The Spirit of Lubbock
By
Dus T. Wrangler UUUUUU

"South

Plains Voodoo". That's what Tommie Hancock called it. Just a vicious circle at times. Again and again and again. Lubbock. That strange flatness that mimics creations with just gusto. I'd had enough, for the ump-teenth-time. Wasn't leaving physically, but mentally, emotionally, literally. I had worked for the past several years around town with local publications. The local rags had become monotonous. Political, so West Texas, so Lubbock. I had worked as Heritage Editor and unofficial Poetry Editor for two competitive local mags. "Ego rags" I had heard them called. And I had enough. I decided to take the summer off. Study Chinese poetry from the Tang dynasty. And what happens? I find the essence of Zen poetry slapping me in the face. Simplicity. One vertical telephone phone silhouetted against brown horizontal. Flat. My flat world. A world I had spent a lifetime trying to escape. A world I had spent a lifetime trying to embrace. The sound of one hand clapping? Lubbock.
Where to begin. There is no beginning. There is no end. There is just now, and how we work into the solution. Lubbock has always been a paradox. But that doesn't matter. What is it about Lubbock that fascinates, alienates, pushes and pulls
all of us who have been born and raised here. Hell for that matter, all the ones who just pass through, and never leave. I can't
answer everything, but I can give my personal twist on the matter.

* * *

Throughout the world there are 'spots'. Places that have an inexplicable
aura, pull to them. "Power Centers" I have heard them called. I feel that Lubbock is a definite Power Center. I read once when a friend and myself went to Taos to perform in the Taos Poetry Festival, that Taos was a Power Center. Nestled between the two mountains, the legend goes if a person is not mentally prepared for it, the village of Taos will really 'sock it to you'. Well due to circumstances of a personal nature, I feel that I was not in the proper state of mind. Needless to say, some very strange things happened. I couldn't wait to get away from there, and return to 'my flat world.' I believe in this phenomenon. I know that a lot of people dispel any such thing. But I tend to disagree. I've heard it said that Lubbock is just like any other place, it just happens to be a nucleus for a vast array of artists, poets, and musicians that have influenced not only the Austin scene, but also Santa Fe, and Taos. Hell even California is being invaded and subconsciously heavily influenced by the Lu
bbock mythos. Let me go a bit deeper.
It is estimated that 'people' inhabited the Lubbock area respectively from "three thousand to twenty thousand years before the advent of Christ" according to The History of Lubbock by Lawrence Graves. Enter the Lubbock Lake Site. This place of water called by the Spaniards La Punto de Agua, translated The Point of Water. It has always been a gathering place. Now combine this with the fact that two canyons meet in the heart of Lubbock at what is known nowadays a Mackenzie Park. The Yellow House canyon Canon Casas Amarillas snakes it's way from the West. The Canyon of Rescue or Canyon of Ransom Canon de Rescate comes from the north, and together they meet and form Rio de los Brazos del Dios.roughly translated as the River of the Arms of God. The two rivers that ran through these canyons were the Blackwater draw from Ransom Canyon (to the north, not southeast of town as presumed because of the canyon just below Buffalo Lakes.) and the Yellowhouse Draw from the Lubbock Lake Site, down through the Yel
low House Canyon. So, now we have these centers of activity for centuries right here in the heart of Lubbock. In fact it is called the arms of God? Perhaps this is one aspect of the spirituality of such a place, for after all, are not all of the art from this area spiritual on one level or another?
I feel that the canyons hold part of the secret. It is said that after the white ranchers and settlers forced the Comanches to leave this area for what would become Oklahoma that the women cried mournfully for the canyons. These were sacred places for the Comanches. Great rips in the belly of the earth that nourished, and sheltered these people. Anyone traveling through this area will comment on its flatness. The home to the 'flatlanders'. But much like our art, poetry, and music, what appeals to us, what returns to haunt us over and over again, is what lies on the surface, but what lies just beneath the surface. You have to go looking or these hidden places, these Escondido or hidden canyons. There are layers. Layers to this area, to its people and to its voice that echoes through its artists. We are all missionaries. Taking this sacred voice with us, in our spirit, in our art, in our souls. It doesn't wash off. It is that which remains.
Another thing that crops up time and time again is the UFO story. In 1951 Lubbock received world renown with a visitation by a series of sightings. It has since become termed the Lubbock Lights, and many attribute the phenomenon of Lubbock with its celestial visitations, but lets look at this in another light. This place has been inhabited for centuries. A center, a power point. Where else would intelligence from outer space come. It just makes sense. It all adds up. There is something here that defies explanation.
Once the grand writer D. H. Lawrence once mused: "Every continent has its own great spirit of place. Every people are polarized in some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different places on the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of a place is a great reality.
To me this sums up Lubbock and this area. It's people. And it's collective heritage. Comanche. Spanish. Anglo. A boiling pot of bare bone mentality. Paradoxes in the flesh. In the sky. In the very earth itself. A tall tale circulating around a mesquite cubscout campfire just of the rimrock of Post. The creak of a dry leather saddle as a cowhand shifts easily against a blue northern. A rust bellied geese sunrise on a brittle November morning. A prayer drifting off the flames of a veladodra candle. What is Lubbock? Listen to the sound of one hand clapping. You'll understand.

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