posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

interspecies communications

Yet another example of cooperation between kingdoms of life is found on acacia trees. These trees sometimes develop galls on their bark: woody chambers that are ideal homes for certain ants. The ants colonize the galls, and when a browsing giraffe approaches the tree to gorge on its tender leaves, the tenant invertebrates rush to the scene to defend their landlord, squirting acid at the giraffe until it is discouraged.

Interspecies communication is an integral feature of life on Earth and has been around for Billions of years. All these mutualistic symbioses have one thing in common: They are held together by signals. A growing fungus will send out special feelers called hyphae and produce mucus to sense the signaling molecules on potential algae teammates, in order to size them up with a view to making a lichen together. The honeyguide bird sings a special song to the honey badger to get its attention, then flies ahead to lead it to the beehive. A foraging shrimp will keep one of its long antennae resting on its goby pal’s tail so that if the eagle-eyed fish spots danger, it will signal to its myopic friend by waggling its tail and both will scuttle to safety. An acacia tree will release chemical signals (hormones) that alert its resident ants to a munching herbivore and tell them where to come to help. Living things survive by signaling to other life-forms, within and across the species boundaries. This includes both whales and humans.

Mustill, Tom. How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication. London, UK: William Collins, 2022.

Tom authored an easy read across a relevant subject: the whole effort initiated after a humpback whale breached over the sea-kayak he was whale-watching from: the energized and auspicious start of a personal search.

I kept getting the feeling that much of the theoretical and applied research—as articulated by the scientists he interviews—is (still!) mired in the most mechanistic of physical worlds, though. Oblivious of the concept that sound—in its spectral complexity—is merely one of a plenitude of energy-exchange, energy-transmission pathways. This, between and among the plenitude of species (who are themselves merely varying configurations of life-energy flow).

The flows are there, we are immersed and part of them. An individual of a species will use the embodied pathways of energy expression available to it. Transmission, signals. Others of its species have resonant energy receptors, communication; other species sometimes have overlapping receptors as well:

“Did you hear that? Ugh, the smell!”

“I did, that was Claude Shannon farting!”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

sacrifice, Urosaurus ornatus

Found this guy stuck in a bucket that had about a quarter-inch of cold rainwater in it. Chilled to immobility, he rapidly warmed up on my hand, but I managed to get this shot before I had to get him back outside where he raced away.

sacrifice, Urosaurus ornatus, Prescott, Arizona, April 2016

posted
  • place: Mint Wash, Prescott, Arizona

naming

Hyla arenicolor, Mint Wash, Williamson Valley, Arizona, April 2005

“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: Unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less than half-real: nonexistent. A person without a name is nobody. A human’s name can become more important than his person. A plant, an animal, a thing without a name is no thing — nothing. No wonder we humans like to think that in the beginning was — the Word. What word? Any word. Any word at all, anything rather than the silence and terror of the nameless.” —

Abbey, Edward. Abbey’s Road. New York, NY: Plume, 1991.

Plowing (ploughing) through Abbey this time, years since reading “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” his writing seems dated, depressing, even dark. So much of the landscape that he passed through is (de)evolved, so much of what he prognosticated about the Southwest, at the hands of corrupt politicians and developers has materialized like a cancer across the land. The forever-expansion, development-is-good, it-creates-jobs mantra that is chanted by deeply unholy men (and women). Bringing 4000+ square-foot pseudo-adobe MacMansions to dot the landscape along with scaled-up vehicular afterbirth: Hummers in every five-car garage. Although there are places one might go and on a middle-scale—meaning the easily visible—local scale, to the uninitiated eye, the natural system seems untouched. But with any consideration of scientific data—atmospheric systems, plant and animal ecosystems, and hydrological systems are being irretrievably altered. What of the domination of a species that will destroy most of the other macro-species only to live on briefly in an impoverished environment: soon to succumb to a viral celebration in the host of hosts. Definitely, catch it while you can. Take the last road trips around before gas costs what it should and the only way to get out of Dodge will be on foot. And the only way to survive the plague is through a slow and costly counter-evolution.

At any rate, this is a frog (possibly a Canyon Tree frog – Hyla arenicolor). But note the incredible coloration. The green exactly matches a particular lichen that grows on the granite in that area. The pinkish blush of the oxidized feldspar in the granite. There were four of them literally stuck to the side of a large smooth boulder on Mint Wash. I was sitting opposite from them, having lunch with Marianne, about 6 feet (2 meters) away, and at first I thought they were phenocrysts in the granite, but then saw they were frogs. This particular one was the only one I could get close enough to make an image of, it was crouched on a relatively reasonable ridge. The other three were glued to vertical (overhanging!) smooth surfaces, but there was a 2-meter deep hole in the creek bed, full of water immediately below them. So, this one had to do. The beautiful beast is about 1.5 inches (3 cm) long.

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L-I-M-I-T-E-D

Aside from a fraction of a kilo-ton of human-re-configured matter that has been more-or-less permanently jettisoned from the immediate gravitational field of the Terran system, all human activities are and always have been fully immersed in what, for the purposes of modeling, may be seen as a limited (eco-)system with limited energy resources. L-I-M-I-T-E-D. Followers of the develop-and-consume-at-any-cost economic philosophy appear to think that there is an un- at the beginning of limited. But are these limits germane regarding the scalar possibilities of alteration that 6.9 billion humans applies to the ‘closed’ system? Can this plague-species actually cause significant change? It’s maybe only a question of where on a sliding scale the alteration sits, and what range on that scale indicates ‘significant’ change.

It is not difficult to observe that all expressions of life have an affect on the immediate vicinity. The bed of dead leaves beneath the cottonwood, layered by age: age showing as a returning dissolution, collenchyma structures in the veins remain longer, the epidermis stripped away by insects, solar radiation, weather, and time. The altered rhizosphere full of exudates nourishing symbiotic microbial life which, in turn, alter the chemistry of the surrounding soil. The altered atmosphere, being distantly distributed by the wind, the absorption of Light. Animals consuming leaves, wandering away. Reverberatory. What does a tree do to the rest of the cosmos? It does. Clearly any form of life has this effect. It’s just a question of how much. Quantitative, with the qualitative in the affirmative, but still open to how.

posted
  • place: Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

Sand Canyon transect

west terminus of Yampa Bench at Chew Ranch, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, May 2010

Try a couple more timelapse shots, but they are unsatisfactory with all the technical drawbacks. Stability, resolution, quality, etc. Nothing to be done about it without a $10K investment, or more.

Instead, after the driving rain all night, start a fire in the morning, in the rain, but gradually it tapers off, though still very cloudy. The guy who came in late yesterday in a Ford Explorer with a Rocket Box on top left at some point in the morning. Gah. No place to go! He’ll surely end up in a ditch somewhere.
more “Sand Canyon transect”

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Clui: Day Five — tangential contact

Enola Gay Hangar, Wendover Airbase, Wendover, Utah, April 2010
In the sonic realm, this part of the western desert (the spatial extent defined by precipitation at least) seems, at first, quiet. Stepping out of the car after a bruising day of fighting the wheel, ah, only the susurration of blood pumping in the ears. But, despite this initial impression, human intrusion in the western desert is never silent. The ambient pre-human sonic domain is defined by a few animals making occasional signals “I am here.” Ravens and coyotes are perhaps the noisiest, with others following in a rapidly declining decibel range. Wind is mostly, literally, in the ear of the beholder as a register of turbulent flow around the aural orifice but occasionally one is in a place where the wind makes some secondary sound (in a riparian regime, in seasonal leaves, or whistling around a certain rock formation, but these are rare and difficult to record without exceptional and expensive equipment). Otherwise, then, there is only the human incursion. This incursion is typically related to the movement of those intrusive humans through the domain as few have the desire to stop and actually hear silence. The few who volunteer or are forced to stop for a longer time are not necessarily prone to sonic disturbances, though that group, as a whole, are dominated by willing or unwilling participants in the military-industrial machine. The balance, a small remainder, are likely seeking the silence. The members of the machine make plenty of noise via everything from weapon systems testing to mining to toxic waste incineration, but access to these secretive sonic sources are for the select, not the transitory rabble.

Those engaged in field recording are left with the experience of tangential contact. That is, functioning as a stationary point, recording the arrival and departure of a nearby transport vector — trains, planes, and cars. Given the proper conditions, especially the lack of wind, these can make interesting (and startling) recordings. Trucks may be heard many miles away and render an impossibly slow Doppler shifting that is also modulated by differential density and velocity metrics of the intervening air. Planes are often more difficult as the most dramatic contact is with the low-flying fighter aircraft which will show up practically without warning and are so loud that recording is impossible. The db peak of that tangential contact pegs the meter. Before the air-to-ground missiles are launched at you, the target, and field incursions become moot.

So, what to do? Muddle along. Hit the casinos. Though I’ve been tossed out of those in the distant past for making photographs, the H4 Zoom looks suspicious, so I think it also will attract attention from security for sure. Ach.

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musings before a roadtrip

Leaving aside the refined mapping of experience-once-removed. And instead, gathering experience first hand, in the moment, where circumspection is wistful, wasteful, or even dangerous.

Music on the road. Traveling minstrels, buskers, harmonica-playing hobos. playing for people on the road, or playing whilst on the road. Meeting at the roadhouse. Beyond the city limits. What goes down when humans engage beyond the control of the proper social order. What goes on outside the ordered flows of town. Interstitial in the sense that between towns lie the open roads. bandits, women and men of loose moral fortitude, and wild animals. The space of chaotic flow.

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even “secret” — pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel.

As a matter of fact, we don’t just “suspect” it. We know it. We know there exists an art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

What is the nature of what is feared outside the purview of human controlled flows? Is it merely nature? It is the presence of (or the risk of) death — that singular element that lies completely beyond human control, for ever? It cannot be erased from the wild kernel of being. Some seek the thrill of facing it, some hide in states of paranoid control to keep it as far away as possible, backing away only to fall over a precipice unseen behind. Religion is the construct that irrationally rationalizes the presence of the unknown, of death, and of corrupt social order.

… back to the road …

The body of speed. (hunt and/or be hunted). Movement is the first escape from death. Running to safety, to the nearest tree. Running to fetch the weapon that you left at home. Running for the crowd so that the odds of getting eaten are marginally lowered. Running fast. Running to change places. Running to make a moving target. Running for help! Running to the Library!

The Book as fuel for keeping warm and The Book as weapon: dictionaries and encyclopedias work best for both purposes. Book as pillow. Book as door-stop. Book as object sensed orbiting centers of cultural gravity. Textual asteroids and debris. Escape that field.

The Book as tool for enhancing procreative potential and staving off death. Rather, Books on how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading about how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading-while-driving. Speed. And then it comes. uuuuuhhh.

20100206-2007-0862

nah. gotcha, I’m outta here, step on it, hit the gas, burn some rubber, spray some gravel in ‘is face…

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Food, Energy, and Society

For most of the time that humans have inhabited the earth, their prime source of power has been their own muscle power. …

Early additional sources of power included human slaves and domesticated animals. The hunting/gathering societies were helped when an extra food gatherer or hunter could join in the task of securing food. Likewise, the labor intensiveness of primitive agriculture increased both the need for and the usefulness of slave and animal labor. …

A slave or extra hunter, of course, would have to be fed. However, two hunters could kill more than twice as much game as a single hunter could kill alone. In this way, additional labor provided a greater return in energy than the energy input required for its maintenance. (p. 68)

Food, Energy, and Society, Pimentel, D., Pimentel, M., Third Edition, Taylor And Francis Group, Boca Raton, Florida, 2008. Food, Energy and Society, [Pimentel, D., Pimentel, M., (revised edition), University Press of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 1996]

I haven’t gotten access to the most current (2008) edition of this major collation of numbers, but the 1996 version is recent enough for the extrapolation process to be framed and the principles to be clearly demonstrated. Unfortunately that extrapolation reveals a worsening situation than they originally laid out (or imagined!) in 1979. With a detailed quantitative analysis of the (energy) costs of all eras and types of food production, as well as an examination of pesticide use, water, biodiversity, and soil resource issues, the separate chapters are full of numbers and comparisons which are remarkable in extent and sobering in their basic message. It would be possible to verify the extensive research in detail by tracking down the fifty-pages of references, but the message is simple: the human species is exerting an ever-increasing energy drain on the global environment merely to subsist, and there are definitely better and worse ways to marginally affect the situation. Humans tend to be wasteful — but any life-form causes this process of entropic waste (energy) production merely by living — it is not an avoidable condition. It appears now that the problems are of such a wide-scale, and the solutions are presently so haphazard (as applied by nation-states rather than through some trans-national instrument), that the inevitable upward geometric curves (population, resource consumption, environmental degradation, etc) will reach their limit. Those curves as they exist in the mathematical domain have no real upward limit and may approach infinity asymptotically. This would represent the system with infinite energy reserves. The earth, taken as a sub-system of the cosmos, is finite, and so are the energy resources it makes available for human use. more “Food, Energy, and Society”

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On The Poetics of Protocol

How to transcend the rigidity of extant and defined protocol? Opposition is no cure. Poetry is an emetic for it; or at least poetic stretching, morphing of the protocol. Or simply turning away to create a new protocol. But this threatens social viability. This is a critical issue as protocol underlies all techno-social deployments. All. And the affect of protocol, its genesis, its makers, its purview, all contribute to the formation of a (dominant) worldview that it imposes a(n arbitrary) frame of reference upon the participant in the particular techno-social system. On the other hand, life without protocols: an impossible situation for social animals (or any animal, for that matter — a protocol may be thought of as a way of going, whether self-directed or directed by innate sense and following the line of maximized entropy production).

This conundrum applies to all (socially) evolved protocols, no matter the genesis. It means that this pervades and saturates, all experiences of being (except perhaps for the pre-human, or over-human). On The Poetics of Protocol, a working title moving towards a core thematic. Using the metaphor of a sliding scale, at one end, chaotic ways of going, at the other, completely prescribed ways of going, life falls somewhere in between.

Having to jump between several points-of-view — the tremendous volume of applicable writing on the range of subjects; a strong, principled, and unifying overview tied to idiosyncratic personal experiences; and, finally, the mental focus required to tie all this jetsam together — the jump has to be transformed into a creatively complied micro-narrative. But looking around at the plethora of source materials is always discouraging — in form and content. The inability to structure my own content into a form consistent with the material that I consume is disturbing, though idiosyncratic expression is one of the goals for PhD research. (Inconsistency has potential to uncover innovative spaces and may be used as a strategic tool or approach.) So this can be viewed as a strategic advantage in the creative interpretation and packaging of the material. Content-wise, I am confident of the presence of something to say, as well as a subsequent pathway-of-action reflecting what is said. Daunting task none-the-less, from any vantage.

Seeing from more than one point-of-view requires motion or at least movement between points of stasis. Does the establishment of a point-of-view require a cessation of movement? (Motion of course is completely relative regarding point-of-view: life is never static so point-of-view never absolutely static.)

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movement and encounter

Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.

It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.

There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered. more “movement and encounter”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

The uncontrolled gesture: go to your edge

Starting with the immediate body as a field-of-action to release control (versus the control-at-a-distance regime we are immersed within now):

Bushwhacking is a method to relinquish control of the trajectory of the body. By exposing the body to the unknown, one has to respond in real time, in the present. This present invites the presence of be-here-now and within that state of be-ing, the embodied self yields to the edge that divides the controlled from un-controlled. Precisely at that edge is the locus of active transformation and change. Making the next step into the unknown is, literally, an act of trust in the body, in a belief that entering the unknown will present possibility. Whether or not this possibility is merely the chance of the continuance of the species (in a biological framework), the projection of life into the not-now, the future, or whether it is an operative pre-condition for a transcendent state I cannot at this moment comment on. Somehow, this is a question that each individuated being self-wise has to make in each of those moments.
more “The uncontrolled gesture: go to your edge”

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Redirecting the Flows of Energy in Natural Systems

(but wait a minute, LIFE is, by definition, a redirecting of the flows of energy in a natural system — a redirecting that is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of living systems — according to basic non-equilibrium thermodynamics of living systems.)

However, there is a scalar difference between humans and other living entities where some humans attempt this kind of control on wide scales, with others re-directing those same energies to completely different configurations, some only images of what their ‘original’ pattern of flow once were. (it’s a question of degree?)
more “Redirecting the Flows of Energy in Natural Systems”

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roadkill

death strewn on the highway. roadkill. carnivore, herbivore, amphibian, insect: getting to the other side of the road is just part of the inexorable (natural) systemic flow. Roadkill represents one intersection of human-defined flows and naturally-existing flows. The result of this fundamental intersection is near-death or absolute annihilation, a rapid reduction to component complex molecules. from the thathunk of meatier species to the simple fluttering splat of the butterfly. Leathery carcasses that persist for days despite the brutal pounding of truck tires and hard-to-remove stains on the windshield that resist even the most vigorous squeegee scrubbing whilst filling-up the tank.

Insects with a low weight-to-surface-area ratio can sometimes avoid liquidation by the slipstream effect which will carry them up and over the vehicle. But trajectory is all, and the meatier bugs, the swarming locusts and grasshoppers, have too much mass in their sagging torsos to experience this sanctified reprieve and thus become one with their maker in a soul-wrenching milli-second that can be a marvel of colorful abstraction a-la Pollack.

Along one stretch of the UFO Highway in Nevada, red locusts were on the march northward along a specific pathway that they were intent on following without regard to individual survival. At 60 MPH, the dynamic was such that their flight reaction to the approaching truck got them only a couple feet off the ground, not over the height of the hood, so, the lower grill was a mass of dessicated carcasses by the time we got to the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, a hundred miles away. Many more were simply crushed by the wheels, leaving greasy red-greenish stains on the road and in the wheel-wells: their natural trajectory on the ground was clearly discernible where it intersected with roads. I noticed in the gas station parking lot in Ely there was a small flock of birds who were picking over the the resulting detritus on the ground, and when they could manage, actually hanging onto the grills and directly harvesting the carnage, ‘burp!’ What would the evolutionary outcomes be? Birds that can smell idling cars? Locusts who tunnel for 40 feet underground when they encounter traces of heavy hydrocarbons, with luck, getting to the other side.

Larger animals, the mammals are the worst, though, when encountered at any speed. Moose and elk torsos will behave something like the old paper-straw-through-the-raw-potato trick — inertial physics at its most fundamental. The front bumper of the car will take out the long spindly legs whilst the massive quarter-ton of body-meat, at just the right height to clear the hood, will simply stay where it is. But where it is relative to the speeding windshield means that it will simply obliterate anything in the front seats of the vehicle. At low speeds, this can mean a struggling, injured animal in the laps of struggling, injured humans, gah.

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A start to meditations on The Road

The road-as-pathway is a channel for the flow of energy. It is defined by socially-constructed standards and protocols: a web of socially-applied energies follow the limitations and directedness of those protocols. Roads are a human construct in response to the existence of natural blockages that divert from desired trajectories, that expend communal life-energies and threaten the control of energy resources.

The road is perhaps a synthesized mirror for the human-navigable river, that directed natural space of flow, or the ocean which is the cumulative and spatial confluence-of-all-rivers.

Practically all natural landscapes have some form of blockage as to cause a deviation to even slow and deliberate human passage. So, when there is a lack of free and easy passage, first a foot-path evolves, or is established through troddden effort. This is a trajectory for the body, with the foot leading. Seeking a pathway on foot requires vigilance and concentrated attention in many environments, though this condition is necessarily eliminated from daily life in the developed world — almost completely through the efforts to flatten, level, grade, and pave large swaths of the Terran surface.
more “A start to meditations on The Road”

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Sydney Non-Objective Gallery exhibition

[ed: An excerpt of neoscenes::drift was recently included in the Sydney Non-Objective Catalogue and CD 2005-2010, SNO Gallery, Sydney, AU, 2010 (gallery catalog and audio CD) ISBN 978-0-9805877-3-9, Mar 2010]

reflections on neoscenes :: drift

lost in a maelstrom of sonic simulations and stimulations, re-collected, re-presented, via various creato-destructive algorithmic methodologies, drift moves through many post-cartesian spaces and through several parallel universes. depending on your frame of reference you may follow a similar path. or you may not. drift demands relativity and provides quantum realism.


(01:00:00, stereo audio, 115 mb)

blurb for SNO gallery exhibition web site, November 2009, NSW, Australia:

drift arises from an ordered archive of ambient phonographic fragments recorded over the past twenty years or so. From this archive improvisational works are assembled: indeterminate and reductive modulations that critically sample the flow of embodied be-ing. Known objects and discrete events populate our world only because we are social animals who have learned the dominant protocols of the techno-social system that we inhabit. This condition is especially onerous with the protocols circumscribing the failed (object-oriented) materialist worldview. drift consciously moves algorithmically with-in and with-out of recognizable protocols, acknowledging that without these memory-impressed protocols, all immediate experience becomes an incomprehensible flow. However, the cosmos we participate in, and indeed, are part of, is composed of these flows and comprehension is an illusion. What we know is only the temporal persistence of patterns in our embodied consciousness which resonate with an attenuated selection of those flows. drift simulates the full signal width of the flows, recognizable or not, and simply transits the field which is the present.

more “Sydney Non-Objective Gallery exhibition”

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Energy and Society

Excellent resource which will allow me to trace both forwards and backwards in time on this particular worldview which, although the definition of energy is strictly based on contemporary physics and thermodynamics (of that time), it provides a valid and detailed approach to the issue.

(Not to mention that the copy I got from Newcastle University was “donated by the Newcastle District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.” Would for the survival of humanity that engineers take in the consequences of thermodynamics at all scales!)

Cottrell maps out in some detail the inter-relationships of technological (energy-usage) and the consequent/subsequent social change/evolution that occurs.
more “Energy and Society”

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  • place: Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

Medano Pass

a much longer ramble with a heavy wind at my back until it’s time to turn around. the dunes are located here for a reason and that reason is the frequency of very intense winds being funneled across the valley into Medano Pass where the sand generated by the Rio Grande out-wash in the (west side of the) valley is dropped in large quantities against the Sangre de Christo mountains. it’s a marvelous phenomena. today, I follow the base of the dunes along Medano Creek which is flowing with copious quantities of chilly snow-melt. the intersection of the dunes with the creek and the mountain terrain is rich with variable riparian regimes and provides shelter from the wind which is carrying plenty of grit up to about 3 feet off the dune surface. the air is charged with particles, it is charged. more “Medano Pass”

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  • place: Arrastra Mountain Wilderness, Arizona

Riverwalking

Moore knows rivers, wet places, how to feel, how to transliterate feelings, and how to see, but I’m not in consonance with her characterization of the desert. Drawing emotion onto those landscapes seems to place the human over that which is not known — as though it could be humanly known. Something like the common personification of animals and the position of pets in the human social system. The desert is a transform mapping of the Void. Why personify that? Seems corrupt to add human stuff(ing) onto it.

Sometimes, in a desert landscape, a landscape without consciousness, emptier of intellect than any other landscape I have ever seen, I think I can feel emotion lying like heat on the surface of the sand and seeping into the cracks between boulders. There is joy in the wind that blows through the spines of the saguaro, and fear in bare rocks. Anger sits waiting under stones. Exhilaration pools in the low places, the dry river beds, the cracked arroyos, and is sucked by low pressure ridges up into storm clouds that blow east toward the Alamo Canyon.

Moore, K.D., 1996. Riverwalking : reflections on moving water, San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace.
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Thompson (NOT Fred)

The Army Corps of Engineers with its national system of dams and levees has shown us what happens when the military-industrial approach in which Man dominates nature is put to work in eliminating wet lands where wild birds gather and sedimentary islands build up to break ocean surges. This form of engineering is the same kind of military-industrial thinking that salinates the soil with center-pivot agriculture and drains the Ogalala aquifer to replace biodiversity with monocrops held in place with the chemical warfare of pesticides. And the animal prisoners taken in this war are held in place in the concentration camps of feedlots and drugged with antibiotics and growth hormones to prepare them for mass slaughter. Their carcasses are then processed in fast food fuel stations along highway strips that are the same ugly clutter of signs and stops from Anchorage to Miami. Our President [Bush] is comfortable with this mentality because for him nature is basically a golf course or a ranch — or a national park turned into a country club where folks can burn off stress by speeding over the snow while polluting the air of Yellowstone with gas-guzzling skidoos. — William Irwin Thompson, essays

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

spring

yes, spring does arrive. the chestnut tree outside the back windows rather suddenly bursts into a leafy presence that only the chestnut can express. added advantage is that it blocks the view into and out of the windows, replacing too-near humanity with … green.

We do not need to invent sustainable human communities. We can learn from societies that have lived sustainably for centuries. We can also model communities after nature’s ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. — Fritjof Capra

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

The Wild Surmise

Sue Thomas poses some interesting questions in her search for possible synergies between the cyber and the natural. it’s an open project — add you own answers on her site!

Please describe where you lived and your strongest memories of nature during the years of your growing up. I’m interested in both positive and negative recollections of anything from the smallest plot to the largest wilderness, including animals and plants.

sotto voce: I am a native of Alaska, born there as a Cold War military child. My father, a senior Pentagon analyst, sport-hunted grizzly and polar bears among other magnificent animals. We moved to Boston, then Southern California, then Washington DC, living in suburban or rural fringes of cities. A primal memory was of viewing a total solar eclipse from a beach in Acadia National Park in the northeast state of Maine, USA, at five years old. Watching the sun be consumed, until there was only a shimmering ring of fire surrounding a black hole in the sky. My father was an amateur astronomer, and I accompanied him on a further four total eclipse expeditions. Along with these specific memories, there are general memories of sleeping in the woods, of eating around a fire, of washing in streams, mosquitoes, and dark star-brilliant skies. more “The Wild Surmise”

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

night songs

(3:40, stereo audio, 7.0 mb)

a dying fire, late in the moonless night, crickets singing all the while, on the leeward side of the summer solstice.

knowing that the Observer is changing cosmos while watching the stars.

the Enigma of Presence. being here is the initial event that triggers all else.

there in the other national park, not this one, feeding the animals is simply a specific event/action that further distorts the fabric of the local universe, where presence causes wholesale materialization of the local universe itself.

so, leaving the world is the ultimate de-materialization from impressing that outer world. talk about reducing carbon emissions!

posted
  • place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

lanfranchis

First-responders on the way home last night. On the way back from checking out the local sonic scene and to meet Shannon and Rick for their solo performances at LanFranchis, a (the!) local alternative space — reminded me very much of FishBon in Santa Barbara except folks were smoking. Also met Katherine, a creative writing student at UTS. The performances were good with a decent 5.1 sound system. It would have been nice to do a mix like I did for leplacard in Helsinki two weeks ago. Here’s an ambient mix from the evening.

Make it to Bondi this morning after long transport delays.

Other notes on the antipodes: clouds (definitely the wrong word!) of black fruit bats the size of fat and dumpy seagulls drift (definitely do not fly!) in the late twiLight airs above the treetops. A … disturbing … sight. Not for its natural curiosities, but for the way the beasts move — as though they are in a drunken haze of meditative zen tranquility while moving across a space of thick gaseous vortices, all lying at the bottom of the sea, and me looking upwards.

The next note: so far, while the National Art Museum has a permanent exhibition of Aboriginal Art, I have seen only two drunk Koori around Kings Cross — near the 20-meter-high Coke advertisement. Enough said. Maybe a dumb idea along with this Colonial geometry but I would like to get a decent didje for working the breath when next in desert lands.

The whole world was asleep. Everything was quiet, nothing moved, nothing grew. The animals slept under the earth. One day the rainbow snake woke up and crawled to the surface of the earth. She pushed everything aside that was in her way. She wandered through the whole country and when she was tired she coiled up and slept. So she left her tracks. After she had been everywhere she went back and called the frogs. When they came out their tubby stomachs were full of water. The rainbow snake tickled them and the frogs laughed. The water poured out of their mouths and filled the tracks of the rainbow snake. That’s how rivers and lakes were created. Then grass and trees began to grow and the earth filled with life. — Koori creation story

More notes: in the water. For the first time in surf for a long time. Body at first not responding, that combined with the size of the breaks. A few minutes conversation with a beach guard who is out in the break herding folks away from a rip. He says it’s a hell of a first day to visit Bondi — they were pulling people out all day, jet skis crashing through the foam heading out beyond the breaks to check on surfers, and hovering choppers. Sets get up to 3 meters, look like even more occasionally. It’s a workout to get through even the secondary shore breaks which are easily at a meter-and-a-half. Noticed the surf report online is in feet. Old timers guarantee that maybe? Great to be out there, though. damn. But no room for error. No body surfing, just stroking between breaks, diving deep under the curlers, and staying out of the way of anything turbulent.

posted
  • place: Huntsham Court, Devon, England

Stonehenge energies

Stonehenge, in a stiff wind. fenced, parking lot closed. the Place looms, well, not looms, but appears between oncoming lorries and a small wood. small and along on a gentle slope that opens up on closer approach. we can’t park, so Jo does a u-turn (aaaaaaa, on the wrong friggin’ side of the road, IMHO!!) and parks on an available pull-out. a full 180-degree rainbow appears over a flock of sheep across the way, almost along the sight line of the standing line stone. there is a hooded figure appearing and disappearing around the base of the main circle, beyond the chain-link fence. I have a sacrifice stone to image there. and some panoramas, but the wind and light rain makes any absorption of the Place not so easy. sunset Light appears, horizontal brilliance cutting from the southwest. clearing the air. there it is. there we be.

I run back to the car, kicking and wiping the beige chalk mud off my boots. getting in , the wrong side always. and fighting the urge to grab the stick-shift even though I don’t have the wheel in front of me. a few missed turns so a larger circled homing-in on Huntsham Court. dark, running the hedgerows. machine-trimmed close and tight. especially with the van that we are driving. high on each side three or four meters. a chill, cold dark. small pullouts for tractors to turn into fields, or leading to stone houses. finally the manor appears. massive stone building with many many windows, stairs, halls, and rooms. three floors, 20-foot ceilings.

we’re not the first to arrive, Jo’s parents and a couple family friends are there trying to stay warm around the enormous fireplace in the Great Hall.

elk and impala heads, jaguars, leopards, bronze owls with glass eyes. swords. closed doors open to reveal more and more incredible rooms. a snookers room, library, sitting room, dining hall set for seventy-five, and on three floors above, the bedrooms and bath, each unique, furnished with a scatter-shot mix of period furniture from stuffed animals to magnificent Tudor oak woodwork and 18th century porcelain bath accoutrement. not to mention the two lions at the front door. wow!

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

everything

Everything depended on geology. Any damn fool could see that the vegetation was directly responsive to the bedrock. Hence birds and wildlife were responsive to it. We were responsive to it. In winter, our life was governed by where the wind blew, where snow accumulated. We could see that these natural phenomena were not random — that they were controlled, that there was a system. The processes of erosion and deposition were things that we grew up with. An insulated society does not see how important terrain is to someone who has to understand it in order to live with it. Much of it meant life or death for the animals, and therefore survival for us. If there was one thing we learned, it was that you don’t fight nature. You live with it. And you make accommodations — because nature does not accommodate. — David Love, to John McPhee in Rising from the Plains

posted
  • place: San Jose, California

seeing hearing feeling

spend the morning with Sally Jane, checking out some of the exhibitions including a personal walk-through of the Animalia project with producers Angela Main and Caroline McCaw (more kiwis!). then on to the ART MUSEUM to see THE SHOW curated by Steve Deitz. some amazing works, leading off with the elegant live-chat-based piece.

lunch with Ken at La Victoria Taqueria, better burritos than Macho Taco which was inexplicably closed at lunch-time.

also happen upon the npr (neighborhood public radio) broadcast studio at the downtown cineplex in an unused ticket booth. was wondering where they were broadcasting from — last night I happened to tune them in at 88.9 on the car radio on the commute back to the ‘burbs. so, met Jon Brumit and

hard to begin and end the day with a rattling vibrating swervy commute that lasts about an hour, door-to-door.

some overviews on the conference:

yadda-yadda-yadda; blah-blah-blah.

so many words, so many moving images, so much sound, talking heads, and spectacle. along with nice personal encounters. the monumental, the hierarchic voices along with the personal, networked, and confidential/private.

San Jose is interesting clash of urban-renewal towers of glass and corrosion-resistant metals: ringed some hard-core barrio Victorian bungalow scene, interlaced with the chronic homeless scattered between the shining spaces and conventioneers.

organized networks are interested in new institutional forms. tactical media has come to a stage of confronting itself. question of scalar transformation, (vs) networked organizations. democracy and networks are antithetical. bunk.

prototypes: sarai, iDC, srishdi school of art and media, indy media, etc

end up going to see a Mike Figgis remix of his film Time Code. a pseudo-press guy is giving away a couple tickets, so I snag one. he explains that he’s not really press, but a writer, and is trying to write a history of media art starting with the worldview of Gertrude Stein. I didn’t quite understand what he was trying to tell me. I suppose he very well might be a better writer that explainer. the film is a disappointment — the subject of the narrative is hermetically sealed in Hollywood and lacks any compelling visual or story elements. Mike is there, verily, and does a live “remix” which consists of rewinding the tape(!) and fading in/out the 4 different screen audio tracks. in form — the four frames which simultaneously inhabit the main screen that were recorded in four single simultaneous takes starting at the same time — there is an extremely interesting potential, especially as the overall resolution of video systems for shooting, recording, editing, and playback are gradually increasing. but the possibilities of the form seem completely wasted by the insipid narrative and visual void. is it a joke maybe?

head back to Livermore on the 87-280-680-84 pilgrimage route. not really liking that violent traverse of the land. though one segment moves across the Calaveras Valley which is still unpopulated and sports the rolling amber hills with huge live oaks scattered at stellar intervals.

posted
  • place: en route - Prescott, Arizona -- Granite Mountains, Mojave Desert, California

incursions

shoving into the month. already moving again. house emptied more-or-less. now out in the Mojave. near Kelso. on the usual overnight stop between Prescott and San Francisco — in the Granite Mountains southeast of Kelso Dunes — perfect temperature, negligible humidity. so, star gazing bare-chested. Sirius, Arcturus, Vega, Antares near the waxing moon. Jupiter ahead. took the back way to I-40 at Seligman — essentially continuing out Williamson Valley Road for 65 miles. deep through isolated ranching territory on the fringe of the Prescott National Forest and something of a soft terrain of limestone, basalt, some red-rock, and green vegetation cover from the recent two weeks of monsoon. even caught a small storm that cleaned the windshield. making virtuality more transparent.

the Mojave as it always is. despite encroaching red-yellow air at sunset from eLAy and other less tangible impacts from humans, bats are winging about, some animals and birds out there — jack rabbits, nothing else seen, but likely there — and the plants, rocks, contributing to the raw being of place. and the ever-consequent silence laying heavy behind any sound. even starting up the computer for a bit of writing is a noisy industrial incursion. and with battery running down very fast. so that words either have to form now or simply dissipate into the real ether! setting the alarm early to have a slow breakfast, tea, before the sun breaks the boulder ridge immediately to the east. want to get on the road in this black car so that at least all the hours of the heavy mid-day sun are not spent inside it. coffin.

back to look at stars as battery dies.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

become republican

JC sends this to da40 — become republican

I respond,

sotto voce:

only too true, though personally I’m not so rabidly anti-Jesus. it’s the zealots who, as the cartoon points out, hide behind His words and are fundamentally hate-full and intolerant. not what I would expect from the pursuit of a Christ-like behavior emulation…

seems there are glimmers of hope that the society has woken up from a bad dream that was imposed by the 2000 pseudo-election. I frankly don’t have much hope though, that the systemic corruption in the political system is going to go away at all, demos or repubs are the same animal from that perspective.

in the Republic system of Rome, there were various contingencies (balances of power) to cover during different times of need (war being the primary one, though it was misused as a power-manipulation tool — nothing new about that! It is interesting that the concept (and specific form of civil rule) dictatorship was held for a temporary crisis.
more “become republican”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Henry at the Beach

okay, okay, I’m slacking here. using all these GIANT bytes of texts-from-elsewhere. well, Karen sent this to me along with a nice photo of her son Henry at the beach. it resonated with my state of being at the moment.

Before the beginning, there was this turtle. And the turtle was alone. And he looked around, and he saw his neighbor, which was his mother. And he lay down on top of his neighbor, and behold! she bore him in tears an oak tree, which grew all day and then fell over — like a bridge. And lo! under the bridge there came a catfish. And he was very big. And he was walking. And he was the biggest he had seen. And so with the fiery balls of this fish — one of which is the sun, the other the moon?

Yes, some uncomplicated peoples still believe this myth. But here, in the technical vastness of the future we can guess that surely the past was very different. We can surmise for instance that these two great balls?

We know for certain for instance that for some reason for some time in the beginning there were hot lumps, cold and lonely, they whirled noiselessly through the black holes of space. These insignificant lumps came together to form the first union, our Sun, the heating system. And about this glowing gasbag rotated the Earth, a cat’s eye among aggies, blinking in astonishment across the face of time.

Well, we were covered with the molten scum of rocks, bobbing on the surface like rats. Later when there was less heat, these giant rock groups settled down among the land masses. During this extinct time, our earth was like a steam room, and no one, not even man, could get in. However, the oceans and the sewers were simmering with a rich protein stew, and the mountains moved in to surround and protect them. They didn’t know then that living as we know it, was already taken over.

Animals without backbones hid from each other or fell down. Clamasaurs and oysterettes appeared as appetizers. Then came the sponges, which sucked up about ten percent of all life. Hundreds of years later, in the Late Devouring period, fish became obnoxious. Trilobites, chiggerbites and mosquitoes collided aimlessly in the dense gas. Finally, edible plants sprang up in rows, giving birth to generations of insecticides and other small, dying creatures.

Millions of months passed, and twenty-eight days later, the moon appeared. This small change was reflected best perhaps, in the sand dollar which shrank to almost nothing at the bottom of the pool where even dumb amphibians like catfish laid their eggs in the boiling waters only to be gobbled up every ten seconds by the giant sea orphans and jungle bunnies which scared everybody.

And so, in fear and hot water, man is born! — The Firesign Theatre

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

distributed empathy

living on the back. no longer an upright animal. except part-time. and no driving for another couple months. perspectives are limited. constant aching. phone calls with empathetic Others, emphasizes the distance of distributed being, how help is only visceral. hmmmm.

posted
  • place: Marble Mountains, Mojave Desert, California

to the Mojave

this is the winter solstice: no better place to spend it than the Mojave Desert. bumping slowly into a canyon that dead-ends into the Mojave Wilderness area, in a cirque of sorts, nothing like a cirque in the Rockies or the Alps, but still, a surrounding of rough garbled slopes leading upward into what are definitely mountains. Creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), and a variety of small brittle brush plants, sand, rock, desert armor, cryptobiotic soil, and that’s about it. animals are here, but seldom seen. lizards by day, a few insects around sunset, but otherwise it is silent except for the throbbing of blood in ears and the assorted noises of body, movement, and living. machine takes on a massive presence by its sound. stove heating water can be heard 100 meters away, hard drive chattering to itself, an loud insect in a box.

dream of the Mojave on 12-14 September 2001. stripping away the frequent aircraft would be the last hurdle. though the drive to get here illustrated that this area is under assault from every quarter. the air itself is hazy up to 2000 meters or more. this must be auto pollution from eLAy, immediately upwind. there is a huge dust storm that rakes from north to south, near the Cadiz dry lake, along a cutoff that I was going to take, but couldn’t locate the road properly as I hadn’t a copy of that quad map. had to go on west, skirting Joshua Tree National Park, and take Iron Mountain road to the Amboy road and north across the Sheep Rock Mountains and the Amboy dry lake, the Chlorite works, and finally to Amboy, more deserted than it was in 1983 when I first visited. actually quite rundown at this point. east towards Cadiz and the Marble Mountains where I choose a bad gravel road, make a few detours, and finally enter a wide wash right on the perimeter of the Wilderness area. and presumably quite near a Latham Shale outcrop. have to triangulate in the morning, based on some field photos that I found online.

this is the first time I have returned to a place like this since Internet-time has come. it is quite interesting to research a location, using topographic, historic, cultural, and scientific names to find online info about many aspects. for example, a report detailing the eco-recovery of areas that were used by General Patton between 1942-44 for massive armored maneuver practices (over 1,000,000 men!) which destroyed huge swaths of the desert ecology in California, Nevada, and Arizona. thanks George C. Scott!

getting colder already. sunset early, around 1700, and just two hours later, the temperature has dropped 30F. got to go get bed set up in the back of the truck. maybe tomorrow I’ll sleep on the ground. such a rare opportunity that it shouldn’t be passed up.

posted
  • place: en route Akureyri - Hrísey, Iceland

the island

back on the island, after many years. Hildur and Simmi come by and pick Loki and I up late in the evening to catch the 2330 ferry from Árskógsandur. they bought the house of the old Czech priest who died some years back to use as a summer retreat. ever since the fish-packing plant closed down in 1999, the regular population of the island has been slowly replaced by now about 40% of the houses as part-time inhabitants.

the first person settling in the fjord from the 800’s was Helgi The Lean who sent Steinólfur The Short to build the farm called Sythstibaer on the island. Many famous characters lived at Sythstibaer including Thorvaldur The Ancient, Narfi Thrándarson, and Jörundur The Shark-catcher. in the mid-19th century, Norwegians used the island as a based for salt-herring production, later taken over by Swedes at the beginning of the 20th century. this activity is the reason for the existence of the present village. there are still small fishing boats operating from the island, along with cod and mussel farming and the national animal quarantine center which provide present livelihoods for the 200 inhabitants.

Loki and I take a walk around town, checking out the new playground (which makes innovative use of old fishing nets), the new breakwater, and the old hut where we spent several summer holidays in. we took a quick look at Alda’s house, next door, to see that it is not in good repair, and the little hot-house rose garden that she was so proud of, is slowly dying.

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

earth-sky convergences

canyon face in there. juniper there, grass, cedar, sage, rock, rock face. having a gravity. yesterday taking another side slot-canyon, up and up to gain the bench-top over-looking the campground. find two un-matched halves, elk antlers, 7-points each, so, 14-point animals. one almost as tall as Loki. after seeing the bighorn sheep kill earlier in the day, lower jaw crushed, nose chewed away. the mountain lions have things pretty good, except for the constant interference of humans into their wide-patterned space. Loki playing in the dirt. part of the time, this seems problematic, the play seems to be generated from a vacant boredom that I can’t fill, nor would really choose to, other times, it seems to be holy. god-inspired, god-directed, god-sanctioned play that is of evolution-leaping intensity compared to the Game-Boy. what a stupid vapid name for an object devoid of any redeeming spiritual value. a generation of gamers swallowing simulations, and the entertained. faugh, what will come of that? everything is boring. speed is fun. simulation is way better than the real thing. not sure that this auto-adapter is running right. worked on the plane, but now, not able to concentrate anyway, on anything, too stressed about being a dull parent. maybe starting to count days until this phase is over. but next week back to school. teaching again. reading Lemke’s draft of a concept of “traversals” — recalling a flash of text that dropped into one of the Solstice videos that I made in Iceland. traverse no zenith. so it goes. battery runs low. no satellite uplink anyway, so bloggish reflections are useless. darkness falls. I will sleep on the ground tonight, and hope for the best. something nervous, but not for any good reason. with towering face of sandstone leaping to converge with rotating Milky Way.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Chimney Rock

at Chris and Scharmin’s place, house-sitting. long roads across Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and other lands. full summer moon at Chimney Rock. rising moons, count ’em, Richard says, how many of them do you have left?

so many longings and self-sufferings from the ego. life flickers through them all and the self is lost eventually, as it should be.

small things: a y-shaped log from the previous campers, there in the fire pit. Loki helps me re-dig and repair the pit, placing the stones in a ring with a slight opening up-slope so the down-slope breeze in the evening will feed oxygen to the fire. that log is special. special for the full moon night. it is juniper, but a perfect shape, curved branches, or a u-shape on a stick, to be more accurate. it is somehow a burl or from a diseased tree. it burns the entire evening, more than 15 hours in the end, with a rich resinous, fragrant, smoke. to be danced around. into the morning when it is still brown wood at the core and sticky with bubbling resin.

maintaining a house and land. having a house and land.

having good friends. what is this in the long run of living? maintaining. the energy of this maintaining is depleting me. (because I maintain with a deep streak of ego, not pure love, as it should be). to what can be done. what if I had all that energy back? to work with on my own psychic condition? I would have wasted it. being with the Other is a salve. but it is not salvation. god refuses to change the rules. elemental beings play until the dawn finishes.

heat of the Front Range day begins to vibrate. water pipes in the walls aspirate with flow to the laundry machine in the next room. raydeeoh is on. Loki plays in the other room. looking over telephone numbers of people to call and see.

watching clouds all day. watching life. day-pulse. dawn. daybreak. moonrise, sunset. fires, smoke, horizons, trees, animals.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

liquid skies

Friday nite. after net.culture class, jam down a beer at Meteori. but detached as hell.

forced marches, liquid skies. tatters of language still sticking to carrion corpses. use what is available. upload, download. split, divide, conquer. don’t worry about spelling, look, or feel, except when feel is skin-to-skin, and when that happens, the only worry is about why. passing passing passing. no gossip here, all the “art” meetings I have experienced, all the academic meetings, confluences, and the institutional structures applied. well, what is it — institutions are codifications of the human will to survive. that is, survival comes best to those who can spare energy to feed into collective social structures. apparently a collective can be more efficient with energy than an individual. or perhaps it is just that we are of that species-type. social animals. is it only in the space of dynamic flows can there be diversity? or, wait, that wasn’t it, walking home from KIASMA, art consumption (but free with the art card), thinking about institutions and structures, and what to say in response to criticism.

posted
  • place: Riga, Latvia

Xavier’s image

hanging at the bus station for a bit, pick up the return ticket to Tallinn for Friday, then going on to the Occupation Museum this afternoon. end up spending several hours there, trying to understand the history of the Nazi and Soviet presence. borders shuffling around, people treated like so many animals. herded around from place to place. with an absolute minimum of care for their survival. pogrom, gulag, concentration camp, resettlement, and the barbarity of the regimes. a little bitterness towards the West, also, with the understanding that the three Baltic Republics weren’t big or important enough for the West to confront the Soviets over. now the issue is how the large Russian minority is to be dealt with. there is a language law coming on the books which declares Latvian as the national language, but I think this will come into something of a conflict with EU directives on minority rights within (potential) member states. the Welsh people, the Sami, and other groups have benefited from the EU mandate to support minority cultures already, so the precedence is not in favor of the Latvians who, by only 4 percentage points, are a majority in their own land. presumably, this will be a major issue, and treated specially within the EU framework. I am staying with friends of Rasa and Raitis, Karl and Kristin, in their roommate, Xavier’s, room. he just left for an extended visit to Mexico, his homeland, Vera Cruz. Karl is Swedish, Kristin is Latvian. on the wall next to the bed is a detailed map of Latvia which I can study abstractly while lying in bed, and hanging over it, obscuring half of it at least, is a big black sombrero with white and silver piping. opposite on the other wall is a big black and white silver print of a woman wearing a swimsuit standing on the sea shore, on a rocky beach, child next to her on hands and feet looking at the ground. the woman is facing the sea. about 10 meters offshore from her, lopsided and partially submerged, is a war bunker with gaping windows and a broken staircase leading down into the water. a man is looking out of the second floor window casing. the woman has her hands on her hips, something of a bouffant hair style from the 50’s and, from a distance, the tone of the swimsuit top makes her look topless. there is no horizon. she is day-dreaming, and that day-dream is my reality. every sensual impression that I have ever experienced she created in the fleeting fraction of a second when that image was made. even when I say to myself (preparing fragments for my public lecture on Thursday): I am a be-ing of energy. it is only because she dreamed it, the energy of her dream has become me. I am that energy. passing through a series of scenarios as disjointed and mute as some dreams can be. giving nothing, taking only the form of the present vessel of place, for the moments of occupation, then immediate, complete dissolution, moving on to the next phase condition. altered state, alter ego. much beyond all that, to the next condition of be-ing. energy-in-motion IS creativity. but how to peg that to the social and cultural conditions of the time. that gap, I cannot bridge with my own abilities at language and the primarily visual tools available to me. which begs the question, what tools would be optimal, what would allow me that full expression of embodied energy? would massive capital of digital power do it? would big photographic prints do it (I have always thought so, thinking that better this or that physical solution would be sufficient to put the whole effort over the edge into electric saturation). joke. making images in silver seemed to be a way of going, but that process, one which I was immersed in for 20 years seems difficult to access lately. it is hidden within the inner topology that has evolved in the last years. hibernating, forgotten. senseless?

posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

spinal slug

yesterday slips into today. in artificial suspension, missing my job, my mission, to network. floating between things. so. and the days get longer. and Berlin looms. keeping wits and senses completely unpretentious. aware that ALL contacts need to be sustained with good information flow. the extreme movement requires high-volume information flow. (like fast-moving animals have highly developed nervous systems for receiving and processing sensory data). speed is related to nervous system. the faster the nervous system, the greater the organism’s potential for terminal velocities! and the hard-wiring of the back can’t take the speed anymore.

posted
  • place: en route Eindhoven, Netherlands - Aachen, Germany

food cycles

turbulence in mind, need some calming effects of … deep breathing. the future wells up, the future in mind, possible futures, and impossible ones, and the difficulties and fears of failure. always. seldom are the possible fun times pictured. only the problems. got to do some more positive visualization — negative vibes aren’t very nice. summer begins to loom, though, as a challenge of ordering movement. and time pressing in. and then hard after that is the question of the next academic year. deciding to remain free-lance or on dropping down into some relative space of at least less motion. thinking ahead is always a stress in this way. but then there is the idea that being a nomad should be a motion that is natural and un-self-conscious. and with that I get back to writing to others. cycles continue. animal protein products in the form of meat, egg, and cheeses, with grain products, bread, oatmeal, muesli, pasta; and plants, apples, oranges, bananas, onion, garlic, tomato, what else. eating the same stuff almost all of the time. (this thought comes after a week of living in a hotel and not being able to cook). about to leave again. these short gigs are too unsettling. they will be ending soon. with no base to move on.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

to be grokked

Well. I did make a foray into the high desert wilderness near Sycamore Canyon a couple days ago. Not far, however. Too much virtuality has left me stunned. Too much driving especially, that oh-so-virtual reality where, like with digital media, we are insulated by the silicon dioxide / amorphous silica, that of windows rather than IC chips … I figured once, some years ago, that I have spent about 500 24-hour days in a car, traveling about 50 mph, since I arrived in this in-car-nation, so to speak (ohhh, now there’s a pun for you…). But as it is ingrained in my existence, I must say that I do enjoy cruising across/through the western landscape in a vehicle. The unrolling vistas, the feelings of Power, more “to be grokked”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

mercy!

I recalled, in answering a long email to Alexandra (who, without knowing me, wrote in response to this whole web site) — I recalled a story from one time when I was traveling in Norway, I guess in 1988. I had been visiting with Janine, a former student from Boulder, outside of Oslo, and was heading by train from there to Stavanger, Norway, on the west coast to visit with Steve and Anna. Steve was an old friend from the School of Mines who had expatriated to Norway to work in the oil business there. Anyway, I was riding on the train, and by the time it reached Kristiansand on the south coast, the car I was in was empty. An old man got on and seated himself a number of rows ahead of me. We had been riding for about an hour in this otherwise empty car. Suddenly, he half-turned and said direct to me, in English, Come, we must not be animals, we must speak. I was a bit blown away momentarily, but recovered and moved up to sit with him. We shared stories for the next hours to Stavangar. He was returning to his home on a small island north of Stavanger in the west fjords. He had been hospitalized for some time, and although he did not say this, I think he was going home to die. He told stories of the brutal Nazi occupation of the town where he lived, and of the rather disingenuous German tourists that have subsequently returned to Norway in the past few years. He also told mysterious stories of a rune-stone ring behind his house, and how once, in a vicious storm (the same intense weather that sweeps across IceLand!) he had woken up in the middle of the night and was compelled to get up , Light a candle and walk out to stand in the center of the stone ring where he remained dry and the candle lit despite the raging storm all about… Speaking. Speaking of Mercy?

The Quality of Mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: “Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his own crown. It is enthroned in the hearts of Kings, It is an attribute of God Himself”. — William Shakespeare

Uh. Not apropos, right? Stumbled on it. Kind of oppressive for the Bard. (Used in the promotion of that old High-Handed and oppressive Christianity.) Maybe I can find something better later. Just finished developing film from as far back as August. Hope to get some new illustrations up in the travelog. I was thinking I should make an index of photographs for folks to reference, so as not to have to plug through the mass of text to find things … But, gees, there are so many things to do.