Road to Roswell. Motel Notes (Feb 08)

  

Roswell, NM Rowell Motel, NM Road to Roswell is long empty and straight. Not another car, house or sign of human life for miles around - though out there in the desert is area 51 creepy as it is remote. New Mexico is hot and we go from down-filled Parker Coats to t-shirts almost between gas stations. The nights are cold though and the crystal clear skies are busy with mysterious 'air traffic'. Blinking lights that snake and ark across the heavens, crossing quickly the space between the stars like some massive game of celestial dot-to-dot. Last night we drove out to alien crash site where Jenny and I stared out into the vast silence, holding hands and shivering under jackets lying on the bonnet of our car.. Roswell is the parallel universe 'Tidworth Hampshire' of my childhood dreams, full of secrets and glow in the dark mystery. All conspiracy and silence - possibility and potential. Amazing drive here. Kansas with massive open fenceless prairie land. Oklahoma with its landscape littered with nodding donkey oil or water pumps, scrub and scattered evergreens. Texas North has vast, open, flatter than Kansas plains and impossible farmland. Low black storm clouds one inch from horizon where you could imagine a tornado touching down at any time. Incredible views from the road. New Mexico is poor and the land appears useless. Virtual desert. Every other roadside ranch and gas station is deserted – husks and crumbling sun bleached multi-coloured shells only. Tumble weeds roll out in front of the car. Dead possums and other nameless creatures at the roadside - Armadillo? Endless Southern Pacific freight trains thread through the barren lunar landscape and into the vast star-filled night, its sad mournful call filling me with a deep and aching loneliness. Massive chrome-covered thundering trucks which gather in special parking lots at night in some sinister CB radio conspiracy, strange and creepy. Heard that the dead road of route 66 runs parallel someplace around here too and it flickers like a phantom in my thoughts. I could drive for a year and never stop. We will be home again on Thursday. After visiting Santa Fa later today. First we're off to see the UFO museum. Couple scream at each other in the next room and keep me awake while I write these notes. A broadcast from the air con vents - 'Bitch' this and 'motherfucker' that over turned up blare of babble on the TV box. She is pregnant and doesn't want him getting high. Thought she was gonna shoot him. I didn't sleep well.