Prior cause drives me. There were cowboys before me, sure in a different form – tougher, grittier and with less irritable skin, but no one can escape the ripples of the past. What's the measure of a man? How much can a man take? If you know, please email me at mantips@thebackyardcowboy.com and be as detailed as possible.
A tripod and phone camera can be a dangerous set of tools to enable the next-level of self-costumed play.
They say we're products of our environment. I googled it so it's true. Living next to an old cemetery as I do, with plots as old as 1874 in plain view, has profoundly effected the lens in which I view the world. Between myself and the busy daily traffic, lie dormant a tribe no more. A juxtaposition of modern movement within purview, then a stretch of silent archival land just up to the edge of my backyard, reminding me daily of my own mortality. This is the setting for my daily meditations. My narrow focus: to listen intently for the sounds of cowboy's past through my small plot of land, mostly over by the rock garden where we buried our pet rabbit.
My transformation into cowboy started when I was continually booted off my 5G network as I attempted to work from home during recent shifts in world affairs. The flood of others doing the same seemingly clogging the pipes for the whole system of tubes. Without the internet, I was nothing. Just flesh and bone, with gooey blood and squishy parts inside that were me, but would make me throw up if I saw them exposed to the air itself.
My self disgust at having no skills other than graphic design, combined with reliance on constant net connectivity to create security for my family, weighed heavy on the bandwidth of my shoulders. Spending more time in the backyard gave me solace with my fleshy bits. I rediscoverd parts of myself that I thought had lost complete muscle memory. I found that if I gave it enough effort I could even skip again! SKIP... in the year 2021? Are you freaking kidding me? This backyard was giving me something that I was not expecting. It was giving me hope. And waves of pollen.
I know not why I've embraced a long past legacy persona, informed only by the skewed cultural lenses of Hollywood's birth, and Netflix's dominant continuance. I know only that I am a cowboy, in mind body and spirit... for the time being.
They say you have to be stripped raw, then come back to where you started to see things completely differently. Or see things flipped on their head from a new angle. Or maybe from an old-era lens made magical by your own mind.
My backyard formed me into a cowboy. These ant-infested, patchy-grassed hills test my character and spirit daily. A mirror directed inward. Especially on days it's raining and mud puddles take foot across the southern bird fence to greet you with your own reflection.
