Haley's Comet & Red-eyed Mexican Cattle

August 5, 2011

This morning, I studied a Republic news photo by Rob Schumacher of a Vandenberg Air Force Base rocket streaking over the Valley of the Sun night sky.

I am interested in the streaking rocket, as a kind of Haley's Comet effect (Thom Ross is doing our next Graphic Cinema and he has a very cool Haley's Comet treatment in a stellar Jack Johnson painting that is the center of the narrative).

Speaking of the Arizona Republic, I am working up a new batch of True West Moments. Finished one on Chinese Dot, the female outlaw who operated as a man—Tom king—until his-her body was set for burial and it was discovered that he was a she. There were clues, on Tom King's reward circular it mentioned that his figure was "faultless." Hmmmmmmm.

The Duke of Dust Presents:

Going through some old artwork and found this little study of Mickey Free traversing a dry lake when he meets a caravan of ricos (rich) in carriages, followed by a herd of red-eyed Mexican cattle and vaqueros, and then, once inside the dust cloud created by the ricos and the vacas he encounters the poor, the proud and the putas (whores and prostitutes) who warn him, "Hell is empty and all the devils are back there," pointing backwards in the direction Free is going. A historic metaphor, perhaps? Or, just heavy handed symbolism?

Or both? Ha.

"It takes a grat deal of history to produce a little literature."
—Henry James