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CLUI: Day Eighteen — storm

dust storm from the tower, Wendover Air Base, Wendover, Utah, April 2010

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.

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CLUI: Day Fourteen

collapsed canal backfill, South Base playa, Utah, April 2010

Flat Light. Cycling perhaps ten, twelve miles out. Parallel with the huge trenches of the salt/potash mining, eventually towards Blue Lake. A bit nervous about unexploded ordnance, but there are plenty of old vehicle tracks in the playa to follow. The berms, canals, and drainage engineering has completely off-balanced the system here. In its original condition, as it still the case north of I-80, there is a thick layer of very hard and relatively pure salt overlying the extremely fine-grained mud that accumulates as the ranges surrounding the playa slowly erode. It’s this same very fine-grained sediment that comprises the nasty dust in the frequent and rather violent wind storms kicks up high into the atmosphere. When wet it becomes a gooey mess that is at the same time, slick and very dense. The very reason that it costs USD 600 if you get your vehicle stuck somewhere in the local playa — usually when the salt ‘ice’ breaks through — it takes a snow-cat to tow it out. And, as the basins between the ranges are being formed as a result of wide-scale extensional tectonics, that stuff is deep, thousands of feet deep! Nothing like the feeling of being out in the back country here with a vehicle that is stuck or has broken down. Cell phones usually don’t work, and it’s a long walk anywhere. I carry plenty of water (10 gallons), a shovel, tow cable, full tool kit, flash-Lights, some food, sleeping gear, signaling mirror, and other bits of paraphernalia to at least make it a comfortable wait. And most of the time, I have my mountain bike which would make a 50-mile exit a possibility.

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  • place: en route Wendover - Salt Lake City - Wendover, Utah

CLUI: Day Ten — transit

into the dust storm, Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, April 2010
A forced migration to the Holy City of Moroni. Tire issues—the damaged rear cycle rim from the red clay mishap in southern Utah and the front-end alignment of the truck. Locate appropriate places to effect the repairs before coming over. A monstrous wind from the south dogs the transit across the flats of the Great Salt Lake Desert on I-80 and whips up a blinding dust storm in the middle and at the eastern fringe at the Kennecott Copper mine’s massive tailings dump.

Salt Lake City is quiet, wide empty streets, pedestrians are frequently toting suitcases-on-wheels. There are bicycle lanes and mid-block pedestrian crosswalks with baskets at either terminus with fluorescent flags for folks to carry when crossing.

Retreat when the work is done and after lousy lunch Reuben at The Bakery. Retreat looks like this (yes, cars and trucks in my lane do retreat forwards, I am, it seems, the slowest car on the road):

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  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

here, there, etc

the play of reification. when mind stops, not confronted by any particular obstacles, but merely by an inertial lag. lacking the energy to proceed. while outside weather changes, un-noticed, unless it is rain. it has fallen below the threshold of modern awareness. inside people. like writing here. slipped by the side of lived be-ing.

wander over to to the Art Gallery of NSW to catch a screening of Gimme Shelter. flashing-back to Ancien Régime of mid-century Amurika, seeing the radical youth of that time — youth who are now retiring boomers fighting to keep a big slice of pie — what’s theirs by right, eh? bah!

a stroll out to Sculpture by the Sea, an uneven sprinkling of expressions placed along the Bondi-Bronte path. Shar says the water is 19.5C, gettin’ there. I’ll be in before long. inflammatory Thai dinner after that.

Willy and Andy unveiled a new blog, a collaborative effort covering “absolutely everything.” Welcome to the blogosphere folks!

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  • place: Coal Creek, Colorado

Moseley Ridge


not far as-the-raven-flies from the Baldwin cabin, over Ohio pass and to the east, here on the west side of the West Elk Wilderness. mild mountains. none within eye-shot breaking 12,000 feet. sedimentary, punctured by laccoliths, overlain by thick deposits of welded tuff, ash, and other volcanic ejecta, andesites, unstable, friable: the West Elk Breccia, 34 million years old.

and in the interests of not moving too far and getting as high as locally possible, Moseley Ridge, made up of those breccias, looks do-able, sort of. at least the view east from the top should be decent — the back of the Maroon Bells. bush-whacking. the first obstacle is an aspen grove with more downed timber than standing. the only progress possible is by balancing on the downed logs and moving along those. off the logs, it’s impossible. steep, turns out the whole western slope is slumping with fissures and extremely steep inclines. it is a real bush-whack. two hours of slow movement through the vegetation only to end up on talus that looked a whole lot smoother from the valley floor. very unstable. each step, leaping from rock to rock, never knowing which one might start to roll down the steep incline. the incline gradually steepens towards the base of the final (unattainable spires). giving up 100 meters from the saddle when rain starts making the rocks slick. low risk threshold. slow and wet retreat.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

dark space

you are in a dark space. not just dark, but black, radiation-less, so that neuronal firing is perceived in the mind’s eye only. subterranean. wandering in a hard-rock drift 200 meters below the surface of the earth. look around, check the area for obstacles to movement and potential dangers. position the Self in relation to the Other who has accompanied you. turn off the Light. extinguish the candle. wait until the last vestiges of red-shifted radiation are gone. wait until the eyes finish their craving for form and visibility. perhaps the occasional cosmic ray tracing is seen, or at least sensed. bring the arm up, palm aimed inward towards the face. feel the flux. palm outwards, scan the immediate region thermally. sense your partner. feel their thermal presence impinging on your palm. it’s like warming your hands at a fire. a life-fire. reach towards each other until the explosion of contact occurs, separate, come together with only a finger, or palm. as though applying paint to a flat panel with the palm, paint the air, back and forth, receive the energy of the other, transmit your own energies to them.

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  • place: Baldwin, Colorado

4th of July

a long day starting with a pancake breakfast. Mount Carbon looms over the cabin, 1000 meters vertical and about 3 km. away, a near-conical peak, at least viewed from the cabin. determining the right approach aside from a direct frontal attack was an exercise in reading topology and collaborative human map-reading, but we eventually got to the right starting point, on an old Denver South Park and Pacific railroad grade from mining times, herding the kids was relatively easy, but after a protracted obstacle-course through and around fallen trees on the forest floor of the main approach, a drainage couloir, combined with the mosquitoes, and word from returning hikers that we were just half-way with the steepest ascent ahead, we gave up and returned to the cabin. missing the peak is always a let-down for us strivers, but missing the view was the biggest disappointment for me — just to see the surrounding terrain, from that 360 point-of-view.

after dinner came the Gunnison fireworks, rumored to be quite elaborate. instead of attending the formal spectacle within the Western State College (small) stadium, we decided to just join the rabble situated in the empty lots, and other random locations in the surrounding neighborhood, staking out a stretch of grass near a playground. clearly there was a complex nationalistic happening in the stadium, given the pregnant pauses, cheers, and apparent choreography to the ground-level and aerial fireworks, but it was worth the wait for the big boomers that cut loose directly over us.

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  • place: enroute Hamburg, Germany - Copenhagen, Denmark

long day

portrait, Björn and Elly (and Kissa), Copenhagen, Denmark, April 1996

I finally arrive, by train, bus, and foot, at Björn’s place around ten in the morning. Completely exhausted, especially as his flat is a fifth-floor walk-up, but a good breakfast and good conversation revived me. Björn has just gotten an arts grant from his home country, Sweden, to continue work on a multimedia opera in collaboration with a number of colleagues. We spent the morning catching up on things and looking at his new computer equipment (enough toys to keep Bach busy). Finally, as the weather was a truly stunning sunny 25°C (75°F), we were compelled to go out and walk around the city. The Danes, being typical Scandinavians, were in various states of undress, and enjoying themselves in the summery weather — it is as though there had been no spring, rather a direct transition from winter to summer. On the City Hall Plaza we stopped in the sun for a beer, joining a delightful elderly woman, probably in her mid-eighties, Elly Justesen, a stranger to us, at a table. She told us how happy she was that spring had arrived, as she could get out and work on her golf handicap (which stood at an impressive 36 at the moment)! more “long day”

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  • place: Köln, Germany

histories

portrait, Claudia and Monika, Köln, Germany, April 1996

A short visit with Monika and Claudia to catch up on Claudia becoming a mother — I remember when she was just a little girl a handful of years ago!

Online problems: it is not precisely clear what is the main obstacle in the way of Germans getting egalitarian access to the Internet. But clearly it is related to the Deutsche Telekom strangle-hold monopoly. Today I spent the afternoon with Udo Noll, one of the partners at Digital Online Media over at their garage/headquarters. He kindly set me up with an account to use while I am in Köln and trouble-shot my modem connect for smooth sailing onto the Net. I never got a chance to check my mail though, thinking I could do it from P.& K.’s house this evening — turns out that the Deutsche Telekom folks screwed me again with the plug configuration at the house — one needs a special plug and some rewiring done by DT personnel — absurd! I’ll go back to Digital Online Media tomorrow morning to do it from their offices. Udo showed me some of the works by artists who are online via Digital Online Media like Otto Schweins and Matthias Groebel. As it was the Easter weekend, I wandered to the real Dom cathedral in central Köln, absorbing some small fragments of spiritual energy and getting a bit nostalgic recalling the many evenings I spent in the past eight years here with friends and my former wife. Many romantic farewells were made on the platform of the Hauptbahnhof, the most busy rail station in Europe with trains coming and going from as far away as Moscow. Walking across the rail/pedestrian bridge from Köln to Köln-Deutz is memorable with the trains slowly rumbling by every few seconds and the Rhine far below flowing implacable towards Amsterdam. It is more chilly today than yesterday, perhaps only in the 50’s F, but spring is definitely happening all around. It is about time. This evening Peter and Kersten got home late with Jonas wired, he bounced around the flat for some time before succumbing to sleep. We sat in the kitchen and talked about life and how one should seek to become more SLOW.