Going Out to Get Nowhere

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Interstate 10 traveling west in Arizona

Just yesterday, we decided with certainty that we’d head out of Phoenix for an overnight somewhere in Arizona on Saturday morning. At the last minute, I worked out an itinerary on the map that would take us west towards the California border and then north. The little two-day jaunt would end in Flagstaff with another visit to Proper Meats + Provisions, where we recently enjoyed the greatest Patty Melt we’d ever had. So we packed up a small bag and got going.

Wickenburg Road out near Tonopah, Arizona

We should have left the freeway at 355th Avenue, but there was no exit, so we took the Wintersburg Road offramp and turned right and right again before reaching 355th Avenue where we needed to turn left off of Indian School Road to head north.

Wickenburg Road at Jackrabbit Wash in Arizona

After a few miles, our road curves and becomes Aguila Road. We were just going along when a horse trailer and Mustang that passed us while I was taking the previous photo were heading back the way they came. We thought this was strange and that maybe they’d forgotten something, or could this just be a coincidence of being a different horse trailer and Mustang? Obviously, something was glitching in the matrix. Then, not 2 minutes later, we learned that it was, in fact, them. They had decided that they weren’t going to attempt crossing this mess on the road. Something about the mud and debris flow didn’t smell right; it smelled downright awful. No matter, we turned around as there were other ways to get to where we were going.

Indian School Road in far west valley of Phoenix, Arizona

Instead of getting back on the 10 freeway, Caroline noticed that Indian School Road runs along the interstate until 411th Avenue, so we’ll take it just to keep our trek off of that ugly road. Hmmm, come to think about it, I had Caroline text me a message as we were leaving Phoenix regarding my utter disdain for our freeways. It read like this, “Freeways are like the average American, fat and bloated with generic franchised, gluttonous places to indulge our worst inclinations. There is nothing to see, no character, and the billboards, like people’s outward appearance, display slogans offering a peak in the height of one’s stupidity.”

Yeah, take that, you stupid ugly freeways with inconsiderate road-raging asshole drivers; we are opting to take the byways to places the mass of turds will never know on their way in a hurry to who knows what. We are the real elitists above the antics of conformity because we don’t travel the way idiots do…

Muddy intersection of Salome Highway and 491st Avenue west of Phoenix, Arizona

…Until we are the idiot. Transferring from the north side of Interstate 10 to the south side, we were able to pick up Indian School Road again, and well, everyone knows that Indian School Road is a big paved affair, so we were going to skip more freeway and enjoy the peace and quiet of a truly rural drive while everyone else zips along lightning speed. Little did we know that only a few miles on the pavement would end, but things looked manageable, so we soldiered on. We knew that some miles down the road, just south of I-10, Indian School intersects with Salome Road, which is exactly the road we want that will bring us to Eagle Eye Road and, subsequently, Aguila. There would have been nothing much in Aguila to see, just some old ruins of motels possibly, and then we’d turn around back towards Wenden before hitting Hope, Bouse, and Parker. From the Colorado River, our plan was to drive over the dam coming back down through California to Vidal Junction up towards Needles, near where we’d cross back into Arizona for a drive up the Oatman Highway, a.k.a. Historic Route 66. There were other plans from that point on the road, but when we reached the intersection of Indian School and Salome and needed to turn right, this mud hole put an end to our road trip. We were defeated and hungry by now, so we turned around.

Caroline Wise reading from a Kindle in Phoenix, Arizona

We were driving back towards Phoenix. With an hour and a half before we’d reach home, Caroline broke out the Kindle to read us some more In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. We are currently in the volume titled The Guermantes Way, which at the exact spot we are means we are 46% through this 1.2 million word book. By the time we reached Bethany Home and 16th Street where we shared an overpriced burger with garlic fries, we got to 47% of the book finished. As for the burger joint, Caroline also had a beer, I had nothing to drink, and our bill with a $5 tip came to $40. Maybe we would have been better off staying in to be everywhere within ourselves inexpensively than to have gone out to get nowhere. But on the plus side, we got to spend some quality time together in the car, so all in all, we had a great little adventure.

Das Boot

JWise Life

Caroline Wise with Das Boot in Phoenix, Arizona

Witness this woman experiencing sunlight for the first time in days. Not only that, but she’s making an appearance in Das Boot. No, not the famous 1981 German movie titled Das Boot featuring the smoldering actor Jürgen Prochnow (her words), but the giant black thing on her left foot. As you know from the previous post, Caroline recently had surgery to remove a bunion, and today was her post-op check-up and bandage change, where we got to see firsthand the incision site and the bruising across most of her foot.

X-ray of Caroline Wise's missing bunion in Phoenix, Arizona

Now, the bone needs to grow back together. While you can’t see it in this image, there’s a screw holding things together. The screw is in there because they had to cut the bone all the way through. I asked the doctor about the overhang of bone and the pyramidal shape on the right and he explained that the body will repair those as healing progresses. She’s so happy with the results so far that we made an appointment for December to take care of the right foot.

Horny Toed

JWise Life

Caroline Wise's foot has a bunion

My wife’s foot has (had) a horn. It protrudes like a giant barnacle off her left foot, just next to her big toe. This type of protrusion arrives with a cost, not one of magic ability, at the expense of something else; the cost is pain. The prominence that exists there is better known as a bunion, and she’s to the point that it must go.

The bunion, not to be confused with Paul Bunyan, is a kind of thorn that, as it presses into her shoes and hiking boots, is pushing against other foot bones, making things wonky. While Willy might enjoy things being Wonka(y), my wife is serious about walking, and being able to do so into the future means her foot parasite must be sacrificed to the surgeon gods.

So today (that having been August 4th), before the sun rises and after an anti-bacterial body wash, without food, coffee, or aspirin, we arrived at the surgery center at 5:30 a.m. for the moment the evil will be extricated, a piece of metal in the form of a screw will merge with her bones, and her 4 to 6 weeks of healing will all begin. To add some drama, a monsoon storm made an appearance and it was raining as we three (Jessica had come over from San Diego) pulled up to the facility entrance.

Of course, this means we are sacrificing no less than a couple of journeys that had been on the itinerary, but hopefully, by early September, even if it means we must go slow or use a knee-scooter, we’ll be back on the road. And if this all goes well, we’ll opt for her to have the right foot exorcised of its demon bunion while we’re still in the same insurance calendar year in order to save money for make-up adventures we’ll be denied while Caroline is an invalid.

X-ray of Caroline Wise's bunion in Phoenix, Arizona

Regarding recovery, a lap table was ordered last week, and I’ve given her a small handbell to summon me when her needs requires assistance because that’s just the kind of husband I am. I can only hope she doesn’t milk my generosity any more than is absolutely necessary. And about this poor-quality x-ray, we wanted a digital copy but had to photograph the doctor’s monitor in order to see what the bunion looked like pre-op.

Well, that was then, and this is now here on a Sunday afternoon three days after the surgery. Everything is great, at least in our view. Only one hydrocodone tablet was taken, and that was very late on Thursday evening; other than that, the discomfort has been absolutely manageable. Tomorrow, before lunch, we have a post-op appointment with her doctor, who will unwrap the bandages to inspect how things are progressing. So far, so good, and the little bell I supplied her never had to be rung once as I’ve been here for all of her major needs…except when I’m off at the coffee shop writing.

First Time Voter

JWise Moments, Photo of the Day

Caroline Wise voting in an American election for the first time. Phoenix, Arizona

Exactly 60 days ago, on Friday, June 3rd, 2022, Caroline Wise became a U.S. citizen, and today, she voted for the very first time in America. She was mailed her ballot, but at least for this first vote, I knew she’d have to vote in person, and as this is a primary, I’ll wager that come November, she’ll want to vote in person for the general election, too. That’s about all I can really share about us stopping in at a nearby grade school for the occasion; maybe Caroline can share some of her thoughts?

Caroline here: I’ve lived in the States for 25+ years now, and for most of that time, my joke was “lots of taxation, no representation” because, as a resident alien, I couldn’t vote. And while I could conceivably have been voting in German elections, I decided not to since I don’t actually live there and didn’t feel I could properly assess the options. When you are a German citizen living in Germany, you are required to vote. Since the powers that be know where you live (you have to register your home address along with your tax information), they send you the invitation automatically. Nowadays, you probably have more options for absentee or early voting, but back in the day, I would show up at a local school, get a simple ballot, and put crosses into the circles with a pencil.

So, as a new citizen, I am excited to exercise my right to vote, even if this was just a primary election. I had waffled over dropping off an early ballot too long, so the plan on the day of the election was to go a little farther out on our morning walk and head to Paradise Valley Community College, which the election website stated was our closest polling site. However, on the way there, we saw volunteers setting up a polling site at Sunset Canyon Elementary, which made the process even easier. There was no line, and the check-in process was easy. We had told the folks there why this was my first election and received congratulations for my newly acquired status. Once our ballots were inserted into the counting machines, I even felt a bit emotional, which I had not anticipated. I felt proud about passing another milestone on the way to being a “real American.”

The Knife’s Edge

JWise Rant

Macro of knife edge

We stand on the knife’s edge before the maw of the beast, its fangs bared, our future uncertain. After thousands, tens of thousands of years of evolving survival skills combined with cultural and scientific advancements, we are led by frightened greedy men drunk on treasure, fearful of one another, and ready to do battle with demons of extradimensional ferocity. Yet, it is only us standing on the horizon, alone with our existential angst and personal neglect of a personal healthy ecosystem of mind, that rages before humanity.

Without wandering hordes of enemies, without wild beasties ready to spring from the night to seize our throats in their jaws, we empower our fellow men to reign with deadly force and allow the madness of unchecked individuals to harness chaos among us to ensure we must live in uncertainty believing horror is just ahead. As we attempt to progress, it is our destruction of the resources of our planet, the potential for profound and abrupt cessation of lives due to mass illness, or political dogma painted in zealotry doing the bidding of jingoistic narcissists that trace back to the most privileged enjoying the high altitude life that survives atop the feeding chain of the haves and the have-nots.

Knowledge and wisdom from our elders were erased over the past century, and rightfully so, as we intentionally dumbed down our populations so that only a small cadre of sadistic opportunists could share power among themselves. We as individuals no longer know how to govern ourselves, our ability to voice our minds without resorting to violence or equally stupid rhetoric has been placed on the sideline, and thoughts of the future have been replaced with hope for survival in a world that if it was managed by wisdom would have few enemies other than those of our own making.

A solution will not be easily had as wealth and power are cowardly fellows and fully understand what could be lost if an angry, undereducated mob was unleashed with the knowledge that they are but frightened tools manufactured by the powers that be who once believed that a stupid society is a passive controllable mass of consumption, profit, and warfare that remains ripe for exploitation while ignorant of what they’ve sacrificed by not investing in themselves.

Alterity

JWise Thoughts

My keyboard

I think I am starting to understand Derrida’s idea of erasure. Could he mean that once we’ve seen a sign, image, or word, we’ve learned what it means? On subsequent encounters with the sign or the word, we erase the previous one in a sense, allowing it to be replaced by a new context.

The written word is a dangerous sign that pries open areas of the psyche that are a threat to external control structures. The spoken word is a distinctly different organ/tool from the written word: the emoting tonality of the speaker triggers a temporary euphoria or understanding that arrives with the perceived intentionality of the person talking. Compare this to writing/reading when we decipher on intimate terms, using traces of other writers that weave between ideas of signifier and signified.

This mechanism of attention/deconstruction is not available to the listener, which for controllers is a good thing as the spoken words flow in ways that don’t allow traces to enter the stream as long as the orator keeps their foot on the pedal of delivering a relative barrage.

This was the method employed by Hitler, Trump, Putin, Charles Manson, Shoko Asahara of the Japanese doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo, and many religious zealots, simply keep drilling the message using an authoritative voice that takes the listener on a ride and overwhelms their analytical mind, rendering them unable to find their own internal voice using threads/traces of what they might have otherwise considered, had they been reading the written words.

For example, I’m currently reading Gayatri’s preface to Derrida’s Of Grammatology, and if I’m comprehending it correctly, it is almost irrelevant as I find my own traces/threads through the meaning of things that produce thoughts and ideas I would consider my own, although I know that what I’m translating into my own discourse is a continuation of words and ideas harvested from everyone, including WSB, Nietzsche, Bukowski, Russel, Baudrillard, E.O. Wilson, and now Derrida via Freud, Heidegger, Foucault, and Lacan.

If I weren’t reading, I couldn’t find the space between words to activate my own thoughts, and I’d have to wait until the speech was finished and an extended silence opened before I could insert my own words. This is a danger of being a listener only as much is lost when waiting for a break. While reading and writing, I have only the tension of my excitement to reach the next word, and should I take a pause, I know I can return to exactly the same point, highlight it if need be, and continue pursuing inspiration if that’s what I’m exploring.

But this is all a palimpsest as I write over the erased text of what I thought I read because my understanding is of no consequence. My interpretation is that of a poor critic afraid to admit deficiencies in comprehension.

I suppose one thing I have learned is that when I reach the actual words of Derrida, I will have to examine the spaces between the words, lines, margins, and the vast empty spaces left as voids in Derrida’s writing in order for me to erase the missing meaning so I might insert my own meaninglessness that should also require erasure.

My job is not to bring closure (answers) to knowledge but to make the abyss larger and more confounding so as to grow the mystery of what still lies ahead. We hope to inspire others to fill the gaps we left behind to peer into the darkness between stars. This is the metaphor for understanding the infinite horizon of potentiality and that we are lightyears away from grasping the limits of our mind and language so we can endure the exploration of all that we’ve never imagined.

We attempt to destroy ambiguity as that is the frontier of freedom where discovery is the propellant, and to that end, all thinkers that risk convention by opening cans of experimental thought taunt the powers that be that their luxuries wrought from control could be put at risk.

Life itself is encoded in written form and must be read using the evolving strings of DNA that are forever altering the story of life on Earth. When we write, we are crafting the future. When we wave in the wind, we are but trees on the surface of a complex structure that lacks meaning; we are the meaning. Should we devolve further and abdicate our responsibility to craft signs, we will become nothing, unable to perceive the abyss of joy.