and suddenly time is up on the Front Range. head west on I-70 to participate in the raising the yurt. along Glenwood Canyon under stormy skies, then once out of that, on to the Grand Junction Airport to meet Collin and Marisa at their offices.

Transit of Utah. From west to east, along a winding trajectory from desert to forest to desert, oil drilling, wind power, gas stations, Mormon farms, gold mines, high-security military bases, municipal alarm towers scattered across the landscape — for warning the population surrounding the bases where testing of bio- and chemical-warfare devices is ongoing — warning them of impending disaster. Continuing on the isolated Pony Express Trail, then descending into populated areas. Calling ahead to Dinosaur to see about road conditions. Plenty of snow on the Uintahs, plenty! At the last minute after checking out the Green River campground on the Utah side, I get word that the Echo Park road is open. So, gas up, including the extra tank, and head in from Jensen. Excellent weather, and finally arriving, no one else around, very good. Get the pick of the few camp spaces, #5, 7, and 9 are the best for shade, seclusion, and access to firewood — though shade is not the issue at this time of year, more important would be the access to morning sunshine to warm up — but since there’s no one else around, I can use the #6 picnic table in full sun in the morning for breakfast. So, I take #7 and offload/set-up quickly: already charged at being here once again…

Today, a group of large Winnebago’s towing large trailers descend around the Enola Gay hangar, spread their leveling legs, expand their living-room sides, deploy external camping chairs, and unfurl their shade awnings. In the large trailers are a range of amateur racing vehicles. Mostly stock cars with over-amped engines. A huge course is set up on the near taxi-way.

Meanwhile, at South Base, a contingent of active Army troops is engaged in a live-fire exercise, complete with fire-finding radar systems and a half-dozen porta-potties, everything obscured in form through the ripple of heat-waves coming from runway one and two and the old taxiways between here and there. In early evening, a contingent of UH-60 Blackhawks come in to land along with a handful MH-6 Little Bird Special Ops ‘choppers.

When a highly-ordered techno-social system meets a disordered system, what are the results? Is it similar to an osmotic membrane with more and less salty water on either side, the fresher water is drawn through the membrane to dilute the salty water? Is the energy-based order diluted and lessened through the contact? A combat situation is, itself, a hybrid sequence of events transitioning between order and disorder at many scales over time– with the different actors intent on maintaining an in-flow of energy in order to maintain their order. It is the ordered expression of collective techno-social energies with the goal of decreasing the order of the opponents system — whether at the single body scale, or at the scale of the wider techno-social infrastructure.

In the case of Afghanistan, the points at which the advanced ordered system (US) can apply weapons to increase the disorder of the opposing system (Taliban) are so limited to be almost point-less. The Afghani society has so minimal an ordered social infrastructure to be destroyed and the relation of individuals to the destruction of their own body-systems (in the case of the martyr), makes the conflict literally sense-less and not win-able in any classic way — where winning is the imposition of a critical level of disorder on the capabilities of the opposition to express concentrated energies that will disrupt the order of ones own system.

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

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

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

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

At Linda Leas cafe in Kanab, locals, non-Mormons pursue another religion, worship of java, across the street from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After the first night out. Wishing for a 4-wheel-drive vehicle to give a greater degree of risk possible. Snow or rain threatening in forecasts, and bentonite clay roads are impassable when wet. The guy working the BLM desk, old, over-weight, tobacco stains his white mustache brown, makes the warnings. He has to talk to foreign tourists and downstreamers a lot, surely. Folks who haven’t a clue about how it works out here. The Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument is so large, and the country so unforgiving, surely they have to scrape up the dessicated or flash-flood saturated remains of folks every year. On the other hand, this is no monkey-wrench territory anymore, it’s just a place for cheap virtual entertainment via wheeled vehicles with windows. Maybe some stars glimpsed, a whiff of juniper blossoms firing off tart pollen.

Typing like I can’t get over it. Wanting to find something to use, utilize, make happen, profit from, in this movement, this travel, across these space. Spaces that have so little to offer in transit, and less to offer when living, settled, in them. Nothing arrives. Nothing comes. Even with some caffeine enhancement via cappuccino. (Cappuccino here, wondering about the spread, propagation, of cappuccino across Amurika). In territories defined by the dominance of thin and watery drip-grind served by waitresses named Flo or Blanch, in stainless diners. Now, instead, cafes with multi-colored chalk menus on the walls, starting with espresso, then cappuccino, then lattes, and so on, with as many permutations as the local consumers demand to enhance their sensibilities. Retro interiors: Naugahyde, Formica, Vinyl, Linoleum, garage-sale vintage, cluttered.

Accident intrudes on the evening hunt for a place to camp. Again the bentonite clay plays a significant role. Up from Paragonah, into the National Forest a few miles along Red Creek Canyon, and the road starts to get wet, then snow-covered, no match for my vehicle, reach a zenith and decide to backtrack. With no turn-around except back a quarter-mile, I start backing, and a bit too fast, get caught in some old tracks in the mud and bingo! In the very muddy ditch up to the axle, with an overhanging branch almost completely ripping the bike rack off the roof. Shiite! Climb out the passenger side window, shaken, cursing, looking at the graying sky and approaching dusk, and knowing the forecast for bad weather.

Leaving aside the refined mapping of experience-once-removed. And instead, gathering experience first hand, in the moment, where circumspection is wistful, wasteful, or even dangerous.

Music on the road. Traveling minstrels, buskers, harmonica-playing hobos. playing for people on the road, or playing whilst on the road. Meeting at the roadhouse. Beyond the city limits. What goes down when humans engage beyond the control of the proper social order. What goes on outside the ordered flows of town. Interstitial in the sense that between towns lie the open roads. bandits, women and men of loose moral fortitude, and wild animals. The space of chaotic flow.

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even “secret” — pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel.

As a matter of fact, we don’t just “suspect” it. We know it. We know there exists an art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

What is the nature of what is feared outside the purview of human controlled flows? Is it merely nature? It is the presence of (or the risk of) death — that singular element that lies completely beyond human control, for ever? It cannot be erased from the wild kernel of being. Some seek the thrill of facing it, some hide in states of paranoid control to keep it as far away as possible, backing away only to fall over a precipice unseen behind. Religion is the construct that irrationally rationalizes the presence of the unknown, of death, and of corrupt social order.

… back to the road …

The body of speed. (hunt and/or be hunted). Movement is the first escape from death. Running to safety, to the nearest tree. Running to fetch the weapon that you left at home. Running for the crowd so that the odds of getting eaten are marginally lowered. Running fast. Running to change places. Running to make a moving target. Running for help! Running to the Library!

The Book as fuel for keeping warm and The Book as weapon: dictionaries and encyclopedias work best for both purposes. Book as pillow. Book as door-stop. Book as object sensed orbiting centers of cultural gravity. Textual asteroids and debris. Escape that field.

The Book as tool for enhancing procreative potential and staving off death. Rather, Books on how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading about how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading-while-driving. Speed. And then it comes. uuuuuhhh.

nah. gotcha, I’m outta here, step on it, hit the gas, burn some rubber, spray some gravel in ‘is face…

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).

fortune cookie:

Be satisfied with what you already own. lucky numbers 16, 18, 21, 25, 29, 45. learn Chinese: Mayor = Shi-zhang

talk to Anthony on the phone, catching up with the poet hissef’, subject launches from Heidegger to Kennan (see following), to Paul Celan through to az’s own individual efforts at poetic production.

The automobile has turned out to be, by virtue of its innate and inalterable qualities, the enemy of community generally. Wherever it advances, neighborliness and the sense of community are generally impaired. — George F. Kennan

from a longer article at Transportation Alternatives. clearly another stab evidencing the general principle that every technological implementation costs something on a scale of alienation. the obverse of destruction of community. I place the destruction back at that granular level: where the particular techno-social implementation splits the Self from the Other by some means. the simplest example is the television, where the attention vector, a metric of the strength of personal connection, is generally directed towards the mediated/socialized flow, and away from, or at least perpendicular to the attention vector of the proximal Other. it would be better to watch the teevee via a macro lens as the media is reflected in the eye of the Other. or, of course, just turn it off and do the face-to-face.

all day today, hypersonic craft rip through the skies, squinting without sunglasses hardly finds any of them, they are distinguished only by their small size, invisibility, odd flight trajectories, and the sonic delay related to speed and altitude, that and the sheer volume. to be under attack from one of them would be fearsome even with a rational understanding of what was going on. it’s not common that they joy-ride around here, but neither is it unknown.

day trip to pick up my new (old) car. down the hill. to the big city. the big hot city rising from the ashes in the desert. Phoenix. water there ain’t. not this year.

make some photos of the old car that Jason and Angelique are selling on ebay.

we come to a moment of making history, or moving beyond history, or making a gesture at least, standing at the edge of something, anything, but it is an edge a precipice. and raising an arm to the height of the shoulder, we sweep the air, palm out. it’s done. over. gone. but never really forgotten if the state of being is like it should be. might be, one day. and it happens within every nano-second.

sparrows and crows are loudly meditating on the possibility that there will be a warm time coming soon. no conclusion. so it goes. caught between a rock and a hard place, caught in a play, caught in a spider’s web. acting, struggling, carefully extricating the body, centimeter by centimeter, to allow for a more full life. electric god dogs. and other titles flicker by in the analyzing mind, cars idle, accelerate, idle, looking for parking. warm air leaks out the top of the window, cold air flows in at the bottom. books, books, everywhere books. this is Europe. the land of Gutenberg. kingdom of the letter. domicile of literary expression. this is what Europe runs on. books, the word, the letter of the law, and religion. what is the obverse of the Word? the image? it is again the intersection of Ikon and Logos. but both are equally mediations. they are only carriers of energies.

weather begins the threatened storm that has been heading this way for two days. one of the kinds of storm that blows cars off the road.