two sketches from the Center of the Universe…

Thirty years plus a few weeks since the original visit to the Center of the Universe. What does it reveal?

EJ sends this along of his youngest daughter Nora (on the right) and a friend making the summer’s pilgrimage to the Center on the way to the Great Sand Dunes. the graffiti that was sprayed on the structure back in 2009 has been painted over (flip through the pop-up photos here to get to the Center, and you’ll see the juvenile work!) it did give me the idea of proposing a temporary exhibition of graffiti, say, Berlin-style (go through the pop-up photos to some classic Mauer-style stuff), on the three sides facing the road, wouldn’t that be awesome!

the work for the Williamson living room is finally finished and gets installed the day before I arrive. it works out quite okay for the space (opposite a huge picture window looking out on North Table Mountain). the Center hasn’t manifest itself at quite this scale before. the process was time-consuming, but Cyndy, a customer-service rep at Reed Photo where it was printed and mounted made it fairly painless. a good exercise to run through with digital scans of some of the black-and-white negatives scans I’ve been making. not too expensive, and quite spectacular quality on Fuji papers. mounting is expensive, however. but the whole process seems ripe for exhibition development of works that I started sketching 20 or more years ago — in the form of (long)tall scroll pieces that have multiple images on a single hanging piece of paper. gotta get to it! a slow day recovering from the long day before. Rick briefs me on the spike in activity surrounding the recent shale-gas plays in North America. missed that development in the last years, totally. StatOil alone plans 15,000 wells in the Marcellus formation of Pennsylvania and New York states. holy cow!

For if there were any solid body in equipoise at the center of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they are all perfectly similar; and if a person were to go round the world in a circle, he would often, when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of the same point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one part above and another below is not like a sensible man. — Plato

up early. zero Fahrenheit. low clouds. solo in the campground. spilled water freezes immediately. ranger passes through, we chat for a bit. brewing tea while ravens flock back and forth in the pines. a long slow wander through the Douglas fir and fore-dune scrub, up the dunes a bit, and back. silent. low chill breeze. cold, cold, cold.

have lunch at the bajada in the sun. listening.

stop at the visitors center on the way out and happen to meet the woman who would have been my boss had I nailed that position as educational liaison a few years back. very nice instance.

then to the Center, of course. for a circuit or so.

then onto the Gunbarrel north-bound. dinner with Rick and Sally in Golden, then on up to Boulder. Chris and Scharmin and the kids prepping for their Hawaii jaunt. Sage a bit more gray in the muzzle like some of us.

Twenty-two years since the first visit. Spring Break. Bit of a rough night, to be sure…

re-arriving simultaneity: with a black and ragged squall line ripping across the wide San Luis Valley, dark, bigger than most summer thunder storms that migrate east across from the San Juans to the Sangre de Christo Range, and much closer to the ground. a fast, obligatory slow-down at the Center of the Universe, one of the fastest visits yet. and by the time we arrive at the Sand Dunes campground, well, it starts snowing right about when we start setting the tent up. setting up on two feet of packed snow. hard as heck to get the pegs in firm. thinking of getting a stand-alone tent these days. though the North Face I got way back, well, 21 years ago is still doing quite well. seen action all over the West. Sierras, Rockies, Mojave. and so on. what else. hadn’t tested the stove yet, either, so, no warm food. warnings from the ranger about the mountain lion that had been recently sighted. rendezvous with the ranger later to get some firewood. Loki and I are alone except for one other pair of hardy campers. cold night’s fitful sleep that brings an additional foot or more of snow on top of the tent, yikes!

flickering times. a month of brilliant sunrises, a month full of stress. some enjoyment, as per usual, though not enough. slingshot north and east to the Front Range, propelled by various portents of success and survival. across Indian Lands, regenerating the rolling vision quest. through the mountains, in the chill of an un-heated car, thanks to a leaky heater valve on the interior heater unit. Wolf Creek Pass. and the ritual stop at the Center of the Universe. leaving a whisker from Yokono there in the artesian fountain — Yokono who narrowly escaped euthanasia-by-injection last Saturday as the vet was too busy. poor beast. she has been suffering of late. took her in for a haircut which leaves her ego a bit bruised, but otherwise she gets quite perky after a cut, unencumbered by pinching mattes of her long hair everywhere on her body. this time, even under her chin. age leaves her no will to groom. and then in the last days her hips seemed to be giving her significant trouble. so it went. anyway. through Durango for a brief visit with Richard and Holly and the kids. Richard on his way north and west to Seattle. on business.

with an image, Valgerdur reminds of a conversation we had early in the year at a dinner at her house. she was describing a trip with a friend of hers in the back-country of Colorado where they happened on an impressive place. synchronicity. nothing surprising, given the PLACE. and the person…

a walk to the Joensuu town beach, first along the river, then to the lake. the thin Light, sharp. always forgotten when away, dissipated from body memory as soon as body is exposed to the power of Colorado or Arizona Light. it evaporates, too blue to stand the brunt of vertical noon desert. but, on the returning north, passing through the land, there raises the high-frequency trace, intaglio, acid-etched, displaced faux-memory. to a temporary and precious foreground. from yesterday to today a chill entered the air. coming from 105F (43C) and going to 57F (12C) and wearing the same t-shirt. no shorts anymore, though, and no sandals. back to black work-boots, black jeans, dark everything. sit on a small floating dock and stare at the water-sun. geese scolding each other. sharp spicy air. elegant birch trees, precious in scale: these same eyes absorbed the Light of the Sequoias this summer. the birch tree leaves are changing color. over one night it comes. no turning back now.

dinner with Neils, Valgerdur, and Haukur. mmmmmmMMMMMmmmm. in the midst of a long conversation catching up on each other’s activities, Valgerdur was recounting her travel to teach in Colorado Springs at Colorado College. She took a road-trip with a colleague which, by chance (well, nothing is chance, all is inter-connected, so…) they are driving south through the San Luis Valley, and they make a short detour to see the Great Sand Dunes, driving past an abandoned house on the side of the road. they are both taken by the place, so, slow down, stop, back up, and photograph it. it is the center of the universe. no coincidence there. electricity. synchronicity. actually nothing really to comment about — it simply happened, period. aside from me being a tad jealous at not being in the Rocky Mountains in the springtime. it’s been 12 years since I have experienced that state of being.

forgot my sun glasses over at their place.

many miles, kilometers gone now. through the center of the universe, and more. movements, with different tools, different minds. trying to relax, but always the pressure of production. and realizing that I AM producing things, energies, situations, but it seems never enough in the proper form. the closest angel, an image made last month, in the last moments of Lappish Light. yeah, okay, this is a big gap, huge gap, like some recent others that have crept into this narrative. but I have no excuses, just that time moves.

arrival at a camping site is preceded by a short visit to the Center of the Universe. what are words?

and before that, early in the blazing day, a walk around some of the constructions of Chaco — the grand kiva is marvelous.

Driving across Colorado yesterday, a very short visit to the Center of the Universe, car full of possessions. Burden-bearer. Arriving at Lenny and Mel’s place in late afternoon. The drive threatened to be under winter-storm conditions but ended up being accompanied by blue sky, dry roads, and sunshine. So much for the Weather Channel on cable teevee. Eye-in-sky-sees-all mentality just fails to bring anything more than another illusion of control to life. There is no such thing as control, control is an oppressing concept of those who wish to oppress. First they teach that oppression is part of life, then they oppress, then they teach the impressionable to oppress.

Blue Spotted Horse said that we all walk two roads in our life. One is the Red Road of spirit that begins in the place where the sun lives. It runs across the world to the place where the Great White Giant lives. The other road is the Black Road of life, the hard road of difficulty, that begins in the place where the sun rises and all the days of people begin, and runs across the world to the place where the Black Thunder Beings live and all the days of people end. Blue Spotted Horse said that the Tree of Life grows in the place where the roads cross. That is the tree we must find and water, so that it will bloom and fill with singing birds. — Eagle Walking Turtle

Life walks many strange passages. Here in Durango. Moving into new worlds, old worlds. Always straddling two roads. Spirit and Life. Loki being a trooper, dealing with changing beds, changing altitudes, changing weather, changing houses, bathrooms, kitchens, people. Names, toys, rules. The constants are a small bag of toys that he accumulates through gifts from people he visits… Mary Ellen offered to do an acupuncture treatment late in the afternoon of the 20th. Lenny and Loki and I with some of their friends with kids spent awhile at the Trimble Hot Springs soaking in the hot waters there.

To augment your experience at the Center of the Universe, I have prepared the first of a series of short excursions into the Place (and its resonating counter-Places) starting with oracle of bones, a subset of the center.