I have been compiling an archive of found internet images I find interesting. They range from other photographer's, images from books no longer in print, family albums, etc. I am going to share some every now and then, starting tonight:

traipsing water and Tiger Woods drive

an old route through acres of bare pecan orchards into El Paso, Texas. Pass abandoned gas stations, homes, towns, grocery stores. There's so much derelict, that I have started seeing it in a new light. In the city once something is abandoned, you have maybe a week or two before it is removed, replaced, and vanished from the city's consciousness, from history. Here, history simultaneously exists alongside the present, and billboards of the future.
Get into the city, into an area resembling a chinatown, in regards to the loud incomprehensible music, the vast amounts of people who somehow all look alike, and the merchandise that is for sale, cheap flip flops, sunglasses, plastic jackets, individually wrapped denim jeans with designs on each butt cheek, cellophane jewelery, etc, only there aren't any chinese people, they're hispanic. Sunday or Saturday, cannot recall, people walk over the foot bridge into Texas from Juarez Mexico, maybe to stock up on clean socks or see the sights. We walk through the downtown core, deserted store fronts, a strong wind careens through the skyscrapers, I see several plastic bags soaring twenty-five stories in the air, taking on flight as if seagulls tumbling through the air, catching the sunlight, reflecting and bathing in it, wingless.
Drive to the University, a tan massive wall separates the two countries, I see shacks bathing in dust. They are drowning in one another climbing up the hill, there's thousands. I look around where I stand, skyscrapers, palms, an alligator fountain, and a man preaching desperately and exhaustively to an empty town square, he is yelling.
This city has a history, but its hard to find.
It is a spring day in the winter.
Coffee at Circle K, a painter or a construction worker wearing overalls and shades covered in plaster or paint in front of me is yelling at the cashiers, "I am superman," several times before he leaves without buying anything.
Doug and Chris's first time at a Walmart. An experience onto itself.
Take the car along "Tiger Woods Drive" back in Los Cruces.

On the airplane, a crowd of people all wearing the same color of orange sharing a high of ecstatic thunder when they all successfully board the plane as stand-bys, blow horns and cheer before take-off.

On the train home into Vancouver, I take the last sip of stagnant, chlorine water, leftover in my water bottle from Texas. Over the loudspeaker: Auburn 16 and the Ducks 11.

LETTER FROM TUPAC SHAKUR #3, TO HIS MOTHER, WRITTEN 3 WEEKS BEFORE HIS DEATH

Dear Mom,

I just got finished reading an article in the New York Times about a guy who got lost in the woods on a hiking trip. He survived by eating egg corns and wild berries. For some reason he was barefoot when he was rescued, in the picture of him his legs were all torn up and bruised. He looked so skinny but he was smiling in the picture. He was wandering around by himself for ten days straight. In the article he was quoted as saying, "I heard the sound of bagpipe music coming from the bottom of a mountain, I just closed my eyes and followed the music. When I finally reached the source of the music after walking for what seemed like hours, I opened my eyes and saw a deer having sex with a moose. I was so surprised to see two different species of animal engaged in sexual intercourse." In the photo the guy was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, so I bet as you could imagine that he was on acid and that he was a hippie.

Much love to you Moms,
Tupac

from page 171 of "A Crack Up at the Race Riots" by Harmony Korine

big dipper and kitsch

breakfast with an alien. an older man, buzzcut, little beady eyes, little to no lips, sitting by himself in the 1990s decorated (coral blue framed white washed bouquets of flowers in shiny brass, paintings) continental breakfast area, drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup sitting in a pink armchair. I was scooping no-name raisin bran when he talked about the "markings" on my arms and asked how long I've been out. He talked so fast I only heard the last word from his sentences as they were higher in pitch than the rest to properly form a question. He assumed my tattoos were markings indicating that I was either on break from the military, or paroled from jail. I told him I was a student and sat down. This tattoo sighting functioned as an icebreaker, as a one way conversation spurted and motored through his lips about his military service in 1959, I think this is what it was about. My nodding unfortunately functioned as fuel to keep his story rolling all through breakfast.
Drove around Roswell to the Alien Museum. It was alot less kitsch than I originally thought, and there were other crazy visitors there, like ourselves.
Drove through the Picacho Foothills and cottonwoods, low lying treed areas near a dried out creek for miles, beautiful. Made our way to where Doug's cabin was and Cloudcroft to a haunted hotel and restaurant, possessed by a woman named Rebecca. She was a maid of the lodge, popular amongst the lumberjacks and other men in town, who was later murdered by her jealous husband who scattered her remains in the surrounding woods. The hotel has been the site of many paranormal investigations who use the best technologically sound devices to catch a glimpse of fog, shadows, or a blur.
10,000 feet and driving around with elk, birch trees and finally a decent radio station that isn't country or christian.
Make our way through Alamogordo, I need to come back here, to White Sands for sunset. Miles of white sand reflecting the myriads of colors the sunset opens. Every direction you look is endless sand dunes. Driving back to Los Cruces on the barren interstate with the sunroof open, a makeshift space center, we see a sky that is bright and speckled, like a poster demonstrating all the star systems, that one living in the city never truly believes actually exist. There's more stars than the fucking big dipper.