2025: A ROAD ODYSSEY: THROUGH THE UTAH OUTBACK, ST. GEORGE AND MARTIAN NEVADA

 

We didn’t bother looking for breakfast in Kanab—which was sound asleep when we left—so we went off in search of coffee and breakfast on the road. And it was worse than we’d thought. Not only is the tradition of getting up early to get things done dead in this part of Utah, but, as a helpful guy at a gas station explained, even though it was mid-October, a lot of businesses—even entire towns—close down for the “winter.”

Yeah, it was cold . . . And we saw a lot of CLOSED UNTIL MAY signs.

Capitol Reef was magic psychedelic geology as usual. Is this what happens when planets hallucinate? If computers can, why not planets? Or interdimensional gods?

Tezcatlipoca? Tezcatlipoca? . . . do you read?

The restaurants on both sides of the Aquarius Inn in Bicknell were closed, permanently, boarded up, as were a lot of the businesses we saw. Sort of apocalyptic. Was anything coming back in the spring?

The religious utopia that the Mormons tried to create is crumbling. Will they all leave, creating a mystery? What happened to the Mormons? Where did they go? Will we see animated pseudo-documentaries about them going off in flying saucers? Could they be living on some far-off planet with the Maya?

Or are the hard-working brown people moving into Utah now Maya rather than Mexica?

What goes around, comes around.

I finished re-reading Phil Farmer’s “Riders of a Purple Wage,” a tale of another imperfect utopia. Gotta tell the dissatisfied younger generation about it. It could help. It could cause trouble. What the hell, gotta do something. We’re all desperadoes these days . . .

 

Next morning it was freezing when we left Bicknell at 7:19AM. Then it dropped down to 20 degrees. I was glad the Carol’s car had heated seats. 

Thank Tecatlipoca for newfangled chicanderas.

We passed through a town called Koosharem. What kind of name is that? A local tribe? So alien . . .

In Circleville there was a sign on a house: BUTCH CASSIDY NEVER SLEPT HERE.

Soon we were back in St. George.

I wrote some disparaging, if hilarious things about St. George the last time we were here. This time I found it a bit more charming, but my twisted sense of humor helped.

It is still cheerfully dystopian in a Firesign Theater/Philip K. Dick manner, like chunks of SoCal sprinkled over red rocks. I tried hard to photograph the surrealism, but it was difficult, like taking pictures of smoke or fog.

I actually found cargo pants (I need them to lug my prescription sunglasses) in a thrift store. One had a tear, and they sewed it up and sold it to me at a discount.

What really knocked me out was the high density of Mexican restaurants. It competes with Glendale, Arizona. Guess they’re letting Mexicans live here.

I had fun, but dystopia, even an absurd one is by nature, disturbing. The happiness is artificial, like zapping your hypothalamus with an electric cattle prod. The shit-eating grins are creepy, and when the dopamine rush burns off, there’s a toxic emptiness that is also a side-effect of the postmodern, transurban sprawl environment.

When will some corporation come up with a cure for it that isn’t addictive or expensive?

The Sprawl (as William Gibson labeled it) is growing. Excavators chew up the ancient, natural, and historic beauty. An artificial consumer environment is being installed. And crackerbox instahomes are popping up all over.

Also, large houses, suitable for polygamous living. Stekes (or stakes) and temples in ritzy neighborhoods. Temple dresses, $150. And Mormon guys in nerdy clothes and haircuts. Brave new Mormons in a world being assembled by Mexicans.

Next stop Nevada, America’s favorite post-apocalyptic Mars colony, but first a short zig--or maybe it was a zag--under stormy clouds and a desert with drying evidence of rain through Arizona. You can never be sure about these parts.

We whizzed through Las Vegas to drop something off to Mike’s daughter.

Out of town, Whiskey Pete’s Casino was shut down. 

Gas was $4.95 a gallon near the expanse of solar concentrators.

 

The California inspection station at the border was unmanned. Gas over $5 a gallon in Yermo. $4.25 in Barstow. 

Most of the restaurants seem to be run by Mexicans. Even the non-Mexican ones. A plot to take over the food supply? Or will Mexican food save America?

CHICANONAUTICA MEETS THE MEXICA IN MORMONLAND

Chicanonautica visits Utah and celebrates Thanksgiving at La Bloga:

And, of course, it's Chicano style:

In the Uto-Aztecan traditon:

With a dash of Hollywood:

And strange Mexican food: 

 

2025: A ROAD ODYSSEY: ESCAPE FROM THE HEAT ISLAND

The Heat Island Effect had a death grip on the Metro Phoenix Area when we left. Still getting up to 100 degrees F. At home I dressed like a beach bum. The air-conditioning and fans kept it livable inside.

Still, Emily and I were eager to get out.

This latest memorial road trip for her mom was the result of a lot of frantic planning and coordinating. We took an extra day off from our jobs at the beginning to do an extra day of hanging out at the Northern Arizona towns that have become our go-to weekend getaways. 

What a better way to clear out heads for an epic journey?

 

First stop, Prescott— the locals pronounce it “Preskit.” 

 

There was a Charlie Kirk remembrance sign at the historic Apache Lodge. What would he have thought of the 19th century prostitution licenses and photos of the era’s sex workers that decorated the lobby? 

We cruised the Whiskey Row area shops, browsing weird T-shirts and photo-ing Halloween decor, and had obligatory coffees at the Wild Iris before taking off to Jerome, that has weirder T-shirts. A full-sized pink and white striped poodle took a shit in view of the tourists on one of the main, twisty streets.

As we got to Sedona, a VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft was coming straight down–an unusual sight for the commercialized New Age Mecca.

At the Goodwill I found two pairs of drawstring pants and a copy of Philip José Farmer’s The Purple Book that had one of my all-time favorite stories “Riders of the Purple Wage” that I had been considering re-reading and recommending to the new generation of Young Rashides (NOT a typo–a reference to the story). Once again, it was as if time travelers were leaving things for me to find.

We had to wait for a train near Flagstaff. A car bore the graffiti: THEY’LL KILL U!

Siri (Emily uses the black dude version) mispronounced a Spanish street name–Cosnino. Emily and I talked about it. The next time he said it right.

At Montezuma Well, two bikers spoke French and wore vests emblazoned with PARIS - COUER - LA SEINE HARLEY OWNERS GROUP.

Military helicopters passed overhead as we zigzagged past Sedona again.

The trip had already set my imagination ablaze. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we ran into Raoul Duke and/or Jerry Cornelius on this trip,” I said.

Then a sniper-bullet of an idea bashed my gray matter:  Raoul Duke, Jerry Cornelius, and my alter ego Victor Theremin meet in Sedona in Nazi America, foil tech AIs, bro billionaires, and the Nazis . . . Have to ask Michael Morcock’s permission to use Jerry. If he says no, call him J.C., John Carter, Jesus Christ . . . mention Cornelius, but “He’s a fictional character, sort of based on me . . . Highly inaccurate.”

Do I have time for such a project?

After Sedona, we did our ritual drive down gorgeous Oak Creek Canyon. I noticed a lot of roadside datura.

At Mike's workshop outside of Flagstaff, we picked him up and transferred our luggage from my Tacoma to his Prius. When we finished one of the Prius’s doors closed as if by a ghost hitchhiker. 

Then it was up to Utah, through the Big Rez. There was graffiti on abandoned structures all over the desert–lots of stylized skulls. The mountains and ground were Martian red. Gas was $2.99 a gallon . . .

CHICANONAUTICA ON ANOTHER ODYSSEY IN ANOTHER YEAR

Chicanonatuica traveling, at La Bloga . . .

An odyssey of sorts:

 

Through what we now call the United States of America:

 

 

And some of us imagine as Aztlán

 

Land of the tortilla machines:

 

 

 

 

 

FREE! MY LATEST STORY!

 

 Yup. I have a new story out, and it's free.

It's called "Doula." And it's part of Sound Systems: The Future of the Orchestra.

Just click in the above link and download it as PDF, EPUB, Apple Books, or MOBI (for Kindle).

It a production of the Center for Science and the Imagination. I'd go into all the details of how and why it came to be later, but meanwhile, I just got home from a wild and wonderful vacation, and stumbling my way back into my usual routine.

Meanwhile, I'm really proud of this story, and being part of this book, and want it to get the widest possible audience.

And here's Shachi Kale's art created for "Doula."

 

CHICANONAUTICA ON DÍAS DE LOS MUERTOS, HALLOWEEN, DEAD DAZE . . .

Chicanonatica is riffs on the October/November holiday traffic jam, at La Bloga.

Of course, some politics get in . . . 

 Some explaining needs to be done . . .

 

Gotta pay our respects to la Catrina:

And get some sugar:

HAVE YOU SEEM ME?

I’ll be deep into road tripping by the time you read this. Moving through a transmogrified world. And of course, I’ll be going through changes of my own. When I get home, I’ll be different, my day-to-day world will be different.

Or is it all a delusion?

Who am I, anyway? The maniac who writes the books and makes that art? Or the nice guy with a job, a wife, a house . . .

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a card-carrying cyberpunk (does anybody know about the McCarthy Era now that it’s happening again, only worse?). But look me up online and there I am, THE Chicano Cyberpunk!

We don’t get to decide how others perceive us. People keep throwing labels at me, and none of them stick.

Frank Zappa, “Who Are the Brain Police?” (1966): “What do you do when the label comes off / and the plastic’s all melted / and the chrome is too soft?”

I don’t blame them. I’m a rasquache mess of random selections of my unstable environment. Your handful of popular stereotypes just distort me.

 

I was in an Afrofuturist anthology. Now I’m going to a Xicanxfuturist one. It’s something new, yet I’ve been doing it all my life.

And I’ll be seventy years old soon.

I’m also a Chicanonaut and the Father of Chicano Science Fiction.

I like the science fiction label because it’s often used to describe what people don’t understand, which is accurate for me. Imagine if I went around calling myself a surrealist aesthetic terrorist creative blasphemer . . .

But who am I really? That guy in the mirror is always surprising me. What did people do before selfies? All those temporary identities melting and evaporating with documentation.

And where am I? In the breakroom of a library, typing this on my phone? Or on the road as you read this? 

If I need to, I can become a space vato or a ciberbandido.  Maybe I’ll discover a new identity somewhere soon . . .

CHICANONAUTICA GOES TRAVELING WHILE CHICANO IN TRUMPTOPIA 2.0

Getting ready for a road trip in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Triggering another Chicano identity crisis:

Which gets complicated:

Who is that vato in the mirror?

And wanna talk about complicated?

JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES THROUGH NEW WAVE BABY EYES

I heard that to read Joyce's Ulysses on a phone was blasphemous, so I had to do it. 

I get it now--the Irish are the Chicanos of Britain. All them linguistic shenanigans. I probably wouldn’t have dreamed of the stuff I pulled in High Aztech and Cortez on Jupiter if it wasn’t for good old James Joyce. Civilization ain't nothing but colliding, fighting, fucking streams of consciousness. Inverting Homer’s Odyssey–inverting the space from outer to inner–is a good way to demonstrate it.

And the obscenity gets shattered with one hot lick for man, one giant, nasty slurp for literature, as it broke the legal obscenity barrier with help of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. 

Why aren’t they included in our celebrations of banned books? Dare I mention the Marquis de Sade? Imagine cute teen hipsters wearing FREE DE SADE T-shirts . .  .

Ah, my kind of fun.

I finished it in the waiting room while my wife was getting a wisdom tooth yanked. While I drove her home she was still high on the drugs and grilled me like a stoned lit professor. That was fun too.

Would it also be blasphemous to say that I got into Joyce by way of science fiction? Some of you are picking their jaws off the floor, but I’m probably not the only one, being a New Wave baby, coming of age in the early Seventies, reading things like Philip José Farmer’s Riders of the Purple Sage and Richard Lupoff’s With the Bentfin Boomer Boys in Little Old New Alabama in the first two Dangerous Visions volumes. There was also Brain W. Aldiss’ Barefoot in the Head, Samuel R. Delaney’s Dhalgren, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy, and probably others that I don’t remember. A whole fricking lost subgenre waiting to be unearthed and explored. 

And in a Feliniesque sequence written before Federico was born, Ulysses actually does get kinda sci-fi:

All you students and academics in need of ideas feel free to plunder. I’m probably not going to do anything with it. I don’t need it. I’m a fountain of ideas.

Fountain of ideas. Stream of consciousness . . .  Slurp . . . Hmm . . . 

Are we blasphemous enough yet?

Back when I was a wage slave for Borders Book Music & Cafe (for you younger folks, it was a big box bookstore, kinda like Barnes & Noble, but more pretension), the phone rang. I answered like a proper corporate android, and a gentleman inquired, “Are you doing anything for Bloomsday?”

“Uh . . . not really,” I answered, knocked back into human mode.

“Harumph. Well, do you know perhaps of a local literary guild that would be doing something?”

Did he know that we were in Phoenix, Arizona? He might as well be asking for a society dedicated to hunting penguins, mermaids, and/or unicorns. 

Poor fellow. I wonder what happened to him? 

What might he think of these musings?

CHICANONAUTICA REPORTS CIBERBANDID@JE IN PARIS

Chicanonautica art manifests in Paris. Read about it at La Bloga.

It triggered a Oaxaqueño flashback:

Ah, Paris:

 

Art:

And protest: