2016

NOMAD sold to Pick-N-Pull (Rancho 1)

After a prolonged bout with regulation, NOMAD was delivered up to a dismantler this past December 1,
not more than ten miles or so from where she spent her life when not parked in San Francisco or out in the landscape. Refereed as a “tampered with vehicle,” no waver was forthcoming, she was unsmogable, hence, unregisterable—not street legal. But, even though she’s sat on a pad, inactive for months, she started right up with a good, long, snort of ether and blithely towed her sister.

NOMAD leaves behind her bereaved owner and source of funds for all maintenance performed these past
24 years, the Widow Georgette, as well as her stable mate and fraternal twin sister, the Toy (aka
“CLWN BX”), and numerous aunts and uncles. (You know who you are.)

NOMAD passed through my hands with a strong engine, good tires, spare windshield wipers, many quarts of unused oil, a pair of captain’s chairs, rust, and some 150,000 miles of driving pleasure mixed with terror.

I’ve been vapor locked beside many interstates from San Francisco to Pennsylvania, and Tennessee
in-between, but most fondly, Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. And don’t forget Colorado! But let’s not also forget all the days and nights spent inside the Whale. NOMAD was a rolling, ongoing interior landscape, cum design project. The “idea” was something like a rocket ship’s escape capsule en route to deep space. The longest trip I ever took in her was 4 months—used her to get me to surgery in Montreal in one of the coldest winters on record, days of –0 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.

In the best of times, NOMAD was a warming hut, a pissoir, an artist’s and writer’s studio, a sense of place,
a womb, my turtle or crab shell—a shield of invisibility. While I’ve had to bail from her several times, have stories about repelling boarders and driving under awful, inclement conditions especially in Western Wyoming—it was an adventure I can call on to talk about, forever.

An adventure I got to share with a number of people—because of NOMAD. She will be missed.

Found my inner owl. Always known this owl was there. Never thought of her as something other than a charm. It’s only intrinsic “magic” property is that it communicates. Truly as the Scotty of our time thought such things should do: “They talk…you talk: “Captain…” Sort of like a telephone, but more.

Ended up in bed 22 at an ER. Got the whole drill for angioedema. Sort of like a dear person I knew who got more than 20 years ago after several unprotected weeks in the Four Corners of the SW. Week three, she looked like a a kachina doll for sale in the museum’s gift shop: puffed lips, green and black, a watermelon. All water, just like angioedema, but having structure; not soft and plastic like an infection. What I wouldn’t give to have that back (the kachina). Unlike my ex-partner, I’m prone to these things. Been to the ER several times before and that’s when I learned about Walldryl (aka Benydryl). And that’s been years ago, 1987?

Knew before I got to the ER this time that Walldryl and a very hot bath, preferably in an old, free standing, deep, clawfoot tub did wonders. There was that delicious screaming nerve-end quality on bath entry. (Ooh, ahh! Zaa!) And, wonder of wonders, the hives calm down as the itchy sensations mellow. Oh, if only one could sleep (safely) in a hot tub!

Also learned of a Walldryl/Peptid AC cocktail. Apparently both are antihistamines, one preparing the way for the other: one Walldryl together with one Peptid AC, every 4–6 hours. That said, the trip to the ER was good for ephinephrine in the IV, no Benadryl, and a steroid—my steroid for the day. (There’re five more days, both in the morning at one swig.) However, in the ER, the steroid was by injection into the meatus, left-leg dorsal. I have a sense that’s where one injects the Epipen, too. Told the Doc I tend to overreact in such situations and asked if the ’pen had a “stop” like a drill press. Doc said it did. The nurse doing the IV loved the veins on top of my left hand—there’s a nice ropey one below the ring finger.

Been in a number of different spaces these past two weeks from Port Townsend WA to Essex MT, St. Paul-Minneapolis MN, Minot ND, and Seattle WA. Inside trains, light rail, planes, and automobiles; hotel rooms, inns, breweries, and tap rooms; coffee shops, book shops, a classroom, hot springs, a theater (Michael Moore's "Where Do We Invade Next?") and a 3-D photographer's studio in the the Mall of America who made the above Georgette statuette.

Left Jones reasonably uncluttered. Came back and denuded its airwell patio, posing the picture above.

Driving cross North Dakota, on ND 5 was like flying a slow plane at ground level for hours from just outside Fortuna on the border with Montana, east 300 miles to Cavalier on the border with Minnesota. Across numerous fracking operations and at least one big boomtown (Williston), endless cultivated fields (verdant and lush with the blush of spring), Minuteman III missle silos, the infamous International Peace Garden (plopped down into a no-mans-land between the US and Canada), a Chinese steam-table restaurant, and miles of seemingly empty oil tank cars on a marginal rail line between Grafton and Grand Forks.

Given the state of the oil fields, perhaps the tank cars were not empty and are simply being used to store oil for sale later at a better price. The single most frequent new construction we saw in the oil fields was the building of numerous new oil tank farms.

You can see forever in northern North Dakota. You can see someone coming from miles away as the land slowly and deliberately undulates in its own natural, near flat rhythm. Wonderful, empty, two-lane country-road driving and conditions were perfect. A buswoman's holiday.

Buried treasure from my hoard: pages 32 and 33, Letter Arts Review 23.3, Summer 2009. The photograph was taken by Christopher Calderhead outside his hut on top of the Ghost Ranch mesa between the dining room and my campsite, early summer 2006. While it had been raining that day, I’m getting off more on the strong pull upwards of the umbrella as the wind that picks up in the evening flows over the top of the mesa we’re standing on. This was also, at the time, the only spot on Ghost Ranch’s thousands of acres where we could get ATT cell phone reception. I was proud to be Christopher's model and to see this photograph later published.

On Hoarding
Certain notes from Stuff, a book by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee (2002):

Compulsive hoarding. Garrison syndrome. Weapons hoards. Exceeding floor load limits. Inaccessibilities within a hoard. Firefighters’ “worst nightmare.” Compulsive washing. Hoarding throughout the life-cycle. Self-esteem and anxiety, ownership of property. Impairing quality of life. DSM-IV and DSM-V. Agony of throwing things away. A symptom, not a syndrome. Senile breakdown in standards of personal and environmental cleanliness. Decision making in compulsive hoarding. Interpersonal problems and emotional intelligence in compulsive hoarding. Leisure, investment, or obsession? Treatment readiness. Buried in treasure: help for compulsive acquiring, saving and hoarding.

"FROM: Postcards for All Occasions," Sutter Street art gallery store front, San Francisco, January 2016.

Walk by this storefront most everyday I’m in town. It's been an art gallery, this art gallery, for a number of years. 10? It’s contemporary, commercial, but not overly slick. Shows interesting things, including the work of this neon artist. A name I don’t know.

Last I saw of this artist’s work, it was the type of message you might leave behind lipsticked to the windshield, far down a road that never sees a plow in winter. Sort of note you’d leave as the last of the Volvo’s tires burned. Something like “GONE TO GET HELP. DON'T PANIC. SEE YOU SOON." Probably edgier.

These last weeks of January have been brushed with a dusting of details on a Missing Persons case, now become a matter for the coroner’s office. The body’s been found, but no telling how they’ll rule.

So it’s no wonder I got a better take on this art. Something I’d seen two or three times before, earlier in the month. This time around, I read it with “knowledge." One could wish . . .

Photographs and drawings by Georgette Freeman © 2016. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016 by Georgette Freeman. All rights reserved.

2 0 1 6

Photographs and drawings by Georgette Freeman © 2016. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2016 by Georgette Freeman. All rights reserved.

2 0 1 6

Photographs and drawings by Georgette Freeman © 2016. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016 by Georgette Freeman. All rights reserved.