back with laughing friends. good deal. and some serious ‘death from above’ action. hard to imagine that I’ll be taking care of two of those beasts in December…

overnight at Eric and Sylvia’s (aka Asteria) place

in Brooklyn after that nice share.dj evening at reboot in the City.

meet Trebor for lunch and coffee in Park Slope. hanging in a coffee house, cyber cafe. where hardly anyone is talking. this is the social venue of the time. wouldn’t have been this way five years, ten, twenty years ago. with Bob Marley playing non-stop on the sound system. and photographic portraits of old gypsy women on the walls. the guy across from me, in the cluster of couches full of typers gets up and leaves, leaving an ipod or iphone behind. a gal next to him in an overstuffed smoking chair gets up and runs after him. no one else looks up at the ripple fluttering of off energy. I smile at her when she returns to her seat and her computer. no more contact.

and the urban vibrato in the space from ankle to nose. along with hard pavement. I walked two miles from Eric’s down to Trebor’s. it always surprises me, the condition of the general infrastructure of the city. would it be better if there wasn’t a war going on?

too dang windy for sonic recordings of the thermal features. but the same wind keeps the ubiquitous mosquitos from simmering around the body — all feeling, as much as Bill Clinton could, for the sources of carbon dioxide emissions which carry an encoded message: warm blood for re-creation.

Yellowstone. for the second day. struggling with the teenager and such. which distracts from and distorts the energy of place. interaction of place and person. the series of images continues domination of landscape which traces the very tangible interactions between human and land. in this case, 21st-century Amurika and the accumulated legacy of a pioneering land which is filling up. to be sure, there is the tribal essence of camping in a tent where nearby there is a very large and possibly very aggressive bull buffalo chewing its cud. and the thermal activities which do remind of the possibility that the planet could most probably simply throw off the species which has raped it in extremis and spend another few million years developing another species for potential evolution. but here we are now, the heart of the Western Frontier Spirit. Old Faithful. the semi-circle boardwalk with bench seats made from plastic 2×4 boards, those extruded from recycled polystyrene bottles courtesy of some corporation, surrounding the low and very trampled-looking tufa deposits. where the faithful, in their hundreds and perhaps thousands come on a semi-hourly basis to watch an endlessly variable repetitive event, marking a psychic continuation from those pioneering days to the present where the frontier is an unknown and fearsome — with Them bent on prising from Us everything that we’ve built up and enjoyed on the backs of Them over the last 100-some years.

that evolutionary struggle along with another one — the elegant mosquito which will still be around after this country is down-graded to a mere tropical storm from Cat-5 Imperial hurricane of the post-war era. though the moot question comes up, exactly which war am I referring to? and is a typhoon from the far east next?

Ready to vacate the camp ground: the omens and portents are not good.

Bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

Nothing like the amplified throb of hydrocarbon explosion to go to sleep by and to wake up by. Camping in a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) OHV (Off-Highway Vehicle) area. The premise is simple, the social system has generated devices, machines, both two-wheeled and four that allow a single driver to mount somewhat like a horse, and to ride at speed on rugged and steep terrain. For entertainment. (Note: three-wheeled machines were banned from production 25 years ago because of the vast toll of injuries and deaths which ensued as a fault of the basic design). The word entertainment is key. It is absolutely true, straddling one of these machines, with hydro-carbon explosions vibrating the body, landscape rushing by a high speed. The body transforms itself into the body of a god (or goddess). (more …)

back in Linnunlaulu, 6.5 years later. the restoration was just completed when I stayed there on the fall of 2000 for three months. but even that short a time has taken a heavy toll on the exterior. common sparrows are nesting anywhere they can squeeze a perch. little caches of twigs sprout from cracks and eaves and the balcony is warping.

a routine jump from Hamburg to Vantaa airport, in from there on the Finnair bussi and Nathalie meets me on the corner in front of the building where the Kiasma flat is — Museokatu 23, in downtown, shows me around to the flat A 11, and we talk about the situation so far. her organization of the practical matters is impeccable. then after a few minutes unpacking and settling in, I head over to the Lasipalatsi Cafe where I find Sophea and Andrew hanging out. then it’s off to the avanto sauna on Suomenlinna. it’s men’s night — as is customary in public saunas in Finland, split genders — and we meet Juha at the ferry terminal. there is little ice around, a few spans of rotten left-overs around the sheltered parts of the island. avanto is the deLightful Finnish habit of chopping — or, in contemporary times, chain-sawing — a hole in the winter ice so that one can take winter-tired body and jump into the water for a

leisurely paddle. tonight it’s a good 25 meters between the sauna building and the avanto dock — across gravel. that’s enough for me. I take the pictures instead of going in.

bad night’s sleep again, not sure where that is coming from. feng shui of hotel rooms. don’t like hotels. open window too noisy to sleep; closed, nose imitates room and stuffs. maybe caffeine. some small cups of coffee during meetings, not just to be polite, but it smells so good. so, wake up before alarm, force the obligatory liter of water down, gradually clear head. body drags along behind. pack, and hobble down to breakfast and wifi access to at least consume croissants and Eudora. and some Firefox. though belly is fat and getting fatter. can’t wait for a swim, cycle, something aerobic. but Dirk has made a tight schedule of luxurious 2-3 hour meetings with such an interesting variety of people. and so, this morning, he comes to breakfast a bit after Thomas Laureyssens comes tentatively to my table.

excellent generation of ideas, intuitive connections, and pathways, dynamically evolving possibility. Thomas is working on a social networking project which aims to create a functional gateway for Belgian new media initiatives.

Brussels as the background. some good food, some short visions, hardly any time to catch the tourist scene, and no photographs made. nothing missed on that account. previous visits, the most recent was in 2000 for the closing cafe9.net meeting which ended up in the scandalous shouting match among participants at a Chinese restaurant. so much for European solidarity.

Dirk and Thomas head off after Angelo Vermeulen arrives for a short meeting before I have to catch the train to Maastricht.

Angelo illustrates my dialogue-based worldview with several direct anecdotes which counterpoint his prodigious and stimulating formal creative output. and reminds me a bit painfully the lack of a PhD is a deterrent to social viability. that or a book. so that story haunts again in the background. text trumps lived praxis, title trumps actual presence. sheesh.

we have lunch at the brasserie Falstaff with a nice interior where “you can admire the transition from Art Nouveau to Art Deco,” and the staff looking like they should be in a Paris bistro. and the pay toilets governed by a wrinkled old lady. just the way it used to be. mais oui! typically touristic, with a complete backwards look to the future. tourists would never distinguish that this is not real. maybe tourists are so conditioned by looking at the world via tele-vision, that when confronted by the real thing, they cannot tell when it is a simulation of something else authentic. like Disneyland. seems like a great place to actualize physical presence in the ‘world’ when compared to prime-time teevee. uff!

over to Maastricht, train to bus to Rod and Lizbet’s place. nine years since last time. catching up on years of remote art, music, books, Iceland gossip. talk about getting more of Rod’s work online aside from the wiki page that a friend has done — he’s a networker, and a singular one of that breed, a networker’s networker. no time to worry about publicity, the market, promotion. the work and the network are all that counts, matters, all that provides life reason. his output into that network is prodigious, profound, and humane. his archive is priceless, marvelous!

a long day yesterday riding the rails from Kiel to Aachen, back into familiar spaces again there. a really nice but far too short visit with Günter, Christina, and Manon — who is now as tall as her mother! last time I saw her she was just a little child, maybe eight years ago?! lovely child. so, hanging out talking about books, art, life, music, so nice to re-connect after all this time.

re-creating the passage of time. young children grow up.

a leisurely breakfast with Christina, and she then drove me to the Hauptbahnhof for my train through Liege and on to Brussels Midi, a short walk to the hotel, where Dirk has faxed a three-day plan of meetings with a variety of artists, artist’s collectives, and educators working in that fuzzy space of new media. my room is not ready, so I stash my bag and start wandering towards the first agenda item: a round-table (albeit around a rectangular table) with two of the principles of LA[bau] — a laboratory for architecture and urbanism — Manuel Abendroth and Els Vermang.

a nice lunch (those dang baguette-sandwiches are always so crunchy that they cut the skin in my mouth at first, I forget to remember this and take care, flipping the sandwich over so that the smoother side of the baguette is up). but mmmm. on the way to lunch, however, a strange event. walking towards a building under reconstruction, a scaffolding is being set up, maybe four stories high at the moment. I catch the eye of a guy who is stacking parts to be hauled up on a cable winch, nothing unusual there. I am looking at the structure which looks somehow unstable. I decide to walk off the sidewalk instead of under the structure. I am looking up at the structure, calculating it’s condition. a pass it by, return to the sidewalk and hear a clang, then a meter in front of me a wrench, a heavy one, smashes to the ground. there is a group of 4 guys walking towards me about the same distance from the landing point as I am. faugh! how weird is that. I had the prior intuition something was wrong with the situation, and I can’t really say that the slight detour I made brought me closer or further away from my head intersecting with this tool which must have fallen from around 15 meters up. far enough up that is could easily have killed me or those other people.

so the rest of the day, I am watching things more carefully, but what difference does it make? if you look one way, you miss what is coming the other.

at any rate, they outlined their program and a couple of the main projects they have undertaking recently. tough to cross over my lack of background in architecture — it has always been a distant field of interest, but seldom the opportunity to crack the conceptual world that it is embedded in. the one time jumping in on a final critique with some of EJ’s students at Boulder was interesting — along with a surficial awareness of functionality in housing design — but does not provide any preparation for the contemporary conceptual spaces of inquiry. it does seem that innovative, and especially decorative design elements in architecture are about something. but the connection between the about-ness and what I would understand as the reason for the existence of architecture is not clear to me. but this is perhaps my own weakness combined with a deep frustration at the frequent appearance of non-functional design in built structures and in objects, for that matter.

at any rate, their work shows the presence of superior economic capital, and the consequent high production values which is nice. professional. sleek, designer, urban.

been in the desert too long, or, not long enough.

Crabbit
(cra-bit) dialect, chiefly Scot. – adj. 1. ill-tempered, grumpy, curt, disagreeable; in a bad mood [esp. in the morning]. (often used in ‘ken this, yer a crabbit get, so ye are’). n. by their nature or temperament conveys an aura of irritability. — drink coaster at Christina & Günter’s place

so, the market spirals down. while I travel. back to Kiel today, after a very late night at Martin’s where Anja teaches me:

Kopf hoch auch wenn der Hals dreckig ist.

(something like — keep your chin up when things are tough…)

the train is canceled, apparently there is a derailing between Bremen and Hamburg. so, after a wait in the Bremen Hauptbahnhof, catch a slow train to bus to slow train to Hamburg. then on to Kiel in a train car packed full of 10-year-olds. got some choice audio of that. soon to be online, but not now, too many bush fires to put out.

and so, last night was also a share:bremen meeting with Jan, Jürgen, Thomas, and Martin. Stefan from my Uni-Bremen workshops manages to drop in for a visit as well. we discuss the possibilities and histories of share:bremen, thinking ahead with workshop plans, and other actions.

crossing another path with sharedj people — Martin and Jürgen of the Bremen crew. turns out Jürgen participated in difusion 2002 using iVisit — he was doing some crazy things with the video image he was sending, and I remember that the students were really intrigued with his mysterious presence…

but the first time in a smoky German bar is too much for me. horrible environment. the Germans are on the verge of passing a law to cut off smoking in public places as have other European states have already passed — Norway, Ireland, Italy, France. it’s about time. head back to Frieder & Susi’s place.

wow, and I made all of $0.69 on Amazon referrals last month from my reading list of books and other media that has crossed my radar lately. I can retire now.

earlier, breakfast at Kuku, and a stop by the Kunsthalle, Frieder gets me in free (as Icelandic/Finnish artist union member) to look at the work of Annamaria and Marzio Sala. interesting, but not compelling. one video installation is absolutely juvenile and would not stand in a bachelors-level class. strange. hanging out in the permanent John Cage sonic installation work Essay.

back at Steffi and Christian’s place, comfortable home. another place of temporary home feelings. lovely to meet little Fritz as well.

now it’s the next day (of arrival) after all the delays, and the contorted efforts to sleep in a seated cattle-class configuration. Heathrow immigrations takes a long time, baggage claim, no problem by the time I got there, change some money, get an Oyster card, get on the Piccadilly line headed East. senses begin to wake up to the pleasures of movement, travel: seeing, talking to Others. change at Baron’s Court to the District line getting out at Aldgate East, try to find the bus stop. for a moment, not trusting intuition, and get into a conversation with an Irish chap with a small news-stand. asking for the bus-stop, but him only interested in my destination “that’s a new’n by me, Senrab (Street)…” it’s chilly and damp. nothing new. slightly cooler that California, but not by much at all. the driver nods at the request to drop me at the Marion Richardson school, before the Troxy Bingo Hall on Commercial Road. not far from the Stephen Hawking Special School. no where to stand on those buses when toting a bag — always in the way of folks getting off and on. aLight and make the short haul to Senrab and neighbor Christiane’s house a few doors down, she comes to the door, gets the keys and an envelope for me, and I am aware of two little girls crouched at the top stairs watching my appearance. back down the block — Maya and Jez, room-mates of JB’s are home, though, so I hadn’t needed to get the key. They show me in/around and Jez makes some tea and we chat for awhile. great to have a home to enter, when landing in a foreign land. I get the sitting room for a bedroom, comfy. with a view out to a garden, lotsa brick walls, and what looks to be a factory out back, converted to a school or so. beautiful building, I watch it in the night and when dawn comes.

a few days before leaping off another earth’s edge. north almost over the pole. if it was Helsinki, would get to 80 degrees north. but only London, so, north Greenland. detritus spread around the room, juggling, sifting, compacting for the two-month tour ahead. some disturbing points, some to look forward to anxiously.

Ryan heads out early for the Buick Invitational in La Jolla with some friends — he’s a golfer. I say goodbye to Andrea and head north to Seal Beach to stay with Dan and Robin, & their gals, Amanda and Rachel. much catching up is done. it’s been 19 years since we’ve crossed paths — a few years after I resigned from my position with Union Oil of California where I worked as half the International Grav/Mag team with Dan. history.

Gary and I head out towards Balboa Park, but don’t actually make it. I wanted to get online for a couple hours of work, so he takes me to a cybercafe in North Park where the PowerBook exhibits it’s intransigent side — something that comes up about 2% of the time when connecting to a wifi node — it can see the node, says it’s connected, but refuses to actually establish a viable connection. grrrrr. the usual spate of re-starts, config changes, etc, to no avail. Gary puts up with my whining, then calls an acquaintance nearby, Christian Michaels, a professional photographer who happened to have a wifi network at his studio. we head south on Ray Street, a funky neighborhood to the beautiful studio built in a former sign-manufacturers space. he’s got a huge video projector with a 25×25-foot projection area at one end of the main studio. as we chat, turns out that he is hosting a share event in the evening! we have a good laugh that I am the share-nomad node. synchronicity! have lunch at a taqueria around the corner, and head back to spend the afternoon with Andrea and Ryan. then Gary comes by to fetch me for the evening happening. end up meeting Morgan Sully of share-San Diego and others. there is a screening of Metropolis, and I do a short VDMX improv. nice!

opening at gallery, artists presentation, driving around town, working in the library, military vehicles in the air. semi-Santa Ana winds push heavy orange pollutions into the sea to the West. San Diego spreads to the south of Mount Soledad past the naval port, to disappear in heavier pollution hazes drifting seaward from Tijuana. Gary and I have a nice Cubano lunch with Sarah, faculty at University of San Diego, a Catholic school. then we hang out in her studio looking at some video Gary shot at Burning Man, and other things. end up watching the dvd Tell Them Who You Are, Haskell Wexler.

down the coast, nearly crossing pathways with military vehicles in the air, at sea, and on the ground. great swaths of California real estate frozen in military reservations. one way, good, as there is no development of the ubiquitous California-style suburbs, bad, as the military never had oversight of pollution issues.

to reconnoiter campus for tomorrow’s class, I decide to cycle down from Del Mar, without taking another quick look at the map. and end up, for the first time in years, not finding my objective! it was a good ride, but I never did locate campus. doh!

maybe one reason I got lost…

long haul from Santa Barbara, down PCH through Malibu, up to I-10 at Santa Monica, retracing my morning commute from the apartment I had at the beach to downtown eLAy back in the dark ages. so long ago. traffic was intense for a Saturday afternoon across eLAy, down to Orange County to Pete & Susie’s place. again, the GoogleEarth preview provides an excellent visualization of where to go. brilliant. the twins are there, Colin and Devin. Colin lets me crash in his room while he sleeps on an inflatable mattress in his brother’s room. eighteen years old, I’d never met them before. and they are studying for finals the whole weekend. last time I’d seen Pete & Susie was in 1987 maybe, 1988? nineteen years. sheesh. too much time passed. catching up, seeing the way things go, the way things are. watching the football play-offs.

our arts birthday stream goes down smoothly, though I never did succeed in tapping into the actual European Broadcasting System satellite output feed of the event. August recorded the stream file on his Linux box.

Wes invites me to jump into what turned out to be an excellent evening — cycled down to fishbon (see their blog) — a weekly salon for an eclectic group of cultural activists in Santa Barbara. the evening starts with a demo of the Wii by a local teen, then a Kung Fu demo advertising the establishment of some special courses starting in the fishbon space. Wes and a friend do a MAX/jitter visual/sonic performance, and after that I do a very short 15-minute improv with VDMX.

and shortly, my talk in the IHC:

tech-no-madic pathways: networks and sonic energy

This talk, framed in observations from 20 years in the Cultural-Industry Sector of Europe and North America, will look at the energetic intersection of body and sound in the midst of chaotic social systems and restless movement. It will doubtfully answer the following questions among a thousand others: What does it mean to be a sound artist? What is a sustainable creative practice? What are we doing here? How did it end up this way? Afterward, let’s talk!

Cynthia heads out into the wide world yesterday, tracing the process with her DTS blog.

movement begins to impact the system. not so easy as the last times, but with more interesting prospects, no doubt. 2007 will bring something, eh? one can only hope, given the paths of the previous 18 months.

Arrive at Adriene’s Hobe Chobe compound after a long morning and day of roaming through the lower Mojave. Old Woman Mountains, Turtle Mountains, Marble Mountains. End up here at the compound in Twenty-Nine Palms, seven miles south of the primary Marine desert training base.

Siddartha.

Elevated fiery thoughts, no mindless sheep in the great herd. Moving across vast landscapes, finding smallness in the world, finding dimensionless spaces in the blasted washes of empty moonLit darkness. Connecting theory and practice.

No one teaches the path that should be taken. It is only taken or not.

Full moons flush the stars from the sky, leaving only the strong and the man-raised devices in the sky. Temporary mindlessness.

back up a familiar wash in the Marble Mountains, close to another Wilderness-designated area. arriving at dusk after an intermittent drive across the Sonoran desert from Prescott. conversations range over media, culture, education, social systems, software, teaching, art, and, uh, what else? weather, geology.

full-moon hiking up the wash into a zone of chaotic conglomerates, alluvium, diorites, granites, limestones.

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.

as Anthony stated once: re-arriving simultaneity. back in Echo Park. brew some black tea, and wander down to the water’s edge. after craning neck for a long look at Steamship Rock. the river seems high but not near flood stage.

frogs texture the air with the only sounds except for birds. a few people in the small camp ground. maybe a total of 5 people in the whole place. and one just left. hoping that there will be only silence and nature this evening. as my small stove roars while heating water. taking glasses off when NOT looking at this screen. what is it that the glass shields us from? full-tilt apprehension of the world. blurry.

different amphibians make sounds now, others stopping, the texture becomes more varied as I listen more closely, something I can do only when I stop typing and sleep the hard drive. so, I do that now. the battery is low anyway.

fast visions, from the top of canyons rims, looking down, from the bottom, looking up. eyes play across surface that shows infinite ages, black sun-stain, and the textures of frozen dunes. cracks, shear zones, friable under-cutting, plants growing in cracks, fracture zones 200 feet high, they plunge beneath the alluvium into the crust, contorted from slow tectonic spasm, gray on the more horizontal areas, psychedelic lichen colors blend to gray and at the same time, divulge each frequency direct to a single rod and cone. life is exciting.

wander through the tamarisk-free zone that park managers have created as an experiment. started that some years ago, and the regular riparian species appear to be re-colonizing the area. wondering if they used some kind of herbicide on the tamarisk — it looks like even shoots are dead.

standing, neck cricked, for long periods looking at the stars. first time to identify naked eye the Andromeda Galaxy. dim but massive. so far away from any significant Light pollution, the sky takes a couple hours to fully Light up after sunset. so that one can walk by starLight. though there are almost no details.

raucous evening with the college room-mates and partners and kids. retrospecting, eating, discussing, and laughing. meeting some new folks as well: stimulating, into a very late night. bed is sleep-worthy, but sleep doesn’t come so easy in the lateness. the new job possibility seems to find a space in self and mind. a retreat to the mountains after twenty years of urban intellectual activities. time to mull, digest, and re-create the documents of all those times. at the same time, working with children, revealing the wonders of the natural energy systems of the Sangre de Christos.

watch/hear elk rut and bugle in the back yard. a big stag riding herd on a sizable harem of cows. not seen this kind of wild-life action in Golden before. a cow charges big friendly 120-pound Milo, Don’s Rottweiler. Milo retreats fast from the backyard fence — if possessing a tail, it would be between legs.

later in the evening, to top the day off, Natalie loses a tooth while playing with Sonya and Alex in the basement.

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

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

mountain sides changing colors already, high up, and when backing away from the verge, the roots of the mountains, seeing the peaks dusted with night snow.

still mulling Marc Tuter’s article in Leonardo; mulling how the praxis model for supra-academic success entails generating texts that fit into book-forms; mulling rhetoric; mulling spin; mulling at the inertia which keeps social institutions functional. as long as individuals are willing to place life energy in representative forms.

when co-option takes place — it is often (always) from a form of exhaustion of the self to resist the social inertia of a situation. peer pressure in a vastly more brutal and subtle way. although one powerful solution to this creeping anti-autonomy is to have a sustainable/sustained lived praxis that is authentic — with spiritual presence and active engagement.

social inertia keeps me on the road on the long drive across the reservation to Durango.

Maps are power. Either you will map or you will be mapped. — Nietschmann

on a near-moonless night, 0300 brings a surround-sound chorus of coyotes howling, laughing, and cackling. at first I was a bit worried, but reminded the self that no living human had ever been attacked by coyotes. sleeping on the ground is always a challenge of mind. to believe there will be no scorpions, snakes, spiders, or other varmits looking to snuggle right up in the sleeping bag with. did hear some scritchy sounds coming from the car at another juncture of Milky-Way-spinning darkness, but saw no destructive evidence of rodents in the morning. a recorder would have been nice with the coyotes, but I was happier with a small hunting knife and flashLight instead.

floating through a high country day. mountain bike ride after breakfast. up to the trail head into the West Elk Wilderness. back out, Sage keeping pace even on the downhills. pack up and make the circle around the north rim of the Black Canyon, and down through Delta. saw a gal parked having a picnic. single bike on the rear rack, like me. wondered about how one crosses paths. make a stop at the Ute Indian Museum.

it’s far from present Ute lands, and most of Colorado was once populated by one or another bands of Utes who are now reduced to three small reservations in Colorado and Utah. another dreadful history of crimes against humanity. are we really better than that now?

seek wisdom, not knowledge. knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

to go on a vision quest is to go into the presence of the Great Mystery.

the soul will have no rainbow if the eye has no tear.

another stop at the Gunnison National Forest main office to check out any information they might have, as well as inquiring about jobs. looks like everything is through the JobsUSA website. one path to travel. have to look into that again when online next. Ridgeway seems interesting again, with some commercial buildings for sale. question is, what to do in these small towns to survive? could computer consulting work? construction is no longer an option with the L5 disk acting up, could be major trouble in the near future. website construction? teaching high school? vocational tech? uff. re-forming trajectories seems at the same time daunting and full of possibility. how can it be problematic when so many others are employed? and so many have managed to gather so much capital in this country. but the path between scraping poor-ness and abundant wealth seems so … arbitrary. there is no clear specifications except for self-confidence.

end the day almost at tree line, up Bailey Creek, off Lizard Head Pass in the San Juan National Forest. the luxury of dispersed camping (finding places up 4×4 roads that are not developed, but make excellent camp sites) is appreciated. no cost, only fuel to get there, and that expense suggested that instead of an immediate return to Prescott, that I take several days and enjoy being back in Colorado and check out several new places. in Curecanti Creek, I saw only one car in two days, and up this rugged route, doubt I’ll see anyone until I head out and down and south west tomorrow. feeling a little guilty being out of phone range, but have no messages except one from Gary, so, figure all is well in the greater telecom world. make a short video of sunset on a nearby peak. and in the process of reviewing the tape after finishing it, I discover that all the footage that I shot of Kevin’s memorial in NYC in March had that effing bad audio. really disgusting — Bill, Stefan, Martha, Rosemary, and others talking about their memories of Kevin. the glitch seems due to bad mike contacts, or a dirty record head. it pops up randomly, and has affected some other critical footage previously. and the pondering on the idea of getting a 3-ccd hd prosumer cam comes back up and/or a Nikon prosumer digital still camera. what else to do with capital? shopping is a dumb way to make a cash flow (negatively). better to keep the investments growing and multiplying. and purchase only items that can definitely be positive cash generators.

whatever the end result, work is the next necessary step to confront. that and the June 18th Month of Sundays performance. finishing up with the house, packing things in a way that maintains some viability to several pathways of action. but meanwhile, watch the sky and the land.

close to the end of the month. another one come by the time anything is uploaded. what would it require to upload from here? military support would allow it, or a significant chunk of cash. $20K? subscription to a satellite data connection in addition to the base unit. satellite might be limited by available sky in this narrow canyon. and data speeds are probably still at modem pace without elite service levels.

observing the sky, rocks, soil, flowers, other plants, beaver ponds, creek, what else. clean up the camping space. people sometimes seem so piggish. Winchester 30-30 shells, new silver brass, litter one spot. hard to imagine folks just reeling off rounds at such a rate there, what are they shooting at? I pretend I am a child, and play in the creek, re-routing a branch of it to pass directly below the campsite. drain another area which is swampy, and remove several contiguous rock fire-rings. make a nice fire — using some of the large logs that are left from the previous campers. in the tradition that Loki and I started in Crestone one year — a single large log makes a swell fire which will keep legs warm through a long and late evening.

and, in a special action, spent boots and half-gloves are sacrificed to the air via fire. last time was in Tornio, Finland, when boots were set adrift in the spring melt-water swollen Tornionjoki back in 2000 or so. time to retire this pair, though they were slightly usable, soles were worn through on the right side and the standard tear along the left inside of the right ball was in full display, and good for mountain-biking in that the smooth soles slipped in and out of the toe-clips compared to my remaining foot-coverings. the boots were bought in Flagstaff back in 1993(?) on a return drive from Colorado around the holidays, and when Loki was a tiny tyke. those boots were made for walking, as they say, keeping my feet happy on the way around the world.

The scale of impact may be described using a material framework in a Cartesian coordinate system. For example, bringing by car a plastic container full of toxic chemicals — better yet, a bottle of water. Leaving this container behind, we have effectively inserted a certain amount of energy into the local system (as defined by a scalar coordinate system) in the form of an abundance of liquid water and the hydrocarbon container itself — a very concentrated form of hydrocarbon energy with a certain threshold value for the liberation of that energy. The threshold value changes over time as the container is slowly decomposed (to compose and decompose) through the availability of UV energy which, at peak dayLight hours, is high enough to just barely exceed the threshold. Whether or not the bottle appears to alter the local environment depends on the speed of liberation of the energy. Or perhaps it doesn’t depend of the speed of liberation. The change in the environment takes place upon the introduction of the object (material energy system) into that particular location. The liberation of energy from the introduced material energy system begins immediately. Plastics release free radical organics all the time in their inevitable breakdown process (smell nalgene vs pvc vs polyethylene, for example). Temporal rates of release do not always scale to the eye of the casual observer. The intent observer, aside from changing the energy state of the system through the act of observation, notices smaller and smaller changes. (Question: in Quantum, (how) does the observer affect the total energy state of the observer/observed system? — another words, does the observer actually introduce an extra energy (source) into the system, or what?) Global warming will evidence itself in an accumulation of relatively small scale observations which will need to be correlated to indicate a larger scale shift in the global system to the casual observer. With observation itself as a rapidly diminishing individual function, (being replaced largely by collective and heavily mediated observation), it will be difficult to make the connection between small and large. Although technically there are large numbers of detail-observers (in the form of specialist scientists), the structure of the social system effectively keeps these observers and their consequent observations separated (by the rigidity of specialty vs trans-disciplinarity). It will take a trans-disciplinary visionary to draw many isolated threads together to make clear the changes necessary in the global system for the mediated-reality pseudo-observer.

Wha’? Who cares? You’re speaking obsequious drivel!

Nawp, just fishing for basic principles of human presence in the world. Impact.

So far only one other vehicle seen on the national forest road today. A 4×4 that went in and came back out from the trailhead in about an hour. Otherwise, watching ravens catch thermals and play around the welded-tuff-over-breccia hoodoos across the Soap Creek valley. And collecting spent brass cartridge cases that litter the ground.

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

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

back to look at stars as battery dies.

after four nights at home, a call to a local emergency transport company is in order for a trip to the ER. the shocking news. a shattered L3 lumbar vertebra. almost medivac-ed to Phoenix, but instead, a 2-hour ride to St. Joseph’s neurology ER on a backboard with a neck brace and morphine.

the ensuing flurry of activities I experience with a certain detachment, partially induced by the heavy meds, but also by a basic curiosity, as I have never spent a night in a hospital before, and certainly had never experienced such a trauma before. riding a gurney around, the world takes on a peculiar perspective. ceiling lines tend to converge towards the toes, eyes are blinded by Lights that penetrate the wounded body, the Other becomes a haloed face warning, bump coming up! to be a gurney driver is to transport the minimal common denominator of the hospital environment, the injured and sick body. from here to there, to be probed, radiated, and sampled, and once again docked to the variety of machines that sustain life.

the full spinal MRI marked a peak experience: one of the best industrial noize performances to date. can’t recall whether they actually added a claustrophobia-fighting concoction to the rest of the meds, but with headphones on, sliding into the extremely narrow white tube didn’t seem too bothersome. the operator stayed in contact with a mike, checking in with me every so often during the hour-long procedure. how to describe the sonic stimulation (along with the intense tesla-flux shivering through my body electric), glitch, techno, noize, industrial. and so on. excellent. I told the operator upon exiting, that it was one of the best noize performances I’d ever heard. how to reproduce it? probably impossible to record it with the heavy magnetic fields. what did it do to my embodied presence?

deep on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. we arrive in a heavy rain storm. arrive where? arrive at a destination, a short rough drive off the main dirt road, up a small canyon breaking off the Kaibab Plateau. deep on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. we decide to head for the top of the cliff that hangs right over our camping site. (more images)

across the expanse of Nevada, Basin and Range province.(more images).