posted
  • place: Kaivopuisto, Helsinki, Finland

to the sea

on the s/y Selina, Kaivopuisto, Helsinki, Finland, May 2013

Jenni gets some rendering going and then we stroll over to the World Festival that is packed with sun-seekers, then on over to Kiasma where the heavy Eija-Liisa Ahtila show is droning along: angstlich. A poignant video introduces the work of Jouku Lehtola following him as he is dying of cancer.

A late email to Mauri yesterday precipitates a crossing-of-path on the s/y Selina at the marina south of Kaivopuisto later in the day. I had always recalled Mauri’s speaking of his boat(s), so it is a materialization of the historic imaginary — in full color — neural networks in gear! Catching up with he and Pia whilst daughter Eeva works on a sketch for a new logo for the stern of the boat. We take a short spin out into the Baltic to test a new sail. This is the inaugural sailing for the season and the weather all day is splendid. I walk all the way back to Tapio’s just to enjoy the city ambiance unfolding on such a nice spring day. Finns are out in force, fully awake from the long winter doldrums. Evening/morning ends with a long stroll around Töölönlahti with Jenni. It feels like home, or so, another home, especially walking around Linnunlaulu. Strange life it is. Who could have seen these instances, all of them, cumulate, in the long-ago future that is the now?

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

workshop – Day 9 – eNZed

prepping the waka, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Workshop day begins: first the waka time on the river. Morning cycle down the river to the Putiki boat ramp, get there a little early, and feel the nerves as to what is possible with the workshop. There have been numerous anticipatory conversations in the last days about what I will be doing. I take a small paper with thought-notes and put it in my life-jacket pocket.

I am fighting with the impression that there is a superfluity of input for the participants — some have not been on a river or so. My dilemma becomes a question of when to jump in and alter the flow of events and protocols which accompany the waka and the enveloping and powerful Maori cultural scenario. It makes no sense to do anything other than participate. Where full participation is a position, an approach to an eventuality of contingent life-flow. I am observing the processes and vibes that are coalescing, seeing if there is a auspicious moment to intervene, but I see none. Back to participating. Enjoying it all. The newness, but also the familiarity and comfort which the Maori protocol applies to that (community-facing) unknown, and The River. more “workshop – Day 9 – eNZed”

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

fire – Day 7 – eNZed

Victoria Bridge, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Cycling down the river to first the boat house, then downtown and The Green Bench for more work, stopping to photograph the river in the brilliant sunshine and I see a huge cloud rising from the direction of Taranaki. could it be an eruption? I ask a woman walking down the bike trail, but she looks and seems completely indifferent, seemingly not recognizing that it is a smoke, not weather cloud. Weird. Turns out that it is likely just an agricultural burn.

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

waka – Day 6 – eNZed

learning Maori numbers, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Up early again, before all the girls are off to school, the morning routines are quite entertaining to witness. Compared to similarly-aged kids in other places (the US!), all the kids I’ve met here seem quite relaxed. Is it the culture here, or? There is a laid-back quality, but I haven’t been here long enough to see how it suffuses through the society. There have to be substantial social issues, with colonialism having left such an influence on things. The stack of histories of NZ that Kerry loaned me before traveling told of savage open conflict until around the time of the US Civil War which is quite recent. Though no longer in direct living memory, it is still quite close. It’s is obvious, from the clear-cut timbering alone, seen from the air, that there is an ongoing and deep conflict over land-use, with powerful development and/or exploitation forces. On the other hand, there are definitely strong voices for nurturing the environment (and human lives on the island) back to something more sustainable.

We take a visit to the waka (canoe) boathouse to check on things — there is a crew of young gals who are practicing waka racing for the national championship. A group of absolutely charming young women.

Mike, our main Maori host comes by, what a expansive and powerful spirit he has! Julian has really cultivated some amazing connections with people here. Everyone met so far has been friendly, open, welcoming, relaxed, ready with a smile, along with some challenging/enLightening conversations.

Hardly time to make any entries now that the road has come up to meet my feet, so to say. Prepping mentally for the symposium coming up in a few days. But there is still so much indeterminacy that I will really have to improvise, and simply go with the available and auspicious energies of the moment. Many stories are already told about energy and informatics.

Towards sunset, an impromptu picnic on river turns out to be a neighborhood gathering, yet another example of a relaxed bunch of folks. Such a (WELCOME!) contrast to Sydney!

posted
  • place: Pueblo, Colorado

on the Ark

memorial, Arkansas River, Pueblo, Colorado, June 2010

long cycle ride with Bill first down the Ark which was partly over the bike path at one point. that made for a challenge going back up against the current in a foot or more of fast moving water — the river is definitely at spring flood stage! Then all the way back upstream to the Pueblo Dam which was open and blasting snow-melt downstream. pretty damn hot, but along the river in the shade of the huge cottonwood trees, all is chill. at the end of the ride, I was tuckered, but also impressed with the urban green-space development that Pueblo is undertaking.

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

Mitten Park

trail of flowers, Echo Park, Colorado, May 2010

Two days here in Echo Park already. Three nights, one night alone, Friday and Saturday there were a couple of people in, then tonight, Sunday, no one around at all. A bit creepy, especially with the mountain lion kill I just discovered over in the middle of the walk-in camping site. Saw that on the way back from Mitten Park this afternoon. Been thinking of the cougars the whole time I’ve been here. Seeing evidences of kills scattered widely across the entire space. Wondering what the total range is for a single cat? I just don’t want to meet one. Having fantasy imaginations, and on the way back from Mitten Park had composed an Ode to the Puma, not able to memorize it sufficiently to record it, but recite it loudly on the way back.

The trail is choked with small purple flowers where it starts from Echo Park. Then there are the vague petroglyphs, then one set of rafters float by, small against Steamboat Rock. Looking at things great and small, it’s all relative to the eye, and the unfolding context.

Eight years ago, I leave a stone from Iceland in a cavity of the standing carcass of a burned piñon, the stone is now gone. Where?

posted

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”

posted
  • place: en route Kluane - Mile 972, Judas Creek Campground, AlCan Highway, Yukon Territory, Canada

first road-trip – day 4

Children visited the Klondike River Boat at Whitehorse. Had some snow before reaching Whitehorse.

Start - 38439 -- Stop - 38637 (Mile 972) -- 198

posted
  • place: Bedford, New York

on the verge

passing through lives and lives and lives. rowing a small boat across endlessly ending time. with days that finalize in the hands of the clock still hanging on every wall, somewhere. days stop when lidded eye shuts: as with child, seen, becomes imagined invisible to others when the eyes close on the self. but days do not end, even as life does not end. yet. life that runs a long and flowing line, continuous, almost everlasting in duration. each creature giving rise to the next in a long flow of be-ing, the continuous expression of life on this planet.

to be the last of of your kind is nothing when held to be the last living thing. but since we have no expansive image of what is life — we cannot measure where it began, nor where, when, it might end — we stumble onward, every day, into every night. later waking in darkness, seeing points of Light shimmering among human-spilled energies, falling back asleep reassured that something else is still there.

morning brings the same difference. and what is it that we have begun?

posted
  • place: Kollafjördur, Iceland

out to sea in ships

Simmi invites Stefan, Loki, and I out for a fast fishing cruise on Kollafjördur on his speedboat. I happen to hook the first cod and pull in a number more. Stefan and I had to stop at ten moderate-sized fish because we only had a little box to put them in. Simmi was bleeding for the whole trip after slicing his thumb open with the fillet knife. we hailed a trawler for some band-aids, turns out he should have had stitches, but it was too late when he finally went to the doctor the next day. the cockpit of the boat looked like a crime scene.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

empyre musings

John von Seggern (on empyre wireless sustainability):

I agree with you, however we shouldn’t confuse the Internet/digital networks in general with the larger techno-social system within which they exist. In point of fact, digital networks perform many tasks much more energy-efficiently than we could do without them (telecommuting vs. actual jet travel for example), so I would expect them to continue to thrive in an energy-constrained future even if many other facets of our society are radically reconfigured.

sotto voce: But in the end, that’s a little like saying how much money I will save by buying a pair of pants at 50% off the regular price. I don’t save anything, I spend money buying the pants.

The Internet as an infrastructure cannot (except theoretically) be excised from the techno-social system that it is embedded within. Energy consumption of that system rises, is rising. Web 2.0 sites brought online huge numbers of energy-consuming server farms which never existed when users did not store social networking data, for example. And the energy usage stats can’t be limited to nation-states, because it’s a global boat we are (apparently) floating in. It’s like saying the US uses far less energy making steel now than it did 50 years ago. What about how much it consumes? And where was the other steel made? The same argument was also used with digital creating “paperless” offices — track paper usage!

Internet helps Americans save more energy every year
sotto voce: Of course, in the process of the engineered evolution of any particular device there will be optimization — that is the goal of engineering. If that wasn’t the case, our system would have never been marginally sustainable from the beginning. Extracting stats on theoretically isolated elements is not valid except for more back-slapping “we’ve done it, we’ve found a way to have and eat our cake”—and it represents no real solution. It is exactly this localized isolation of elements which allows this mentality to persist. Just as with many previous industrial advances where a resource was abundant, any negative affects of the use of that resource was able to be overlooked by the end user who was somehow isolated (usually geographically) from them. That geographic isolation is no longer possible when the effects are global. Think, around the globe, there are no isolated corners to sit anymore.

This is exactly the point that I am making—that unless people realize radical shifts in their/our relationship with the deep and broad techno-social infrastructure, we are not making real reductions in the overall footprint, and it is the size of the cumulative footprint that will spell the difference between sustainability or the alternative which is only dimly making itself known through the fog of naivety. (and believe me, I don’t place myself above the fray, but energy consumption and the reliance on the largely invisible functioning of that globe-spanning infrastructure is a seriously addictive way to go).

posted
  • place: en route Kiel - Lübeck - Berlin, Germany

row your boat

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
If you see a waterfall
Don’t forget to scream

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the river
If you see a polar bear
Don’t forget to shiver

Row, row, row your boat
Gently to the shore
If you see a lion
Don’t forget to roar

Row, row, row your boat
Gently in the bath
If you see a spider
Don’t forget to laugh

Row, row, row your boat
Gently as can be
‘Cause if you’re not careful
You’ll fall into the sea!

Rock, rock, rock your boat
Gently to and fro
If you do it hard enough
Into the water you go

posted
  • place: en route Golden - Steamboat Springs, Colorado

chainless

winter closes in. early. Stef contacts old amiga Mary who encourages me to stop by and stay in their Steamboat condo until the Echo Park road re-opens in Dinosaur. haven’t seen her since 1989 perhaps, she and her husband and kids are based in Laramie, about a two hour drive from Steamboat. the drive from the Front Range to the (north)Western Slope is routine. scrolling landscape behind windshield and tinted windows. but winter seems to have come faster and heavier than is recalled easily. thinking there is some risk to be moving around without chains at this point. chainless.

posted
  • place: en route Durango - Sangre de Christo Mountains, Colorado

reading list

sotto voce:

reading list from the alter ego:

the sky in the morning (re-mix of the previous day, delivered direct to the eyes)

the sky in the early afternoon (especially passages on primitive turbulence of pre-strato-cumulescence)

the sky during later afternoon thunderstorms (the chapter on electromagnetic radiation in wide frequency bands is stimulating)

the sky closing in on sunset (the chapter on red-shift)

the sky 2 hours after sunset (requires adjustments to the eyes from black on white to white on black)

the sky in deep night (the chapter on the Milky Way is most spectacular in a post-Debordian way, as is the anti-spectacle of getting eyes (the corners of) to read nebulae in any detail)

whups, just tripped over my feet, gotta read more of the ground as well, but that’ll have to wait until tomorrow — as I try to remember to stay motionless when doing close readings…

on the west flank of the Sangre de Christos up about 400 feet above the valley edge. parked in a leveled area — a mine dump. debris and slag and a Lazy Boy recliner. altered landscape. pondering the routes that got me here in this moment, and the whole long term of life. how the School of Mines was a turning point, and the great feeling I had when I first drove in between North and South Table mountains into Golden, 30 years ago. what was another turning point? leaving Big Oil? perhaps. certainly led to a long road of different activities, culminating in the move to Iceland. and having a child. way points in life. while some set a course early in life, and never stray from it, making progress in an endless sea is a relative condition. while this life has been more stopping to check way points, and re-setting the heading, bearing, route based on what was discovered at any one point. not having a particular destination. but sometimes feeling as though the boat is sinking. listing, taking on water, swamped. stoved-in, derelict, drifting, rudderless, without compass. but, still moving.

and still the big issue is the desire and idea of getting word committed to paper. in such a way to boost productivity and profile and prospects. an investment of a year. but the deep doubts…

mountain side, of the Blood of Christ’s, changing colors already: high up, and when backing away from the verge, the roots of the mountains, seeing the peaks dusted with night snow.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

John Francis Wester 1958 – 2006

John Wester Learn sorrowfully from the network (from Karen (T.)) of another passing. John Wester was a great friend from junior and senior high days. we maintained contact after the college diaspora and when we were both living in Los Angeles after college (he doing his law degree, me finishing my tenure with corporate oil) and later through email, thinking that at one point we would cross paths. an obituary is a terse framework that little shows the life, only the social situation. I’ll add some words and, if I can find some, photos soon. Karen calls — the first time we have spoken in, what, maybe 30 years? nah, a few less than that. it is strange and nice to hear a voice that slowly stirs older memories — of those humid summer days down at the North Shore dock of what was a not very large lake in one of the first planned communities of the 1970’s, Montgomery Village. I would cycle down Brink Road from home to the Village on occasional summer days before a drivers license made more of the world available. At the dock, John, Richard, Taryn, Karen, Mark, Gary, Bruce, Sharon, and others would hang out — some of them working (boat rentals), some like myself, just hunting for summer friendship. more “John Francis Wester 1958 – 2006”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Jón Gudjónsson

Jon, Eyjafjördur, Iceland, June ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.
Jon, Eyjafjördur, Iceland, June ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.

Loki’s grandfather, Jón Gudjónsson, passed away this past night in his sleep, at the nursing home in Reykjavík. My former father-in-law. This, an image of him from 1993 when he still had a fishing boat and would put out in summer from Hrísey sometimes for a day or more, fishing for cod. I was fortunate to accompany him on several occasions, running the hook lines, piloting the boat back to harbor while he cut hundreds of filets. He had a seaman’s eyes, Light blue with a far-seeing squint. He navigated simply by watching the water and any nearby landmarks. Whenever standing onshore, he rocked from side to side, feeling the sea after 50 years of fishing. While the word jolly is overused for Santa Claus, it would apply to Jón, with a boisterous and quick laugh, no mistaking when he entered a room. He was an expert making landi, the garage-made Icelandic hooch with a kick. He brewed it to 95% alcohol and then watered it down a bit for mere humans to consume. Pure, potent, no hangover. And hárfisk (dried filets) which he supplied the whole family — he had a whole production facility in the back of the tar-paper cabin on the island — along with a noisy fan assembly to speed the drying. He was the master of repairing things with whatever was available in the moment. Enough to get through the next winter. I considered him to be one of my few connections to ‘authentic’ Icelandic traditions. Growing up in the times when famine was not far away, moving to the big city during the WWII boom, and then capitalizing on the purely Icelandic boom brought on by the international law increasing national coastal (fishing) control to 200 miles. He owned and captained a large trawler for some years. He could cat-nap anywhere at any time, even after several cups of jet-fuel black coffee. On the sea, he admitted to me once that he had conversations with the seagulls. He kept a weather log book which he would make regular entries in the most beautiful handwriting, with big tough hands that never saw gloves ever when gutting fish for hours in freezing temperatures.

I remember one late spring, accompanying him north to prepare the Arnarberg 101 (his boat) for the summer — scraping and painting, fixing the engine and autopilot, and other tasks. First thing, however, on arriving by ferry to Hrísey was to make the rounds, visiting the locals, he knew everybody. house after house of coffee, cakes, pancakes, and landi. Oh my gosh, my stomach was trashed after several hours of that. When no one else was around, he would mostly speak English, but when there was a family gathering he would imperiously demand that everyone use Icelandic with me.

He will be missed by all who knew him.

posted
  • place: The Mission, San Francisco, California

places, sounds, words

portrait, Sirpa, Mission 17 Gallery, San Francisco, California, June 2005

make a blitz into downtown to meet Sirpa and check out her exhibition in the Mission. we met nearby at her friend Alice’s home and drive down to the gallery, the Mission 17 Gallery. parking is a hassle, with my boat-length pick-up. not used to driving it in compact urban settings. walk down Mission, thinking that this setting is almost identical to Brixton in London when I was there with Pete. urban complexity, noise, confusing information flows, mixed cultural impulses, chaotic surface intersections and orientations.
more “places, sounds, words”

posted
  • place: Hrísey, Iceland

Arnarberg

really hard to imagine what this place is. how it fits into world systems. how it is to live here. week after week, year after year. fishing. Simmi has kept up the Arnarberg, Jón’s old boat, in a deal with a mechanic on the island, they split the use and maintenance of the boat. Simmi has also built a small harfiskur ‘factory’ shed where he can prep fish caught on the Arnarberg for filleting and drying to make the delicious fish jerky. the boat is out of the water now for the winter, which has definitely arrived.

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: Trondheim, Norway

the bridge

pedestrian bridge over the Niderelva. can’t seem to find out the actual name of the bridge* via searching on the internet. could go outside and walk over to it, there’s a big sign, but that’s too easy. it’s a beautiful structure with the nearer half on tracks that allow it to retract and open for small ships that occasionally moor up the river.

* Trine later sends me a possible name — Verftsbrua, related to the word ‘wharf,’ or place for building boats.

posted
  • place: Akureyri, Iceland

Vilhelm Thorsteinsson

big news for the day is the arrival of the Vilhelm Thorsteinsson, the slogan “ICE FRESH” emblazoned in 3-meter high white letters on the hull, back to harbor after 100 days fishing near Svalbard. the boat, one of 11 owned by the Samherji cooperative based here in Akureyri has taken 7900 tons of herring, amounting to ten percent of the total quota for that particular region of the North Atlantic. The region, the Svalbard Zone, is known for both its rich fishing possibilities, and for the contentiousness of the regional bickering over who controls the fishing rights. The Icelandic government has recently supported the rights of their fishermen to resist the efforts of the Norwegian Coastguard that interfere with their fishing activities. Today, a day after steaming heavily with a high waterline into the fjord, the bulbous bow is sitting half-exposed. the herring that once sat chilled on ice in the hold is now off-loaded and beginning to make its way into the local and national economy. a cash-cow on the water. understandably, the Mayor of Akureyri, Kristjan Thor Juliusson, met the two Captains, Arngrimur Brynjolfsson and Gudmundur Jonsson with a large decorated cake.

posted
  • place: Fort Myers, Florida

continued dental misery

Back from another dentist’s office. more work, some drugs, this time, to curb an infection. making the perhaps chronic instability of the immune system, due to sugar consumption, an important object of scrutiny. made it to hot and humid Florida yesterday afternoon, and collapsed, exhausted in the hotel near Aunt Mary’s flat in the Shell Point retirement complex. the week in New Jersey seemed to blaze by, mostly because of the cotton-headed-ness of my senses on simple 2×200 milligrams of ibuprofen daily. remarkably over-sensitive to even basic pain-killers and anti-inflammatories like that. seems to affect my whole being. but, lumbering around, trying to avoid the mosquitoes and the rain, making the system-jarring transitions from outside to inside environments. that’s the hardest. small air-conditioned interior spaces at maybe 22C, forty percent humidity, and exteriors at 35C and ninety-five percent humidity. the body reels from switching on and off of body temperature-regulation mechanisms. sweating to chill, skin clammy with condensing water immediately on exiting to open air. stays cool for a few moments, then the real heat takes over and the body withers. I’d much rather be in the heat all the time and acclimate to the ambient environment. but in this age, humans make the re-engineering of the world the paramount aim. to conform it to a narrow band of temperate, un-threatening, and benign artificial living situations. not recognizing that this makes the species soft, vulnerable, and ultimately unable to deal with the real environment. it makes, among other class structures, a split society — those who function mainly outdoors, and those who stay primarily indoors in a steady climate regime. this class structure is often delineated along education and class lines, but can be crossed by yacht-owners, boat-racers, and hotel maids.

Floridada. as Paul named it. thin sliver of earth between swamp and sea, tangled vegetation, voracious insects, carnivorous reptiles, strip malls, developers, and snow birds. not to mention the German tourists — signs in German signify that, though the real bodies are not much in evidence, at least I haven’t heard them around. prolly too bloody hot for ’em.

go swimming and listen and look.

posted
  • place: Tallinn, Estonia

back & forth

En route to Tallinn.

Last time here was with Stefan in 2000, the fall, meeting Ivika. I guess I was teaching at the Academy in the fall of that year as well.

Super sea cat, Italian boat, like a huge speed boat. Stupid interview in bad English on Finnish raydeeoh. No translation. The Cranes. The deejay is pointless.

This way of blogging is pretty lame.

Like writing in the notebook.

The hydraulic properties of water are very much felt with the cleaving of the water by the ship, it hits the waves, and there are sharp shocks. Sky-sea interface, back to the infinite half space concept. Sailing between two infinite half spaces. On one, through another. Heavy traffic here in the Baltic. Cats, freighters, ferries, tankers, roro’s, containers.

Ivika meets me in the terminal with blond hair. Looking very different than the last time when Stefan and I popped over from Helsinki for a day visit back in 2000. It’s brisk out. We walk from the harbor to Mare’s flat in the Old Town, in a 13th century building. 51 Pikk Street. Beautiful space with a sauna even. The city has rapidly changed from the dour shabby outlook of Soviet times to the slick consumer surface of globalism. And is still transforming. Watched by the glazed and red eyes of the drunken Finnish tourists. And somewhere, by invisible rich business-men between their buying and developing spells.

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

the lost films

have the chance to catch The Lost Films that Stan Brakhage made in 1995. so in-spiring to receive these energies of his life. after he has passed away last spring. an honor to have been taught by him. even when he would sometimes leave the room when screening a film, and forget to turn off his wireless microphone on the way to the drinking fountain or the bathroom, or in an encounter with a colleague in the hallway. when I was doing my MFA back in the late 80’s and again when I was a visiting faculty in the fall of 1997, my office was next door to his 3×6-meter cubby-sized office with a sloping roof on the upstairs hallway where the photography grad students had their darkrooms. it was in that little office where many of his hand-painted films came together, on a glass-topped desk. with the pigments standing ready. how did he conceive, map, from working tediously frame-by-frame with a loupe, the projected brilliance of 24 fps? astonishing crystal clear will-to-see, and to apprehend the world as-it-is, and as we adsorb it through wide-spectrum eyes, corners of eyes, through eyelids, blurred tears, and squinted eyelashes. Light-receivers, life-receivers. and how he conjured humor to arise from chaotic abstraction, magmatic? no, more like a tremoring breeze through new aspen leaves. the coursing of wind mingled with the temporal deflections, resistances of leaf. and the leaf laughs. “it’s the same.” as Lightnin’ Hopkins says, “if you cain’t say it, then … SING boy!”

notes for The Lost Films:

1) A travelogue “nocturne” on the City of London as illuminated by “glaze” finally off the surfaces of Turner’s paintings.

2) A travelog to the north of Finland, shepherded by the midnight sun.

3) A hand-painted work, a “midsummer’s night dream,” still reflective of the previous summer in Finland.

4) A multiply pastel-toned balloon of optical fog triumphing over the barest hints of photographic representation in the lower right-hand corner.

5) A mountain meditation primarily in blue “mountains” of the mind shaped by amorphous dull yellows and faded violets.

6) A hand-painted film, some of the same colors of the previous films moving through sandbars and oceans of thoughtful recollection.

7) This is the eternally ephemeral process of attempts to remember imagery “giving-way”/ being-displaced-by the contemporaneously practical sighting of what confronts any given viewer at every shift of open eyes (or, as in the film, at every shift of camera, optical focus and montage of edit) — the skeins of the Atlantic, the particularities of Boston night Lights, and illuminated points West, ending on a garbage truck in a parking lot by the deserts of New Mexico.

8) A dark “sea chante” of absolute photography.

9) The color negative of “truth” — that is to say it is the whole truth (insofar as hand-painted film might aspire to achieve it) and a counterbalance epiphany to any such “truth” as might be put in quotes.

— Stan Brakhage

Once, I think it was in 1997, Stan and I were talking about his trip to Finland for the retrospective at a small film festival, he was telling me of a peak experience he had while in a rowboat coming from an island in a lake after a sauna. the Light. he broke down and cried from the seeing.

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

the next solar cycle

spent much of yesterday online, remote. talking with the https://archive.reboot.fm crew during their collaborative re-streaming project from Berlin. Thomax from the old orang.orang radiostadt project was there as irc host, and many net-amigos dropped in during the course of the 12-hour stream. by day’s end. though, I was wondering about the effect of a full day online, again. the price you pay’s a very general and deep issue regarding technological implementations, technological consumptions, technological deployments anywhere, anytime, anyhow. the cost (in life-time and life-energy) that is extracted from the individual and collective psyche is always there, this is a principle. as soon as one begins to make a re-configuring of the natural conditions of flow, that re-configuration itself, because at least part of it is contrary to the flow, costs in that the self has to expend internal energies, or, to get Others to do the same. huge discussion to try to launch into here, now. part of that greater schema that I have been promoting on a granular lever in teaching.

more “the next solar cycle”
posted
  • place: en route Kiel - Lübeck, Germany - Copenhagen, Denmark

can’t recall

moving along. with a short stop/lunch with folks at the Computer Science / Media Department of the University of Lübeck who will be involved in the establishment of the International School of New Media that Hubertus has been working on in the last couple years. they will move into a nice new location, the Media Docks, immediately adjacent from the old town. more of the old Hanseatic traditions. so it goes.

heading for Copenhagen via the boat at Puttgarten.

there is no voice that can speak life. but to get into a dance with the Void. I have not changed. at all. no evolution, no learning. only going. parsing input data, but it is routed to the same boxes. as ever. no cross-over networks, re-routed neurons. learning systems. knee-jerking. hard-wired. why no escape?

smoke rising from farm fires in the Danish countryside. and in my gaze there is a reach into the terrain’s history. looking for mounds, barrows, and the “holm gards”: reading the “Heimskringla” epic of the Age of Vikings on my PalmPilot. simulation.

have to write to Marcel to see if he remembers what I said about networks in Zurich — at some point I made a short statement, and in the moment, thought it was very apropos, especially when I observed that everyone in the entire room paused to write it down. but I have since forgotten what it was! “a network is…” or “a network isn’t…” gees.

posted
  • place: Fort Myers, Florida

Shell Point

Shell Point retirement community. a TOTALLY different reality from that of the rest of the world. and watching Daniel Boone as an Admiral in the English fleet fighting the French. Europe in action. in the middle of this place. a boat tour around the mangrove swamps surrounding the place reveals a small nugget of information about the Indians who believed that there were three spirits in the world: the spirit in the sun, in the eye, and in the reflection in water. while mansions and yachts abound. the reflection in the ego mirror instead.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

not to mention a full-on remix that I made at some point:

Our age is simulation. It builds on the protocols of the fathers. It modifies codes, programs, and interfaces. Generations before beheld the Other face to face; we, through their surveillance monitors. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the network? Why should we not have a stream and dialogue of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the remix of theirs? As we are carried for a time in this sensual presence, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the energy they supply, to action, why should we search among the overwritten drives of the past or put the living generation into a simulation of its simulations? The sun shines to day also. There are new nodes, new humans, new thoughts. Let us demand our own networks and paths and protocols.

posted
  • place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Tallinn, Estonia

Technicolor yawns

back in Estonia after a rough catamaran ride across the Baltic. in the open sea, waves were cresting 3-4 meters. not being a seafaring-type-dude, this was a bit intense. most people in the boat were “yawning in Technicolor” as it were … the stewardesses handing out plastic bags constantly. didn’t upset my stomach, but it was disorienting and even caused an occasional white-knuckle grab of the armrests when cresting a wave and going for the trough. the swells were almost broadsides, and although it seemed that the ship had an effective stabilization system, there were a few moments where I was wondering how cold the water was if the need to swim suddenly arose. meet Ivika at the Academy lobby, along with Shawn, a Canadian electro-acoustic musician and Polar Circuiter. the Media Lab here is still undergoing construction, but appears to be a viable organism. my lecture for this evening starts at 1600.

done with one group contact here. the usual eclectic array of intelligent, sentient beings.

posted
  • place: Tallinn, Estonia

across the Baltic

Stef and I take a quiet trip across the Baltic to Tallinn. I wanted to scope the place out before I return next week and teach at the Estonian Academy of Arts Media Lab, and it was nice just to check the place out. the quick transfer last spring between boat and bus on the way to/from Riga didn’t give any impressions. we wandered around the old city, obviously tourists, had a terrible lunch. then met up with Ivika, Mare’s assistant at the Lab who graciously showed us around to a nice cafe and then to a couple art exhibitions and an opening. the culinary side of things definitely ended up on the positive side when we discovered a fabulous Russian restaurant — okay, in the tourist guide, but, still, the food was great. back to Helsinki by catamaran. another long and exhausting day.

posted
  • place: en route Reykjavík, Iceland - Stockholm, Sweden - Turku - Helsinki, Finland

gravitatus

on board the MS Gabriella, just left Stockholm, imagining that there will be an open window of time while en route. plane flight from Iceland, the usual 0415 wake-up to catch the 0730 flight, east to Europe. waking and sleeping are the same state. car, bus, plane, bus, bus, boat, taxi. will be the cumulative way. and little thought. except for the cycling of separation from Loki. my boy. we decided at bed time last night that I should wake him for a hug and kiss before I went out the door this morning. after exactly three months together all the time, traveling so many kilometers, now yet again, leaving. no less easy than five years ago when I did it the first time.

wandering around. Stockholm, the airport, the bus terminal, the ship, here, there.

using the model of energy — life energies, quantum energy fields, chi — life looks different, but still the gap of praxis is massive. like there is a chance there, a minuscule crack in a plate-metal covering. for the Lightness to slip through. for meaning to replace the vacuum of materiality. (how can this be? that I conclude material presence is a vacuum? presence is an absence? what is absence? maybe impression, the leftovers of presence are the traces of the energy that has been transmitted to the surroundings (to the Other) in the time of presence. take care of the conditions of presence, or else absence can be devastating. we all spend all life in both conditions simultaneously. (boat listing rhythmically, we are in the open Baltic, though it is only as deep maybe as the ship is long. a sea, no ocean. it would be different sailing over the Marianas Trench, it would feel different. like on my second visit to Iceland. Stefan’s family has a summerhouse in one of the most revered national locations in all Iceland, Thingvellir. it is the location of the original outdoor parliament site, literally astride the mid-Atlantic Ridge in an area that technically is a classic spreading center — a fault-graben structure characterized by long north-by-northeast-south-by-southwest trending faults, frequent seismic and volcanic activity, and constant subsidence. we go out there on a short weekend trip in late summer. there is a rowboat that we take out on the enormous spring-fed lake. for the only time I ever go fresh-water fishing in Iceland, the first cast and there is an enormous hit on the line, and I bring in a very large lake trout. a farmer on the shore is watching us suspiciously. the slow sun-going makes the lake pass through millions of form and color permutations. we drift. Stef then says he has to show me something and begins rowing north along the coast past the summer house. there are some small linear islands a meter or two across and maybe 20 long. he rows between two of them. there is the sensation not of sinking, but of being drawn downward, body amorphous, without a center of gravity. the water which is absolutely clear, even with the bottom 10 meters down, turns black, there is no bottom.

posted
  • place: en route Reykjavík, Iceland - Old Greenwich, Connecticut

temporal remains

flash fire, morose carving up of temporal remains. moving and moving. Helsinki for some hours on Saturday, enough to have breakfast at Fazer with Sanna, then drop by Tapio’s place to leave some material offal. then back to the airport to head to Copenhagen, landing a kilometer from the Oresund Bridge that threatens to bind Denmark and southern Sweden in (un)holy matrimony. faced the sad fact of the total sum of money that I have spent carting around about 3 cubic meters of belongings since 1989. first from Colorado to the East Coast, then by boat to Iceland, then, five years later, shipping it back to NYC with almost the same stuff, putting it in storage in Newton, New Jersey for five years (at U$D40/month), and now, finally (?!?) driving it all back to Prescott, Arizona to reposition it there to cook in the desert heat. basically don’t even know what is in the boxes, but with the sum total of the money invested in it, damn well ought to be valuable! but likely not. just stuff. weight, mass, to be acted upon by gravity and the entropic effects of time. the storage unit in Jersey is marginally exposed to rain water, and combined with the humid and hot summer climate, I have the feeling that everything is at least partly consumed with some form of microbial critter. decay, rotting stink.

but anyway, Loki and I take a visit to the cockpit of the B757-200 for some time. wow! the pilot is quite friendly for my moderately intelligent questions. the view is intense, a strange feeling of vertigo, but not vertigo, realizing that to be in the front of the plane has something to do with whether the thing will stay up in the air. feeling the power of the outsides, as we sail over Goose Bay. ain’t see no geese up here! Light snow on the ground, in patches, but nothing serious, it’s warm in Gander. 20C the pilot says. while NYC is only about 13C. stormy on the whole East Coast, I am hoping this doesn’t mean anything serious about the landing situation.

posted
  • place: en route Keflavik, Iceland - Copenhagen, Denmark - Kiel, Germany

(x, y, z)

airports and early mornings. not much sleep. a dream where Bill showed up. we were staying on some kind of boat. but meanings are hard to recover from the falling impressions of being at this early hour. no prognostications. called Nancy last night for the first time since I can remember. she put her back out last week also, the day before I did mine. strange. hereditary problem with the lower back structure. so it will be hard to take care of. back trouble. what about front trouble? or side trouble. top trouble, bottom trouble. so it goes. Cartesian problems. using the standard notation of (x,y,z) data sets. without the complications of matrix convolutions.

And though I have no telepathy with my visitors, after they have spoken, I have the power to recall their voices, to become the speakers. And I do this so that I might listen for the hidden music — a very difficult task, since the instrument of these voices is plucked only on the thin strings of words — but I listen very closely to the voices, straining to hear in them the song of the ethos, so I may know. — Desi speaking, quoted by Kit Reed

Christian picks me up at the airport, on the way home from helping Frank and his wife move in to a new flat in Hamburg.

posted
  • place: Akureyri, Iceland

Varsha’s dreams

again, heavy weather causes changes in plans — one that keeps me around Loki longer than I expect. despite the slight stress that change makes, I am happy that this happens. no planes taking off yesterday or today, so Loki is stranded with me for at least an extra day. across at the pizza place, a man is vomiting loudly in the bathroom in the early evening while I call the airlines about the flight situation. swimming for a short time. the wind. like yesterday, is intense. this jewel arrives from Varsha by email from half-way around the globe, Bangkok:

A long drive into the hills beyond Kanchanaburi and we unexpectedly arrive as evening falls to a destination on the river Kwai, from where we complete the rest of our journey by long-tail boat deep into the jungle. We are to stay in a raft-house on the river surrounded by sounds of lush nature unbroken by electricity and all the noise created by it. As the sun drops behind the hills, darkness descends quickly and the few boats go silent, unable to ply dark waters in safety. By now the temperature has dropped considerably with an unusual cold spell that we are experiencing.
more “Varsha’s dreams”

posted
  • place: Trondheim, Norway

Dora I

morning, Jane makes a breakfast for the first year students. social contexts and interactions. the day is spent in individual discussions with a few students. A cycle ride around town in the late afternoon takes me by happenstance first to St. Olav’s cathedral and then on to Dora I and Dora II — more monuments to the War. German u-boat slips. massive, massive structures with a gravitational force far beyond the same volume of the densest basalt. bunkers hidden in ornamental bushes overlooking the slips, and steel doors leading underground into every hill. two cylindrical towers with steep conical tops. heavy reinforced concrete. relics. on the North Sea. monuments that will last for the future of human existence as we know it. is Germany building, driving another Fortress Europe? nah, not yet. I cannot comment on this stuff anyway.

posted
  • place: en route Selkä-Sarvi - Kemi - Helsinki, Finland

winter is here

Eero wakes us up early, as agreed if the storm is getting serious, the wind velocity threatens to rise to 20 meters/second or more (75 km/hour), and the boat is not safe for much over ten at all. we quickly gather our things, prepare the boat, and with a definite level of tension, head out towards the mainland. the ocean is extremely choppy, with wave-sets coming from several directions at once. the proliferation of islands and skerries seems to cause very complex wind and sea dynamics. Eero says that we will go back to the island if it gets too bad. it is cold. the sea is gray under the low clouds. we finally arrive after a rough ride of 40 minutes. Jussi, the keeper of the maritime station motions us through the window of the tower to come have coffee with him. I end up doing a portrait of him in the tower.

portrait, Jussi, Harbor Master, Kemin satama, Lapin lääni, Finland, October 1998

he is a sea-faring man, it is clear to me. he has the eyes of a sailor, eyes that are clear and that are focused on the horizon. he shows us that the wind speed indicator is showing only around 7.5 meters/second at the moment. we are lucky. while we are in the tower, it begins to snow. the first snow of the season. winter is here. no turning back. we say goodbye to Jussi and then to Eero, and drive towards Kemi, stopping in the forest by the sea to get a shot of the snow which Sanna has been waiting for. end up sitting talking for five or six hours, we haven’t anywhere to go, and it is comfortable and warm in the car.

finally, in the early evening, we drive into Kemi and sit in a pizza place for some dinner before Sanna drops me off at the train. when we leave the pizza place, it is snowing hard. I board the train, secure a bunk, and Sanna drives off to Tornio to do her editing.

posted
  • place: Selkä-Sarvi, Finland

wood-fired sauna

before the sauna, Selkä-Sarvi, Finland, October 1998

Sanna goes on to Tornio to pick up the video camera and the car, while I hang out at the Kemi library and read magazines. we did not have a good night. I never sleep well on the train, though I prefer to take the night train to or from the north — the day train is paralyzingly boring and tedious. I end up in the bar on the train writing manically through much of the night, and finally crawling back into bed, exhausted.

I recall Riikka’s dream from Grenada. How the aliens abducted her and flew her out to a place in the desert (recalling the outlines of the mountains). And then began to tell/show her about the rods embedded in the earth there. Sticking a meters out of the ground, they were semi-metallic – (semi-conductors) – that went several kilometers deep into the earth. Through the natural high-intensity of the earth’s magnetic fields there … and so on … Electromagnetism.

While I lie here almost naked in a small moving room on a train, the Santa Claus Express. I should be screaming with laughter. Train #69, The Santa Claus Express. Heading north. A woman-girl fast asleep in the other narrow bunk. She sleeps, and my hair still falls out along with the dandruff.

Gotta piss. Maybe head for the bar. Do so.

Here, I’m from a different planet. Fuckin’ heading north to the fuckin’ unknown. Coasting into the fuckin’ winter of my life on the Santa Claus Express. Sober (a shot of Tequila?). Hardly moving. Hanging at the bar. The train has stopped, but nobody has noticed. (Has somebody pulled the brakes?) No fuckin’ way. So it goes. The Others sharing the space here continue to paw their way through life. Unable to sleep, I come here. Just to write as I have so many times before. These thin contrasty lines that keep only part of the self alive.

Approaching a station. Jarkkala or so, couldn’t understand the announcement, an automated woman in Finnish, Swedish, and English. She tells us where we are. The train moving slow. The moving only a shaking back and forth. Nothing else. Blackness outside. Black clothes on. Suddenly I think we have changed direction. While the drunken Finnish fellows sing English (Amurikan) songs. (We have come to Parkano, or somewhere). Another place name. In between coming and going. (I am lost again!) The fellows get louder and louder. And it all goes on (hyvää, hyvää, one says, trying to break in and tell something. joka paiva ja joka ikinen yo.) Military guys, well, still wearing fatigues. hair stringy and dirty. sticking straight out around the neck like the bearers slept with head dropped straight back, slack-jawed, mouth wide-open gulping air like a gaffed cod. eyes glazed under crusted lids. (Can I remember another life, other from this one, here, now?) doubtful. Buried in the detritus of present saturated busy-ness. The boys singing “rollin’ on the river.” And counter voices lifting up — so all conversation eventually stops, is subsumed: they either sing or sit in drunken silence.

I wobble back to that small moving room and squeeze into her bunk. There’s no room. She sleeps. and I think about sleep and movement, and what comes at the last stop. Kemi finds me still awake and wired at high latitudes.

she picks me up from the library and we head to the harbor at Aljo, where we meet Eero, the ship captain and park ranger who will take us to the islands for the night. the boat is a ten-ton speed-boat used for patrolling the area of the national park and conducting research. I study the charts and instruments carefully. We visit two islands first, Sanna making several shots. The main reason she wanted to come and shoot was to capture some scenes of bad weather for her video, which was shot so far under mostly ideal weather circumstances. This is the last weekend Eero will have the boat in the water until next year. The sea here, not being very saline, with the temperatures in winter well below zero degrees Centigrade, freezes with up to a meter of ice. The islands are accessible by ski and snow-mobile by Christmas, although people seldom visit them. As we sprawl intertwined in the sauna, we are talking about how the entire scene is a perfect script. Our long running conversation of the day which has traversed so many levels of emotion and situation; the abrupt shifts of sensuality and language whenever Eero enters the scene; the powerful physical setting; the drama of the weather which eventually threatens to strand us on the island for an indefinite period, the traditional wood-fired sauna — something which is always special to me, as well as to every Finn, and so on. bodies steaming in the night airs.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

dragging

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.

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

rafting

another quiet run of the Pumphouse – Radium section of the river. with the one raft and the three kayaks, people are trading off, although I stay in the raft, in the guides chair for half the day, Rick taking care to keep the kids in the boat and happy. Loki especially enjoys the short sections of easy white-water. the WAVES, Pabby, they are so BIG! he exclaims more than once. the SUN is intense, and by the end of the day, back in Golden, I feel totally fried.

posted
  • place: en route Copenhagen, Denmark - Stockholm, Sweden - Turku, Finland

snow

There is snow. Hard pellets strike the flank of the X2000 train racing on slick steel ribbons across the land. NORTH NORTH NORTH. No chances now of spring in the near future. Almost horizontal, this wet frozen water. Snow on the ground. No chance. At all. And yet another 30 hours further north to go. This last stretch to Lapland will be bus, hydrofoil, train, bus, boat, train, train, bus. Past an unfrozen lake. Is this reason to Hope? Can it be read as a reviving, slipping from the dead to the green of living? Having been there before, alive, once, recently, and now moving negatively into backward time. Where trees are shorter. Flat Light, no snow now, land looking dried out and dusty, air Light blue, nascent pale. Birch trees cluster and cross trunks at low angles. Moving very fast at this second, and hours later, bus, and now the boat, I discover that one of the bars has Guinness. Good. I sit for one, joined at the table by the window by an elderly Finnish man who has two pins on his lapel, one with a silhouette of Kekkonen, the former Finnish president, and the other appearing to be an oak leaf cluster. I stare out of the window and REFLECT. It hits me, that the form of our imaginations at the moment we reflect are parallel to the universe of meaning and intention around us. As I am absorbed, watching out the window, watching the world, mediated by glass, my thoughts are fluid and in motion just as the scene playing by the window, rocky islands, wooden houses — we never have an open window, do we? Always our sensuality is mediated. Can we move through this condition in this presence? Or is it against the Spirit of the presence? Should I (in dreams) explore my presence? Does the mediation actually give us a small possibility, a small distance on the world that we can step back and SEE what we are (in Spirit) and … A call comes on the loudspeaker in the room in five languages if there is a Doctor on board, please contact the bursar’s desk as soon as possible…

posted
  • place: en route Köln - Kiel, Germany

northward again

Moving again. North, away from spring. Fragments of the world do not add up to anything that is expressible. Tractors in the fields. Greening. The greening of the world is not fragmentary, but is pure (I want new words and ways of moving them to the page). Tired of the same places, I guess, but the same friends bring a special closure to all movements, the small circles that can be memorized, closed, and stored away for next retrieval. Kiel is not so large, and it is easy to find the Muthesius Hochschule where I meet Hubertus in the late afternoon. The flat where I will stay for the duration of the workshop is in a special building of the Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel. It overlooks the harbor. Here I am , another seafaring situation, on the main harbor, and not far away, the Nordsee-Ostsee Kanal. Here is another history of the War, the U-boat, untersee boot. A large cruise ship moves by the window, heading for Gotebourg. A few people are clustered on the top decks while Irish farmers protest cuts in beef production and silent pictures from a tornado in Minnesota play on the feed line into the room. Suspended dis-animation, curious. Palestinians chant and throw stones on the West Bank. Israeli soldiers shoot them. When does this end? Is this only ignorance to think that these things can be overcome? Teevee.

We go to dinner, all the while discussing the critical issues of being. Hubertus started here two years ago as Director of the FORUM, an interdisciplinary program of lectures and workshops that runs parallel to the regular study program in Design, Fine Arts and so on. Something of a unique program where he is given almost complete autonomy to bring people in — the students don’t realize the luxury and possibility, especially given Hubertus’ massive personal and professional network and his own significant professional output. Paying for dinner, his credit card is rejected apparently because of a problem with the dates on the local dial-up machine and the central computer — it seems the central computer had not yet had its clock adjusted for DayLight Savings which went into effect last Sunday at 0200. Is this a foreshadowing of the Millineum Bug? It is easy to be pessimistic about all this. Technophobia aside, human nature fore-fronted; it is fallible, grotesquely so, not much thought needed to figure that. Has the world ever been in mass chaos? Perhaps in the Plague times, although that was very much a process with a discrete temporal vector pre-determined by a combination of transport speeds of the time and the latency period of the Plague itself. Now, given the immediacy of computing, and despite the fact that computer networks are not everywhere on the globe, they do control aspects of life that touch almost every human being through an instantaneous Butterfly Effect. If, for example, anything in the chain of production of wealth is disrupted, the entire chain reels from the effect … What is the minimum percentage needed to affect the whole chain? How sensitive is modernity? (Can we look at Yugoslavia as an example, or Somalia, Japan, elsewhere?) Is it a card house?

posted
  • place: Port Annapolis Marina, Maryland

Paradise Yacht

Sitting in a 40-foot converted trawler in the marina across the Severn River from Annapolis and the US Naval Academy. Today I take Magga and Loki to Baltimore-Washington International Airport for their flight home. The schedule was a bit skewed because Magga had read her ticket wrong (Icelandair screwed-up again…) and they ended up flying out a day later than she had planned. We left Kathy’s place on Friday morning to head to the Baltimore Aquarium for the afternoon when she called to confirm her seats, she found out her ticket was for the following day. Earlier I had called up Mary Anne, Gary’s sister who runs a yachting service with her husband, Jeff. Since I was going to be in the Annapolis/Baltimore area for the weekend, I thought a visit to their place would be fun — and so, we ended up staying on board one of their boats last night and I will stay here for two more nights until I fly up to NYC on the 18th. Loki is on the plane at this moment. Leave-taking. Separation. I move through the material world as one in a mist, where sensual interaction is as though experienced through heavy filtration, heavy interference. It is cold. Winter is definitely here. Even saw a bit of snow last Tuesday morning up in Pennsylvania. But the seasons are only a backdrop, a set for the endless movements that have succeeded each other in the past years.

posted
  • place: Mclean, Virginia

back years

Loki and I drive back to Kathy’s place around noon today. On the way we stop again at the house where I grew up and took a hike into the woods behind it to see what was happening there. Developers, those fiends who would wish to see the world paved and marketed, have begun their work in the area, and direct behind our old house is a new development of about 20 houses built in what were open fields and forest. Walking down the steep hill behind the house I was a bit shocked to see the large pond gone and only a creek running down the center of the open space that the pond used to occupy. I had spent hours and days at that pond, fishing (there were a number of large bass, countless sunfish, snakes, and frogs there), sailing model sailboats, skating, and paddling about in our canoe. The pond was formed by an earthen dam erected by farmers perhaps a hundred years previous, maybe more. Either the developers had knocked a hole in the earthen dam or flooding had washed part of it out. There were only a few weeds growing up in the silt which lead me to believe that it had not been empty for more than a year or two… I stood in the middle and stared into the sky above feeling the years wash away. Remembering the times. And watching my own little boy wander around the place, throwing rocks into the creek. I spoke to the sky. Musing. Back up the hill, I took a look at our old back yard and saw that, much to my disgust, the current residents had cut down the 20 fruit trees that my father had labored so much over. They were all highly productive after the initial few years of tending — apples, nectarines, peach, plum, apricot, crab-apple,and pear. The row of Christmas trees which we would plant each year after having them inside for the holidays were now up to 40 feet tall. The Coastal Redwood likewise towered over the house.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

eliminate chaos

Well, after hacking for 28 hours in 36, I am beat now … I was surviving on Rilke on the long (and delayed) flight over from NYC to Helsinki. And I was happy to recall this one favorite from the magnificent collection translated by Stephen Mitchell…

We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke

So it goes, I always say. Marvelous translation, and incredible, the crescendo it reaches, the roiling descriptive power, the shifting focus and awareness. I know this torso. I photographed it in a museum in Kässel some years back, and it figured in the Apocalyptic Dream work as one of the centerpiece icons. Then I stumble on this translation just a few years ago. Shaking. I am staying in one of the oldest reconstructed buildings on Suomenlinna, the old fortress island. It was a quarters for Russian or Swedish officers — which or both I don’t know as I haven’t really examined the history of the place. The entire island is on the short list of World Heritage Sites, and, indeed, it is an incredible place, I’ve seen nothing like it in all my imperial travels … The walls of the building I am in are over a meter thick, and it has huge windows that overlook part of the bastion and the dry dock that is full of old wooden boats. Other windows look out onto the courtyard where there is a monument to one of the Swedish monarchs. There are massive ceramic tile furnaces in each room, standing 12 feet high with gleaming white columns to each side. I have been struggling intensively to make a comeback from the recent removal of my main website from the server I was using in Iceland. I have no idea what happened, but whatever the case, I have to reconstruct my site as best I can very soon … I am getting more and more attention for the breadth and personal outlook of the site, but … Now the whole thing is gone except for this travelog work and some fragments. I only have access to three free Megabytes on this server, so I can’t reconstruct everything on it anyway. I wish I had one cheap/free server somewhere with ten or twenty megs on it … Wait a minute, I am having a deja vu at the moment. Sitting here at 01:22 in the morning, on the island, after two hard days work. Typing these very words. I had a dream about this. Somewhere, sometime ago. The feeling of trying to do things but not being able to eliminate the CHAOS from life. And almost wanting to succumb to it. Well, it isn’t really chaos, it is just the conditions of living itself, nothing that can or should be eliminated from living, for it is life itself. I cannot allow the failure of these machines, of my techniques deter me from a full enjoyment and engagement in life.

Life is what’s happening when you’re busy making other plans … — John Lennon

Funny, poignant? and True! He speaks and sings true things often, in spirit.

posted
  • place: Akureyri, Iceland

burp!

My entries here have become fragmented, aimless, and discontinuous. I am self-conscious about this development. Not really thinking most of the time that anyone is really reading this long, boring text. But occasionally I wonder about the whole concept, why am I doing this? The writing here, for those who know me through correspondance (that word spelled that way always now, in memory of Ray Johnson) know that this writing is stilted, formalized, and rather lifeless compared with live interaction. I never did develop a healthy style, more just have written under a conglomeration of influences from Henry Miller to J-M. G. LeClezio among others, and all that previous knowledge completely corrupted by living in a second language situation for the past seven years now … A day of blustery rain showers in between pulses of brilliant sunshine. The storms roll off the mountains where there are clusters of ragged clouds (Loki calls them cloud hats). They sail quickly across the fjord, leaving gray curtains that slowly break into triple rainbows. The storms here are silent save for the wind and rain. There is no lightning or thunder — both these phenomena are extremely rare in Iceland, although Thor was well known for the loud blows of his magic hammer, Mjolnir. In the six years I lived here, I heard two crashes of thunder and saw possibly one strike of lightning. Today, time is seen linear and spatial in the voluminous skies — every moment there are different displays of Light inter-playing with the greening and white mountains, the cool blue Arctic sky, and the shading masses of condensate that spin tones of Light in all variations. We swim under this play. Enjoying the changes. It probably doesn’t get over 55F. Nothing new. But, despite temperatures which never satisfy the needs of my warm blood, I like being under water in a swimming pool when the sun shines. I teach Loki how to catch this underwater Light in his hands. appended on an email from Joy…

… For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. — excerpt, T.S. Eliot

There is a German cruise liner in the fjord off the pier that has loosed a number of its lifeboats to putter around, apparently letting the passengers fish. The harbor will be host to something like 38 cruise liners during the summer tourist season this year, more than ever before. The tourist board promotes the country more and more each year — I think around 300,000 tourists come now in the three summer months. The absolute number isn’t great, but given the size of the country and the fragility of the environment, well, it seems the main tourist spectacles are becoming run down, worn out.

My mother is just out of the hospital and calls from Arizona. In a rare two-way phone conversation, Loki actually talks to her. Usually he is too shy. She is feeling quite good.

posted
  • place: Hrísey, Iceland

island possibilities

We leave Akureyri for the short drive to Arskogsandur where we take the 19:30 Sævar ferry over to Hrísey. Everything is enveloped in a dense and chilly fog, we can see nothing from the boat nor, once on the island, from the small house we stay in. The house is old, a white-painted tar-paper-over-wood affair with a green corrugated metal roof. It sits a couple yards back from the dirt road to the garbage dump at the far east end of the main village. Behind the main four-square house is an adjoining shed that is Jón’s workshop. Jón is my ex’s father, a retired fisherman. He also has a 1-1/2 ton fishing boat on the island — it’s not yet out in the water this season. He doesn’t use it for commercial fishing anymore, as he sold his quota of fish to take, but he does go out with family visitors to get fish for making into harfiskur, a fish jerky. His wife Helga is getting on in years, fourteen years Jón’s senior, and not well, so he may not get up to the island from their home in Reykjavík at all this summer, probably the first time in 20 years that they have not spent most their summers there in this little house.

On the ferry ride over and the walk to the house, at least ten people inquired as to when he would make it up this summer. Next door is Alda’s concrete house. Alda is 84 and has lived alone in her house for years. Even though we are at 65 degrees 50 minutes north latitude — that’s about 30 km shy of the Arctic Circle — she has a small greenhouse in her front yard (sheltered from the north wind) where she grows the most extraordinary roses I’ve ever seen. In the summer the whole glass house is bursting with blossoms — some are almost a foot across! She’s been having trouble with her feet, and was snowbound for five weeks during this past winter. The people in the village check on her and bring groceries, but it is getting more difficult for her. Still, she cheerily shows off her roses to whomever might happen by and want to see them. I had planned to make the long walk to the north end of the island tonight, the actual solstice evening. But I am too tired after pushing a huge wheelbarrow full of food, clothes, a large color tv, Loki, and a barbecue from the dock to the house to do so. It will have to wait until tomorrow. Later, friends, Hoffí and Kristín join us from Reykjavík for the weekend. So, instead of a walk, I mix some bad screwdrivers with some bad vodka and we watch a bad film on a bad tv — of all possible things to do on a small island in the Arctic Circle on the summer solstice …

posted
  • place: en route Stockholm, Sweden - Copenhagen, Denmark

fast trains

Already I am back on the X2000 train heading for Malmö. The boat docked around 0830 this morning and I made a race across town via the Metro to the Central Station. I didn’t want to miss this one, as it would affect whether or not I would be able to buy Björn a beer this afternoon in Copenhagen. The X2000 service is among the best in Europe, as far as I have experienced of high-speed trains on this and other trips. I always enjoyed the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) in France, but I never got to ride them First Class, so I don’t know about the service. Anyone traveling in Europe with a 1st class Eurail pass should be sure to look for these trains and try the ride. (Look for ICE trains in Germany, TGV and EuroStar in France, Belgium, and London, and X2000 in Sweden — I think Spain and Italy have inaugurated their versions, but I have no experience with them.) On the X2000 they serve excellent meals and there are free headphones and friendly personnel. I found the only flaw was the constant beeping and ringing of mobile telephone calls in a car half-full of Swedish corporate managers. Such is life.

Today the weather is better, and here in Sweden the trees are almost completely sprung. more “fast trains”

posted
  • place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Stockholm, Sweden

exile

Up early again. Sunshine. 0930 ferry into town, packed everything last night, so took my backpack over to the Silja terminal and left it there in a locker, then went direct over to Muu to get one more fix of fast digital life for the time being. I meet Tapio at Café Fazer, off the Esplanade. This week he is attending a conference put on by the American Studies Department of the University of Helsinki concerning a critique of media and culture. The prospectus looks, well, typically academic, and it is certain that they have good funding given the number of American … academics … giving papers. We have a long conversation about some of the issues that concern us both. At the moment the boat is slowly pirouetting away from the dock and heading past Suomenlinna to the open Baltic. more “exile”

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

digital working

Saturday morning, I get up earlier, as there are a thousand things to be doing, the problem is that there are so many people to visit, that if I do that continuously until I leave, then I get no additional work done — which may be the case anyways since I am still having software problems (Deck II and SoundDesigner deauthorize whenever the machine is shut down — a huge problem, considering that there are only a total of three authorizations possible, faugh!…) It’s always something. And I need to make my reservations on the Silja boat to Stockholm, shop for food, get something for Loki, on and on. I do not understand how it is to produce work anymore. Time has been so fragmented and broken in this travel, and, as well, having no place to base myself, I would need three more weeks at MUU to get a finished dinner piece done … It has been good to get back up to speed on the sound system, and begin to recall all the possibilities of sound editing. Makes me hungry for more … I eventually get everything in order and begin assembling raw material from the Dinners tapes that I have carried so many kilometers.