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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Rice
Read between
October 1 - December 2, 2025
The danger is in lingering outside modern society too long, fearful and yet wishful of reentering, and losing the part of you that can tolerate your own species and its endless number of flaws. Emotional self-sufficiency taken to extremes can become unhealthy, limiting your options and could put your very survival at risk[12].
Just like in painting, or poetry, or singing, or dancing, there must be no “shoulds and should nots” in writing except one: narration, description, and dialog should be faithfully moved from the writer’s brain to the sheet of paper, with the writer as a sort of conduit or pipeline, without any thought to what is politically correct, or personally shameful, or socially taboo.
I love the desert: it is mindlessly unforgiving; one day it will kill me, and that’s okay.
When someone’s life becomes too clean, too peaceful, too sanitized, too pretty, and too easy, she or he ceases being fully human. Being human means bleeding a little now and then.
It actually seemed a shame to have struggled up the side of the mountain just to look around a bit and then descend. I feared that if I stayed up there too long I would become enlightened (a dreadful thought), so I hurried back down to camp.
The last place, I reasoned, they would look for me is at or near the Sheriff’s substation in town. Nobody would be stupid enough to evade arrest for over an hour, then go get a burrito across the street[61] from the would-be arresting officer’s office... right? Twilight came upon me as I ate my burritos while I was in my pickup, which was parked across from the Sheriff’s substation.
I bought a bag of corn chips and a fifth of whiskey, then drove back to the man’s fire and brought those items there for him. I figured come morning he could use a hearty breakfast.
Branches and twigs grabbed at my hat and yanked it off; I struggled to reach it, grabbed it, and put it back on my head (it wasn’t much of a hat, but it was good for another twenty years or the next rain which ever came first).
My ancient Coleman gasoline-fueled stove leaked fuel, so I had to carry it carefully. If I did not pump air into the tank just right, or if I didn’t get the stove resting at just the right angle, it would spit gasoline at me as well as all over itself, and ignite at unpredictable times when I was trying to cook. Some people would suggest I fix the leak, or buying a new stove, but I hate throwing something away just because it might kill me some day.
The sun stomped on my face and I knew it was morning.
“My! My! My PEACHES!” I wailed. I flung down my burden of trash. He said something about skipping breakfast, and that if I had really wanted the can of peaches I should not have left a P-38 can opener on the dashboard. Apparently it was all my fault. I was glad to see him. I love my brother, most times, but other times I love canned peaches more.
(Later the next day I drove to Window Rock and along the way I saw a sign that read “FAT SHEEP $80[97].” I stopped at the sign, as any sane person would, and I talked to the Navajo man sitting next to the sign. I asked him if he had any skinny, pretty sheep for sale: I was willing to pay extra. He told me to go away.)
There was a woman of about 50 years old, dark skin weathered by the sun, in the aisle looking over the toilet paper, trying to decide which offered the best ass wiping for the best price. I stood a few feet away trying to make the same decision, but the options were just too many--- so I thought I would ask the woman for advice. Instead this came out of my mouth, without my knowing it would: “Golly, I wish I were a dog. That way instead of having to buy toilet paper, I could just drag my poop-rimmed ass on the carpet. Think of the money that would save!” A flirt. I was flirting. This is
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Later that night I telephoned my brother and told him, “Hey! Today in El Centro someone tried to give me over a thousand dollars!” “What did you have to do to get it?” he asked. “Pretend I was someone else,” I said. “Shit, man, you have to join the Actor’s Union for that. Did you take the job?” I told him, “Nobody would ever believe me being me, let alone me being someone else,” and let him stew in that Zen-like conundrum when I hung up.
Surprising both of us, I used the fork on his arm, and not gently. It was like sticking a fork in a baked potato to see if it was done. He yelped, and both hands flew from my throat as he jerked his body away from me. He clutched his left arm with his right hand, bellowing in pain and rage. He took a few backward steps, suddenly peaceful and apparently no longer wanting (or willing) to strangle me. It appeared this baked potato was done. I was horrified. I had never forked anyone before (or since); I explained that it was my first forking and as I rule I do not fork people. In fact I had
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“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” -- Jack Kerouac
A lengthy argument followed. I argued in favor of madness; my brother argued on the side of sanity. As is almost always the case in human history, sanity lost the argument.
Did it even matter where I went, as long as I went? I’ve seldom concerned myself in the past with where I was going: it was the moving that was the attraction.
Cold fell upon the East Mojave desert like a mugger upon a trust fund baby asleep in a crack house.
More than one billion people trample the earth and never see, feel, taste, hear, and smell it: alienated, estranged, divorced from the soil that nurtured and gave birth to them. When nature became a tourist attraction, all hope for humanity was lost.
Hauling the canned food from my pickup to the cave took six trips; hauling the perishables took two trips; hauling plastic jugs full of fruit juice, and boxes of assorted food stuff, took six trips. The task summed to about 66 miles, 15 trips one way (counting the battery), and three days. When the grocery store cashier had asked me, “Would you like help with that?” I wish I had said “Yes” and then kidnapped her as my personal pack horse. I’ll remember that for next time.
Stephen Reed Donaldson once wrote that the best way to destroy a man utterly is to take from him something he cherishes, break it, and give it back to him. I will never return to the East Mojave; I could not bear seeing what has become of it.
Autism is diagnosed by having difficulties communicating, and this issue can lead to frustration and loneliness; this in turn can induce Cluster “B” personality disorders as well as a truncated life span. (Personality disorders can be “comorbids” with Autism Spectrum Disorder: they are not diagnostic of autism.) I am still struggling to be content with how I was born; this, I fear, is true for almost every human.
