TEXAS: WHERE THE WIND PUMPS THE WATER AND THE COWS CUT THE WOOD

About the Book

Every rock, plant and mineral is named in the Texas cultus—no thing is left out. The mystic otherness of Texas is hard to conjure for a wind-swept plain, but a total verbal blast envelops the young---there is no U.S. outside of the cutlus. Homebase resents any dependence on the other estates. Accidents may or may not happen, but to be born there seems positively holy or wholly other---from Chisos Basin to Caddo Lake there is an enveloping Texaness.

About the Author

I was forced to move out of Texas for health reasons when very young and found it to be unhealthy to live in Arizona and California away from the Texas cultus or mind-set deep in the heart of. Deep in the heart is a dramatic carving out of a state of mind that is part geography, part philosophy and partly enveloped in a religion of place---the holy land is not holy without small towns even if they get boarded up. Dallas is not Texas, but an invasion of Texas by insurance companies. I taught philosophy, religious, sociology and history for forty years in Arizona but always kept in mind that our paved street connects to my home town of Amherst on the revealing plain. A closer reading of this book should reveal some criticism of the cultus.