wanted to check if a round-about way to get to the top of the bench was possible via heading to Mitten Park, and ascending the end of the bench there. nope, not without some serious bouldering or even technical climbing. got up pretty far, but the as the rocks are severely distressed at the fault itself, everything gets unstable. I quit where the trees stopped growing! good day for just looking around at everything along with a little initial off-road cardio. the cryptobiotic soil is always something to visually decode along with the lichen and other symbiotic expressions.

a short circuit to recall the textures and to reacquaint the senses with the essences of place — sky, rock, earth, plants, former occupants, etc: the basics. starting with a quick overview of Echo Park from the southern wall (a of the first two images), following that complexly eroding wall along to Pool Creek, then across to some nice petroglyphs.

The overall direction of change in the universe is from less probable (more organized) states to more probable (less organized) states. Life does not “oppose” this but rather makes use of it. The “downhill” movement can be used to raise things “uphill” (just as water flowing downhill through a water wheel can be used to raise a weight). There is, however, always a net loss of organization in the process.

For life on earth, the dissipation of energy from the sun is the downhill movement. Photosynthesis creates “uphill” molecules which in turn can be used in cellular respiration to create additional “uphill” molecules from which, in turn, all of the “uphill” organization of life and culture derive.

All of biological and human organization represents a state of improbability very much less than that of the concentration of energy in the sun, and one which would quickly dissipate if the sun ceased shining (or there was some disturbance in the chain of water wheels which link the sun to biological and cultural organization). — Paul Grobstein

Systems thinking is a framework that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation. The only way to fully understand why a problem or element
occurs and persists is to understand the part in relation to the whole. — Fritjof Capra

In conversations with Churchman on the historical sources of systems thinking, he often identified the Chinese I Ching as the oldest systems approach. As an effort to model dynamic processes of changing relationships between different kinds of elements, the I Ching might be seen as a systemic approach, in contrast with the more systematic approach of rationalist Western thought rooted in the work of Plato and Aristotle. The pre-Socratic philosophers were perhaps closer in spirit to the Eastern view than they were to the more orderly view of systems embodied in the later evolution of the Western tradition. This is particularly true of Heraclitus, whose inspiration is often cited in connection with the more progressive developments within the contemporary systems tradition. This contrast between systemic conceptions, which focus on interrelationships and dynamic processes, and the systematic conceptions, which are more concerned with classification and order, is critical in understanding the relationship between different views of systems in the twentieth century. — Debora Hammond, in The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory

Okay, so in the process of simplifying last week’s posting — 08 Jan — I’ve got to take yet another look at how control is projected by an organism. Or maybe that should be a question — does an organism exert control over its environment? Or does it merely synergize with the flows that are available to it? What affect does the neurophysiological field of action of a particular organism exert on the localized situation? Primitive neuro-systems read gradients or difference that ‘matter’ to their existence. Quantifying these existing gradients of energy relates to an organism’s ability to find the energy sources through which it survives to prolong its life and procreate. This is the fundamental means by which life has prolonged itself on the planet continuously since it began. The existence and control of thermal (heat) energy gradients are also extremely important in the regulation of internal physiological systems through direct biochemical reaction-rate regulation. The surface or edge of an organism is clearly ‘signified’ in thermodynamic and physical terms; the maintenance of internal gradients might be called ‘control’ where the control is a function of defining the primary limit of the organism’s field of action. hmmm.

Aside from a fraction of a kilo-ton of human-re-configured matter that has been more-or-less permanently jettisoned from the immediate gravitational field of the Terran system, all human activities are and always have been fully immersed in what, for the purposes of modeling, may be seen as a limited (eco-)system with limited energy resources. L-I-M-I-T-E-D. Followers of the develop-and-consume-at-any-cost economic philosophy appear to think that there is an un- at the beginning of limited. But are these limits germane regarding the scalar possibilities of alteration that 6.9 billion humans applies to the ‘closed’ system? Can this plague-species actually cause significant change? It’s maybe only a question of where on a sliding scale the alteration sits, and what range on that scale indicates ‘significant’ change.

It is not difficult to observe that all expressions of life have an affect on the immediate vicinity. The bed of dead leaves beneath the cottonwood, layered by age: age showing as a returning dissolution, collenchyma structures in the veins remain longer, the epidermis stripped away by insects, solar radiation, weather, and time. The altered rhizosphere full of exudates nourishing symbiotic microbial life which, in turn, alter the chemistry of the surrounding soil. The altered atmosphere, being distantly distributed by the wind, the absorption of Light. Animals consuming leaves, wandering away. Reverberatory. What does a tree do to the rest of the cosmos? It does. Clearly any form of life has this effect. It’s just a question of how much. Quantitative, with the qualitative in the affirmative, but still open to how.

try a couple more timelapse shots, but they are unsatisfactory with all the technical drawbacks. Stability, resolution, quality, etc. Nothing to be done about it without a 10K investment, or more.

Instead, after the driving rain all night, start a fire in the morning, still raining, but gradually it tapers off, though it is very cloudy. The guy who came in late yesterday in a Ford Explorer with a Rocket Box on top left at some point in the morning. Gah. No place to go! He’ll end up in a ditch somewhere.

I decide to do the traverse from the Pool Creek road over to Sand Canyon since the lower mouth of the canyon is not accessible because the Yampa River spring run-off level. On the way, I decide to drive up to the Bench fork to see where this guy drove — I am stunned to see that he took the branch up to the Harper’s Corner road, with the 18% grade. No way, after a night of rain, and, as I see when I get out of Pool Creek Canyon, snow down to about 6000 feet, so the last two miles of the road would be absolutely impossible. Just the drive to the fork is bad with the red clay sticking in the treads on the tires making them useless aside from the fact this is a relatively level road, so, no problem. I see his tracks, and even the difference of a few hours (time for the road to dry some), he was having more trouble that I was. I could see the difference of a few hours of drying time. I can only hope that there is no additional rain before Friday when I have to head out, south to Glade Park. I imagine that he is stuck somewhere on the road, though, hopefully not blocking traffic! (Of which there will be none, because after that weather, they for sure closed the top of the road for people coming in.)

The traverse the wide and clear bench to Sand Canyon is subtle but effective. Several kills, and between those and the barrel cacti colonies and the Indian Paint Brush (Castilleja linariifolia) flowers, plenty of that counterpoint coloration that is so outrageous in the West. The silver-green-blue of the sage, then these absolute vortices of color with the flowering plants, stimulating in the soft and wet Light. Found another 14-point elk rack, gah, these animals are big! Wouldn’t want to encounter a mad one! End up on the canyon rim, just across from where Sebastien, Jeff, Chris, Wendy, and I hike to from the old camping place, years ago, there are some extant shots of folks sprawled on a small bench of sandstone, resting, and eating M&M’s. I recall looking across the canyon at that point, thinking how it looked, how it impressed form into eye. Today, climbing down that formerly observed face was steep and tricky. All the while, wondering about cougars. A series of nice overhang/caves at the top under the limestone cap rock, so, continued the series of cave panoramas, hope to have three decent works to perhaps make into large-scale print works.

The psycho-geographic process in this situation, this environment, this weather, is strictly controlled by the contingencies of the total situation. There is little choice, per se, but rather the application of experience, or lack thereof, to the movement through, across, into, and of the essence of the place. Movement is dictated by will throughout the body, but it also immediately comes up against the contingencies of place. Unlike the Sonoran Desert, the actual number of spiny plants is not near as great, but the small size means easily overlooked, heavy boots are a necessity. And care becomes more about the stability of the foot-fall rather than what the foot might intersect. Some time is spent exploring several small side-canyons where there is plenty to absorb.

hike up Pat’s Draw and around the fault area, up a steep talus slope below the high scarps of Harper’s Corner, as far possible, and even some slow trundling down some very unstable and steep terrains. Seeing more 12-16-point elk racks, more mountain lion kills, and the weather is warm.

Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed watching of rotating the stellar field.

This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy — it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight.
(more …)

I chance to spot the raven squeezing through a small gap where the square-ended galvanized panel meets the arching roof. Bully fer ‘im! Then, later, I see them resume their shuttle flights to and from the hangar, going through that one gap and possibly another at the other end somewhere. Smart birds.

Re-construction is continuing on the Enola Gay Hangar almost constantly. All the new windows are finally in, the wing areas seem to be in order with their new galvanized sheeting. A couple days ago, the last gaps in the sheeting on this end and the far roof have been put in place. So, what of the ravens and their constant efforts to build a nest (and hatch chicks perhaps?) somewhere inside? They are now gone. I felt a little ill when I saw that the construction crew was going at the remaining gaps in the sheeting, knowing it would cause a huge disturbance in the lives of the ravens. Okay, to be sure, they would likely not have been nesting here in the flats if the building had not been constructed here to begin with — humans had already caused a significant distortion in the flows of this place — life does that, always. I noticed for a couple days the ravens sitting on the roof, but no more of the flying back and forth by the window of the residency. This is a huge loss, and I wonder if anyone else has thought about this as an affect of the restoration process?

A nice hike with Neal, his last day before heading back to London (despite the volcano!) into the Toano Raptor Observation Area at the south end of the Toano Range. No big raptors except for a turkey vulture who didn’t fly away from a sheep carcass at the side of the track in until we were just 20 feet away (oi, pew!!). That’s as close as I’ve been from one of those huge birds. The hike in gets into snow pretty quickly, including corn snow coming down. But the sun is warm on the south-facing side of the canyon, and with the elevation gain, the view to the east over the playa and all the way to the Wasatch Range is fine. Apparently in the fall, during migration, more than 50,000 eagles, hawks, and falcons pass through the area.

There is a large (black) raven (Corvus corax) who is in residence in the Enola Gay Hangar. There are some major areas of the roof and sides of the hangar where the corrugated sheeting has (surely!)been blown off over the years, so the interior is exposed to the elements and to natural energies. This raven (or two) is in residence somewhere high in the iron girders. Much of each day, especially during morning and evening, the raven is seen flying very purposefully between the hangar and a spot some 200 meters east of the hangar where there are some low scrubby bushes and open ground. (S)he flies back and forth not far from the window that I look out from on occasion as I work when inside the residency unit. Movement out the window catches my attention and about half the time it is the raven making this low and very determinate transit between the hangar and this spot. Occasionally the movement will be from the ground squirrel couple who has taken up residence in the underbelly of the Airstream, and otherwise, the few lizards will do their peculiar dances across the gravelly yard when it is warm; and lately, a handful of very small birds will spend the early evening hours, before sunset, picking aphids off the salt brush bush growing in the yard. But it is the raven who is most compelling. Back and forth. Before I leave, I want to hang out in the watch-tower and simply observe the flight cycle. I reckon (s)he’s gathering sticks for a nest, but I haven’t clearly seen anything in his/her beak on the flights back to the hangar, so it’s a question: what’s ‘e doin’? Actually it could be a pair of them, they are know to find a partner and mate for life. Hmmm, novel idea…

The ground squirrel pair is another matter. They’re gaining access to the otherwise pretty solid and gapless lower framework of the Airstream via the fold-out step area below the front door. There are also areas for critters to enter via the electrical and water hookup doors. One of those has a broken latch, so I think I will tap and screw that one down semi-permanently as the vehicle isn’t going to be moved anytime soon.

Neal and I head out to the Bonneville Flats towards evening. I want to cycle and he has some filming to do. Amazing Light. I cycle for about an hour, going about 8-10 miles out and then back. Hard to tell, dimensions are reduced to time alone (and body metrics). About five miles out there is a cluster of vehicles, apparently a photo shoot happening. Cycling down the ‘main drag’ of the speed-test area is a singular experience. Speed becomes necessary to overcome the lack of Cartesian cues, no pathway. Got to get somewhere. Got to approach those little specks in the distance. Oh, those are cars, sure takes a long time to get closer. Hit some areas where the salt is wet and there are loose crystals which splatter all over me. It mostly appears like ice, so brain is thinking danger! slick!, but it is quite the opposite, sticky like climbing on limestone.

The accompanying images are suffering from more digital camera woes — dust on the CCD. Absolutely disgusting. I don’t have a proper removal kit, and this Nikon model doesn’t have one of the vibrating sensors that can dislodge that extremely irritating blobs that end up on the sensor despite me never taking the lens off. Yet another disappointment with this Nikon (D200) — for the price paid it is real garbage compared to the old analog F2as and even Nikkormats from the 1970′s. I never had dust-on-film problems like this, ever! Neal has a nice Canon SLR system from his university, along with a HD 3-CCD chip DV cam. I’m jealous.

Neal makes it in from London after last weeks aborted attempt from having the flu.

A loop north around the Silver Island Mountains paralleling the Bonneville Salt Flats traces may textures of rock, sky, and the interface between. Numerous forays away from the truck into the landscape, looking at everything, smelling everything, hearing … nothing … or so. The space vehicle rumbles onward on the bad road. Bad road. All bad roads lead away from, further away from, Rome.

Leave the car, be here now. The desert commands that (or the fearful response, deny here now, and insulate the embodied self from any manifestation of here, get back to the car, now).

Turning to the west at the north end of the mountain fault-block, I am suddenly met by five huge white Maremma (or Great Pyrenees?) sheep dogs, each over 100 pounds, ready to shred whatever fleshly appendages might be protruding from the truck. They were guarding a sizable flock of sheep who were busy razing the already marginal winter foliage. gah, why they allow sheep farming up here, I’ll never know — the BLM’s “multi-use” philosophy destroying what land cover there is left in this place. The circuit continues across the playa from Pilot Peak and on to Leppy Pass and a human installation.

(Ed. note — have solved the image gallery as you can see. Seems to be relatively glitch-free and less work than my previous solutions. This is one image from a number — Pennsylvanian-Permian-aged lime/mud-stones, highly contorted. Do hope to get all of them up from this trip so far, sooner than later. But there is so much code to do for that — I still haven’t settled on a means to display images on this blog — there are several pre-packaged plug-ins for WordPress in this regard, but I haven’t decided. Not going to Flickr things nor use Facebook as the data management and control is passed off to those cloud services (not to mention the perverse End-User Licensing Agreement terms). The travelog blog means was good, but the file structure of WordPress does not lend itself to any automation if I use that older technique, and I desperately want to get out of the manual compilation work that I have been doing all along. It’s incredibly time consuming and easily bunged-up with (simple) code errors. Ach, as this site evolves into its 16th year, it remains something of a millstone, given the relative paucity of traffic (1 – 2,000 hits a day total).

Aim for the nearest topological features to the south, some small intrusives, an isolated fault block, likely, rhyolitic basalts of some sort (with some peridotites or greenstones possibly?). Lake Bonneville paleo-shorelines are visible, with a prominent one slicing the hills like a poorly-made isometric topo model. The hills are technically on the Air Force test range, but I disregard the signs (parking behind some low hills across the road in order not to attract attention).

Definitely a different regime than, say, the Sonoran desert. Here, the land seems more sterile and has only very low scrub, most less than a foot high. Low or black sagebrush (Artemisia), salt brush (Atriplex), rabbit brush, black brush, tumbleweed (Salsola pestifera), and a handful of other species are thinly scattered, with either desert varnish, pebbly sand, or the occasional small colony of cryptobiotic soil. Can’t really tell if this lack is a direct result from severe overgrazing (this is, after all, BLM land) or just a harsh (colder, drier!) regime here compared to the relatively abundant biota of the Sonoran.

Plenty of evidence of other human intrusions on top of the igneous stuff that these hills are made of. Bullet casings, scraps of glass and metal everywhere, bullet holes in anything worth shooting at. Two mines have burrowed into the earth, leaving debris, holes, and mounds, a refrigerator with major firearm damage, a twisted bike frame, and the shattered glass crunching underfoot.

The hills are much larger than they initially appear, a frequent phenomena in a landscape without the normal metrics for scale (trees and human structures). A great view in all directions from the top.

A lake shore sand deposit in the form of a light tan mudflat attracts my attention on the talus-skiing descent, as it is bisected by the old roadbed which exhibits the typical roadbed riparian affect — with visibly larger brush on either side of the eroding pavement — the direct affect of the slight concentration of runoff precipitation. Walking here in the flats one feels … exposed … as the occasional mining truck speeds by a mile or so away. The only relief among short sage brush are the holes dug by coyotes into smaller varmit holes, now that would be something to watch! Good for spraining an ankle if step is not watched closely. The only other difference are the widely scattered aluminum beer cans, mostly effaced of any markings by the brutal sun, sitting pell-mell in the sand.

I notice later that the Nikon has more crap on the CCD, about which nothing can be done — you can see two spots in the lower left center of the images. My irritation with this camera system increases as the years go by. I am constantly astonished at the poor quality of the lens, along with the dirt accumulation on the CCD — it’s a closed system, for god’s sake, how does it keep getting dirty? I don’t even take the lens off, ever! I think the Canon system is superior both optically and technologically. But nothing to be done about it, unless I decide against getting a new laptop and instead get a new camera. Ach, I get tired of technology!

John Vallee, 54, lives near the trestle that spans the Crane Creek and was watching TV when he heard a loud screech. He went outside and first thought he saw a blanket tangled under a rail car. Then he realized it was a person.

“It’s going to be hard for me to get to sleep,” Mr. Vallee told Florida Today. “I can’t get it out of my mind.” — AP

The energized impression and apprehension of be-ing leaves us with resonant formations in embodied memory. And it is resonance that best circumscribes (models) the phenomena of the propagation of empathy from the Other to the Self. Although there is no hard evidence in humans, the concept of mirror neurons would seem to support the idea of resonance. Caught a lecture at UM with Deb on “Empathy in Normal Adult Development and Neurological Disease” with Bob Levenson from UCB which got me thinking of the actual mechanism that allows for the transmission of the energies of expression across Cartesian space from the Self to the Other. The obvious model would be the transmission of band-limited radiative (visual, auditory, touch, etc) energy which then is apprehended by the neural system, a system which is sensitive to ‘matched’ or similar experiences that have already impinged and impressed themselves on the body system. This impression process changes the body system from one energy configuration to another. And any life system will have fundamental resonant pathways — these would be necessary determinants of basic learned experience — whatever the particular and precise mechanism is (mirror neurons being perhaps a primary model), the idea of resonance seems to be key. Resonance would depend on some accounting of sameness and difference as per prior embodied experience and the persistence of impressions (which themselves are configurations of energized neuronal structures: memory) among other factors. There would have to be a means for rapid energy pattern-matching across a huge volume of semi-fixed memory structures in the brain — it would be impossible to check all possible prior impressions with all live incoming impressions, so there would have to be some kind of disgressionary or limiting function to the process in the form of step or directional filters…

I can’t get you out of my mind…

If one constructs a tool, what is one doing, and why is one doing it? How will one do it?

How to control of flows around oneself? And what does this control mean? Where does the desire to control arise from? Is it simply about evolutionary (survival/procreative) pressures? Is there anything about control that is altruistic (or simply outside of the broadly evolutionary imperative)?

The divide between life-forms that make tools and ones that don’t is fundamental, but it may be ignored when regarding the smooth continuum framing life as a system(?) that alters the flows of energy around it generally to its advantage (or to its need to continue — life is about life needing to continue life). The divide then appears to arise only when one considers how (from a mechanistic p.o.v.) that control is exerted.

This divide seems especially arbitrary when the body itself may be seen as a tool. The mechanical relations between bone structures, for example, or the magnifying ability of the lens in the eye. And, extending the definition of tool beyond the purely mechanical to, say, chemical, the body is a clearly a refinery in the exact same sense as a petroleum refinery. It conducts a wide-ranging set of thermodynamically driven reactions to access and distribute concentrated energy sources that it has introduced to its system. While there is a material dividing plane, the skin, which historically looms largely absolute in determining many classifications of relation and order, that plane may also be seen as arbitrary. The surface tissues — including the entire gut and lungs — are highly permeable surfaces which are constantly interchanging matter and energy with the environment they are in. In an optimal sense, at a particular time, this interchange process does not degrade the general order of the biotic system, but it does precipitate localized and systemic change. Also to be considered are the millions of microscopic organisms which synergize with the larger human body system — without which that system would likely not survive.

Are there, then, distinctions to be made based on body-as-tool and the ‘external’ tool that the body/mind system synthesizes? Or are these distinctions merely artifacts of the entire mechanistic p.o.v.?

It would seem so. If one considers, again, the relations within the body between , say, limb or organ, where a part may be seen as having a particular function which benefits or affects another part. A particular part has a function (as any tool also has) which aids in the performance of the body-system and interacts with other specific mechanisms in the body. In a living body-system these inter-relations are both necessary and sufficient if one includes the those moving between the body and the external. The body is seen as an indivisible whole, but without the constant interactions with the external environment, it would, for practical purposes, dis-integrate immediately.

The point of this short meditation is to emphasize the process which a tool, by definition, precipitates. That process is the fundamental alteration of the energy flows to which the tool is applied. This process unites the purpose of both internal and external systems for energy flow change which may be seen as a tool. The body is a technology as much as anything external to it which causes an alteration of extant energy flows. (Uff, this suggests that life itself be defined as a technology as it always alters the flows around it — we are life, we alter the flows around us, we are a technology.)

The division between tool-makers and those organisms which do not make tools may then be seen as a somewhat arbitrary one. Both organisms are needful of altering the surrounding flows to survive, they actualize that need via evolved mechanisms as they relate with those particular flows. The ultimate point for both internal and external tool use is the optimized continuance of life.

Meanwhile, thinking about difference and edges. Organisms are distinguished by defined/refined difference between themselves and that-which-surrounds through changes in the characteristics of the field/flux. There is also an internal(ized) sensitivity to difference that arises in an organism — as an evolutionary trait related to the search for usable energy gradients as a source for ensuing negentropic action or use. Distinguishing difference: how does it arise and proceed? Or is the energy gradient, a fundamental expression of difference, difference itself? Skin seems to be absolute and abrupt but in fact is a layered, gradational transition from Self to what is out there. And, in fact, if there is a continuous energized substrate within/below/of all, there is only difference in relatively and locally definable by characteristics which are circumscribable with non-absolute frames of reference … sheesh …

(but wait a minute, LIFE is, by definition, a redirecting of the flows of energy in a natural system — a redirecting that is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of living systems — according to basic non-equilibrium thermodynamics of living systems.)

However, there is a scalar difference between humans and other living entities where some humans attempt this kind of control on wide scales, with others re-directing those same energies to completely different configurations, some only images of what their ‘original’ pattern of flow once were. (it’s a question of degree?)

The juxtaposition: humans re-organizing the ‘natural’ flows around them (as technology), and humans re-organizing the flows which are human — other humans (as society).

These processes are indistinguishable in their application and only express some difference in the materialized extremity of their results. Humans are simply an other expression of the natural system. It is only in the degree or scale of re-organization of flows that they extend that distinguishes them from other expressions of life. One could argue that earlier Archean life on the planet, utilizing the energy available in certain chemical bonds over eons, completely transformed the composition of the atmosphere in a process of dynamic equilibrium — something we humans are apparently doing yet again in a vastly shorter time. Life, via evolutionary developments, integrally tapped into an available energy source/flow with gusto until the source was depleted or another ‘easier’ source was encountered. Life based on photosynthetic processes of energy utilization is a example that has a long and continuing evolutionary history.

Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, explores this process of (the human) redirection of flows as the idea of “fabrication” — as a god-like means to artificially re-create and temporarily reify natural systems. She squarely positions this energy exertion as part of the “external subjectivization of the modern world.” This condition of externalization is a necessary precedent condition for the social and represents the ‘mechanism’ which draws granular and embodied human power from the individual into the social system (for cumulative and disgressionary use by that system). This energy consequently becomes unavailable to the individual, although the pathways that the social system constructs for the expression of its energy may be utilized by the individual, depending on their particular positioning within the system.

(Working at a job for “The Man,” that vaguely persistent image that arose in the times of African-American slavery, frames this dynamic. While most individuals in the middle- and upper-class would consider that their work in the service of someone else is merely a fact of existence and that the convertible and abstracted instrumental returns (money) more than suffice as a reward for the life-time and life-energy expended in this way. It is this collective faith in the abstracted social instrument of money (and other codes) (see Code and Money), expressed as a crucial social adhesive, which gives the social system a form for the expression of the cumulative energy of individual participants.)

Within the life process itself, of which laboring remains an integral part and which it never transcends, it is idle to ask questions that presuppose the category of means and end, such as whether men live and consume in order to have the strength to labor or whether they labor in order to have the means of consumption.

If we consider this loss of the faculty to distinguish clearly between means and end in terms of human behavior, we can say that the free disposition and use of tools for a specific end product is replaced by rhythmic unification of the laboring body with its implement, the movement of laboring itself acting as the unifying force. Labor but not work requires for best result a rhythmically ordered performance and, in so far as many laborers gang together, needs rhythmic co-ordination of all individual movements. In this motion, the tools lose their instrumental character, and the clear distinction between man and his implements, as well as his ends, becomes blurred. What dominates the labor process and all work processes which are performed in the mode of laboring is neither man’s purposeful effort nor the product he may desire, but the motion of the process itself and the rhythm it imposes upon the laborers. Labor implements are drawn into this rhythm until the body and tool swing in the same repetitive movement, that is, until, in the use of machines, which of all implements are best suited to the performance of the animal laborans, it is not longer the body’s movement that determines the implement’s movement but the machine’s movement which enforces the movements of the body. — Hannah Arendt, “The Human Condition”

death strewn on the highway. roadkill. carnivore, herbivore, amphibian, insect: getting to the other side of the road is just part of the inexorable (natural) systemic flow. Roadkill represents one intersection of human-defined flows and naturally-existing flows. The result of this fundamental intersection is near-death or absolute annihilation, a rapid reduction to component complex molecules. from the thathunk of meatier species to the simple fluttering splat of the butterfly. Leathery carcasses that persist for days despite the brutal pounding of truck tires and hard-to-remove stains on the windshield that resist even the most vigorous squeegee scrubbing whilst filling-up the tank.

Insects with a low weight-to-surface-area ratio can sometimes avoid liquidation by the slipstream effect which will carry them up and over the vehicle. But trajectory is all, and the meatier bugs, the swarming locusts and grasshoppers, have too much mass in their sagging torsos to experience this sanctified reprieve and thus become one with their maker in a soul-wrenching milli-second that can be a marvel of colorful abstraction a-la Pollack.

Along one stretch of the UFO Highway in Nevada, red locusts were on the march northward along a specific pathway that they were intent on following without regard to individual survival. At 60 MPH, the dynamic was such that their flight reaction to the approaching truck got them only a couple feet off the ground, not over the height of the hood, so, the lower grill was a mass of dessicated carcasses by the time we got to the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, a hundred miles away. Many more were simply crushed by the wheels, leaving greasy red-greenish stains on the road and in the wheel-wells: their natural trajectory on the ground was clearly discernible where it intersected with roads. I noticed in the gas station parking lot in Ely there was a small flock of birds who were picking over the the resulting detritus on the ground, and when they could manage, actually hanging onto the grills and directly harvesting the carnage, ‘burp!’ What would the evolutionary outcomes be? Birds that can smell idling cars? Locusts who tunnel for 40 feet underground when they encounter traces of heavy hydrocarbons, with luck, getting to the other side.

Larger animals, the mammals are the worst, though, when encountered at any speed. Moose and elk torsos will behave something like the old paper-straw-through-the-raw-potato trick — inertial physics at its most fundamental. The front bumper of the car will take out the long spindly legs whilst the massive quarter-ton of body-meat, at just the right height to clear the hood, will simply stay where it is. But where it is relative to the speeding windshield means that it will simply obliterate anything in the front seats of the vehicle. At low speeds, this can mean a struggling, injured animal in the laps of struggling, injured humans, gah.

The road-as-pathway is a channel for the flow of energy. It is defined by socially-constructed standards and protocols: a web of socially-applied energies follow the limitations and directedness of those protocols. Roads are a human construct in response to the existence of natural blockages that divert from desired trajectories, that expend communal life-energies and threaten the control of energy resources.

The road is perhaps a synthesized mirror for the human-navigable river, that directed natural space of flow, or the ocean which is the cumulative and spatial confluence-of-all-rivers.

Practically all natural landscapes have some form of blockage as to cause a deviation to even slow and deliberate human passage. So, when there is a lack of free and easy passage, first a foot-path evolves, or is established through troddden effort. This is a trajectory for the body, with the foot leading. Seeking a pathway on foot requires vigilance and concentrated attention in many environments, though this condition is necessarily eliminated from daily life in the developed world — almost completely through the efforts to flatten, level, grade, and pave large swaths of the Terran surface.
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Presuming the Terran system is a (fully) self-regulating system, then the hypothesis would have to include the entire evolutionary process which produced human beings among other biota under the particular macroscopic and microscopic availing conditions. Self-regulation would then suggest that the system will solve the current problems of human over-population and resource spoilage as it solves all other oscillations of what is a system in thermodynamic disequilibrium. Biospheric self-organization (among a holistic range of other mechanisms that we likely have no clue about in the moment), will do it’s thing. Despite, in spite of, and at the effect of what a specific biotic evolutionary line is doing. There is plenty of data showing wide-scale fluctuations in, for example, atmospheric components related to changing biotic fluxes.

Angel Place, one of those darkish urban voids produced by vertical development and poor planning, is host to the Forgotten Songs installation as part of the Hidden Networks program. sounds of extinct and near-extinct species that once filled this very ground before colonization. the bird (sounds) are in cages. what brilliant human-applied alterations of flow does (temporarily) to natural systems. when’s equilibrium gonna happen?

today, after that small amount of moisture in the night, the entire place is vibrating. when standing still, there is a loud and continuous background buzzing that is non-specific in source direction. standing near a particular blossoming plant, there is the sensation of particular bees and other insects doing their thing, but otherwise, there is this background humming that has no point source but rather simply is — like the hissing of blood in ear.

on the way in to Sycamore Spring both times, I note the existence of a lone Cottonwood tree growing up in the middle of a lightly sloping alluvial fan below a sizable un-named mesa. the only possibility for a Cottonwood to be there is water, and plenty of it. a good objective for a bushwhack. after the numerous encounters with slithering and rattling things yesterday, attention to movement and especially foot placement becomes aligned with breathing. of course any movement has to be calculated when in such an environment. miscalculated movement will be punished by some extremely sharp and pointed object intersecting and likely penetrating the body wall. I escape these four days with only two of those painful encounters, both arising in the thin slice of time between a visual scan of upcoming terrain and a glance at some specific object within the field of view. then aiiii-shit! as the pain jolts upwards from compromised shin.

this bushwhack takes me to the cottonwood. it looks to be around a hundred years old, there are a few other water-seeking plants, a tamarisk, rooted in a whitish rock ledge. apparently some near-surface water is available. paradise in the shade under the tree. except for the stench of death which I trace to the desiccating corpse of a cow 20 meters away in the scrub. the shifting wind brings eye-watering wafts on occasion, but otherwise I spend an hour or two soaking up the energy of being under the lush green canopy surrounded by hard-core Sonoran desert. it is a singularity like Sycamore Spring on a smaller scale and with no running surface water.

minuscule F/A-18 fighters are frequently dog-fighting in the airspace above. in the day and night. moving in and out of unaided vision, tightly circling each other, dropping flares, and, with afterburners, roaring in such volume that all ambient sound is swallowed. for our nation’s security. so it goes.

otherwise, commercial flight contrails gradually fill the sky with high-level cirrus clouds that soften the terrain and its re-radiative impact, but this effect distorts its being what it is, along with distorting the things living here. they did not evolve with spent jet fuel clouds hanging overhead to shade them from the burnishing sun. this is a problem. just another problem that the human species have applied through their amplification system — this is the waste product, waste energy, which alters the environment.

the rest of the day is a slow and rambling return to base. run across some small mining digs, one trenched into a pegmatite dike that includes some coarsely crystallized black tourmaline with its classic trigonal (rhombohedral hemimorphic) cross-sections. someone has tramped this land, and in the hunt for extractive wealth, has, literally, left no stone unturned. the West is everywhere scarred by these digs from small two-meter test pits to the massive kilometer-wide open-pit gashes. that mineral bonanza, that natural ‘surplus’ regime drove and still drives the development of the West. straight north of here about 15 kilometers, is the Phelps-Dodge copper/molybdenum open-pit monstrosity. without which, as the old Colorado School of Mines bumper sticker proclaimed Ban Mining, Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark the developed world could not exist.

Transmediale09 tasks start to form up. Though the decision to go to Berlin is not made quite yet. I can participate to a degree without going, working as a remote online moderator for the conference.

Winter Solstice about over and gone. To stretch days to June 21. No problem with that. Here sunrise was at 07:33 and sunset at 17:23. Not bad, day hardly shrinks from summer when the nights are still long and dark.

As the basement chill grows. It’ll be long underwear here. With no sunshine. Star shine tonight, perhaps sun tomorrow. I’ll watch the sun come up. The windows are warped in most the house. One way or the other. Gap at the bottom of the big one facing south. When the Pacific storms come ripping through both that window and the western one over the guest bed leaks a bit. Will have to see if I can effect a fix. Reading Thoreau. And others.

I do not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mind to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation and it put me on the alert to see more like it. I exulted like “a pagan suckled in a creed” that had never been worn at all, but was bran new, and adequate to the occasion. I let science slide, and rejoiced in that Light as if it had been a fellow creature. I saw that it was excellent, and was very glad to know that it was so cheap. A scientific explanation, as it is called, would have been altogether out of place there. That is for pale daylight. Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes.

It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day — not an empty chamber, but an inhabited house — and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them. Your so-called wise man goes trying to persuade himself that there is no entity there but himself and his traps, but it is a great deal easier to believe the truth. It suggested, too, that the same experience always gives birth to the same sort of belief or religion. One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man. I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing from the missionary. I am not sure but all that would tempt me to teach the Indian my religion would be his promise to teach me his. Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things; now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the Light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth. — Hank Thoreau

Japanese climbing Hydrangeas (Schizophragma hydrangeoides) cover the southeast corner of the house here.

Back to the desert. Around 95°F from Kingman onwards past Needles, then the turn north off the Interstate into the Mojave. Things are still green. The Buckhorn Cholla (Opuntia acanthocarpa) is blooming, along with Sacred Datura (Datura meteloides) and other plants. There is already one generation of spring grass that is now bone dry and gone to seed, dead. A reason for some alarm in human quarters: fire hazard, from simply driving through the stuff with a hot exhaust pipe. Southern Arizona is already seeing higher than average burn acreage this year even though it is early in the fire season. Sliver of crescent moon, shadow bathed in blue-green earth-Light. Venus slightly below, eclipsed by granite boulders. Jupiter with an extended string of pearls high and wide. Close by to the place I camped in December on the way up here. Not as cold as then, but the temperature swing from day to night will be at least 30°F tonight. But the dry air has a ethereal soothing quality. Limited material content, terrestrial-bound equivalent of Mars. Day and night. Hot and cold. Long drive tomorrow, the rest of the way for Dana’s birthday dinner. Five hundred miles away still. Mostly interesting drive, as a virtual show of landscape variation. But tedious when there are deadlines. Would rather take several days to cross the Great Valley. So many strange scenes there.

Smithsonian magazine echoes my words again. How the visibility of the West has contracted from 145 miles to between 35 and 80 miles. More dramatic than I mention to folks, but I got my statistic some years back. It is decreasing. From the right vantage, overlooking Tejon Pass and the gap to the south of the San Bernadino Mountains, thick jets of raw burnt-red eL-Ay air burst into the desert, making a dusty haze that spreads east to Arizona and further. Ever got caught downwind of a campfire? What’s the difference to that and being downwind of 13 million Los Angelenos swarming in single-passenger SUV-droves, simultaneously towards and away from their every desire. Not much. Weepy, stinging eyes, raspy nose, and asthmatic breath.

Imagining if I came into a sizable chunk of money I would buy a 3-CCD video camera. I shoot so much nice footage in cool places that it is a bit of a waste having a crappy consumer cam. Would never settle for such lousy optical quality doing still camera or traditional film work. The cheapest one could get would be $3K, and the prospect of a used pro cam is unsettling. Hmmm.

Well, once the doctoral direction is settled (or dropped).

Lizards are twice as fat as normal. And twice as slow. Their usual lightning-scurry is replaced by a wheels-spinning shuffle. They are gorging on bugs of which there is a profusion from the relatively abundant rains this winter. This is a dorsal view of an Ornate Tree Lizard (Urosaurus ornatus) that somehow got caught under some foam panels I was moving around. I was unhappy that he was dead. At first I thought he was faking, as I had just seen him alive a few minutes before. He had no apparent damage, and with the colors on his belly — a place you never see when they are alive, I popped him right on the scanner and made a 2400 bpi scan. Both sides. Incredible beast. And such a feeling of the body. Pity he died, though.

And now the Nile Virus season begins.

Fat lizards everywhere, and snakes. Now run across several snakes around the house, one just outside the back door today. And a minuscule rattler out on the Mint Wash trail.

05 2005′, ’14 1638

so, finally made it up Granite Mountain in the Wilderness area. up early, but not early enough, so the late morning sun told us on the way down, but we didn’t know that at the time. on the trail from Granite Basin by 0715, the first mile a mild level upstream through the riparian wash that leads to the artificial lake across Mint Wash at the trail head. the next two miles a brutal climb zig-zagging up a south-west-facing slope of scrub oak, prickly pear, manzanita, yucca and such. with the main bulk of the mountain directly to the east, we were early enough to get some shadow cover on the way up, but even still, intense exposure. saw several horned toads and plenty of lizards, but nothing more (i.e., snakes). the last mile, a traverse through partly ponderosa forest was easy. the final ascent to the peak we were aiming for, (500 feet below the main peak which would require an extra six miles return trip, bush-whacking), was relatively easy. a snack at the top, and in the building heat, a tiring walk back. saw the largest (greenleaf) manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita, Arctostaphylos patula) I’ve ever seen, with several trunks over 9 inches in diameter. the splendid surface in molt now, but after the peeling bark falls, the trunks are soft-glisten smooth to the touch, and have an unmistakable warm coppery color. treks like this, moderate as they are, remind me that I am soft. no tough survivalist, though I can read much in the landscape, it is clearly a leap away from actually living in the environment. just the solar exposure for that brief time is grueling.

so much stimulation. skunks, 8-point bucks, fish, minnows, crayfish, bats, Mormon Locusts, lizards, snakes, sage grouse, sagebrush, the Yampa, the Green, Steamship Rock, the sandstone, the sky, storms, swimming in place in the river, hiking Sand Canyon, waiting for rain. two days in Echo Park is a lifetime of regeneration. will definitely bring Loki here. 14 years ago I was here last. it has changed. the broad park with 20 or so huge cottonwood trees is half gone, consumed by the river, the trees lying like skeletons of monstrous beasts in the low water. that whole area is now closed for camping, and a ‘regular’ campground established at the point where the road exits the canyon on the way down. nicer that way, gives the wildlife a better chance in that area. strange how much the topography has changed, though, I had not expected it. not to mention the colonization by tamarisk. that has changed the shoreline. watching the stars last night, sleeping in the back of the truck, head on the tailgate, waking at regular intervals, seeing the sheer wall above and behind me, changing color, shade, as morning approached. and the rotation of stars silhouetted by the massive cliffs in every direction. no bugs to speak of, but tonight there seems to be many.

Sand Canyon, a long hike starting rather late in the morning, so that when I reach as far as I feel like going, it is in the peak of the heat and Light radiation bath. early on, there were plenty of cool shady spots to catch, resting in the silence, but on the way back down to the river, the heat and Light was searing the eyeballs. pressing down on the head. and making everything stand out in etched presence. (find edge). convolve the edge with a Dirac Delta function to send it to infinity. and it becomes the key value in knowing, at least in the moment. for each manifestation of energy in the universe, the critical point is the edge. how to maintain the energy right to the edge. but not beyond. (an aura is the inability to stop energy at an edge — it suggests a permeability, or that energy permeates everything. spreading to infuse the next manifestation. intertwining with and loving the Other.

a raptor harries me from above: death from above (the calling-card moniker of the Charlie Company 1st Battalion 8th Cavalry), rapacious cawing, echoing off the walls of the canyon, its yearling young joining in short flight or resting on a ledge far above me when I stopped to watch from under a cottonwood tree. I am not a welcome addition to the area. later I covertly watch the same raptor giving the same abuse to a passel of ravens that were coming downriver. ravens are everywhere that I have lived in the last years. there was one raven in Iceland, a huge one, who would come into town in the winter, I would cross his path in the crisp and dark mornings outside the house on my way to the bus stop at the top of the hill. he would greet me in a gutteral “craaaaaaawwwwwk.” I would look up, and wish for the best that spirit can offer to another being. and recall the ravens of Kehlsteinhaus, Hitler’s “Eagles Nest” near Berchtesgaden in the Austrian sub-Alps. the place looking like the home of the Nazgul in Lord of the Rings, in a greasy fog. while down below in the valley, American military officers relaxed and played golf. spoils of war. carrion.

a day so full of unspoken in-press-ons (no other human contact save for a few limited conversations) that spirit simmers at the surface. want to keep it there. will be here again in the near future. even though it is not so easy on the car, but if this is the main thing I do with the car, well, it will be worth it.

This time of the year, under the shadow of the Flatirons. Dreaming of honeysuckle in my mouth. Wine and roses, Goshen, and awakening powers. Finding a Lady Slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum) in the deep wood. Delicate soil-changer. Growing. (Like all rising, growing things, waxing, increase).

Why is this? Is a pivotal point happening sometime soon, has one already transpired? Or was one missed in the noise of the daily movements? No way to tell, except that I do feel inspired by the place. Not the socio-cultural, but the raw presence of place. Why not?