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Meerhaba Littourati! If you're wondering why there hasn't been any new posts in a while, it's because I am traveling. I am accompanying my wife as she participates in a delegation of journalists to Turkey, Our trip will take us from Istanbul to Ankara, south to Konya, then into Cappadocia, Izmir, and a stop in Ephesus. Finally, we will finish with five more days to take in the sights and sounds of Istanbul again.
I will be back on May 30, and the Blue Highways posts will continue then. In the meantime, I hope to make occasional postings to my personal blog, Muse Gumbo, and will possibly develop an interactive map of our trip, complete with pictures and perhaps even some video.
I look forward to getting back to the Blue Highways when I return, but for now, think of me in a bazaar bargaining for rugs, or in a Turkish bath, or watching Sufis whirling to touch God.
I am constantly amazed at the journeys we take in life, and none is more amazing to me than the journey that mothers take. They willingly take on the job of hosting a new being inside their bodies, give birth to that new creation, knowing that joy will emerge from the pain of birth, and then give of themselves over and over throughout their child's emergence from infant to adult, and even beyond. Not to diss fathers, but mothers are very special.
Whatever journeys you travel - if you are a mother, a wanna-be mother, a wished-you-could-have-been-a-mother - or anything that involves mother in the title, Littourati is in awe of you. You have made, or shown the courage to want to make (even if it didn't work out), one of life's greatest journeys.
Here's a poem set to video, inspired by the mother-teenage daughter relationship, that I wrote. If you're the mother of a boy, or a mother-at-heart, I haven't written one for you yet, but it doesn't mean you're not important. They're different journeys, but all share the goal of wanting to shape the next generation of responsible adults.
Click on Thumbnail for MapLet's stop and rinse off at Spencer's Hot Springs with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM)! After all, we deserve it. Traveling is long, dusty and tiring. In this post, I'll reflect on hot springs and bathing in general. Sounds fun, doesn't it? To see where Spencer's Hot Springs is located, so you can really visit there one day, click on the map thumbnail at right.
Book Quote
"On the map I noticed a thermal spring to the south. I wandered around side roads before Spencer's Hot Springs appeared on a knoll under the snowy Toquima Mountains east of Austin. When I saw the blue pools steaming, there was no question in my mind. With only five Nevadans to the square mile (in actuality many fewer when you discount Las Vegas and Reno), I figured I could get by undisturbed. Behind a cover of thistle and spiny hopsage, I stripped and dished up the hot water, let it cool slightly, then poured buckets of it over me. I even slapped on hot, gritty, blue-gray mud to loosen the sinews. Then I rinsed clean as men before must have done, dumping over me water warmed by the molten heart of the earth."
Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 6
Spencer's Hot Springs, near Austin, Nevada. Photo at AustinNevada.com'sFlickr photostream. Click on photo to go to site.
Spencer's Hot Springs, Nevada
Until I moved to New Mexico, I had never experienced the glory of a hot mineral spring. I knew they existed - in fact there were hot mineral springs near where I grew up in California - but I'd never been to one. I still haven't been to Orr Hot Springs or Vichy Springs, so near my home town.
The state in which I live, New Mexico, as in Nevada, is a place where hot springs abound. You find them in the Jemez Mountains, at Ojo Caliente, and in the desert at Truth or Consequences (once known as Hot Springs). Trips to TorC and Ojo Caliente made me a believer. In Ojo Caliente, the baths are infused with different minerals. There's an iron bath, an arsenic bath, and a mud bath, as well as other pools. You can even drink natural water with lithium in it for a mental pick-me-up. At TorC, you can stay in motels and hotels that tap directly into the hot water underground, or you can rent a public or private tub at a place like Riverbend Hot Springs, situated right alongside the Rio Grande.
There's really nothing like soaking oneself in water heated by the earth's internal processes. Heat generated by molten hot magma (can't you just hear Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers films?). It feels different than city water dumped into a bathtub through a faucet. It leaves one with an invigorated feeling, but also a relaxed and rested feeling. It is very hard to describe.
I think about this because I often, just because my mind work this way, have thought exercises where I think about what humanity did before our modern technologies. Certainly, before hot water heaters installed in houses, to take a bath most people had to heat water on a stove. Of course, this is the genesis of the gags you can see in old westerns, where the womenfolk enlist the menfolk to drag some character with a name like Old Scratchy in for a bath. He kicks, bites and screams, kind of like a dog that really doesn't want to get wet, but in the end he gets put in the tub and he ends up liking the bath. Of course, heating enough water for a bath took a while, so baths were rare and when they did occurr, a lot of people had to share the same water. You were not lucky if you were the last person to bathe.
That type of bathing, I'm sure, happened for pretty much most of humanity's civilized period. Before that, well, there was the streams and oceans if one wanted to get clean. And they were cold. No wonder that bathing didn't happen very often.
So, I imagine that those people who lived near a hot spring like Spencer's Hot Springs were really lucky. They could bathe in water that, depending on the spring, remained warm to hot. They got the experience that very few people in the world had. And, I'm sure, they were cleaner than most of the rest of humanity. we are very spoiled in the modern world with our daily showers or baths. For most of our history, cleansing one's body, heart and mind was a luxury.
I'm glad that I didn't know about Spencer's Hot Springs when I drove past on Highway 50 in July 2010, because I would have been disappointed that I couldn't stop. I had a schedule to keep - which is unfortunately the way most of us travel nowadays. Also, it was mid-summer and very hot in the Nevada Desert which does not make a hot spring sound appealing. If I ever travel that way again, however, I'll either work it into my schedule or make it a priority to visit the springs, especially if it's a more hospitable time of year for such activities. Like LHM, I'll strip and rinse, or even climb in, and enjoy something that I've found to be extremely soul-refreshing. I'm not a prude about nudity, so if there are some other people there and they are naked, I'll climb right in though I never push the sight of my nakedness on others - I'll suit up if those who are there are suited.
Pippin's song in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien best sums up the feeling of taking a hot bath (and it's even better in a hot spring!)
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day that washes the weary mud away! A loon is he that will not sing: O! Water Hot is a noble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain, and the brook that leaps from hill to plain; but better than rain or rippling streams is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed; but better is Beer if drink we lack, and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high in a fountain white beneath the sky; but never did fountain sound so sweet as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
I searched long and hard for a song about bathing in a hot spring, or a mineral spring. Well, long and hard is about a half hour for me. There seems to be a real dearth of such songs and that presents an opportunity for an enterprising songwriter. Think about it - laughter and love at the hot springs! So, in its place I'll give you an old standard about bathing - Splish Splash by Bobby Darin.
If you want to know more about Spencer's Hot Springs
Click on Thumbnail for MapHickison Summit was evidently a place where early Native Americans "posted" carved symbols in a kind of prehistoric Facebook page. A lot of those carvings could be considered "naughty" because they depict various female body parts. The academic term for these carvings is "vulviform." Click on the map thumbnail at the right to learn where you can go to see prurient archeology.
Book Quote
"Wind and water had cut the canyon wall into particularly sensuous shapes, and on rocks the elements had left blank, Indians of a thousand years ago carved sacred designs. The Bureau of Land Management had fenced off the petroglyphs, but stick figures, concentric circles, and rectangles stood out clearly from the damp stone. To the Indian, these cuttings were not pictures or objects so much as events: they carried life.
"At the west end, where the fence came close to a ritualistic chiseling, I reached over and traced my finger along an incised abstraction now polished by years of hands. A cryptic engraving. Then I saw that the design wasn't at all abstract, but rather a graphic rendering of a female pudendum, a glyph even Cro-Magnons carved. In a time so long ago no descendant can remember any of it, an Indian had cut his desire, or coming of age, or hope for regeneration into the pink sandstone. It was as if I touched another dimension - a long skein of men, events, places. It was as if I had reused the image."
Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 6
Looking west from Hickison Summit. Photo by Max Farrar in Panoramio. Click on photo to go to site.
Hickison Summit, Nevada
When I was an early teenager, my uncle who was staying with us at the time came to me and said he wanted to talk to me. "Okay," I answered, not sure what he wanted. He took me outside and we sat out on our deck for a while, and then he said "so I saw your pictures." I wasn't sure what he meant. I hadn't drawn any pictures. I didn't think of myself as an artist or anything. "What pictures," I asked, puzzled. "The ones on the bathroom window."
Oh...those pictures. At night, after taking a bath, the window was fogged up and I drew pictures of female genitalia in the steam on the window. After all, it was that age where I was really thinking about those sorts of things a lot. Women and their bodies were a source of extreme interest and fascination for me. I had gotten in trouble previously for having some magazines between my mattress and the box spring, but in those heady days those were the first glimpse that I ever had of an unclothed grown woman. They were amazing, beautiful and a bit intimidating and I remember the feelings as my hormones kicked into gear when I saw them. The pictures I drew were my attempt to recreate what I saw and remembered. I had thought they disappeared when the window fog evaporated but, evidently, they had left enough trace amounts of oil from my fingers to leave behind a more lasting record of my artistic endeavors.
Our art is a signpost of where we are at in our lives. Like Picasso, who had his "Blue Period," I have occasionally, through art, had my own periods of creation. (Note: I do not equate any of my creativity with the genius of Picasso or any other great artist or writer) When I was a teenager, my stabs at the female form were one marker of where I was in life. As a young adult, my tortured poetry about relationships marked another period. I had a long period where I didn't do anything creative at all. After another reawakening of literary creativity brought about by a disastrous foray into a friendship that got too involved, I went through another bout of creativity reflecting that period of my life.
Now, my art reflects, I think, a more sober, reflective self. I don't put myself up there with the great artists of the world, but like the Native Americans on Hickison Summit who carved their signs and symbols into rocks I throw my creative endeavors up onto the Web, which in our age is a hi-tech version of rocks, bulletin boards, billboards, or refrigerator doors.
Given that, it's nice to know that a constant art theme throughout history, especially the history of males, are the signs and symbols of the feminine and female beauty. They may not always intend to honor, but in my heart, even if such symbols are born out of lust or humor or even anger, they still acknowledge the amazing power of our feelings and longings to be close to someone, even to be one with someone. It's only our own thoughts of inadequacy and our insecurities that may lead such symbols to be drawn as expressions of unfeeling objectivity. The essence of life and the forces, which we barely understand, that drive men (and women) to try to picture and reproduce the feminine, is pure and sacred in its untouched state. It makes me feel less silly for drawing pictures in steam on my bathroom window, and more a part of the strong energy of life. Now in my late 40s, it's wonderful to still feel that urgency, those longings, that sense of the mystery of the feminine when it reveals itself, or is revealed, to me.
Musical Interlude
I guess, fitting with this theme, J. Geils Band'sCenterfold will fill the bill. Ahhh, the 80s. Where my teenage lusts clashed with my more adult finer sensibilities! I wrote in the last post that pornography has not been alien to me...obviously some form of it has been around since early humans started drawing pictures on cave walls. Whether you think it can be art or not, turning our longing and sexual expression into graphic depictions of all types, from porn to high art, has a long history.
Click on Thumbnail for MapWe turn onto the Loneliest Road in America with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) as he travels the bluest of the blue highways. In Ely, at least when he went through, we find that the loneliness pervades his perception of the town. My experience in Ely was of a quiet place, but not necessarily lonely. But, we'll examine loneliness through the prism of a Nevada industry - the oldest profession in the world. Click on the map thumbnail, to your right, and make Ely a little less lonely.
Book Quote
"Not everything that happens in Ely happens at the Hotel Nevada, but it could. The old place is ready for it. But that night the blackjack tables were empty, the slots nearly so, and the marbelized mirrors reflected the bartender's slump and a waitress swallowing a yawn...."
Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 5
"Tradition persists in Nevada. You can see it, for example, in the whorehouses of Ely. Prostitition is legal in White Pine County because miners, in order to work efficiently in the ground digging for this and that, traditionally require whores."
Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 6
Hotel Nevada in Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. Kamerick.Ely, Nevada
So far along this virtual journey we have been taking with LHM, I have come across only a few places where his journey and my actual experience intersect. Ely, Nevada is one of them. In a previous post, I mentioned that I had persuaded my wife to drive to California to see my family. Our route took us through Utah and then into Nevada on US Highway 50 to Ely, where we got a motel room and spent the night. I'll include in this post some pictures we took there, including some of interesting public art murals that are sprinkled downtown.
It's interesting that LHM paints Ely as being so initially...unexciting...with his description of the Hotel Nevada and then turns around and writes about prostitution in Ely. Prostitution is prurient, and somewhat exciting to read about, right? However, I read this as a way of indicating the loneliness that is part of the Nevada experience. Okay, maybe that's not LHM's intention but that's what his description brings to my mind, which is really the point of this blog.
Downtown Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. Kamerick
As you drive into Nevada on Highway 50, the signs unmistakably identify that road as the Loneliest Road in America. In addition, US Highway 6 joins Highway 50 near Ely, and my only other awareness of Highway 6 was in Jack Kerouac'sOn the Road, where way back in the state of New York Sal waits in the rain for a ride at the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River, intending to hitchhike Highway 6 out west, and has to take a bus back to New York City berating himself for a fool. Standing at Bear Mountain Bridge in the rain, Sal feels a loneliness and, not being able to handle it, heads back to New York City to start his journey in another way.
I am also struck that prostitution, seemingly out of touch with a lonely hotel and the loneliest road in America, is an occupation that caters to the lonely and for the lonely, often by the lonely. Prostitution has been labeled the oldest occupation on Earth, and has been a symbol used throughout literature. We have a lot of archetypes of the prostitute, such as Mary Magdalene in the New Testament, or the whore with a heart of gold. However, I am often struck by the other side of what I read about prostitution - the difficult circumstances that lead people to turn to the world's oldest profession. Dysfunctional families, personality issues, emotional issues. Those gateways to the dark and lonely side of the human soul that I, who suffered family dysfunction and sexual abuse, know all too well. I'm not a prude - in fact I have a history of difficulties with sexual addiction (pornography) related to my history of sexual abuse - but it strikes me that my experience is probably similar to that many prostitutes in the commonality of loneliness.
Mural on AT&T Building in Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. KamerickI was reading a book recently called The Art of Racing in the Rain. It is a touching book about the loyalty of a dog named Enzo. Enzo, who is the narrator, reflects upon the difference between loneliness and being alone. Being alone is a reality. When one is the only person in a room, he or she is alone. However, loneliness, according to this book, is a state of mind. One can be lonely, despite the fact that he or she is not alone. One can be alone, yet not lonely. Being lonely is very difficult, and I've known people, including myself, that despite the presence of those who care for them and love them, remain lonely. People seek out aloneness at times. Nobody seeks loneliness and prolonged loneliness can lead people to desperate things. After all, we are all social and want human interconnection.
Miners, out in the wilderness around Ely, found themselves lonely for companionship. They might have wanted someone to talk with, be a companion, to love them even for a short while. Of course, that meant a business opportunity existed, one in which the providers could justify their actions as a type of public service. Giving up one's body in prostitution is an opportunistic business transaction performing an act that should be the complete antithesis of such transactions. The sexual act in a normal, healthy way involves putting much trust in one's partner. As a business transaction, such sex might be the extreme version of loneliness without being alone. Why? Because no matter how much is paid for sex, the sex act under such conditions cannot provide the loving human contact that most of us crave. It is simply business. At the end, the participants, if lonely, remain so because once the transaction is over, it's finished. There is no continuity, no promise of tomorrow unless there is payment, no chance of unconditionality because it is all about conditions.
Detail of downtown Eli mural. Photo by Michael L. Hess
That is probably why the websites of the two brothels that still exist in Ely strike me as strip clubs, where one can get extra benefits after the strip show and the lap dances are finished. It all seems very lonely to me, with the participation of a lot of lonely people. While Nevada regulates the prostitution industry, the exploitation of people's loneliness by appealing to their need for companionship through the most powerful feelings and instincts we have as humans seems to me to really touch on the most vulnerable parts of us and is ripe for the emergence of the dark and seamier sides of humanity.
I don't want to end this post on Ely with a downer. Ely has more merits than LHM gives it. It has some very nice attributes as a city, and is quiet and not at all completely driven by the prostitution industry. We especially liked the public art, in the form of murals, spread around the downtown. When a city makes efforts like this, it shows a pride in community and a real attempt to make a place appealing for residents and visitors alike. The photos I've peppered through this post show some of the artwork one can find around the town.
Detail of mural image in Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. Kamerick
Musical Interlude
I was going to put, for the musical interlude, Patti Labelle'sLady Marmalade, to keep in the mood of this post. I forgot about an amazing Cole Porter song called Love for Sale. This version is sung by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald. Just listen to the lyrics rendered in Ella's wonderful voice - it captures the loneliness perfectly "If you want the thrill of love / I've been through the mill of love / Old love, new love / Every love but true love."
;)
Ankara, 
