricks could formed of the mud, animal dung, and a bit of straw, and then left to bake in the sun. The challenge was the cost of timber for roofing and, for brick vaults, timber for propping them up during construction. Egypt imported its timber from Europe. Then World War II broke out.

...Ancient Egyptians built vaults, many of which had survived for hundreds, even thousands of years, without using wood, but how? Every one of Fathy's attempts to construct a roof without wood collapsed in a heap of bricks and dust. But then his brother, who was working on the Aswan dam, mentioned that the Nubians, the dark-skinned people of Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan, roofed their houses and mosques without using wood.

In an a matter of two visits to Aswan, Hassan Fathy found the masons, barefoot and in turbans, who showed him their technique of roofing by means of parabola-shaped layers of adobe bricks laid at an angle against a back wall. The bricks had extra straw for lightness, and a groove, made by the scrape of a finger before they'd dried, on one side, so as to give the mortared brick "grab." Mortar was a mix of sand, clay, and water. Using no tools other than an adze, and a plank for scaffolding, two men threw up a fine mud-brick roof over a 10' x 13' room in one and a half days.

...Marveled Fathy, "It was so unbelievably simple."

...When Simone Swan was living in New York, a house with two courtyards came to her in a dream. And it seemed like a dream to me that, less than a year after I'd first glimpsed Swan House from the road, I was sitting with its owner in the Nubian vault that was the living room, the shell high above us aglow with the orange light of morning. A graceful eighty-something with a crown of snow-white hair, Simone Swan was telling me how, at mid-life in the 1970s, she had gone to Paris for the Menil Foundation's exihibition of the surrealist Max Ernst's paintings, and at a dinner party, met a filmmaker who had just wrapped a documentary on the world's greatest architect.

...Simone laughed. "I said, Hassan Who?"   . . . . CONTINUE READING

Marfa Mondays Returns with an Interview with Dallas Baxter, "This Precious Place"

A metaphorical asteroid took out the past few months, but (whew) the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project resumes today with podcast #12, an interview with Cenizo Journal's founding editor, Dallas Baxter.

Baxter had just turned over Cenizo Journal to its new owner when I interviewed her last February 2013 in Alpine (about an half hour's drive from Marfa). She had arrived from New York just around the time of 9/11, and as editor of a journal covering the arts and history of the Big Bend / Trans-Pecos region of far West Texas, Baxter has an usually rich experience and perspective. If you wonder how a print publication can make it in this crazy digital age, and what it's like to live in such a remotely beautiful place, listen in. 

There will be 24 podcasts, and the project now extends through 2015.

Listen in to all the podcasts anytime at www.cmmayo.com/marfa

Check out the dedicated Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project Blog

Recent Marfa Mondays Podcasts include

+Cowboy Songs by Cowboys

+Mary Baxter, Painting the Landscape (no, she's not related to Dallas Baxter but they are friends)

+A Visit to Swan House

+Moonlight Gemstones

+A Spell in Chinati Hotsprings

... and more. Listen in any time, free, to all of them here.

COMMENTS? Always welcome.

Marfa, Capital of Quirkiness, on 60 Minutes

In a segment that aired on Sunday, "60 Minutes" calls Marfa, Texas "The Capital of Quirkiness." The sweetly artsy spirit of this remote small town of far West Texas was precisely what appealed to me when I first came across it more than a decade ago-- and what drew me to start writing a book and podcasting about it back in January 2012. But as I delved in, reading and traveling and interviewing a wide variety of artists, scientists, business people and others, I soon realized that there's a far larger, more complex story, or rather, stories, to tell about the Big Bend region. Start with the fact that the Spaniards called it the Despoblado (Empty Quarter), and on pre-20th century maps it appears only vaguely as "La Apachería..." It's one of the earth's "Thin Places," to steal an Irish term-- and with a frightening history, a starkly beautiful swirl of landscape, border country. . . Watch "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" for an idea of what it looks like.

So far, of the projected 24, I've posted 11 podcasts about the region. A few favorites:

Cowboy Songs by Cowboys

A Visit to Swan House

Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend

We Have Seen the Lights

Charles Angell in the Big Bend

Listen in to all the podcasts anytime at www.cmmayo.com/marfa

Next podcast: an in-depth interview with Dallas Baxter, founder of Cenizo Journal.

P.S. Follow my other blog, Marfa Mondays Blog, for updates about the podcasts, photos, videos, and more.

Comments

Boquillas is Big News for the Big Bend

After much rumor and anticipation, the Boquillas border crossing into Mexico from far West Texas's Rio Grande Village in the Big Bend National Park has just-- today-- thanks for the tip, Charlie Angell-- reopened for the first time since 9-11. This is one of the most remote places in the Lower 48, and in northern Mexico's state of Coahuila, and though the number of people crossing was always a mere trickle, the border's closing after 9-11 had devastated the Mexican town of Boquillas (which means "little mouths").

>Read more in the San Antonio Express-News

I'll have a lot to say about these remote areas of the US-Mexico border in my "Marfa Mondays" podcasts and in my work-in-progress about far West Texas. Recently I visited the remains of the  long demolished informal bridge over the Rio Grande at Candelaria. There was maybe 15 -20 feet across as I recollect, and I saw paw prints in the mud on both sides, going down from Mexico and coming up into Texas: a coyote, I mean canine, had crossed.

I'm also working on a podcast and an essay about the Big Bend National Park-- one of the most geologically varied and starkly beautiful places I have ever seen. Stay tuned.

Marfa Mondays Blog (New and Improved)

Now live on blogger.com, migrated from my website where it was rather unceremoniously parked:  Marfa Mondays blog, which is about my Marfa Mondays Podcasting Series which is apropos of a travel memoir-in-progress, World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas. 

The blog consists of posts about the podcasts, other books, photos, and more about Marfa and environs-- that means the Big Bend.

OK, back to editing podcast #11.... Want an update? Click here to receive my free once-in-a-while newsletter.

Because of the plague of spam I've turned off the comments on my blogs but, as ever, I do warmly welcome your comments via email.

Marfa, Marfa & More Marfa

Oh, this country has such beyond splendid skies! Apropos of my book-in-progress, World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas, I recently returned from my latest journey through Marfa, Van Horn, Presidio, Terlingua, and the Big Bend National Park, and will be posting scads more "Marfa Mondays" podcasts...

Pending: an interview with Enrique Madrid of Redford; interview with Dallas Baxter, ex-editor of Cenizo Journal; a journey up Pinto Canyon Rd and another up Casa Piedra Rd (a branch of the old Comanche war path); a visit to Cíbolo Creek Ranch, a trek (ayyy 3 hours each way, no shade) to the Apache Canyon and arrowhead quarry; and a bit about strange battle of Zapato Tuerto (Spanish vs Apaches); and yep, "Cowboy Is a Verb."

Oh, and more about the glorious Chisos and Spanish painter Xavier González.

>Listen in to the latest podcast, A Visit to Swan House
>The archive of all the "Marfa Mondays" podcasts  is here. Listen in anytime.

From Pinto Canyon Rd
www.cmmayo.com

Lone Cloud, Hotel Paisano, Marfa
www.cmmayo.com

Pinto Canyon Rd
www.cmmayo.com

Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center, Fort Davis
www.cmmayo.com

>Listen to the podcast with Chihuahuan Desert pollinator expert, Cynthia McAlister

Waiting at the Marfa Lights Viewing Station
www.cmmayo.com

>Listen to the podcast "We Have Seen the Lights" about the Marfa Lights

Near the Cubes, Marfa
www.cmmayo.com

Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West by Rubén Martínez

What is the West? That cross-borderly mashup of music, footwear and haberdashery known as “cowboy cool”? Or is it indigenous? The Big Empty, healing refuge, Hispano, Chicano, Mexicano? Or is it now found in the scrim of “underwater” water-sucking tract houses? What is this landscape, if not seen through millions of different eyes each with its own needs, lusts, filters and projections? And how is it changing? (Radically.) In Desert America Rubén Martínez tackles these immense and thorny questions in a narrative of multiple strands masterfully braided into a lyrical whole. . . 

CONTINUE reading C.M. Mayo's review in the Washington Independent Review of Books

Comments

World Waiting for a Dream, Reading for PEN San Miguel January 29

Pinto Canyon Rd, looking towards Mexico

I'm reading for PEN San Miguel in San Miguel de Allende this Tuesday January 29th @ 6pm, from work in progress, World Waiting for a Dream... Lots of good reasons for that title, but I'm really bamboozled about the subtitle.

1. Travels in the Big Bend?
2. Travels Far West Texas?
3. Travels in the Big Bend of Far West Texas?
4. Journey in the Big Bend of Borderlands Far West Texas?

ayy, blimey

Maybe right now... #4

Who's the guy in the photo? That's Charlie Angell, Big Bend expert and expedition guide. Don't go snerging around the Rio Grande without him. Listen in to my podcast interview with him here.

>Read more, and listen in anytime to the podcasts-- so far 9 out of 24-- at Marfa Mondays.
Including interviews with rock hound Paul Graybeal, desert pollinator expert Cynthia McAlister, artists Avram Dumitrescu and Mary Baxter, and more.

>More about the event here.

I will probably talk a bit about Cabeza de Vaca, the ghost lights, and glorious Swan House. Hope to see you there!

The Next Big Thing: A Bloggy Round Robin, from Karren Alenier to Yours Truly on World Waiting for a Dream

Karren Alenier

My amiga the DC-based poet and Gertrude Stein (and Paul & Jane Bowles) expert Karren Alenier tagged me for this blog round robin (I guess one could call it that), wherein one answers a set series of 10 questions about one's own work, then tags few more writers to carry on the following week.

>>Read Karren Alenier's blog post about her fascinating Next Big Thing, The Anima of Paul Bowles, here. (We almost coincided in Paul Bowles' workshop in Tangiers... she in 1982, me in 1983.)

And going back from there, check out previous blogger, Sammy Greenspan of Kattywompus Press, here.

This week, along with me, Karren Alenier tagged one of my favorite poets, Bernadette Geyer, who used her round robin to talk about her forthcoming book, The Scabbard of Her Throat.


Now for Yours Truly:

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

C.M. Mayo on Pinto Canyon Rd, south of Marfa, Texas

1. What is your working title of your book (or story)? 

World Waiting for a Dream: Travels in the Big Bend of Far West Texas

2. Where did the idea come from for the book? 

More than a decade ago I visited this jaw-dropping place and have yearned to explore and write about it ever since. Finally got around to it.

3. What genre does your book fall under? 

Travel memoir / creative nonfiction / literary journalism. 

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

Tommy Lee Jones would have to make an appearance at some point. I wouldn't mind being played by Deanna Durbin bursting out in a rendition of "Grenada!" Just kidding. 

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

In-progress, starts with Cabeza de Vaca, the conquisitor who got lost (really), works its way through Comaches and Apaches, railroads, the Mexican Revolution, the arrival of the wizard of cubes aka Donald Judd, scads more about Mexico and Mexicans than one might expect, OMG the sky, and OMG the sky at night, meditations on dinosaurs, et voila. 

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

Agency, but as I'm writing it I'm hosting a podcast series, Marfa Mondays: Exploring Marfa, Texas & Environs in 24 Podcasts 2012-2013. 

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

I'm not there yet. My goal is to finish the podcasts by the end of 2013 and then spend a year on the manuscript. 

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

It will be similar in structure and style to my previous travel memoir, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California the Other Mexico (Milkweed Editions). And that was modeled on a mashup of V.S. Naipaul's A Turn in the South, and works by various other travel writers / literary journalists, among them, Sara Mansfield Taber, Ted Conover, Bruce Chatwin, Ian Frazier, Robert Byron, and Alma Guillermoprieto. 

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

I was born in the furthest west of Far West Texas (that would be El Paso) and I wanted to write about this part of the country that, because I grew up in California, I don't know all that well, at but mainly, it was just a strong intuition that this book needs to be written. And I'm curious enough to stay with it for as long as it takes.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest? 

Have a listen to some of the podcasts. Many are interviews with artists and/or about remote and beautiful places such as Chinati Hot Springs. The area is also famous for its ghost lights which were noted by the Apaches more than a century ago. 

>Complete list of "Marfa Mondays" podcasts.

Listen in anytime.

P.S. I'll be reading from the work-in-progress this January 29 for PEN San Miguel in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Tagging for next week:

---> Rose Mary Salum

PS I tagged Deborah Batterman, but she declined because she'd already been tagged! Read about her Next Big Thing, Dancing Into the Sun, here.