posted
  • place: Eindhoven, Netherlands

on the Maas River

week ends. a lot of energy expended during the time here. I have gotten a bit soft staying in Scandinavia for so long. used to open spaces, fresh air and water, and that situation. here in Netherlands many things are different. people. bicycles, fewer mobiles. (today I run out to get a mobile card so that I can use my phone while I am here…) shifting numbers, identities, and all the while, I can be hunted down by whoever accesses the data. pinned down. near the Maas River, and escape is not possible. breakfast at the hotel, Dutch, French, German, English. middle-class business.

this is the way the World ends, this is the way the World ends, this is the way the World ends, not with a bang but a wimper… — T. S. Eliot

so, what else. the west is in a frenzy, and what lies beyond all this. nothing of note?

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

frost

trees are frosted, and the river is frozen. winter came suddenly. last Monday, maybe, I don’t remember. deep submerging. my silver ring glows and shimmers in the blue Light now.

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: Unari, Finland

40th

40th year comes on slow through the thin white curtains with blue Light skin and Lightening dreams. and the heating musk of bodies intertwined and motionless or so. the placid river running under two bridges and over one dam. not frozen, with the tannin color of a bitter root drink. horizontal clouds differentiated into cool and flat warm tones. above the Arctic Circle. and the day ends, blue as the beginning in a silent place on a lake, a sauna sweat, two or more fires. burning. white birch with crackling oily skin flares dry and makes fast yellow flames. silence, within another cosmic movement. a bright red toadstool grows in the yard all the white night — I look at it once, through the kitchen window, in the dimming Light, inside I stand naked and skincool, drinking a glass of water. I look again and eyes blur into standing sleep with warm arms wrapped around me and moist breath on my back.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

DMV

shopping, and at the Department of Motor Vehicles office to get a new driver’s license — where I had to wait for almost two hours — though I used part of the time to run errands.

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: Radium, Colorado

radiation

intensive solar radiation that vibrates the sky, rocks, and even the river, the Colorado River, only a few tens of miles from its headwaters. the kids, Sally, Rick, and I use Dave’s raft on a short mellow run, accompanied by Tom, Karen, and Don in kayaks.

posted
  • place: New Hope, Pennsylvania

Mifune

self-portrait with Kathleen and Anthony, New Hope, Pennsylvania, June 1998

Kathleen sees a samurai-helmet-like aura exploding from me head while I do some yoga on the grass of her backyard next to the Delaware River, not so far from where Washington made his legendary crossing. she banishes or outlines it with a sage smudge-stick. I am aware, but feel bad later, when making a joke at dinner that this helmet is related to my desire to play Toshiro Mifune in a Kurosawa flick — the one I recall so vividly, The Hidden Fortress, I believe, where Mifune is galloping bareback, sword upraised with the two-handed hilt gripped directly and unwavering in front of his right shoulder. I am stressed about the Shaman situation. I am not able, in the time available, to unwind enough to engage the psychic energies that I have available, except. I am able to ponder that I have had a previous incarnation within the geographic confines of Scandinavia. a quick reduction tells me that, yes, indeed, I could have been a Viking. or a simple inhabitant with business to finish in the Northlands. takin’ care of business now. pacing pacing pacing that land, beginning to know it better in a distributive and global sense than the locals. strange (I say to myself). a word I use often to describe events of the external world. but it is a nice time, and Loki appreciates it all. he continues to theorize about the Lightning Woman, and the Rain Man, and the Cloud Woman from the huge bed in the bright white master suite with the balcony overlooking the river. the four of us (Anthony, Kathleen, Courtney, and I) throw him up and down in a blanket immediately before he and I get in the car to drive to Lawren’s place in Alexandria.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

late night question

where are you? I ask her in the white night — lying intertwined on someone else’s bed in someone else’s flat at the north end of town — long after she and I stopped dancing at one of the beer-smelling clubs on the border between Finland and Sweden. Her profile softens the near-view, her breath smells of the chamomile tea with sugar we drank after the long walk home. The sap begins to run in the birch trees, the river ice almost broken, school is almost out. The night never ended, never began, stars long gone, weeks ago, years, eons, memory removed when they last faded into the summer sky so that there is only here, now, and the rising and falling of her breath, the heart-beat, felt through proximal warmth and mere layers of skin.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

volume

Oh hell, what pretense to think that I could really get any sensible writing done here, when all other mediums seem to fail me as well. Concentration lags behind — a result of very poor physical condition that my body is in, and mentally I am really unfocused … Can’t really point to what is going on. Material stimulation and the stimulation of speaking to others seems to not hold my attention for long. I wonder at how others can focus and make massive and detailed material contributions to this monolithic world of Art. I am left babbling about spiritual transcendence, hypostasis, and being. Out of step with the environment that I have immersed myself in … This Art world. This world of commerce and culture and the intersection thereof. more “volume”

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

after all hallows

Here about a mile from the headquarters of the CIA and about five miles, as the crow flies, from the White House in Washington, D.C., on the south bank of the Potomac River in Virginia, staying at Kathy’s house for a week or so. Time is moving so quickly that I can hardly think. Loki and Magga arrived from Iceland on the first of November, the day after I flew north from Tallahassee via Charlotte NC to Baltimore to stay over at Steve and Genie’s place there in Catonsville. I guess that was Halloween, yes, there were trick-or-treaters dressed up and coming to the door asking for candy … Genie wasn’t feeling too well, so Steve had to put a witches hat on to dole out the goodies … The election is over, boring Clinton won over a more boring Dole. Amurika trundles onwards to the millennium. Kathy just last month arrived home here from a small town in Siberia between Omsk and Novosibirsk where she adopted a 2-1/2-year-old girl named Vika from an orphanage there. Most of my time is spent concentrating on an active and focused engagement of Loki, given the short time we have together. I am not sure when I will see him next after this, although I hope to stop by in Iceland in the late winter on my way to Finland to teach there. Separation is always such a brutal loss.

posted
  • place: Tallahassee, Florida

moonburn

group portrait, heading to the Wacissa River, Tallahassee, Florida, October 1996

Time spins more and more. Now here as visiting artist at FSU, courtesy of net-worker Paul Rutkovsky. Last night Robert, one of the faculty, had organized a group moonLight canoe trip on the Wacissa River, about 20 miles from Tallahassee. The moon was full, and there were about 20 folks, mostly students, two to a canoe, some with flashLights. We put in with a guide, Fred, at a small parking lot on the river and slowly paddled down the river a few miles to a side-stream that ended up in a 50-meter-wide underwater sink-hole which was the source of the stream. Sink-holes are earth-surface phenomena — where the ground waters under a place have eaten holes in the rock — in this case, limestone, which is very soluble in water — and occasionally these holes are so large that the very ground above them collapses and caves in … Leaving holes that can be many tens of meters across and sometimes hundreds of meters deep. There are instances where houses have been swallowed whole by one of these beasts… In the case of the sink-hole on the river, it is fully immersed and actually is a spring source with a large volume of water welling up from the hole which is connected through underground channels to a lake about ten miles away. The water is about 20°C (70°F), chilly by local standards, but in the middle of the circular pool, someone had moored a small floating platform. Being the mad fool that I am, I had to go swimming — despite not having a swim suit or towel. I tried to talk some of the others into it, but they were too shy … ach, these Amurikans … So, I hopped out of the canoe and undressed on the platform and dove in. Moonburn! OOoooooo. Cold, but totally refreshing! Magic. All tiredness left my body.

moonLight, Wacissa River, Tallahassee, Florida, October 1996

It reminded me of a personal motto that I used to frequently quote to my friends — along the lines of:

I’ll do anything twice, three times if I like it.

I mean, trying something new once will never give a real taste of the undertaking, so twice at least allows the possibility to saturate the self. And, hey, if it is fun, than that third time, well … and I don’t mean that I necessarily stop at number three … But maybe that would be an interesting path to follow, stopping — so that one does not become too attached to the material process of pleasure gratification… It is marvelous, the power of the natural world. Despite all the mediation that is a daily fact of the world that I inhabit, despite the critique of the romantic vision of the natural world, despite all that, there is still massive healing power within the synergistic interaction with the physical world … My body and my eyes were totally relaxed by the water and the moonlit darkness. I cannot explain these things otherwise than to attribute them to the power of that natural physical force. Winter is miles away from my thoughts, here in this tropical locale. Kati sends me a fragment of E. E. Cummings, the English poet. She’s in Finland, so it has heavier meaning for her (and will for me when I head back north in a few days)…

autumn has gone: will winter never come?
o come, terrible anonymity; enfold phantom me with the murdering minus of cold – open this ghost with millinery knives of wind scatter his nothing all over what angry skies and gently (very whiteness:absolute peace, never imaginable mystery) descend

I get chills, sitting here in the Mac Lab in the Visual Arts Department. memories of Finnish winter… Air conditioning. It’s warm outside, and here my eyes are burning from the dry chill of conditioning and the blast of charged electrons in my face. Where are we in this mediation?

posted
  • place: Savannah, Georgia

mind is

self portrait at Alyssa's, Savannah, Georgia, October 1996

The next morning. Slow. With some warmth, Alyssa makes tea. Sunday in Georgia. The party last night downstairs and other permutations limited sleep. Morning. Chilly with the dampness of the seaside pine groves. The river. Winter. Late October. Bet it gets really cold here by February. The exhibition last night was by one Bernie Casey, a painter. Work titles ran like Strong as a Tree, Missing Thumb, and Land Stories. Stories that openly the Land can tell. History speaks with a partial tongue.

A mind is … A heart does … A hand can … Education is …

posted
  • place: San Luis Valley, Colorado

The Center of the Universe

History

After the beginning of my explorations of the Center, they have continued almost yearly to the present day. There was one three-year gap between visits after New Years Day, 1992 when Nick and I drove down from Golden where I was staying at Rick and Sally’s place after a great New Years Eve Party. On that trip, when we arrived at the center around sunset, the temperature was around -20F. Unfortunately, we were driven off by a state trooper who told us to leave before I was able to complete a circuit and sacrifice ritual. That’s something I perform each time I go there_leaving an object, picking something up, and making a complete circuit around the house, stopping at each face and corner locus. Nick and I left and went to camp overnight at the Sand Dunes where the temperature went below -30F and the only way we stayed warm was cooking and eating dinner in the well-heated campground bathrooms. There wasn’t a soul around, although we did see fresh puma (mountain lion) tracks in the creaking and crackling dry snow. The next morning we returned to the Center to find it enveloped in a crystal ice fog that gradually cleared to brilliant sunshine. Strangely enough, but in keeping with the fact that the Valley is often chalking up the lowest temps in the state, returning to Denver later in the day and heading north over Poncha Pass, the temperature was at least 40 degrees warmer…

I did fly over the Center in a jet going from Denver to Phoenix with my son, Loki, in 1994, and although I was able to point the Center out to him, it was still about six miles away as the crow flies… Such is life. I had to wait another 18 months for the next visit on land. That visit came in mid-August of 1995.

It was a fine day, the drive from Boulder was leisurely although I did note a great deal of traffic on CO 285 all the way. I stayed overnight at my friend Hector’s place in Crestone on the Baca Grande (where I hope to buy some land and build a solar home someday). The next morning I went down to Alamosa to visit Adams State University and their Art Department (unsuccessful job hunting…). Then I headed for the Center. The Sangre de Christo Mountains and the Valley had gotten an enormous amount of rain that summer so the mosquitoes were as intense as the vegetation was lush. The Center was green and swarming! I spent an hour wandering around examining what I have looked at many times before. Time changes everything including the Self. I saw nothing more than I saw in the beginning, but everything seems to be more clear, transparent, and ultimately pregnant with vital be-ing. I have taken so many people to this place, and have come there so many times in all seasons of year, that the Place is inscribed in my soul for whatever reason that may come to be.

Burnt Sienna, a color straight from the Umbrian Hills, was the color of the feral cat that was living around the Center at one period of time. I guess I have outlived that beast that once so startled me as I clambered through chest-high weeds in late summer. And then there was the time, a group of us were staying at a friends place in Crestone and were on our way to the Sand Dunes. We stopped our car and the others pulled up a bit later in their car. They had seen an owl on the road, roadkill, and had stopped to examine the corpse. Ken cut a leg and claw off. I made an image of everyone standing in a circle around Ken holding this huge raptor claw. Another time, Anthony and I stopped on our way south to Arizona in mid-winter.

Turns out there is a small lake northeast of the center about a mile, one of the San Luis Lakes, where the Navajo creation legend is said to have taken place — the place where the first man and woman came forth. Further to the north, about ten miles, near Crestone, there is a Carmelite Monastery, a Hindu Ashram, and a Buddhist Temple. And I recall one time, when visiting a friend’s place in Crestone, I was out mountain-biking along one of the many small creeks that come rushing out of the Crestone Peaks area that towers over the valley, when I came upon a lone figure among the cottonwoods and aspens, a Rastafarian, sitting by a fire, drumming. There are energies of all kinds running in certain areas of the San Luis Valley. Geologically, the Valley is said to contain the largest single aquifer by total volume in the entire west of the United States.

Directions

The Center just happens to be located in the southwestern part of the North American continent at an approximate elevation of 8000 feet above sea level on the floor of a broad valley surrounded by mountains that reach over 14,000 feet.

In terms of geographic precision, I will narrow things down until we arrive at the threshold of the Center. In the southwest of what is presently the geopolitical entity The United States of America, there is the state of Colorado, and in the southern-central region of that state there is a huge valley, the San Luis Valley.

The San Luis is only a few miles across at its northernmost end, but it broadens and opens to the south until it spills over the New Mexico-Colorado border where it is around 75 miles wide. It is defined on the East by the Sangre de Christo Mountains, and on the West by the San Juan Mountains. From North to South, the valley spans over 150 miles. Approximately 75 miles south of the north end of the valley there is a crook in the Sangre de Christo mountains that, over geologic time, has filled with an enormous deposit of wind blown sand, now known as the Great Sand Dunes National Park.

If you are arriving by car, there are two sets of directions. The nearest international airport is located in Denver, the capital of the state of Colorado. That is about 250 miles by road from the Center. There is another smaller airport for commuter and private planes in Alamosa (the nearest town of any size), about 12 miles from the center. Anyway, it is easiest to get to the Center by car, especially as the distance to be covered are extreme and the weather also — hot in summer, and often very cold in winter (see the local weather statistics).

From Denver, one can proceed directly onto State Route 285 that heads first west into the Rockies, then gradually turns southwest, traversing a number of easy passes (Kenosha and Trout Creek) before turning directly south to briefly follow the Arkansas River and then heads up Poncha Pass before entering the far north end of the San Luis Valley. Shortly after the small village of Villa Grove, one turns onto Route 17 which heads due south through Moffat and Hooper and then, right before the village of Mosca, one sees the sign for the Great Sand Dunes to the left (east).* Turn here towards the Dunes and go about three miles (maybe less), looking for the Center, which will be on the left (north) side of the road back about 20 yards. You have arrived! Watch out for the mosquitoes if you go there in the summer, especially around the artesian well that is about 20 meters to the east of the Center.

From Alamosa/Santa Fe/Albuquerque and New Mexico to the south, simply head north on Route 17 beyond Mosca and turn east at the Sand Dunes road (see * above)…

via the Center, 22 September 1996

posted
  • place: Manhattan, New York

leaden being

Took the afternoon bus from Newton into NYC yesterday and met Stefan at his office across from the NYC Public Library. We then met Debra for dinner and came home and looked at prints. I spend the morning catching up on communication and web work. Nothing like telecommuting from NYC to Helsinki. George calls from Rochester, and I talk to Adrianne about the BLAST project more. I stay indoors most of the day. The thermometer says 96.8F when I last look at around 1500. The City bakes in the summer. Inside it is 77F. There are some new developments on the horizon which I will divulge at a later date. Despite the acute lack of funds, I certainly am supported enthusiastically by my friends who spare no expense. I have said before that I am blessed in having many friends. For this I am grateful. Thinking about water and rivers:

sotto voce: I dissolve into my own substance of leaden being. Water is the object that moves my body, that quickens the static rigidity of tooth and bone, that lets me bleed into the soft sand of the riverbed, and that carries all to the ocean with the silt and glacial milk. The river is the tawny-brown of digested basalt. I am standing in quickclay, a substance sometimes described as a discrete state of matter along with solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Placing one foot on the dark sand, a dry fringe appears around my boot. If I repeatedly step up and down in place, the sand begins to get wet and suddenly liquefies. I begin to sink.

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: Akureyri, Iceland

balances

The days here vibrate with a frequency that invades the soul. It is almost the Solstice. The nights are signified only by subtle changes in the color of the clouds, and of course, the changing azimuth of the sun. Local time here is Greenwich Mean Time, but the actual position of Iceland on the globe is approximately 1-1/2 hours to the west. Because of this, high noon, defined as the time when the sun is at the highest angle above the horizon, comes at approximately 1330. And so, at 0130, or astronomical midnight, the sun is at its lowest point, which, now, is just grazing the sea direct to the north. It is the Arctic sun. It vibrates, a high-pitched squeal. Vibrations that invade the soul, not leaving it until this night Light is extinguished from memory towards the winter Solstice. So, the days — the times when Loki is awake — are still filled with swimming, playing with rocks by the rivers or ocean, hiking in the mountains, eating ice cream. When he sleeps I work pretty hard on network things — this web site, email and snail-mail correspondance with folks, proposals for teaching work for next school year, and wondering how I will survive financially. I found out my bank balance in the US was U$D18, so I had to transfer most of what I had left here to the US except for enough to survive on for the next ten days and to pay for the bus to the airport in Keflavík and then from Kennedy airport to Stefan’s place in Manhattan, I guess. Shit way to live. Beginning to wear out my welcome maybe, too. I mean, I am wealthy for all the friends who have shown incredible generosity and hospitality on this long impositional road I have been on, but I am lame at organizing the fiscal side of life.

posted
  • place: Vienna, Austria

kunstradio

A busy day today, with lots of possibilities. I had lunch with Heidi Grundmann of Kunstradio, a program of ORF, Austrian National Radio. She is the director of this innovative program which has a regular 40-minute weekly broadcast of a variety of art radio programming. Most of the things you will hear on Kunstradio are works made especially for radio, although the program also has an Internet presence and has initiated a number of cross-media projects like Horizontal Radio and a new project Rivers and Bridges. This latter project looks interesting, and I have been thinking today of possible things to do as a participant. As my current web site is subtitled a bridge from eye to soul, there seem to be some common threads, most especially in the networking I have been involved with for the past ten years. Heidi and her husband, Bob Adrian X are pioneers in applied technology in experimental arts and networking, and both of them have been working in this field since at least the early 70’s. After spending a couple hours with Heidi and her assistants (Elizabeth Zimmermann and August Black, an American who, coincidentally, is on leave as a student at Syracuse University), I went to the EA Generali Foundation to see a video exhibition. And then I got online FOR FREE from the library of the Technical University again. Tomorrow I will use the facilities to do some web work, transferring files like this one from my PowerBook to the PC’s they have there and thence to my web site in Iceland.

posted
  • place: en route Rösrath - Köln, Germany - Vienna, Austria

First District tour

I arrived from Köln to Vienna, following the long train ride through the German heartlands. Passing by Nuremberg, I thought of hopping a train to nearby Bamberg, the home of the work The Bamberg Apocalypse an altar-piece I have wanted to see for some time, but, no time for that now. It was snowing heavily from the Austrian border on to Vienna. I made it to Mathias and Sylvia’s place with minimum problems and was happy to stop moving after the ten hours on the train. It will be interesting here, I can see that. Vienna is a special place that is/has been balanced on many borders and frontiers. I won’t have much time to work on the digital audio piece, especially between visiting people and getting over to Hungary to visit ArtPool and Kesckemet, but will at least get a start on it, and hopefully continue the work later in Helsinki. I look forward to the next days — and discussions on audio art, radio, and networking.

The gray smoke drifted the gray that stops shift cut tangle they breathe medium the word cut shift patterns words cut the insect tangle cut shift that coats word cut breath silence shift abdominal cut tangle stop word holes. — William Burroughs

I begin to understand what must be done. Pure incantation, pure consciousness, pure un-self-consciousness, pure impulse, pure way of going. In the interstitial moments between things, thoughts, and seeing, another way of being must be cultivated. Awareness full into each second. There is no time for replaying, no second chances. this is IT!

It’s quite cold, and at times there is a bit of snow falling, we make a long walk through the marketplace and flea-market, on to the First District, a stop in the café in the basement of the Weiner Secessionist Museum, and the long walk back to the flat on Sebastianplatz. We spent an hour online, I showed them my web site, although the connection wasn’t particularly fast, and they ended up casting an I Ching with the question poised What will happen to us in Japan? They are leaving in August for a four-month sabbatical at a house in rural Japan with a view on Mt. Fujiyama. Tough life! Progress was the return, but the I Ching cautioned about a return crossing on the Great Water (good thing they fly via Siberia and not the Pacific Ocean!). This evening we caught the film Chungking Express with Fatih and Roberta, friends of Mathias and Sylvia who will be sharing their new studio space. Visually the film had interesting camera work and post-production technical manipulation. The story was the familiar one of young loves and losses and lives. After the film we had a drink at the bar Trapant, a ultra-cool hangout featuring 60’s sci-fi video, funky music, and a stripped-down urban nihilistic 50’s architecture. Hmmmm. Taxi home, the black driver groovin’ on techno-reggae. After all the walking earlier in the day, I didn’t complain when Sylvia decided to cab it. Now it is two ayem, and I crash, leave these click-clacking keys for the morrow.

posted
  • place: en route London - Disley, England

sleeping with fame

Spent most of the day out in Oxford first to meet with the Master of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Stephen Farthing, and after a visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, we had a few rounds with Brian Catling and Kate Davis. I was meeting with Stephen to find out more about an interesting position opening at Ruskin — as part-time Tutor of Fine Art with a specialization in IT (Information Technology) and Electronic Media. As I am under-employed except for occasional visiting artist gigs, I have some responsibility to job-hunt where-ever I go, right? Brian is a well-known writer (see March 26 entry with a short quote from a book of writings of his…), performance artist, teacher, and Head of the Sculpture at Ruskin. Kate is a Tutor in the Sculpture Department. We had an enjoyable tête-a-tête for a few hours before Joanna decided we had better get on the road heading north for her parents place. Good thing, as traffic was already getting to its usual crawl-state on the M1 — the rats of London streaming outwards for the week end. The car decided to begin coming apart, something we had to deal with immediately. At that very moment it begins to sleet, making the subsequent traffic even more dense. (We never did get to the Pitt-Rivers Museum — it was closed. But we did make plans to get together with Kate and Brian again on my way back through the UK in late May.) After a long drive we finally arrived in the town of Disley, Stockport, in northern England near Manchester now, where Joanna’s parent’s (Jim and Margaret) live. That evening, while I stayed home hacking, everyone went out to see Geraldine McEwan in her renowned performance as “Jane Austin”. It turns out Geraldine had earlier in the day napped in the same bed I slept in, and the sheets hadn’t even been changed! How’s that for a brush with British FAME? And I can’t tell you the DREAMS that I had that night.

bed, Disley, England, September 1996

Anyway, looks like I won’t be uploading this until the First of April at the earliest. So I stop for now, with burnt bread pudding on the sideboard and Albinoni playing in the next room.

Official histories, news stories surround us daily, but the events of art reach us too late, travel languorously like messages in a bottle. Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the chaos and order it will become. — Michael Ondaatje

posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

packing notes: leaving Ice Land

Packing Notes Iceland – NYC:

Albums (Beatles albums separate)
Tapes (in cases?)
Cameras
CD’s (together in trunk)
Software (together in trunk)
Video Tapes (together in trunk)
4×5 negatives (together in trunk)
35mm negatives (BANK!)

one box of wearable clothes
one box immediate papers
one box teaching materials
boxes of archived letters and papers

Nakamichi (in own box) (leave?)
Turntable (in own box)
Camera equipment (in trunk)
Books
Print work
Camping equipment
Darkroom stuff
Tools
Cycling tools
Art tools
Papers
File Cabinet
Trinkets
Framed prints
Art works
Posters
Print drying racks

To travel with:
Daypack
Green suitcase
Grey suitcase
Backpack (zipper repaired in Boulder)
Black bag
Tan bag
Nikkormat
Nikkormat Black (to be repaired in NYC with receipt)
2x lenses
Hard drive
PowerBook?
recent 2x negatives (Get a DAT recorder?)
Glasses
new notebook
2x pens
slides of ?? in a notebook
some audio tapes?
toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, scissors, q-tips, shampoo,
hiking boots, good running shoes, hi-tops?, low black shoes,
anorak or Gortex?
1x wool sox
2x jeans
Icelandic sweater
belt
6x tee shirts
3x tank tops
half gloves?
swimsuit
goggles
I CHING?
paper case
passport
copies of Icelandic papers
drivers license
credit cards (PINs)
no keys!
no towels
African hat
jean jacket
jean vest

posted

talk

man talk

talk(1) User Commands talk(1)

NAME
talk – talk to another user

SYNOPSIS
talk address [ terminal ]

AVAILABILITY
SUNWcsu

DESCRIPTION
The talk utility is a two-way, screen-oriented communication
program.

When first invoked, talk sends a message similar to:

Message from TalkDaemon@ her_machine at time …
talk: connection requested by your_address
talk: respond with: talk your_address
more “talk”

posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

self-portrait after civil wedding with Nick (witness) and Magga

self-portrait after civil wedding with Nick (witness) and Magga, Reykjavík, Iceland, June 1992

I had extensive second-degree burns on my ankles with painful edema in my legs after falling into a mud-fumarole area where the ground just collapsed under me a few days ago. I had to hike out seven km. to get back to the car — mostly walking in the cold river to staunch the pain. Got married during MB’s lunch break, Nick didn’t know he was going to be witness. No happy looks from the newlyweds. A portent?

posted
  • place: Denver, Colorado

University of Colorado – Boulder, US / Basic Photography :: Jan-May.88

group portrait, Basic Photo class on a field trip to Denver, Colorado, January 1988

(not in order of the photo!) Karen Porter, Melissa Wolfson, Tammy Helming, Pauli Ramm, Brad Driver, Jeanne Walsh, Anne Odell, Sylvia Walravens, Kendall Mockridge, Fontaine Taylor, Rebecca Ruocco, Chris Keller, Hilary Harris, John Hsin, David Mendenhall, Michael May, Jason McBride, Paget Reed, Cindy Downs, Burke Archibald, Lindsay Coolidge, Claiborne Gayden, Amy Neunsinger, Tim Kemp

posted
  • place: en route New York City, New York - New Jersey - Washington, D.C.

in transit, The Tunnel Diner

on the road, The Tunnel Diner and a loaded vehicle, Jersey City, New Jersey, May 1986

Max, aka SGT PPPR, aka Sergeant Pepper, sporting KXLU (schizo radio on the left) and Suicidal Tendencies bumper stickers, carries me through the Holland Tunnel from Manhattan to Jersey City. A ritual meal stop at the The Tunnel Diner* seems auspicious, that’s exactly what transpired: fortified for the New Jersey Turnpike. Some hours later, after fighting the East Coast traffic, land at Randy’s place in Adams Morgan, DeeCee, for a stop-over before heading west.

*The Tunnel Diner: 184 14th St. Jersey City, 1942 Paramount and 1950s Kullman remodel. Famous for its commanding location at the Jersey City entrance to the Holland Tunnel, the Tunnel Diner is a fascinating illustration of mid-century diner reconditioning. In addition to building new restaurants, diner manufacturers also reconditioned old diners that were traded in, and even renovated other diners on-site. Although the details of the Tunnel Diner’s building history are not well known, its current condition reflects a 1942 Paramount, most visible on the inside, and a late-1950s Kullman remodel most apparent on the outside. The diner, which played a role in the 1996 Al Pacino movie, City Hall, also comes with a towering, vintage vertically arranged diner sign. Unfortunately, it may be too late for the Tunnel Diner. Despite being set on a river of nonstop, outbound tunnel traffic, the diner closed in 2007, and was soon after slated for demolition. It nonetheless still stands –maybe- albeit surrounded by chain link fence, and that’s never good.
posted

Marlin #3

30 June 1978 — Uh-oh, another age away. again, much has transpired ≈ 12,000 miles and many people later. I’m lying in my bunk now on Marlin Drilling Co. Rig #3 ≈ 150 miles due south of New Orleans. Today I slept in the car after arriving late in the evening (last) on a cruise from Colorado (only 1300 mi.). Awoke with the sun & proceeded to organize the car (& examine what damage my dropped muffler did to the car — messed up some frame molding on the bottom rear): drag — will have to get a new muffer (muffler!) next week on my first day off before I head to Anderson, SC & Richard’s place for our annual Chattooga River outing. The chopper left ≈ 0900 — I took a few photos (color). finally got to the rig & got started w/ work around 1030 — had to unload that 8″ casing since they’ve almost finished the latest hole. It was fairly easy — Albert & I upstairs & Robert & Jim on the boat w/ Peewee in the crane. Val was up rough-necking for the week, so he was unavailable.

approach, Marlin #3, Gulf of Mexico, July 1978

The trip to Colorado was more or less unpremeditated — was going to spend the week at the beach!

Went straight to Mike, Phil & Nat’s apartment up at Golden Ridge (arrived Saturday June 24th in the morning). pretty much surprised everyone. Spent the evening catching up. Got hold of my room-mate, Charlie, finally after getting myself evicted from my own apartment for having hair that was too long (the Landlady says, we don’t like yer kind).

I don’t feel like writing, if you know what I mean.

But let me summarize what I’ve got to cover before I split ↓ (over)

posted
  • place: Golden - Pueblo, Colorado

Vernon Holloway 1958 – 1977

Vern was my friend and next-door neighbor in Thomas Hall, 2nd floor, at the Colorado School of Mines during our freshman year. This portrait is from the day the semester was done and Vern was leaving for home in Pueblo, Colorado.

portrait, Vern, Golden, Colorado, May 1977

A day later he was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. I saw him next in a casket in Pueblo, a shadow. [ed: the following from the journal 30 September 1977]:

Well, it seems for the time being I have lost my somewhat atrophied ability to recollect the rest of August, so I’ll turn my mind to more recent events. The most tragic thing recently that happened to me, or, more correctly, that involved me, was Vern’s death. When I got back to school, Mike told me that Vern had gotten leukemia — he found out the day he got home from school in May. Spent the whole summer in the hospital, undergoing chemotherapy and all that kind of stuff. The weekend of 20 September, I think, Mike had gone down to visit him — reported back that he was doing very well — that he might even be able to go home for awhile. They had a good time listening to tunes and so on. Mike talked about him a lot. Well, it seems that on 27 September, Vern died. He was really doped up and that with the chemo was too much for his system to handle. more “Vernon Holloway 1958 – 1977”

posted
  • place: en route Anderson, South Carolina - Clarksburg, Maryland

road-trip

Well, got back from SC early this afternoon after a great drive. We stopped at 6:30 AM to see Cathy Barbano in Chapel Hill. She was surprised, though now quite awake. She has a really nice dorm — on the 7th floor, private bath, etc. Only stayed 1/2-hour & continued on home. Really had an excellent time at the Thomson’s — they’re a great family.

Yesterday (19 August) we (Karen, me, Richard & Randy (& John & Brian – a couple guys from UNC who we ran into)) canoed Section 3 of the Chattooga River. We left Anderson around 7:00 AM after forgetting our food, etc., & headed for the SC/GA border. After an enjoyable 1-1/2 hour drive (we took 2 cars — Richard’s VW & mine with the canoe), with Randy & Richard shooting bottle rockets at Karen & I). We made it to the outfitters. We met Brian & John there by chance & they teamed up with us, fortunately, since single canoes are not allowed to attempt Section 3. John had been down two times previously.

Good thing, as we probably would not have survived some of the Class IV rapids and a couple water falls that we had to portage around. The take-out had a cool chute where the whole river went through a place only a few feet wide. Richard was the first to seat-drop into it and then over a small waterfall into a huge pool. Everyone else followed, wild!