field work
coitus in cena*
This was a year of infestations. Several varieties of grasshoppers hopped and flew rampant for a couple months, stripped my sole apple tree of leaves and were working hard on the native plum trees, stripping both the leaves and bark off any new shoots.
As with all natural systems, though, a boom of one species will generate a boom in another. Predator, prey. In this case, praying mantises (Mantis religiosa), supremely well equipped to capture and consume the bumper crop of grasshoppers. There are hundreds of both beige and green mantises everywhere on the property. They have always held a fascination for me, primarily how attentive they are to the presence of another being. Commonly kept as pets, I encountered this pair in rural Colombia:
Then the sex begins.
And ends.
* coitus during dinner
any landscape …
Any landscape is so dense with evidence and so complex and cryptic that we can never be assured that we have read it all or read it aright. The landscape lies all around us, ever accessible and inexhaustible. Anyone can look, but we all need to see that it is at once a panorama, a composition, a palimpsest, a microcosm; that in every prospect there can be more and more that meets the eye.
Meinig, Donald W., and John Brinckerhoff Jackson, eds. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Meinig’s allusion to holistic natural systems is quoted in an essay and exhibition on the historical “Drawings of the Great Colorado Survey”:
Huber, Thomas P. Hayden’s Landscapes Revisited: The Drawings of the Great Colorado Survey. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2016.
James Miller‘s concept of “living systems” emphasizes that all such systems—from cells to landscapes to societies—share common scale-independent patterns of organization and processes as well as divergent features. As initially articulated in an editorial by Miller in 1956 in the then-new journal Behavorial Science:
Our present thinking-which may alter with time-is that a general theory will deal with structural and behavioral properties of systems. The diversity of systems is great. The molecule, the cell, the organ, the individual, the group, the society are all examples of systems. Besides differing in the level of organization, systems differ in many other crucial respects. They may he living, nonliving, or mixed; material or conceptual; and so forth.
Miller, James Grier. “Editorial.” Behavioral Science 1, no. 1 (January 17, 2007): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/bs.3830010102.
In the context of landscapes, this approach aligns with systems thinking by focusing on how ecosystems, organisms, and human activities interact within larger networks, and are themselves comprised of smaller and smaller networks. A landscape may be seen as a living system with a complex of nested subsystems, where elements like nutrient cycles, energy flows, and information exchanges are interconnected. These interactions contribute to emergent properties and systemic behaviors, underscoring the need to consider the whole landscape when analyzing environmental changes and implementing management strategies. Augmenting or supplanting those more empirical methods, we believe that artistic, creative, imaginative, embodied, and other refined sensory-based processes can very effectively address and engage not only the astounding complexity, but the raw and inspiring beauty of these systems. Key to what may be a singular holistic ‘understanding’ of a landscape is focused and sustained observation that is aware of the scalar similarities and differences.
The original Hayden report from 1876:
Hayden, Ferdinand Vandeveer. “Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories: Embracing Colorado and Parts of Adjacent Territories; Being a Report of Progress of the Exploration for the Year 1874.” Washington, DC: US Geological Survey, 1876.
Hayden recognized the profound value of William Henry Holmes‘ drawings, though he did not formally recognize the other artists who produced documentary drawings on the expeditions, He reserved most of his praise for William Henry Jackson, the photographer who documented so expansively the landscapes of the American West setting the creative precedent for the likes of Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach, Robert Adams, Willy Sutton, and the many others who followed.
totality 14:01:35
Short narrative: Driving (thanks, Steve!) from Franklin, Tenneessee starting at 07:45 on I-24 met with plenty of traffic at various choke-points until getting off at Vienna, Illinois, heading west. Made it to approximate centerline outside of Anna, Illinois just 25 minutes before totality, so wasn’t able to set up photo gear in a decent way.
Perfect weather, ~70F, 95% clear skies, some thin cirrus clouds that did not affect viewing at all. Some shadow bands, small and less distinct than in 2017, the final onset was very rapid. Spectacular diamond ring, then four minutes of totality with a massive hook-shaped prominence and others distributed around the disk, corona brilliant, easily observed out to maybe five lunar diameters, circum-horizon twiLight was gorgeous. And then it was over.
Many hours drive back in extensive traffic that intersected with a huge storm system threatening golf-ball-sized hail. Arrived back in Franklin at 23:00.
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!”
Letter to CSM COO
[ED: After meeting and talking to Kirsten Volpi, Mines COO/CFO, at a faculty barbecue, I had some follow-up comments for her on being an employee at Mines. Especially relevant was the issue of tele-commuting, although we happened to be still some few months before the Covid cataclysm. We, the staff at the CGS, had been lied to by the former State Geologist, Karen Berry, who told us in a staff meeting that Mines did not allow any remote working, apparently because she didn’t want to allow it. The rest, as of March 2020, is history. I worked four years 100% remote until retiring, no problem.]
Hi Kirsten:
My comments here fall broadly under the ongoing topic of employee retention—an important interest for institutional management—that President Johnson mentioned at last Friday’s staff plenary session. I would hope that perhaps they might shed some anecdotal light on that critical issue from the point of view of an employee. I write as an alumni and a three-year administrative faculty member; and, as someone who cares about the place I work, the people I work with, executing my job with a high degree of professionalism, and the value of work/life balance.
Following up on the question I posed during the Faculty/Staff plenary regarding ‘remote working’, I would offer that if you are considering any staff participation in policy-making around this issue, I’d be happy to contribute my expertise to the discussion. I was surprised when you stated that there was no policy and that some people *were* actually telecommuting. We have been told by our so-called “manager” that it is a Mines policy: remote work is absolutely *not* allowed (thus my original question). And I note that recently one of my professional colleagues left the CGS because of this arbitrarily fabricated limitation. There is substantial research available on the subject that confirms that flexible working conditions augment productivity *and* job satisfaction. They also improve the ability for employees to fond and construct healthy work/life balances.
This brings me to a second point. When I was on the faculty at CU-Boulder, I noted that there was the Ombuds Office (https://www.colorado.edu/ombuds/our-services) that allowed for confidential tabling of any university-related issues. I feel that Mines is deficient in this area—that there is no equitable means for addressing the complex issues that may arise—especially as the school is expanding so rapidly. There is the confidential CARE system, but this seems to focus on student issues, not the wider spectrum of institutional dynamics. Perhaps the ombuds model should be considered.
Moving on, I will relate a couple example of negative issues that I have witnessed as directly impacting both myself and my colleagues at work, both which exhibit a flagrant disregard of staff and their well-being. There are others.
The CGS is located in the Moly Building which is currently under heavy construction and has been for the last eight months. The entire project was ‘presented’ to the staff essentially as a fait accompli. What little information that was passed to us was in a two-line email format: this is what is happening, deal with it. Further occasional emails dealt with the absolutely minimal warnings that understated risk to life and limb if one walked outside the building, ever.
Our first real experience of this particular ‘development’ project was to arrive at work to watch 15 100-year-old trees ripped down and sent to a landfill, while a large and well-established natural riparian area was eviscerated with heavy machinery. That area served, among other functions, as a buffer between our offices and the loud traffic of 6th Avenue, as well as, more importantly, a small but rich wildlife refuge. Given that Mines now has the word “Environment” in its tag line, we found this a richly disturbing irony. The water flow of that riparian corridor was completely disrupted by a typical ‘modern’ solution that shunts surface drainage from areas where it normally would be absorbed into groundwater. I could go into much more detail about available knowledge that demonstrates development does not have to mean utter destruction of a landscape. This violent construction process continues to this day with zero consideration or opportunities for any expression from our staff, despite the persistent stress of environmental destruction, noise, dislocation, delay, and general chaos.
There is a concept called ‘participatory design’ which operates under the principle that those who are to use the designed object or environment are given an active role in the design process. This is a crucial dimension to truly sustainable development. In this particular situation, however, the feeling is that there is no recourse, no mechanism for ‘speaking truth to power’. This is a sure way to cause those who can to move on to more humane working situations to do just that. If such a feeling is the dominant modus, an institution will be in constant internal conflict with its own potential (humane) success. I see this on a daily basis among my colleagues, how these small things add up to embodied stress and dissatisfaction.
The next step in this destruction process was paving over what remained of the open area bordering the riparian zone, so not only did we lose the buffer of trees, but then a vast sheet of unshaded black asphalt was installed that, among other negative effects, markedly increased solar heat buildup immediately outside our entire wing of the building. Car windshields reflected glare directly into half of our offices for much of the day. These are two tiny details, but it is in these details that makes a difference: there are many more that I will not enumerate here. There are ways to pave an area that allows for stormwater percolation using perforated pavers among a variety of other solutions.
The parking lot debacle segues into the second issue. Admittedly, the CGS is a bit of an orphan child at Mines, and this aspect came into sharp focus when the dictate came down to us from above that our parking lot fee would double from $265 to $497 per year. Not only that, but the lot is now requiring a ‘reserved’ permit that restricts the user from parking *anywhere* else on campus, despite the high cost! Our work flow at the CGS is not so similar to a ‘regular’ staff member in that we do come-and-go a lot, often with field gear, attending off-campus meetings (on campus meetings are even more complicated in that it can take 20 minutes to get somewhere on campus on foot). I’m wondering if the time lost to walking too and from personal vehicles is to be deducted from *my* time or from the institution’s time—if I do pay more to park, the institution wins on both counts, my cash *and* my time. I personally decided to subtract *my* cash completely from that picture—by canceling my parking pass completely, in protest—I will follow your advice on the second factor. I happen to live in Golden, though, and can bike commute, while most my colleagues have significant car commutes. Many other staff folks dropped a tier or cancelled, tired of being cash cows with no good alternatives. Some of the few who went for the higher fee did so because they were afraid of the risk to their cars and personal safety as has been demonstrated most recently in the area. Given the fact that no one else will be using this lot aside from folks working in the Moly building, the occasional contractor, and perhaps a few Facilities Maintenance folks, it would seem that this decision to double rates is a shameless and rather ignorant grab.
I know this may read like an editorial, but that’s because, in part, I was a Special Editor for the Oredigger, back when. And while I would like to think that this letter will have only positive outcomes related to my employment here, sadly, I am not confident that. Being a squeaky wheel—one that actually cares about the institution, its legacy, and the people working here—will perhaps ultimately cause my departure.
At any rate, thanks you for your time and consideration, I would reiterate my interest in helping develop an up-to-date policy for telecommuting (noting that my father authored a number of reports out of the White House’s Office of Technology Policy on tele-medicine among other tele-processes *in the early 1970s*). It’s about time!
Cordially,
John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
je suis: a performance
Simon mentions that this performance piece was discussed around the dinner table at the Abranowicz-Raisfeld ski house, in Upstate NY the other weekend. Didn’t recall that I had actually mentioned it to anyone. Magga and I were on a three-month driving trip to France, Italy, Germany, and Denmark, and were in the French Alps for a time. The performance came together spontaneously during a picnic of baguettes, a variety of fromages fins, some wine, (c’est typique, touristique). I recall we were seated on rocks — a curious ‘elephant hide’ manifestation of dolomite — and were instantly plagued by hundreds of very large ants. Taking the rinds of some of the cheeses, I wrote on the rock in large lower-case cursive letters: je suis (I am). I did not document the process itself: the photos document the aftermath prior to our abandoning the site.
je suis was a spontaneous nod to Duchamp, to be-ing, to consuming, and to the beastly nature of nature.
Francis, bara að segja
[…] The misuse and destruction of the environment are also accompanied by a relentless process of exclusion. In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged, either because they are differently abled (handicapped), or because they lack adequate information and technical expertise, or are incapable of decisive political action. Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against human rights and the environment. The poorest are those who suffer most from such offenses, for three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse of the environment. They are part of today’s widespread and quietly growing “culture of waste”. […]
Pope Francis, 2015. Pope Francis’ Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly. The New York Times. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/qdmyswf [Accessed September 25, 2015].
changing the course of nature
dripping water
changing the course of nature
changing the course of nature
naming
“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.
ravens coming home to roost
in the Zone
clade dynamics
Evolution may be dominated by biotic factors, as in the Red Queen model, or abiotic factors, as in the Court Jester model, or a mixture of both. The two models appear to operate predominantly over different geographic and temporal scales: Competition, predation, and other biotic factors shape ecosystems locally and over short time spans, but extrinsic factors such as climate and oceanographic and tectonic events shape larger-scale patterns regionally and globally, and through thousands and millions of years. Paleobiological studies suggest that species diversity is driven largely by abiotic factors such as climate, landscape, or food supply, and comparative phylogenetic approaches offer new insights into clade dynamics.
Benton, M.J., 2009. The Red Queen and the Court Jester: Species Diversity and the Role of Biotic and Abiotic Factors Through Time. Science, 323(5915), pp.728–732.
into the Dunes
State of the Species
Agriculture gave humanity the whip hand. Instead of natural ecosystems with their haphazard mix of species (so many useless organisms guzzling up resources!), farms are taut, disciplined communities conceived and dedicated to the maintenance of a single species: us.
A tiny excerpt from a longish article in Orion, “State of the Species,” by Charles Mann. (see 1493) Here Mann explores principles of abundance and how species respond to a resource-rich environment.
changing the course of nature
Changing the course of nature, a series of actions, grew out of a fundamental principle that the embodied and living Self (as organism) alters the existing flows of the ambient natural system — the system which the Self is (merely) the energized extension of. If one envisions life itself as being a negentropic phenomena occurring as part of a field of energy without known limit, then it makes some recursive sense that a life-form would seek to extend the alteration of the flows that are moving around it, through it. Predation is a form of this, eating, consuming; sensing even could be construed to be an alteration (as Quantum) confirms — that the observer changes that which is observed. Alteration, fluctuation, change occurs at all scales.
One easily accessible phenomena that presents the idea of energy flow with a certain universal precision and intuitive simplicity is water. Fluid flow surrounds the body in water vapors, airs, sprays, and floods, while we also consume this flow directly, finding necessary sustenance for the body-system. Although the internal system is, topologically, simply an extension of the surface area of the external skin — both skin and gut are sensitive interfaces with submerging energized flows — with liquid energy flows everywhere.
Life speeding up entropy …
more “changing the course of nature”
highly recommended!
Systems depend on power, which they use to develop structure and functions that self-organize according to laws of energy transformation and use. As suggested by Alfred Lotka in 1922, maximum power results from self-organization according to the natural selection of systems designs. This chapter explains energy laws, including the maximum power principle and its control of production, growth, competition, succession, energy storage, diversity, and the oscillatory pulsing of all systems. more “highly recommended!”
change
The argument may be made that a fence, a window, an article of clothing, a wall are — one-and-the-same — deflectors of the extant natural flow of energies out there. They represent a set of energy deflectors imposed by humans on their environs.
The other issue, tied to this is the production of waste (unusable) heat energy which impinges on a locality after the use of high energy sources which are subsequently rendered into usable and unusable forms of energy with varying efficiency. The primary source of this unusable energy is in the actual production and maintenance of the energy deflector systems: making and installing a fence, fabricating a window (glass being an extremely energy-intensive manufacturing process), building a wall, a building, a dam. more “change”
assessments
And so, encroaching on the last major procedural hurdle before the doctorate goes to the external examiners (next year sometime). The panel assessment seems to be routine and bureaucratic. Public speaking in compressed time frames is no fun. When there’s always too much to get across in the extremely limited time frame, and the highly institutionalized context allows for negligible true dialogue. In some ways, the process is a deeply laughable (chortle?) imitation of what it claims to be, or what it once perhaps was. That is, learning as a process of open and sustained dialogue between two or more humans. Facing the unknown that each other presents, or both facing the unknown of what is, or what is out there. Contemporary ‘education’ is a thin and watery drool coming from somewhere up above — meager remains of what’s left of a blasting monsoon of shared life that brings one to a deeply profound awareness of that-which-is. Instead we squelch around in evaporating puddles of shared encounter, wishing for more rain, and complaining about the weather.
Tomorrow, it happens. We shall see. No brolly, no Wellies…
So, over this hurdle, and maybe the final work commences, perhaps finishing earlier than scheduled, or at least that inspiring outcome is a concept on the radar.
Meanwhile, surviving week-to-week, in part through the acupuncture and massage treatments from Heiji Cho and some of the Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM) students here at UTS. The gall bladder channel is the one being worked — to release rising yang from the liver. hmmm. The treatments work, they seems to diffuse the migraines that do show up and eventually, as is common, with any lock, the migraines will vanish. I am confident of this, and only wish I had come to this conclusion last year, or even earlier as these episodes interrupted life from time to time. The stress of movement came on such a regular basis, but there was no thought to find a source, find a working solution, a cure. It was only the process of gritting the teeth until a dark and quiet room could be found for the duration. Western meds never really worked, they only covered the symptoms at best, and in some cases a single pill cost as much as a full 90-minute acupuncture treatment session.
But choosing to undertake a treatment of what is known as ‘alternative’ medicine was always a difficult stretch. Despite input from trusted others who had benefited. There was the hardship of paying cash from the pocket to the practitioner when cash was never so abundant.
Trail Draw and Upper Pool Creek Canyon
An Outward Bound group rafts in, and are lectured to in the Trex seating arranged for “camp fire talks” here in the campground. I find it really bizarre, when there a thousand ‘natural’ places to sit for a dialogue, they make a bee-line to the plastic composite seats. I guess they got lectured on the tamarisk mitigation work around Echo Park, I didn’t ask, as I was too busy prepping for the day. They later went into the woods between the campground and the river and were doing something. Wonder if they saw the carnage I wrought on the tamarisk behind site #7! more “Trail Draw and Upper Pool Creek Canyon”
western terminus Yampa Bench
Sleep difficult, not sure why, whether simple discomfort, though the back of the truck seems very comfortable in the immediate impression, warm, soft enough, but body cannot find a comfortable position, side to side, somehow, problems. Could be that yoga hasn’t been happening in the last days. Hiking is a challenge for the body as well.
Drive up to the head of Sand Canyon, intent on doing a hike, but what looks like bad weather coming in, a heavy front across the whole west, sends me back after a short recon along the Bench Road. It seems doable as an alternative escape route, if this end is the worst, though, in wet conditions, forget it. And it totals thirty miles to Elk Springs, not just the three miles I did on recon. Almost all of it is in the red and yellow (bentonite) clay-sandstone alluvium, and this is precisely this same stuff which sits at the top of the Echo Park Road — from the 2000-foot displacement on the Mitten Park Fault, so, no real solution in heavy and widespread rain. However, this doesn’t seem the case — the rain is sporadic, fast-moving, and interspersed with bright sunshine and the roads are basically still dry after two days of ‘winter storm,’ so fretting about it is a waste of energy. Either I get out on Friday or I don’t and have to wait a few days. Plenty of water, fuel, and food, so that is no problem. The only locked-in point is the flight next Wednesday evening to Portland. But I’d still hate to miss the yurt-raising in Glade Park at Collin and Marisa’s this weekend! more “western terminus Yampa Bench”
Mitten Park
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?
Pat’s Draw
arrival and meditation
Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed perusal of the rotating stellar field in ma’ face.
This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy—it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight.
more “arrival and meditation”
CLUI: Day Thirty — raven’s revenge
I chance to spot the raven squeezing through a small gap where the square-ended galvanized panel meets the arching roof. Bully fer ‘im! Then, later, I see them resume their shuttle flights to and from the hangar, going through that one gap and possibly another at the other end somewhere. Smart birds.
CLUI: Day Twenty-Eight — raven’s grief
Re-construction is continuing on the Enola Gay Hangar almost constantly. All the new windows are finally in, the wing areas seem to be in order with their new galvanized sheeting. A couple days ago, the last gaps in the sheeting on this end and the far roof have been put in place. So, what of the ravens and their constant efforts to build a nest (and hatch chicks perhaps?) somewhere inside? They are now gone. I felt a little ill when I saw that the construction crew was going at the remaining gaps in the sheeting, knowing it would cause a huge disturbance in the lives of the ravens. Okay, to be sure, they would likely not have been nesting here in the flats if the building had not been constructed here to begin with — humans had already caused a significant distortion in the flows of this place — life does that, always. I noticed for a couple days the ravens sitting on the roof, but no more of the flying back and forth by the window of the residency. This is a huge loss, and I wonder if anyone else has thought about this as an affect of the restoration process?
Wendover weather
CLUI: Day Twenty-Five — sandstorm
Apocalyptic. Huge wind storm, driving wind upwards from the playa to the black clouds collected over the ranges. Wind. Then, much later in the evening, the air becomes heavy on the lungs, and a fine powdered dust hangs in the more still air, like a fog, but dust, powdered mountains, air-borne terrain. It is dark, lightning and thunder shuffles in the background, unseen, muffled behind the curtain of dislocated earth hanging in the air. Eyes sting, nose waters, pressure heavy on the lungs, body recalls the Great Sydney Dust Storm of ’09, sleep is disturbed so the reading of Augustus continues, more on that later.
Many other events and actions go un-commented-upon, so far. And there are more sounds to upload, along with numerous time-lapse sequences. These seem most apropos to the time here. Watching the weather — back to the “window weather’ concept.
CLUI: Day Twenty — raptors?
A nice hike with Neal, his last day before heading back to London (despite the volcano!) into the Toano Raptor Observation Area at the south end of the Toano Range. No big raptors except for a turkey vulture who didn’t fly away from a sheep carcass at the side of the track in until we were just 20 feet away (oi, pew!!). That’s as close as I’ve been from one of those huge birds. The hike in gets into snow pretty quickly, including corn snow coming down. But the sun is warm on the south-facing side of the canyon, and with the elevation gain, the view to the east over the playa and all the way to the Wasatch Range is fine. Apparently in the fall, during migration, more than 50,000 eagles, hawks, and falcons pass through the area.
CLUI: Day Eighteen — storm
Brutal sand/wind storm (again, what else is new in “Wind-over”). I have been almost completely scuppered in doing sound work here by the incessant wind (and not having a decent wind-snout for the Zoom H4. I thought Iceland was windy, well, this place is a close competitor. No trees, and the contrast of the flat playas between the relatively high mountains makes for some adiabatic action combined with a series of major Pacific storm fronts pulsing through. Noting when in (sparsely) wooded mountain valleys of the Toano Range, there isn’t the intensity of blast — the opposite occurs on the air base which is on the edge of a playa that extends 200 km to the north, 200 km to the south, and 150 km to the east: flatness breeds velocity. Velocity and sustainability — it goes on and on with only occasional respite.
CLUI: Day Eleven — Blue Lake
I finally got down to Blue Lake Wildlife Area to check out the swimming possibilities. The water is around 80°F year-round and the lake itself formed through the effects of a geothermal percolation spring. It’s frequently used by open-water scuba divers for certification, and the area shows the signs of heavy human abuse (the BLM doesn’t really ‘manage’ it much).
quick note on virtuality
The condition of virtuality arises when humans create a situation which attenuates the flows that are impinging on their sensual and embodied presence. When technology is defined as a way to alter the paths of energy flow: virtuality is a subset condition of the altered flows such that the flows that are obviously (or not!) entering the body system are attenuated. The obvious (materialist!) subset of the widest set is that grouping which attenuates the classical sensory-input spectra. These may be ‘scientifically’ framed based on typical wave-based mechanical and electro-magnetic physics: the EM frequency band of visible Light, the pressure-induced electricity of touch, and so on. In a holistic approach to presence, the affectations of flow are continuous, complete, and substantive.
Alluding to yet a further subset is the use of glass as a specific form of energized matter which is placed between the eye and the ‘world out there.’ This is a fundamental form of virtuality, where silicon dioxide is introduced as an attenuating filter of flows between embodied presence and the cosmos. (this is a short intro to a longer text on the history of glass that’s cooking on the back burner.)
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”
desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)
Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.
[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system’s process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct (complementing, say, Maslow’s needful ranking). Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through — steps/degrees of flow alteration.] more “desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)”
blackbird sings
Nan’s funeral in Charlottenburg. I see a number of people that I have not seen in some time. Kathy Rae is there from Manchester, and Sandro, one of the students who came to Iceland all those years ago.
The funeral is moving, standing room only. In the room with the casket, a video tape interview with Nan running silently, along with a projection of one of her Light-water videos. Flowers, candles. Friends in black. Stories from a few folks.
After the service, Sandro mentions that he has a photograph from the Iceland trip, which he then pulls from an envelope. I am moved when I see that it is one of my postcards that I sent him after the trip. I think I sent each of the students that I had addresses for a copy, if I remember right. I immediately notice that it is on resin-coated paper, ach, but that was a time when I could use nothing else as I had only the college lab which could hardly be called a lab even. I worked with what I had. He said he would send me a high-rez scan of it. It underlines that old idea I had to gather up all the postcards that I have ever sent and put on an exhibition. What fun that would be. Especially if each of the people would attend the show.
It is very nice to let memories of Nan float up, especially her work which is essentially about Light. And her presence as a mentor, teacher, friend, her art. generosity. And the community she supported.
And memories of her Armani suit and her fondness for good cognac.
Avalon from Roxy Music plays in one interlude. and I make this small tribute — blackbird sings…
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
Porcupine Creek
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.
rainbows
memories of recent and undocumented interactions with rainbows. dredging up a spectral wonder committed to film at the God’s Falls in North Ice land. and this text composed some months back on the back deck of a house no longer lived in:
what sight of rainbow gives full and transitory is not the will to wake up the next morning, it’s just late afternoon, well before sunset. lightning strikes the house. the radio quits. do the dead feel the hissing crack of close lightning like the living do? a bit of dread, a bit of shaken body wonder?
rainbow gives nothing except the radiation to brush the eyes. but in that brilliant subtlety there is everything. the smell of rain soaked earth and sage, cedar and piñon. when it is leaving. gone. all is gone, even memory of persistence of vision an illusion. after all, memory is imprint of the primal mind leaving the moment. rainbow gives only memories of itself, written in state-shifted electric bodies.
psychogeographic confluence
Psychogeography, yet another buzz-word in contemporary media art Worlds. Usually applied in the context of the controlled environment of urban human-scapes. A gravel and sand bar at the confluence of the Yampa and Green rivers makes an ideal counterpoint. Despite scaring off the wild geese and beaver. Where to go? The water’s too cold to ford the river, and the canyon walls too steep to climb. Around-about, then. Leaving Debord, the dérive, and the rest of the Situationists well behind with Parisian dog-shit on their shoes and Gauloises Caporal ash sticking to their tongues.
defining instruments
long hike onto the bench above the campground and above Mitten Park. lizards, snakes, birds, jack rabbits, mule deer, limestone, sandstone, chert, black widows, other spiders, textures, sounds, steep climbs, looking over several precipices. there is nothing here. there is only. there is only energy. mind reflects back surface noise and shapes, so far. noise of social engagement. clearing will take time. and will ultimately bring back more power to the spirit. hoping that no job offers arrive during this period of being offline. doubtful that anything will. given the record of life to this point.
darkness falls drifting slowly upwards from the ground. under the huge cottonwood Light is lost. in the branches of the piñon. blond dead grass radiates sunshine recalled from noon. sandstone walls the heat. moon begins to Light canyon walls after twiLight. high-pitched bat chirps ping fast when bug is echo-located, otherwise, slower twips as they sail around the heard space, defining its dimensions. all this mostly unseen to eye.
Bush-Whacker
Jeb Bush as a politico-in-the-making left his mark on the world during a debaucherous elk-hunting trip near Gunnison, Colorado in the fall of 1974. Is this a case of “Fools names and not their faces are always seen in public places?”
what else to say about that. it didn’t kill the aspen tree, but it leaves the unsightly human detritus and hints at the depth of the sleaze that dominates the family in power. The moral system that allows a man to vainly scar a living tree in a delineated Wilderness area is not only corrupt, but shows a contempt for natural systems that is fortified by the family’s exploitative nature in the extractive minerals business.
agave
The agave (Agave americana) that I transplanted to a spot outside the back door as a fist-sized stub about a decade ago has reached three feet across with spiny leaves that could easily impale any hearty mammal. To avoid the most direct damage, I trim off the sharpest part each time I am here. Anyway, the plant is about to do it’s thing. That is, shoot a 12-to-18-foot (4-to-6 meter!) center stalk that culminates in flowers and ultimately dried seed pods. Sometimes called a Century plant this is a mis-nomer as it takes only (in this case) a decade to reach this point. The entire plant then dies off. Not absolutely sure this is about to happen, but looking at the image you might see the yellow patches on the spines. It appears that the plant is drawing its energy inward, away from the spines in order to shoot the stalk up. Either that or the plant is dying. We’ll see. Was considering putting a web-cam on it as it is just outside the back office window…
luminal connections
of course, it’s just a full moon, but the estimation of Light pollution is … depressing — what is pollution other than the direct re-formation of natural energy forms by the active intervention of human beings? a (theoretical) natural system without humans (very theoretical!) will be in dynamic balance with all elements, so when there is a concentration that is mortal to the local system, it will seek a balance. question is, when the system is skewed to the extreme of unbalance, what will the re-balancing be like? gradual, as history has gone, or, like the tsunami, sudden and catastrophic. and, I wonder, who cares? in the face of daily life, is it really possible to pretend a care for a macro-scaled system, what does it mean to care for the world? is it perhaps merely an annoyance combined with the leisure to contemplate the abstracted concept of the world?
another beast
Phrynosoma solare, a horned toad which is not a toad, but a lizard. this cute fella likes to chow on ants. found him hanging out on the driveway, so I moved him over to the basalt outcropping nearby, watched his colors change. constantly aware that the abundant rains of this past winter have altered the ecosystem substantially. more bugs, more and fatter lizards, birds, plants, everything. very interesting.
one year from passing
a year since Dad died. doesn’t feel like that at all. a year. one of an endless cycle of circles around a Light. how else would we know, without abstract methodologies of measurement, except to see that things are the same, and different each time around. time may be a continuous phenomena, but it is variable for different beings, and states of being. why not? the willows, aspen, poplar, and birch are all transforming. rapidly. along with the snow marching down the mountainsides. by the time I get back from Norway in three weeks, this place will be stark, winter. time passes. flooding all corners of the sensual world, and affecting change in all things. when in the pool, at each deep inhalation there are smells of the sticky-sweet poplar here, almost a taste. it’s slightly different from the Cottonwood of the desert Southwest, but the smell brings a strong memory to surface. I’ve talked about this before in other places of this travelog. the smell of trees.
At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously — as the three Mora sisters said, who could see the spirits of all eras mingled in space. — Isabelle Allende, House of Spirits
rapacious
three juvenile owls, each a foot tall, are sitting on a clothes-line along the Boulder Creek bike trail as Loki and I bike home from Kathy’s talk at the Boulder Bookstore. in a blustery sturm und drang, we watch. rapt. raptors. as they flutter in the coming storm-wind, pouncing on falling leaves thinking they are prey, in the dark, just a few feet from us. no fear. predators-in-training. raptors. other cyclists swoosh by, oblivious that they are being watched.