Dec 11
“we see here that you had study abroad in South Korea
This is a voluntary interview; you can leave whenever you’d like
This date is different from what you said”
Kraftwerk playing in the Los Alamos Starbucks
“Is it just for memorabilia? You don’t intend to use it ever again?
If any government entity saw it, they would say um nice try
and you said that you got it so late you didn’t use it at all?
You probably shouldn’t use this photograph ever again”
Dec 12
went on a walk
40 degrees, it’s supposed to snow tomorrow. The trail I run is all ice and mud so I had to turn around.
I jogged through town and talked to Matt.
Matt asks if I go out when it snows, I say no. He says
“I think I would be afraid of the snow.”
I say “I don’t really know what to do with the snow” because I’ve never really lived with it. Snow frightens me the way the ocean frightens me. It’s overwhelming.
He says the ocean is more of a real threat though. I say snow gets on my eyelashes and in my eyes. He says the ocean is a whole other world, and I say a world that you can’t see!
Matt says that if anyone hates us it’s all the creatures who live in the ocean. I say I believe, more than anything, in nature’s ambivalence.
I spent about an hour making photographs.
Dec 14
“What’s a Quark?”
“It’s Europe’s oldest cheese
Austrians eat it with a spoon
They spread it on buttered bread
I should know; I lived there for seven years
You know Americans don’t even need a visa
I went there for a week but stayed years
it was mostly for spiritual reasons
I fell in with this theosophical group
The guy – he was very Italian – they had built
a time machine. The women cried when we got out of it
I just had an incredible headache”
“Why did you come back to the United States?”
“There was a woman…”
Dec 15
“Its sparkling mass
Is hollow matter,
Can quickly shatter
Like shiny glass”
Dec 17
“Sorry you had to come twice.
people will take the job and say
“but I don’t want to work the holiday”
and then they’ll quit
You wear so many hats doing something like this.
It’s not like before. No one is going to shoot at me!
I didn’t want to be pregnant in (redacted). I thought
this town needs a dedicated pet food store”
Dec 28
Last night I watched this frustrating
cartoon called when the wind blows
About this ignorant elderly British
couple who had an atomic bomb fall
near enough to destroy their house
but not immediately kill them
And so I googled “how does
Hiroshima look now”
And then went down a rabbit hole
on tulpas and how the guy who
started JPL conjured demons for
his rocket science
So I fell asleep all scared and jumpy
“Sounds educational but anxiety
inducing
I too have googled nuclear war at
1am”
Jan 13
TW: Annular Eclipse
33" snow in Tijeras over the past few weeks.
These are photographs of the annular eclipse that happened a few months ago. Through local Indigenous knowledge I have been told that it is in poor taste to show images of an eclipse because it is a private matter between the sun and the moon.
I share these images with some embarrassment.
Jan 31
"It's not enough! That isn't enough birdseed!"
"They don't know that. This is the kind they like.
...Living in Him and through him. Do you get that?
I'm living like Christ now"
"When are you coming home?!"
Feb 24
I spoke with Jenny yesterday. 134" of snow, she showed me on her laptop. She says Freddy was running around on the roof.
I told her about the 33".
Feb 28
"You two look great. Are you headed anywhere important dressed like that?"
"We are on our way to Bandelier"
Mar 16
Winter weather warning in the Jemez.
I saw a third of a deer in an empty soccer field Tuesday before it started snowing. Ron says something dragged it down there.
Mar 20
"It's so good that you have a hill behind your house"
"Is it? Is it? Hills have deer"
"My grandma says when I'm out there I have to be careful because of the mountain lions"
"How would you be careful of them?"
"We have coyotes too."
"Do they make noises at sunset?"
"No. We never hear them"
April 8
“I got you chocolate whipped cream. They had regular but I thought why not. Hope that’s ok”
“It’s the right choice”
“Ok. Great!”
“You won’t believe who is parked next to us.”
“No way we know someone here. Someone you know or I know?”
“They’re from Los Alamos. Two guys.”
“No way.”
April 12
“You need to know about it the same way we all need to learn about the Tulsa fires. What happens when we don’t know about that? My friend couldn’t watch The Handmaid’s Tale. And look where we are now.”
“I too am afraid of forced birth.”
“Right. So the reason I haven’t watched the thing is the audio. Nolan preferences the action audio so it's impossible to hear the dialogue. It’s ego!”
“I hear it’s all about how much Oppenheimer fucked. I hate thinking about that.”
“Yeah.”
May 22
"I was in Los Alamos yesterday. There was a car wreck at the junction, you know, down before the kind of snake road up there. The snaking road. And cars were backed up, look at this picture."
Backed up all the way to the top.
"There is a truck route you know. My partner takes it in his old car because he is afraid the car will break down on the one lane with no shoulder."
"yeah but that too connects with the snake road. We were stuck."
At four (I say I drove during a lightning storm around 8:30, no traffic then)
"But you can go the back way like the Puye Rocks way but it is closed, you know? Otherwise you have to drive down to Albuquerque and take the Zuni way through the pueblos."
"Wait, what? There’s a back way? It’s two hours down and at least two hours around!"
"You know what they say. It’s better to be moving than to wait and stay still."
July 4th
I have a - I stop breathing at night
Scared the shit out of my wife
So I’d be in bed - (choking sounds)
You know? Choking and trying to catch my breath and trying to kick the blanket off me to sit up.
Ha! And then my wife comes round the side of the bed trying to wake me up.
So this nurse - she was the head person - a respiratory… res’pitory therapist… department.
She gave me this flier and told me to watch this show and I watched it
And everything they talk about is like true!
You know?
So I uh… watched it. I watched it. It’s uh… really good. You should watch it!
It’s an hour. And it’s about wearing - taking off your shoes and walking. Walking in the grass or - wherever but grass is beautiful and… soft and everything. It… it really talks about how it travels through your foot. From the earth and all that. I’m not high on the earth and all that! I can say that right now! Ha ha ha!
July 7th
"I do this - like, it's something to do. I used to fix cars years ago. I got a great deal on it from a guy who owns the other apartment over... I forget where. You know, you’ve inspired me, I really should start - somehow with the kids - volunteering -”
“I mean, I think you do good work. The lab means a lot to many of my students. It’s like a - a sense of hope for the future. Many have internships and I think it keeps them focused.”
“I’m not a millionaire or anything. I help my - if I get any money I give it to my daughters or-“
“I don’t see you driving a Tesla, M____. I don’t think you’re a spendthrift!”
“Yeah. Ha! Ha! If we got hit by an EM blast I could still start this thing - electric ignition!”
“Ha! God.”
July 14
“So… spies.
The Manhattan Project was a war of information. And the workers who came here, they signed the Espionage Act. So, Ruth Marshak wrote that she didn’t know what this was all about even though she was living with a physicist. So that secrecy was cutting right through their dinner table. But! I showed you that picture earlier… if I could find it again… of Klaus Fuchs. A man who signed the Espionage Act but definitely did not hold to it. Have you heard of him? Before? I think he may be the most damaging atomic spy ever, but there’s no ranking body”
Oct 9
“I met this woman and she was an asthmatic. And she was like on several medications. And she said that she started going to the salt cave like once every six weeks and she was just down to nothing but a rescue inhaler. And she said ‘you feel happy!” This, this incredible feeling. And I went and I took two friends with me, and it was like 35-40 dollars for an hour and um, I think we, you know, and look it up! You can’t believe it - so you go to this strip mall, it’s on second street off of Cerrillos, go down Cerrillos turn left, and it’s next to a bakery, and, and you go inside there - wear your socks - and don’t bring electronics, because they’ll be encrusted. Corroded by the salt. You don’t need it anyways. Awesome. I didn’t even tell you, for about, all three of us, for the next three weeks, I swear I feel happy for no reason at all. Like you just feel joyful. I was breathing better, everybody felt like so good! It was lovely”
Oct 14
“Um... what I would be most concerned about is... your particular interest that there is a racially-dictated difference in color perception, which I think has been disproven for, like, about a hundred years, and is popularly... if at all discussed in contemporary times, tied into eugenics”
-“So this thing that I’m, I stumbled upon where... just, color chart...-“
-“I’d like to see the peer-reviewed evidence for that study-“
-“so you, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re saying that that is eugenics?”
“It’s pseudoscience rooted in racism. Sorry to say. Yeah.”
Oct 19
I couldn’t hike up the regular trail because mud was getting stuck to my boots, so I walked up an arroyo that had followed volcanic rock. There were small pools and streams all the way up, and there was a very thin layer of snow on top of the hill I hiked yesterday during the red flag warning.
Today I have been reading Frankenstein.
Oct 24
I am not curious as to why I am fascinated by toxicity.
I have resisted interrogating my desires for fear of losing them.
I imagine tiny antique particles of the earliest plutonium refined by humans entering my lungs when I walk through the canyon. A mosquito bit me near a pool of stagnant water below the Nature Center. I call Ron and ask if I should worry about the bite and he says no way. I scratch and wonder if it would be worse if I got any dirt in contact with broken skin. My cat sniffs my wet boots. I wash my hands and imagine there is nothing to worry about.
Ron bought snow shoes to share but he says this winter is supposed to be warm and dry.
Nov 8
“So you don’t have a radiation pen, but you’re gonna get one soon?”
“Yeah! They told me when I start… shadowing. I do have to take a three day course or something. With, and h, I forgot his name but the guy who gave us a tour or whatever. Well, the professor, he was a professor here actually.”
“Oh, and he works… at the lab?”
“He stopped working at the lab actually. He said I have to take a three day course and after that I get my pen. But literally, when we went into that little contamination box it was crazy! I was standing there, all…”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s like crazy. It’s like…”
“Are there clowns? Do you see colors? (Laughter)”
“(Annoyed) yes, I’ve seen colors. They’re like…”
“(Laughter) can you see the radiation?”
“I mean, they tell us we could smell it”
Apr 29
“Are you looking for the owl? I can show you where.”
“Yes.”
“It’s over here”
…
“Since I have you here, can I make your portrait?”
“What do you mean, portrait?”
“Take your picture real quick”
“Oh, sure! Do you want - what - smiling? Or?”
“Anything you like, smiling if you want. For my purposes, what I look for is ‘dead inside’”
“Oh! We work for the government so we know how to do that!”
Apr 29
I couldn’t teach so I went home, and I couldn’t be at home so I started walking. I hiked down to the canyon below the canyon and the owls were not there.
Meg said the pilot swerved to avoid hitting a dog on the runway.
