the neoscenes/tech-no-mad (b)log ::
traces pathways and actions encountered and undertaken
Lungs fully projecting a heart-centered fury: where the *fuck!* is my wallet? Eyes beginning to have that orbital ache that forms the root of migraine. It’s a travel day, the day after the actual travel day, where travel did not happen, air travel, at least. Travel on a clogged interstate to the airport took place.
And now travel is abandoned.
For reasons only partially understood.
Knowledge, knowing, is a deceitful commodity.
Overcast 34˚F
+10˚F in PM
Took family to SS & church. HJO had an excellent sermon on the future of PSC: 1) to continue preaching the Word of God and Salvation by Faith in Christ, 2) continue the Missionary program, and 3) provide for expansion. He specifically mentioned radio & TV as a basic element in 1).
In my discussions with various individuals on the payoff from a study by outside consultants, I note a feeling that such a study will “solve all our problems.” This is far from what will be the situation when we get the consultant’s report. We still have to face the necessity of making some hard decisions. Some of these are 1) the source of funds for expansion, and 2) whether to expand rapidly or slowly.
While LCH took the children to the Museum of Fine Arts, I made up two microphone cables for the Annual Mtg. on Tuesday next, and put some labels on the gear.
DCH spent the afternoon at the Ockenga’s. His girlfriend, Cindy, was injured in an auto accident last night.
St’d car w/ ether in PM!
Alice informs me that I have a reservation at the Bayberry Hotel on Long Island for 13-14 August.
It looks like a chart for Sperry & Raytheon to show the respective details of each class of measurements that each wants.
Clear
Rain in PM
It must have rained 1/4″ of so last night but there is still a deficit of about 2″.
DCH at home today.
LCH took CR et al for a ride around the neighborhood; they stopped at the HS to see Mr. Grey.
Put in the form stakes for another patio strip.
A KC-135 crashed in the Hanscomb glide-slope, killing 4.
Mr. Cleaves(?) of the radiator & Body Shop in Stow stopped by to see the car — he wants $5/hour to fix the bodies.
Overcast
Took family to SS & church; Harold Brown spoke on the definition of the “Universal Church,” a fine sermon.
We then went to Wollaston to the Vetterlein’s for dinner & a most pleasant afternoon. They have a 70-year-old home that they are gradually working over — 3 floors & basement. They also had a good HO-gauge train layout — JCH fell off a stool while watching it, hurting his forehead.
Took the drive shaft out of the Willys; it still vibrates.
Went into office for half a day. JLV gave me the map they brought back from Patrick. JV is going ahead with the coord. comb., he has found a program, several years old, that converts x-y-z to spherical polar. It is new at MITRE.
Reported to First Aid Room for some cold pills, and that I expect to undergo corrective surgery on my jaw. Also mentioned this to WLZ.
Larry Globus in to say that Dr. Wells spoke yesterday of a reorg. of the PA work into 8 areas.
Rec’d another check from Liberty Mutual/Industrial Accident Department, this for $132.86.
Clear +20°F
Called Dr. Thoma’s office to report my cold (LO6-3324). He was busy with surgery at 11:30 AM. His secretary called later at home to say that I am not to go to the hospital under any circumstances with a cold.
Went home at 1:30 PM. Tried to get a Toro engine short block at Mill Dam, but he didn’t have one. Bought a two-tube used fluorescent fixture @ $5; will put it in the shop.
LCH took DCH to a high school rifle team meet at the Concord Armory.
Wrote letter to 1) INA & 2) Liberty Mutual to get my $15 back for ambulance service on 04 May; advising both that I could expect to enter the hospital soon for corrective surgery.
Clear in AM
Stayed up reading Thomas Aquinas until midnight last night. DCH worked on a chassis until 1 AM. We all — except DCH got up around 0830.
I masked the jeep wheels — with Janet’s help on two — and part of the interior for spraying, and then found that the vacuum cleaner wouldn’t do it. Borrowed Mr. Hosea’s, and did it in a few minutes. The color has too much blue in it. I’ll try it again.
Worked on the summary of my financial condition for American Institute for Economic Research.
relative to the check for $90.00 that I rec’d 2 days ago from Liberty Mutual as partial payment for lost time as a result of the 4 May auto accident: I was finally advised to cash the check and take a payroll deduction for tax record purposes. Dr. Hutchinson will do this, certifying to Tom Saxon in the Fiscal Office of the nature and amount of the deduction.
Started to read Cook’s article on the IRE Proceedings for March 1960 on Pulse Compression Radar; it is quite ingenious.
Clear – cool
Cashed the check for $90.00 from Liberty Mutual for the workmen’s comp part of partial payment for lost time from the 4 May auto accident. Dr. Hutchinson in Personnel will authorize a payroll deduction of $90 for tax record purposes.
Bought a used (but good!) left rear brake drum for the green Jeep at Lincoln Auto Service, for $7.00.
Honed the two front green Jeep brake cylinders. The liquid had lots of sludge in it.
Had to re-insulate the flange bolt on the tan Jeep distributor, putting on Teflon. It then ran quite well, including the overdrive.
Too drowsy to work much; did some on the NZ report. There isn’t much operational doctrine available.
Clear, humid
Was extremely drowsy all day, perhaps due to the Teldrin capsule I took yesterday. Maybe that is why I had the auto accident near Baltimore!
Tuned the piano down to C64; a number of the hammers are out of order.
DCH found the glasses lost yesterday while swimming at Walden Pond.
Unable to get together with Bill Lemnis on the Pen Aids work.
Went to Dr. Sleeper on afternoon; he removed the traction bars at considerable discomfort to me.
Talked to JLV; he will stop in office on Friday AM.
Went to see Dr. Sleeper; he took off the steel traction bars from my teeth at some discomfort. Didn’t feel too good afterward.
Took DCH to Scout mtg. Passed three boys on 1st Class Signaling and on 2nd Class; there were quite a few with merit badges for the Court of Honor, which has been changed to 16 June.
Rec’d notification from Blue Cross that they have paid my hospital bill!
Dr. Lyons took out the rest of the stitches.
Went up to Princeton — LCH on to Boston.
Clear
Left the hospital and went over to the railroad station, taking the 10:41 AM to Trenton. LCH stayed on the train and went on home to take care of the children. Howard and Winifred met me and took me over to Princeton to their home. I’m sore and not well, but hope things will straighten out. The car is supposed to be repaired by the end of the week and LCH will return so we can drive it back.
The hospital bill was $260!
In hospital.
LCH in at 11 AM after a good night’s sleep. I wish I could.
LCH went out to Roy’s Service Station on Hamilton Avenue where the car is. She brought back an extra pair of shoes, my brown coat & slacks & topcoat. She said he told her the crankshaft in the engine is broken! Howard is to call hiim at 10:30 tomorrow morning. My, I hope it can be repaired!
Took a shower in the afternoon or evening after LCH left. She is staying to go up to Trenton with me tomorrow.
In hospital.
LCH down.
LCH arrived at 0700 on the night train and came in as soon as visiting hours were on at 11 AM. It was wonderful to have her here. Mary has two children. Edith and Al the other two.
I feel better.
Dr. Lyon came in and removed half of the ten stitches in my chin. His fee is $250!
Am being pumped with chloromycetin. Dr. Lyons wired clips on my teeth during an AM operation, and then put them together with rubber bands. I eat thru the slits between my teeth! This for 30 days! At least I’m in good company. This hospital is new and I am well taken care of.
Howard got the 1:29 PM train home, after doing a great deal of work. Preliminary examination shows the car can be repaired.
Had an accident as noted in personal diary.
Speedometer 37483
Up at 5 AM and went up to Hagerstown to look for a car. Found a ’56 9 passenger green Ford with 30,000 miles on it.
Took Rt. 40 to Baltimore and in front of Roy’s Cities Services Station, ran into a GT ’56 station wagon at 10:25. Broke the left side of my jaw and sustained a 2-1/2″ laceration to the bone from striking my chin on the horn ring. Some other cuts and bruises. Was taken in an ambulance to St. Agnes Hospital, Baltimore. Howard came down in PM. A Dr. Lyons reduced the dislocation at 9:30 PM; the left side hurts.
The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.
ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility
The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.
The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”
The erection of class/caste protocols (another harsh historical judgment in the midst of the industrial age):
Entrance into the leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments, and these employments, by selection and adaptation, act to admit to the upper levels only those lines of descent that are pecuniarily fit to survive under the predatory test. And so soon as a case of reversion to non-predatory human nature shows itself on these upper levels, it is commonly weeded out and thrown back to the lower pecuniary levels. In order to hold its place in the class, a stock must have the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its fortune would be dissipated and it would presently lose caste. Instances of this kind are sufficiently frequent. The constituency of the leisure class is kept up by a continual selective process, whereby the individuals and lines of descent that are eminently fitted for an aggressive pecuniary competition are withdraw from the lower classes. In order to reach the upper levels the aspirant must have, not only a fair average complement of the pecuniary aptitudes, but he must have these gifts in such an eminent degree as to overcome very material difficulties that stand in the way of his ascent. Barring accidents, the nouveaux arrivés are a picked body. more “the leisure class … (at 11.11.10, 11:11)”
Start to try making time-lapse sequences from the immediate surroundings. Lousy and/or old equipment, a quasi-functioning power system, and the results show it. Add a portable generator, a better tripod, longer cabling, a 3-CCD camera with chip memory (ah to be free of tape!), and a laptop with a battery that lasts longer than the start-up sequence. I’m ready to cash in some of my retirement piddle to cover it. Maybe $10K I could get away with all of it, including a decent audio recorder? That, along with a better 4WD truck and I’d be part of the pseudo-elite for once. hah. So, anyway, now, marooned in Echo Park by the intense weather, (I was warned, fair enough, but I told the ranger that I wasn’t planning to come out until Friday next at least, anyway, so things should dry up by then, and that I had enough supplies for at least two weeks if not more). Stormy already today, late morning, humidity pulled the clouds up, and while attempting some decent time-lapses, it gets worse. What else is new? Maybe I end up sitting in the car just writing. There are rain filaments across to the north.
Cutting tamarisk growth behind camping site (#7) to feed the fire. Keeps mind busy, with flinging sharp blade biting into hard wood. No help around in case of an accident. This sharpens the wits. more “end of the road”
At Linda Leas cafe in Kanab, locals, non-Mormons pursue another religion—worship of java—across the street from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After the first night out. Wishing for a 4-wheel-drive vehicle to give a greater degree of risk possible. Snow or rain threatening in forecasts, and bentonite clay roads are impassable when wet. The guy working the BLM desk, old, over-weight, tobacco stains his white mustache brown, makes the warnings. He has to talk to foreign tourists and downstreamers a lot, surely. Folks who haven’t a clue about how it works out here. The Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument is so large, and the country so unforgiving, surely they have to scrape up the dessicated or flash-flood saturated remains of folks every year. On the other hand, this is no monkey-wrench territory anymore, it’s just a place for cheap virtual entertainment via wheeled vehicles — SUV’s — with windows. Maybe some stars glimpsed, a whiff of juniper blossoms firing off tart pollen.
Typing like I can’t get over it. Wanting to find something to use, utilize, make happen, profit from, in this movement, this travel, across these space. Spaces that have so little to offer in transit, and less to offer when living, settled, in them. Nothing arrives. Nothing comes. Even with some caffeine enhancement via cappuccino. (Cappuccino here, wondering about the spread, propagation, of cappuccino across Amurika). In territories defined by the dominance of thin and watery drip-grind served by waitresses named Flo or Blanch, in stainless diners. Now, instead, cafes with multi-colored chalk menus on the walls, starting with espresso, then cappuccino, then lattes, and so on, with as many permutations as the local consumers demand to enhance their sensibilities. Retro interiors: Naugahyde, Formica, Vinyl, Linoleum, garage-sale vintage, cluttered.
Accident intrudes on the evening hunt for a place to camp. Again the bentonite clay plays a significant role. Up from Paragonah, into the National Forest a few miles along Red Creek Canyon, and the road starts to get wet, then snow-covered, no match for my vehicle, reach a zenith and decide to backtrack. With no turn-around except back a quarter-mile, I start backing, and a bit too fast, get caught in some old tracks in the mud and bingo! In the very muddy ditch up to the axle, with an overhanging branch almost completely ripping the bike rack off the roof. Shiite! Climb out the passenger side window, shaken, cursing, looking at the graying sky and approaching dusk, and knowing the forecast for bad weather.
back at yet another airport — north, east, south, west? future or past?
Let no one say the past is dead.
The past is all about us and within.
Haunted by tribal memories, I know
This little now, this accidental present
Is not the all of me, whose long making
Is so much of the past. Tonight here in suburbia as I sit
In easy chair before electric heater,
Warmed by the red glow, I fall into dream:
I am away
At the camp fire in the bush, among
My own people, sitting on the ground,
No walls around me,
The stars over me,
The tall surrounding trees that stir in the wind
Making their own music,
Soft cries of the night coming to us, there
Where we are one with all old Nature’s lives
Known and unknown,
In scenes where we belong but have now forsaken.
Deep chair and electric radiator
Are but since yesterday,
But a thousand camp fires in the forest
Are in my blood.
Let none tell me the past is wholly gone.
Now is so small a part of time, so small a part
Of all the race years that have moulded me.
— Oodgeroo Noonuccal
as an example of the problematic of owning, and of property in general, as it is defined in Western social codes:
The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign — for all these titles are synonymous — imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once . . . [and so] property engenders despotism . . . That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse . . . if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings — kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
and
Property, acting by exclusion and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars, and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
I don’t quite fit in Kevin’s shoes. when he passed away, his Aunt Rosemary asked me if I wanted his shoes. Kevin wore 9-1/2, I wear 9. I said yes, why not. so she sent me a box full of maybe eight pairs of shoes.
as I walk around Sydney (too much), I have come to wear his quite comfortable Merrell slip-ons to help ease the stress on the only remaining shock-absorbing L5 disk which, as my neuro-surgeon diagnosed, would accelerate its deterioration following the L2-L4 fusion from the accident. the L5 is the only disk left that cushions the spine in the area between rib-cage and pelvis. else wise the spine in the lumbar region is a solid bolted-together mass. this dictates that I have to wear shock-absorbing shoes. no hard-heeled dress shoes. though I used to like wearing such, I cannot now. Kevin had a great pair of shit-kickers (cowboy boots) that I unfortunately have hardly worn as within five minutes of standing and walking a bit, it hurts the lower back. same with my old Beatle boots which also have the additional effect of torquing the lower back with the heel height. ach!
I think to myself, I’m walking in Kevin’s shoes. I am walking in Kevin’s shoes. they are slightly too big unless I wear fat socks. I don’t quite fit into Kevin’s shoes. but I have walked much more than a mile in his shoes. and I like it that I remember him when I walk around here.
got to weigh in on health care. so sick(!) of the toxic blather going on within the US, although it might just be that it is a spent nation-state, in the throes of becoming less relevant in the world. clearly it is becoming less functional internally which eventually (already) will have an effect on external relations. morally it is tearing itself apart by those who, strangely call themselves Christian but who seem to have zero compassion and limitless zeal for defending against the stranger and killing preemptively when that stranger seems strange. period. I have some understanding of the fear of governmental authority. the media in the US has certainly inculcated so many other nation-states with the blight of the dictator and illustrated that to the US citizens, a situation that reinforces some traditional/historical fear of the government. fine. more “health care”
Long day after another long day after another long day. Seeing faces materializing out of time and time and times again. This is what the road brings, a movement into memory. Blizzard happening across most of the western mountains and plains. Driven by Pacific storms rolling in and intersecting with Arctic air masses. Colorado is no exception. Waking at Steve and Gaan’s place, a quick peek out the window shows flurrying snow piling up. And cold temps. Around 15 F. We hang for the morning, chatting about other friends, and life pathways. And politics and nations and economies and on.
Their place is perched on a small mesa, surrounded by juniper and piñon. Gaan had photographed a bobcat in the garden recently. The view was unbroken north to Pikes Peak and west to the Wet Mountains. Mmmm. They had to leave on short notice to meet the guys coming through the blizzard from Denver to clean the grease trap at the restaurant, so I packed up the truck and headed out as well, over to Bill’s place. It was snowing heavy, and Rt. 50 was already bad, but I made it over where I dropped off the black walnut lumber (missing three pieces that were buried in the bed of the truck). It’s the remaining slabs of wood from the tree that I helped Dad topple and send out to a lumber mill in Frederick. Bill’s going to make a coffee table for me from the wood. We hung out for a couple hours — I gave him a couple 16×20 prints and we talked about plans for the coffee table. Around 1430 I figured I had better head out so I would at least have a chance to make it into the San Luis before sunset.
I-25 south to Walsenburg was nasty, and just out of Pueblo, a couple cars went ripping by me, three minutes later, one of them had launched across the deep median ditch and head on into opposing traffic, three other cars were involved. Two of them completely destroyed. All the windows were gone in the one that passed me and no sign of anyone in the car. Six or seven cars had already stopped, and I felt sick to my stomach, why am I throwing myself down this iced-over road at 55 mph? Why? I slowed and started to double-flash the on-coming traffic who could not yet see the accident, hoping to slow them down before they came on the site. I doubt some of them could stop. Another life done gone. Ambulances passed about 15 minutes later. A bit further down towards Walsenburg the road dried out, the flurries stopped and the clouds allowed some weak sunshine through. The sick stomach feeling persisted for awhile. Made phone calls, it’s Sunday, free minutes. Turned off onto Rt. 160 West to La Veta pass and the Valley. Temps, never high, dropping continuously. Made the far side of the pass right before sunset with some electric views. Stopped repeatedly to shoot with my substandard SLR. Through Fort Garland, following the circular roots of Blanca, the Valley clear, dry, and cold. The Crestones showing chill gray ahead approaching the Dunes. Then darkness. Empty campground. A ranger cruises through in his truck and we chat a bit. He promises to check on me around 10 am tomorrow.
The Milky Way slashed across the sky. A few Geminids, Jupiter and Venus setting a couple hours after sunset. Cold. Heat up a pot of chili that Bill gave me last night, mmm. Just the thing to be eating under these conditions. Arrange things in the back so I can make tea with cream in the morning without getting out of the bag. It will be brutal in the morning with a clear night at 9000 feet up and wedged between two sets of 14,000 footers. No sun before late morning at the earliest. Hanging in the cab writing this text. So far behind on the log. So many things gone down, so many people crossed paths with. So many stories told and heard.
leave Karen and Ron’s place mid-morning after finishing off the networked book proposal, needed to get that uploaded before Monday, and no likely internet connections before that. head south. big accident on I-25 south of C-Spgs. western gusts rock the truck. huge streamers of snow coming off Pikes Peak. get to Steve and Gaan’s place around 1230 and dump some stuff there. we hang for awhile, catching up, and then the three of us head back to Pueblo West to their restaurant (Puukaow Thai) for a Light and very tasty lunch.
then I head over to Ava’s place for Bill and her’s Christmas dinner party where Chris, Rick and Sally, John, Jimmy and Wendy, Emi, Rob, and some others show up in the very exotic Kona Kai apartment complex. the building, a rectangular complex with a large courtyard in the center was built in the 1970’s. the courtyard was covered completely and landscaped with tropical plants which seem to be thriving mightily thirty years later. a complete surprise when entering the doors, especially given the weather about to happen outside.
always nice to catch some face-time with folks not seen so often.
head back to Steve and Gaan’s place where we hang on the deck and get a spectacular display of Geminid fireballs despite the radiation point in Gemini have a fifteen-year-maximum full moon plunked down in the middle of it. hard to imagine the show without the moon, it was intense.
Days spin into the weeks. and time begins to come to an end here already. so, trying to get in touch with folks, Pallí, Sara, Magnús, and others. too short. and pathways too long. and there is no time to catch everyone. made it to a big opening at Kling og Bang with some former students and saw a whole slew more from the period of time I taught at the Art Academy between 1990-96. very nice to talk to some of them after this long gap. many are still active.
three years since that crippling accident. still walking, still talking, but still realizing that at any moment it could all stop. happy every morning that I can get up and make some tea whilst listening to construction noises in the neighborhood.
from Rod — he thinks it’s a good idea. me too, seems to be, at least (please note that this article has nothing to do with InterCity Express (ICE) trains here in Germany):
We all carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory but nobody, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our closest family or friends.
If we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn’t know who to call. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this ‘ICE’ (In Case of Emergency) Campaign
The concept of ‘ICE’ is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As cell phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name ‘ICE’ ( In Case Of Emergency).
The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialing the number you have stored as ‘ICE.’
For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc. A great idea that will make a difference!
Let’s spread the concept of ICE by storing an ICE number in our mobile phones today!
Please forward this. It won’t take too many ‘forwards’ before everybody will know about this. It really could save your life, or put a loved one’s mind at rest.
ICE will speak for you when you are not able to!
should never have allowed only a day for this one. White Mountain Peak, 14208 ft. (4331 meters). it was a choice between that and Mt. Whitney, 14500 ft. (4420 meters). not a clear choice, though a repeat of Whitney would have been nice. but with a 22 mile (36 km) round trip distance and 5500 ft. (1700 meter) elevation gain, doing it in one day is a brutal pre-dawn-to-after-dark excursion. that and it was a weekend, and probably one of the busiest weekends of the summer in the Sierras with the Perseid meteor shower showing up as well. Whitney can see 500 people on days like that, not to mention that one needs a permit to do the hike. no time to get to the National Forest office on Lone Pine to get one. so, a fine second-best choice. I’d been wanting to get up to the Bristlecone Pine Wilderness area since the early 1980’s, so this was a perfect opportunity. north of Bristlecone is the Barcroft Station one of the UC high-altitude research stations situated on a shoulder of White Peak Mountain. it’s possible to drive in about 30 miles to a locked gate below the research station at around 12000 ft. (3600 meters). unless you have special dispensation to possess the gate key, you have to park there and do the seven miles in to the peak. otherwise, you could shave three miles off the round-trip distance. I might have made it if that had been the situation… so, no need to give the details except I missed by a mile and 800 vertical feet. right hip cramped. no cardio-vascular issues which was gratifying for the first 14,000-footer attempt in the last decade, and two years following the accident.
hitched a ride for last of the 12 miles with a woman who works at the research station. she couldn’t bear to leave me hobbling in her dust trail.
then it was on to the Bristlecone Pine area to check out the trees. could barely walk around. back down to 8000 feet to sleep better, though it is 40 F warmer as well. the Perseids are nothing special, unfortunately. and so, cold stellar places left behind for the time being.
the second anniversary of the accident. while doing yoga, the body muses on the possibility that the technological solution to the shattered spine will fail, catastrophically, one day when in the Warrior One Pose. rendering the body in two halves. one which does not function, and one that might.
There is no happiness for the man who does not travel. Living in the society of men, the best man becomes a sinner. For Indra is the friend of the traveler. Therefore wander! — Aitareya Brahman
so, movement beckons, re-reading Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines, and recalling the little snippets of antipodal behavior that resonate. going walkabout, as the Aboriginals do, seems to be a highly developed form of psycho-geography with a substantial spiritual element fused into the embodied core.
but two years later, I am calmly ecstatic when I am able to do a six hour bush-whack in a landscape where I recognize most of the elemental features as well as the more universal vibe of the place. to do the same in an unknown place would cause a bit of stress, but with an equal dose of thrill. to see the unknown world, absorb the sounds, colors, the people, the life. what more can one ask in this incarnation?
a small tid-bit from my ex-father-in-law Jón, who passed away a short time ago. going through his log book, which he kept at both his summer houses — I guess a hold-over from his days as ship’s captain — this bit of Icelandic poetry along with a translation by Magga and Jay:
referring to a long-ago event, from the early summer of 1992, on the first day out in the country for a hike with newly-arrived Nick. long story short, I fell into a Reykjadalur fumarole. aiiii, shit! first-degree burns on my ankles…
three months out from accident/surgery and all reports are positive from Dr. Papadopoulos. he was busier than last appointment, but he gave the essential prognosis that I can wean myself from the brace and swim, hike, and so on. good deal. it comes off as much as possible. which may be a slow process, it has grown to fit, muscles succumbing to laze and sprawl in the molded plastic casing.
retro-fitting the travelog — now back to December 2000. about half-way, though the first half is probably twice the volume of text than the latter half. doubt I will get the whole thing done. it is a legacy project.
pondering how it is that I have not brought more relevant experiences into this travelog. the last decade of my trajectory is relatively singular, and has crossed the paths of a great many of those who are greater in the eyes of the mass pay-per-view. nothing rubbed off. or only a little.
it could be that, as with the subject of my inquiry — the continuum of human relation — I tend to take a relationist rather than a reductionist approach. that is, allowing a text (better yet, speaking!) to generate from the complex and dynamic space of the human connection rather than making a series of overarching reductions of that Other, through the encounter. hmmm. it is this pathway which almost requires an abandonment of social relevance, except as a chance by-product. there will be unprecedented outcomes.
it is exactly this reductionist approach which brings massive social rewards: the compressing/re-stating/re-creation of lived presence as completely embedded in the social system. indeed, this IS the essence of fame. the generation of parallel (yet seemingly convergent) pathways which appear known, or previously experienced (social structure is predicated on shared experience). when there is an encounter with an Other who, on examination, does not share any of the abstracted pathways of life-experience, we feel uncomfortable, distanced, and afraid. through the “getting-to-know” process — a process of trying to locate within the Self and the Other common pathways and patterns of being — if we are not successful in finding any shared pathways, then the social dimension of the relation is doomed. we are forced to simply be in the moment, in a fearful and unknowable sequence of moments that have no predictable outcome. “breaking-the-ice” — looking for the flow of shared life by breaking through the stasis and reification of socialization (judging on looks, on possessions). looking at life passing on around through the (distorted) socialized eye. seeing only the known, blocking out any confrontation of the unknown.
a couple Latino guys come to deliver the firewood. my ears are wooden. hard to understand them. not able to dredge up some English, and not used to hearing the Spanish, though I can understand when one of them translates to the other.
here’s a side view of the titanium in my back — up to the right. the cylinder in the middle is located at the core of the L3 vertebra. and the HUGE wood screws are in the L2 and L4. sheesh.
sliding into fall. this is the first year that I have not been working, teaching somewhere in the world in the month of September since 1986. instead, nursing body to some state of health, slowly. bored with reading and other forms of mediated consumption. can’t sit long enough to really do concentrated work on new videos and such, but do want to at least get one new dvd done with the 3 or 4 new videos finished before summer started.
everything is in slow motion except for time passing rapidly. now more than two months from this cataclysmic accident. no meaning to interpret in the event and the subsequent process of recovery.
talking by phone to folks occasionally, hardly doing email, don’t understand the malaise.
Details aside. Woke up this morning in peak condition, ready for a lively 4th of July. Hours later, stretched out in pain on the bedroom floor apparently suffering from a herniated lumbar disk or so. The truth turned out to be far worse.
early morning, seeing Stefan off to the Manhattan train in the accumulated six inches of snow. wanted to rise as early as possible to stay with the body-time shift accrued in Iceland, in anticipation of a long and tiring day today. travel days have become, in the last few years, the source of parallel migraines of some degree. don’t really feel the connection overtly between the actual travel and the headache, but the fact that they come on those days and seldom otherwise makes it clear there is a one. but how? just the stress of travel? which, by now, shouldn’t really even be a stress. the dislocative process? the rising unknown of what is at the other end? dunno. diet doesn’t seem to impact the severity, only sleep. that the body undergoes stress along with travel is somewhat clear. the break in routines, and the ‘un-natural’ conditions of motion applied to the body by the variety of technological means used.
heavy snow in Copenhagen, delayed commuter prop flight to Hamburg, Christian there waiting despite bad roads. turn around after arriving at their place in Kiel to train it to Lübeck to meet Hubertus and Mindaugas to go over details in preparation for next Monday’s workshop start since they will be in Estonia for the first week of my visit. Lübeck has streets of ice, accidents everywhere. get the keys for my little flat in the Altstadt of the city, on a narrow alleyway. catching up in listening and comprehending in German. comfortable. train-riding, bahnhofs, backerei, and all. conversations of trans-language.
out on Sanibel Island for the day, getting lobsterized under the intense mid-day sun. not proficient with getting sunscreen on. never did like the greasy feeling. first time in warm ocean water since … surfing daze in SaMo, Santa Monica, 20 years ago, can it be? nah, I guess I was on the Eastern Shore of Maryland at the beaches there with Randy in the mid-80’s, the time I punctured my ear-drum in a body-surfing accident, and Randy drove back to DeeCee in the Porsche at 100 mph, somehow avoiding the police. my ear leaked yellow pus for a couple days before healing. I went to some doctor on Dupont Circle to get checked out. unemployed and uninsured. as seems to be my wont.
anyway, great to be in warm water, would like large waves for some good surfing action, but the heat and wetness is fine. now, how to protect the skin, this aged skin that I have abused so many times before. the worst during the month-plus in the Alps in 1982 also with Randy, I don’t think we had sunscreen, and being at altitude, with a convertible (a 2CV Citroen), and not seeing a cloud for the entire month. my nose got fried and never recovered. I think I lost the primary layer of skin, as now it gets blotchy red whenever it gets any sun. I do what I can to keep it protected. recalling the photos in the old medical handbook of the guy with the prosthetic nose, lost his to cancer. faugh. soft body. after a few hours exposed to the sun and water, feeling debilitated. gotta toughen up! air conditioning then does me in, after eating a half-pound of ground beef, fries, not enough water. wiped out.
and now a brief memory of a death last summer, no, two summers ago already. seeing Ingvi one evening, talking with him about the future, what he’s interested in doing, then two days later, the young teenager is dead in an automobile accident where his father was driving. in the countryside of Iceland.
scanning the network for old friends, I look for my oldest friend, David. from second through sixth grade in Clarksburg. a friend for exploring with: fields and woods, following creeks, playing soldier, fishing in the pond behind our house, slogging through swamps and bogs, long summer adventures with canteens and snacks, hiking sticks and knives, watching out for poison ivy, copperheads, and water moccasins, riding bikes into the dim of humid summer evenings, playing catch until eye could no longer see the ball. soft spoken and gentle, David stuttered a bit, but was a determined and stalwart friend. we ended up in different schools after elementary school, and we lost contact after that, but I knew he went on to be a commercial pilot. and now he’s gone. he shared the same birthday as Loki. August 18. he was 9 days older than I, now he’s forever younger, buried in the cemetery behind the little white clapboard church in the center of Clarksburg, a couple hundred yards from the home he grew up in. and the school we attended together. more “David Glenn Marshall 1958 – 2000”
Dinner two nights ago shifts into another kind of event. Friend Winni from Germany comes by with his teenage son Ingvi for a dinner of fish (caught by Jón in Eyjafjördur this summer, near Hrísey) and new potatoes. I had happened to run into Winni at an art opening at the Living Art Museum the day before that. Last time we crossed pathways was back in Germany in 1991 when Ingvi was just 6 or 7 years old. Tonight we learn that there has been an automobile accident somewhere in the West Fjörds and Ingvi has been taken away from this present being. This is a terrible event. Such a youngster. Winni is in the hospital. Tomorrow we go see him.
it is clear that many people live in a world of mechanical or Newtonian causality, that there has been little popular progress beyond that model of thinking about the world. material substances are just that, objects rule.
These considerations force upon us the impression that the law of causality as a principle of natural science is one incapable of formulation in a few words, and is not a self-contained exact law. Its content can in fact only be made clear in connection with a complete phenomenological description of how reality constitutes itself from the immediate data of consciousness. — Hermann Weyl
the week flew by, two nights in Oslo, stayed at Hilde’s place, and so many things happened in that short time, thoughts can barely touch on half of them. a good, sincere seminar at the Academy of Fine Arts, with Kenneth, and hours spent talking with him. saw Janine (along with her daughter Anna) for the first time in 11 years. she had a couple works in the Fall Exhibition, so we met there for lunch before I tried one last attempt at shopping for something for Sanna met with the kunst.no (kunstnett) people, Erik, who Atle introduced me to, and Jøran, the Director. when first meeting Hilde — after the two delayed flights and the train in from the airport — I also met Cecelia, the Director of the Granum Kunstskøle where Hilde works. we were talking, she was in a hurry to get somewhere, and the conversation went on for some time about bi-cultural living, she having been raised partly in the US. finally she had to leave, and rushed out the door. a few moments later, the door buzzer rang, Hilde answered it and said ‘there’s been an accident.” so I followed her downstairs, and there was Cecelia lying on the sidewalk having seriously injured her ankle. there were a few people milling around, unable to act, it seemed, I knelt behind her to hold her up, she was in shock already, and in a lot of pain. it turned out to be multiple fractures and probably ligament damage, unfortunately. I got a bit angry with the people standing around. the fellows from the music store on the ground floor were just standing there, I yelled at them to call an ambulance, but they just stood there. another chap, just off the street, was trying to help, but it ended that Hilde had to go upstairs to call an ambulance. I didn’t have my mobile with me or I would have. the shock energy was too much for people, I guess. true, the ankle looked terrible, and I got a bit queasy when the paramedics arrives and started checking it out, but I didn’t understand why people were so helpless. shock is a weird thing, though. she was shaking, and trying to assemble things in her mind, and panicky. weird energy flow, to be sure. Hilde and I were both a little shocked by this intersection of energies.
permutations of Helsinki, as typed by fingers on ancient keyboard interfaces include Helsniki, Heslniki, and Heslinki. just can’t type no more. sitting in Carroll’s — the burger chain that is consuming Finland — sitting looking at my burger and fries, and I hear a small, then larger wail coming from behind me, then I see a guy sitting in front of me leap out of his seat and run to the door where there is a little tyke, maybe three years old with his finger caught in the door hinge that just closed behind a customer going out. the mother, sitting next to my table was right behind the guy. the mother doesn’t say anything to the guy about his quick action, probably she is a bit traumatized about the accident. the little boy cries for some time, but seems not the worse for it all. the guy sits down and I make an “oh shit, I bet that hurt, and that’s too bad for the kid” face that he returns at me in affirmation. the wailing goes to my stomach. I have been thinking about Loki a lot lately — thinking how far away he is, and of the times we spent in the US this summer — how he will grow into this mixed and different life. whether he will grow strong or weak for living with his mother in Iceland and seeing me only on occasion. multi-culturalism is a position of power in the time we live in, but that advantage can be wiped out by (culture) wars in a moment, depending on the position of the cultural heritages. Presumably, being on the fringe of both the Amurikan and European spheres of power will serve to his advantage, but one can never tell. And anyway, what is politics in the actual scope of life, anyway?
Choose no life. Choose sysadminning. Choose no career. *****
Choose no family. Choose a fucking big computer, choose hard * *
disks the size of washing machines, old cars, CD ROM writers * A *
and electrical coffee makers. Choose no sleep, high caffeine * D *
and mental insurance. Choose fixed interest car loans. Choose * M *
a rented shoebox. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and * I *
matching combat boots. Choose a swivel chair for your office * N *
in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose NNTP and wondering why * S *
the fuck you're logged in on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting * P *
in that chair looking at mind-numbing, spirit-crushing web * O *
sites, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose * T *
rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last on some * T *
miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to * I *
the selfish, fucked up losers Gates spawned to replace the * N *
computer-literate. * G *
Choose your future. * *
Choose sysadmining. *****
— Joona hunts that down in his fight to keep several servers up and running smoothly in Tornio…
late in the evening, eyes are gritty from the effort to keep them open and the lack of sleep previously. jet-lag has hit me hard this time, mostly because I am not pushing myself onto the new time zone, but rather staying awake at the wrong times. a police boat is dragging the water under the bridges for several days, and the news makes it even to the Helsinki Sanomat, it is unusual that the body is not found sooner, a teenage accident victim.
the ankle only causes me problems when I try to torque it with any power in the same direction that it was sprained. Loki and I make a 40 minute hike up the hill and around back down yesterday and this tires it out. wavering thoughts on the suitability of the schedule I have coming up and how to deal with this. but plane tix are plane tix and they are not changeable at this point. Loki has to get home, I have to get to work. nothing else will do. the way events are linked in living. and accidents, and chance meetings that lead to dancing for hours and hours which leads to talking and walking and trying to keep each other warm which leads to: I am here, I am not here. my body tells me I am here, I try to connect with the sun, the clouds (absorbing Light from voluptuous cumulus masses soft-filtered through sheets of gray-falling precipitation)
He who binds to himself a Joy, Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the Joy as it flies, Lives in Eternity’s sunrise. — William Blake
I have made a net, now what do I do with this admirable set of humans? is there anything at all theoretical to be done? or can it only be a praxis that ends in the grave? this thought crosses my mind as I compare the forms of existence that those around me are suspended within.
two weeks left in Amurika. planning the future. playing the game. needing to put some significant time into the Ars Electronica project which I have not even titled yet. how to include as many students as possible. consolidating a space (the exploration paradigm). is there another paradigm? how to bring young people into this space with a critical sense of the role of technology (and of simply occupying, utilizing the space represented by the Net)? I come to name the newly created listserv and netspace I have been carving the last two years — NEW MEDIA EXCHANGE — TheEnemy — as it were, is, was. I will unveil it at Ars Electronica in September.
They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them. — A. A. Milne, Eeyore in Winnie-the-Pooh
leading into the reality of an accident. watching the sky (an impending thunderstorm), I miss two steps at the Pagosa Springs thermal spa and viciously sprain my right ankle. quickly hobbling to the car, I get in and in a few moments, I pass out (vaso-vago shock response — see December last year when visiting Mary Ellen and getting some acupuncture treatments from her). Loki tells me my eyes don’t close, yet I cannot see nor hear him calling me until I pull myself out of it. so much for that. I am able to barely drive, shifting feet a bit, and double-footing with the left — a good coordination exercise. about ten miles down the road I stop to call Joe to tell him of my mishap and my estimated arrival time. I have to cut the call short as I almost pass out again. crawl back into the car and drive to Farmington — a two-hour drive. fortuitously, Holly, Joe’s wife is a nurse-practitioner and when I arrive they take good care of me — ice on the ankle, sit back and relax, entertain Loki, order a pizza for dinner. Joe and I figure it has been ten or twelve years since we last crossed paths either at Collin’s first wedding or at the cabin in Tincup. long long ago and far far away. but anyway, so many things are brewing for me in the next months that I am quite behind on email lately.
Another early morning train, to München on to Frankfurt, then to Offenbach for the afternoon visiting the Hochschule für Gestaltung there, then on through Siegen to Rösrath to visit with Volker for a day. This movement. Last night vibrating inwardly, feelings electric again (there was a window there that opened regarding mortality versus immortality — walking behind Tom and Christa out in a village near Linz, heading for the country, I suddenly recalled that I had not been aware of my own being, I had forgotten to be, and then came a flooding roar that something could have happened in that state of not being within my own life, I could have had an accident!) But I did not. No use describing it. Salzburg. Another fragment of intensity, of energy, happened after the lecture yesterday, riding the strassenbahn back into town, I see the mountains far away, through the opposite window of the tram, they are small and though covered with snow, are pink from the industrial haze.
The vision leaps out at me. Recalling the instance that I have often recounted in class. Walking up to the bus stop one morning in Iceland, I have not really woken up, I am moving, but only the body is on motion, the mind is off, still, dull. Standing at the bus stop, it is at the top of a hill, there are some buildings around, but there is a rather unobstructed view plus-or-minus of the entire horizon which spans a long ridge of mountains on the Reykjanes peninsula, Mt. Esja sitting somberly to the north, and other low ranges and peaks scattered to the east and north, a few fragments of ocean are also visible. I am turning slowly, gaze traversing the critical intersection of these two rough half-spaces. The energy starts somewhere in the belly, at least that is where I first notice it, in the belly, maybe the solar plexus, it is rising in the body, and at the same time, the mind begins to fire. There is the immediate realization that the seeing, the apprehension, and absorption of Light energy through the eyes is charging my body with strong forces, fields of power. I become aware of living, being alive, being. As Rilke termed it, superabundant life began to trace each edge, each separation, while at the same time all things were fused into a unitary essence that circulated freely through all parts of my body. Yep. München. Snow here. Bright outside the windows of this ICE train. Moving again at high speeds.
Force-12 winds rip around the country, a bus is blown off the road and a teenage boy dies in the accident. Cars are also blown away … Bryndís worries that the ship her husband works on, a trawler captained by her uncle, will go to sea this afternoon despite the terrible, dangerous weather. The captain has a reputation for stubbornly keeping to decisions. Seems like a dramatically fatal attitude here. The snow melts under the warmth of the wind from the south-west. We are on the leeward side of the country, and so don’t feel the brunt of the snarling low pressure pumped-up by warm Gulf Stream energies. But even still, the fjörd below us at the port is foaming and cars are urged not to cross the pass to the next fjörd as some have already been blown off the road there. Parents are telephoned with the request to pick their children up via car from play school and elementary school to avert the risk of walking in the wind. Iceland in January. The drama of the weather continues. Valdís invites me out for cake and coffee (I have tea) at the café across from the school. The cake she describes last week as looking something like Vatnajokull, the huge glacier in the southeast of the country. Turns out it does. Björn and Hrefna join us. It is difficult to walk outside at all between the gale and the wet ice everywhere, so Björn gives me a ride home afterward. He tells a joke about an Icelandic farmer who is going to Reykjavík for the first time ever in an airplane. The stewardess hands out chewing gum to people to help equalize the pressure in the ears during the flight. The man unsteadily gets off the plane at the end of the flight, gets his bag, then comes up the stewardess and asks, How do you get this stuff out of the ears?
At lunch today, MB comes home and we go together down to some official state office here and finalize our divorce which has been simmering (well, hardly) in a separation for almost two years. The disjunction of the union was as quick and as easy as the official union way back in the summer 1992 with our friend Nick visiting from Colorado as the witness in the city courtroom. (the glum looks: I with 1st degree burns on both my legs from a crazy accident falling into super-heated mud in a thermal area, hiking on the first day Nick arrived, and MB at 7 months pregnant. not auspicious for a start.)
the marriage really only lasted a few years, these last two we have been legally separated. Loki is the most critical force operational between us, but whatever, it is remarkable the coolness both of us (don’t) show during the proceedings. We are cool people, I guess, after what MB characterizes as a bad marriage. Her second. My first. At any rate, I guess it frees us both up for the future, whatever that might bring. After that, Loki and I walk around town where I visit the GilFelag, an arts/culture organization who put a call out for exhibition proposal — I wanted to talk to them about doing an exhibition of laser prints later in the summer. We also paid a visit to Lara Stefansdóttir, a colleague that I met at the Icelandic Educational Network (ismennt) an Internet activist who is now consulting with the University of Akureyri.
