closing in. final copy editing. a few mistakes, but not many. posting signatures (posting?) This is 2012, but no digital dissertation submission at LTU. argh! Sending molecules instead of bits. Annoying, along with a bound copy for the library. (and an extra one for the Australian National Library…). Such a waste of effort. Otherwise I’d be done with it!

spend the day cycling around Boulder, visit with Mia at her shop Two Hands Paperie on the Mall, then called up Jeff and Leslee who happened to be home, hung out with them for the afternoon. gorgeous weather. (more like late April, a bit worrisome, with the potential for fire season to be a problem, March is usually the wettest month of the year in Colorado).

Cycling down the river to first the boat house, then downtown and The Green Bench for more work, stopping to photograph the river in the brilliant sunshine and I see a huge cloud rising from the direction of Taranaki. could it be an eruption? I ask a woman walking down the bike trail, but she looks and seems completely indifferent, seemingly not recognizing that it is a smoke, not weather cloud. Weird. Turns out that it is likely just an agricultural burn.

long cycle ride with Bill first down the Ark which was partly over the bike path at one point. that made for a challenge going back up against the current in a foot or more of fast moving water — the river is definitely at spring flood stage! Then all the way back upstream to the Pueblo Dam which was open and blasting snow-melt downstream. pretty damn hot, but along the river in the shade of the huge cottonwood trees, all is chill. at the end of the ride, I was tuckered, but also impressed with the urban green-space development that Pueblo is undertaking.

An Outward Bound group rafts in, and are lectured to in the Trex seating arranged for “camp fire talks” here in the campground. I find it really bizarre, when there a thousand ‘natural’ places to sit for a dialogue, they make a bee-line to the plastic composite seats. I guess they got lectured on the tamarisk mitigation work around Echo Park, I didn’t ask, as I was too busy prepping for the day. They later went into the woods between the campground and the river and were doing something. Wonder if they saw the carnage I wrought on the tamarisk behind site #7! (more …)

Sleep difficult, not sure why, whether simple discomfort, though the back of the truck seems very comfortable in the immediate impression, warm, soft enough, but body cannot find a comfortable position, side to side, somehow, problems. Could be that yoga hasn’t been happening in the last days. Hiking is a challenge for the body as well.

Drive up to the head of Sand Canyon, intent on doing a hike, but what looks like bad weather coming in, a heavy front across the whole west, sends me back after a short recon along the Bench Road. It seems doable as an alternative escape route, if this end is the worst, though, in wet conditions, forget it. And it totals thirty miles to Elk Springs, not just the three miles I did on recon. Almost all of it is in the red and yellow clay-sandstone alluvium, and this is precisely this same stuff which sits at the top of the Echo Park Road — from the 2000-foot displacement on the Mitten Park Fault, so, no real solution in heavy and widespread rain. However, this doesn’t seem the case — the rain is sporadic, fast-moving, and interspersed with bright sunshine and the roads are basically still dry after two days of ‘winter storm,’ so fretting about it is a waste of energy. Either I get out on Friday or I don’t and have to wait a few days. Plenty of water, fuel, and food, so that is no problem. The only locked-in point is the flight next Wednesday evening to Portland. But I’d still hate to miss the yurt-raising in Glade Park at Collin and Marisa’s this weekend!

Getting places, visiting friends. This is something I do that others don’t seem to do quite as much. With or without kids, people go on vacation to some elsewhere which is not local. But why this nagging impression that without me making repeat and sustained contacts, that Others have little interest in doing so. Of course, they have a life too, but so do I (I think): what trumps one over the other in considerations of time to maintain contact? It’s my job, perhaps. Is this a general un-sustainability of contemporary social conditions — at least as it sustains social relation beyond the immediate in-your-face people engaged with? Distance, obviously, can increase from there and is measured by the face-time, life-time, and life-energy spent. We do not do well spreading our attentions widely, except for those who crave (are craven) to have the attention of many. There are humans who can capture the attention of millions of individuals. This is only through mediation, however. With increasing numbers roughly equivalent to increasing mediation. Bang for Buck.

Does it matter, this wide-scaled exploration of the apparatus, the anatomy of power relations in the social system I am embedded within? Is it again merely something done to fill the time of being here. And will have little or no use in the long run except as a legacy substitute for being here? Ach, it is all looking towards that eventuality, as far as I can see. And what is that? Whilst reading on a early 20th Century historical treatise on Augustus (Octavius), a paean to the Caesar, successor to Julius Caesar, and master of the Roman Empire for many decades. The understanding must be embedded in a living praxis.

Suit-up later despite the weather for a relatively short but very intense hike to check out the small bench area above the soft red hills that are immediately above Lower Pool Creek Canyon. Dimension is distorted. Small- and smooth- looking becomes large and rugged (as usual). Slow pace, looking for access up the bench face. Strange smell, noted. Noted again about ten minutes later. And five minutes after that, the first fresh, very fresh paw-print the width of my hand. Thank god no overhanging trees of any height or size up here. With the near presence of a sizable carnivore confirmed, looking becomes a multi-dimensional immediacy. But then the sunLight breaks through after a squall, and I race through the juniper around to the west side of the bench trying to find a strategic vantage for some photos without foreground trees. Can’t get to it quick enough to capture sunLight glistening on wet uplifted fault faces of Harper’s Corner. Looks damn nice, though. Didn’t become someone’s dinner at the expense of a couple good photos either.

Back to the east rim, to plot a way back down, I spy a strange sight 200 yards below in the fading Light. A tremendous elk rack still attached to whitened skull apparently hanging in a juniper tree. No easy way down the bench there, I have to back-track to find an accessible egress. Finally make it to the rack. Amazing, 14-point, other bones strewn around. Blood still on some of it, so, not too old. A scattering of the rest of the stripped skeleton on the ground in the area.

Then a few minutes later, stumble on some large chunks of petrified wood which I trace to a deposit in a loosely consolidated conglomerate sandstone layer. Strange that the wood would remain intact in such an environment. The pieces are internally fractured, but exhibit good detail in the re-mineralization of the wood structures.

Finally back to the bike for the two miles downhill back to Echo Park. More severe weather rips through the entire night. The road is definitely closed. No humans in sight.

Start to try making time-lapse sequences from the immediate surroundings. Lousy and/or old equipment, a quasi-functioning power system, and the results show it. Add a portable generator, a better tripod, longer cabling, a 3-CCD camera with chip memory (ah to be free of tape!), and a laptop with a battery that lasts longer than the start-up sequence. I’m ready to cash in some of my retirement piddle to cover it. Maybe $10K I could get away with all of it, including a decent audio recorder? That, along with a better 4WD truck and I’d be part of the pseudo-elite for once. hah. So, anyway, now, marooned in Echo Park by the intense weather, (I was warned, fair enough, but I told the ranger that I wasn’t planning to come out until Friday next at least, anyway, so things should dry up by then, and that I had enough supplies for at least two weeks if not more). Stormy already today, late morning, humidity pulled the clouds up, and while attempting some decent time-lapses, it gets worse. What else is new? Maybe I end up sitting in the car just writing. There are rain filaments across to the north.

Cutting tamarisk growth behind camping site (#7) to feed the fire. Keeps mind busy, with flinging sharp blade biting into hard wood. No help around in case of an accident. This sharpens the wits. (more …)

A KC-135 Stratotanker spends the morning and evening making touch-and-go-landings. In between I suppose he’s busy re-fueling the F/A-18′s that are prowling the air all day. Immediately prior to spotting him on the first round, a series of very large concussive explosions shake everything — either very close sonic booms or bombing on the range.

An early evening cycle ride to the east, around the industrial area, then south along the perimeter of the airport runways and the speed track, all the way to the distant bunker and taxiway where the loading pit for the Enola Gay’s special cargo stands. The bomb was so heavy and large, they had to make a eight-foot-deep rectangular pit with a hydraulic lifting mechanism to drop the bomb into, roll the plane over it, then lift the bomb into the plane’s bomb bay.

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.

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 long cycle ride south from South Base, the (doh!) southern part of the airbase. Into the region down-range of the heavy machine-gun target range and where fragments of mock-up Little Boy bombs (prepped with high explosives, not nukes) may be found along with tens of thousands of rounds of oxidized-green-sheathed bullets scattered everywhere on the surface of the playa. The cycling is a bit surreal when surrounded by mountains floating on silver lakes. Lots of effort into the wind, but otherwise, it’s a flat out ride. Slight differences in the surface texture, and then the human altered areas — the dikes and drainage berms of the saline concentrating solar evaporation ponds.

Then there are the bunkers and V-1 test area. Matt said the casinos use a couple bunkers for records storage, as does the city of Wendover. The Simparch-designed CLUI South Base Clean Livin’ center is a cool space — completely self-contained with a PV electricity system, gray water recycling system, and a composting toilet. Along with the refurbished Quonset hut it makes for a homey post-nuclear space for quiet meditation.

got to weigh in on health care. so sick(!) of the toxic blather going on within the US, although it might just be that it is a spent nation-state, in the throes of becoming less relevant in the world. clearly it is becoming less functional internally which eventually (already) will have an effect on external relations. morally it is tearing itself apart by those who, strangely call themselves Christian but who seem to have zero compassion and limitless zeal for defending against the stranger and killing preemptively when that stranger seems strange. period. I have some understanding of the fear of governmental authority. the media in the US has certainly inculcated so many other nation-states with the blight of the dictator and illustrated that to the US citizens, a situation that reinforces some traditional/historical fear of the government. fine. but why is there almost zero fear of the corporation? how can this be? (a belief that the government will effectively control the corporation?? or what?) it is irrational. but then again, fear usually is, especially the fear exuding from an under-class which is very poorly educated (a result of a very stratified anti-Federal education situation, but that’s another whole story). This under-class seems not to understand the dynamics of power as it happens to be expressed in the particular system they live under — global capitalism — despite being locked into that servile under-class by those same dynamics of power. a dynamics that is expressed in the same way as it is expressed in any other system of power — the elite rule that under-class. whether it is elite politicians-for-life (the Senate) or corporate boards or whatever arrangement of power, it’s all Machiavellian in both intention and execution. doh!

I have had wide experience in numerous socialist (gasp!) countries and with some of their medical systems. I have also had several encounters with fragments of the US system. in different situations I have been either uninsured or insured. I am alive/walking today because of the quality of the US system, a system that took care of me after an accident when I was in an uninsured gap in time. the system (which really isn’t a system, but more a hodge-podge of competing, conflicting, and discontinuous sub-systems), without any paperwork, without even a ID (I’m white), the local hospital ER took me in and diagnosed my severe injury — a shattered vertebra and sent me on for major surgery and hospitalization at a top neurological center a couple hours away in Phoenix, Arizona. a week in post-op ICU and I was sent home (to my sister’s place where she cared for me for some weeks until I could be moderately ambulatory). later, after three months of heavy physical therapy and a deep focus on my part, I am once again healthy and mobile. without that level of technology and expertise I would be either a paraplegic or simply dead.

this particular experience doesn’t preclude any of the criticisms of the overall system which is bleeding people for far more cash than is necessary even when factoring in bureaucratic inefficiencies that might be introduced by governmental oversight.

I didn’t have insurance at that time because it was prohibitively expensive for me as an individual free-lance educator to underwrite, an entrepreneur. surely many potential and practicing entrepreneurs are faced with problem, to what extent does this impede them? I took the calculated risk when visiting the US that nothing would happen to me. I was insured (by the State) when teaching in Finland and in Iceland and that insurance extended by reciprocity to any European state. I would have been covered anywhere in Europe had that same accident occurred there. The ultimate level of care may not have been the same in many less developed Euro-states, but in Scandinavia and most of the states I operated in, the intervention and care would have equaled or exceeded what I got in Arizona.

another prior encounter with the US system, because of a running injury during a period where I was first uninsured then insured saw mis-diagnosis for fractured sesamoid bones in my left foot. on five occasions over a four-year period I had x-rays and a variety of examinations in the US, none of which identified the problem correctly. after I moved to Iceland, my first encounter with that socialist (gasp!) system (never mind the stupid insurance company ploy of pre-existing conditions in the US), the (Swedish-trained) doctor did a focused exam of the foot and without even an x-ray, diagnosed the injury correctly, and scheduled a surgical intervention shortly thereafter. I had several other encounters with the system up there including the complicated birth of my son which was taken care of completely, my wife staying comfortably in the hospital for ten days (and having the option to take off either six months at full pay or one year at half pay from her job for maternity leave; I got to take off the second year at half-pay too). a number of emergency interventions were expertly taken care of as well. all for free. my cumulative tax rate as a university educator there was the same as I paid in the US when you added up all the local, state, and federal rates.

in Finland I had some minor encounters with the system which were expert and professional. and free.

now here in Australia, I paid all of USD 270 per annum for private (state regulated) insurance. I have not tested it out yet, but do plan to explore it for some minor chronic issues.

once, in a meeting with some executives from Ericsson in Stockholm some years back, the conversation turned to health care and I heard them agree that the high taxes that they paid as members of the upper-middle-class were worth it to have a stable society where all were cared for. uff, that sounds like (gasp!) socialism! curses! never mind what the Bible says about the sin of empathy.

although my eating habits are a bit skewed in the direction of consuming too many carbos and dairy than I should, I exercise at a level that most people my age think is extreme. six or seven days a week, I engage in some combination of cardio, strength, or centering exercises for a couple hours. swimming, cycling, yoga, tai chi, weight lifting, resistance exercise, and such. I walk stairs rather than take elevators or escalators. I am walking after that accident partly because I was in better-than-average condition to begin with and I don’t intend that to change radically.

with universal health care in the US I can see one argument against it — who wants to pay the bill via taxes for the HUGE number of morbidly obese over-consuming Amurikans, many who are the same thought-less, compassion-less christian folks righteously ‘defending the constitution’ and their fat slice of pie with weapons? gah.

a brilliant day, 70 F at least. Nick takes the day off and we (Nick, Deb, and I) head out to the Katy Trail at Rocheport (located in Missouri’s Rhineland which was settled by Germans from the Gießener Auswanderungsgesellschaft in the 1830′s). we do a leisurely twenty mile ride southeast along the Missouri to Huntsdale and back. then a nice aprés lunch at the Les Bourgeois Vineyards. the entire area around Columbia is a classic karst landscape of Mississippian Burlington/Keokuk Limestone forming deeply excised drainages, caves, and springs, along with damp soil caused by the limestone weathering to a sticky clay. all along the Missouri River floodplain where the Katy runs are high bluffs of the limestone. the Katy came about as a Rails-to-Trails park and is built on the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Railroad corridor.

Interstate-70 slices across the river, through the deep karst, into the sky, with death-rattle sounds and falling gravel.

hurdles to decent mass transit. it’s far easier to drive into New York City than to take the train. The Town of Bedford controls the parking area for the train. to get a day permit one has to show proof-of-residency and the registration of the vehicle to be parked in the ‘municipal’ parking lot at the train.

are there any bike racks at the station? yes, one for three bikes. sheesh. but, you can’t take bikes on the train, anyway, and there are no bike paths or lanes anywhere near the train station … (the curse of a traveler to be able to critically compare and contrast an extended sequence of different places and their relative infrastructural differences.)

the US should take a long and hard look at the level of organization that many European states have accomplished to promote the use of bicycles and mass transit as one answer to the over-reliance on and over-consumption of hydrocarbons.

drop by Jessie’s place on the upper East Side for a f2f and nice lunch. good to cross paths with a fellow BrainStormer.

and finally get back to PhotoCare to pick up the Nikon. been feeling half-naked without an image-making device. resorting to the phone-camera is never really satisfying at all.

(sketch) the seminar ends in two side-steps which confirm the in-sustainability of that particular track of teaching — the holding to a(ny) model. it is an outcome in facilitating the participants to actually mutiny and go off on their own, rejecting authority and (s)lack, and with strong expressions of independence and a desire to find relevant subject areas for inquiry. when will this happen on a larger scale, across larger swaths of so-called learning spaces? there are limits to tolerance, this demonstrates, but can those limits be prescribed and stretched without pretension? or does any pre-tension doom the process from moving into at least an abandoned form of random encounter, instead into mere buffoonery.

well before the end it was already impossible to sustain a track, so that option fell by the way-side. at the same time, dialogues were undertaken with a ferocious concentration. this had the effect of gradually loosening any vestige of authority-in-relation in addition to any privileging of knowledge or know-ing. dramatic developments. and as the (post)authoritarian protocol became internally incoherent, evolving too many possible interpretations, efforts focused on relinquishing traces of control that the protocol demanded and instead the formation of a new protocol exclusive of the facilitator. did not compile the questions, such as they were. relevancy appeared to be attained, but through a desire to move back to traditional models of relation (the text). very interesting development. will have to re-think that framework. of all the thousands of possibly inspiring texts to consume, which will be the right combination? hmmm. cook book might be the best starting point.

a little awkward with the stylized ending, but as a sample in the extreme spectrum of idiosyncratic confabulation, very interesting!, or … not. ! a formative de-briefing is hoped for, but that will have to arise independently in other temporal spaces. perhaps easy to be cynical about the self and the situation, but human encounter arises in all forms, this being one of them. no qualitative judgment possible.

the cycling across town to Charlottenburg is fascinating, memorized now, the transitions, the corners, the sounds, the traffic. the tourists, the police, the Park, the City. the images and sounds are building up to something.

head to Lichtenberg for Barbara and Susanne’s birthday party, in a green garden shaded by an enormous and very healthy apple tree, late into the slightly chilly evening, a fire of large pieces of timber that clearly were formerly from houses. 25×25 cm cross-section, pieces several meters long, with nails in them. rafters from destroyed buildings. war relics. or reliquaries. incredible food. and a Russian accordionist.

April enters warmly. with loss. I lose one of my Saranac cross-training half-gloves. I use them all the time for cycling. although I’m not doing any weight-lifting in the moment, I’ll have to find a replacement.

meet Peter for a beer at Hackischer Markt, we wander over to Alexanderplatz where it’s warm enough to sit outside. he tells stories of his father who dies an alcoholic after fighting in the army on several fronts in the war.

hope to get to Mechernich later to see the rest of the crew later in June or so, though any travel will be contingent on whether or not I can find someone to sublet the flat for June and/or July. can’t afford to travel and rent at the same time.

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…

listening to: muslimgauze & Phil Niblock

good art allows a deepening of internal vision, a precision of being, as delineated by an Other’s perspective and worldview combined with their abilities to express that view in a way which catches the streaming of Self, gently re-directing it to an alternate placement.

Wes takes me on a uphill cycle ride around Santa Barbara that, after some hairy traffic encounters, ends back down on the ocean-front and a cafe for some refreshments. mmmm, that Southern Cal feeling.

Sarah, a former student from Boulder, has a show running between 09.23 – 11.16.2006 at Hooked on Colfax at 3215 East Colfax in Denver. couldn’t squeeze the opening into the schedule, but would highly recommend the show, I’m sure it’s interesting.

hanging out at the condo in the morning, then out into town for some cycling in the afternoon. funny to be hanging here, it’s been YEARS since the last time — with Collin during the 4th of July 1986(?). don’t have the negative scanned, but it was the location of the portrait Miss Liberty (a little girl dressed like the Statue of Liberty riding a trike in the 4th of July parade) that was used for the poster for the Niepce show.

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.

(catas)trophic cascades dominate most global ecosystems these days. with the apex predator being the highly adaptable human. here in the desert, there seems to be a local balance, but it is impossible to make any determination from cursory observation. with the air often filled with supersonic overflights, leaving an intense flux of sound to spread over the entire space. top gun dog fights.

sitting eating dinner and suddenly, about 50 meters away, a red-tail explodes from the air and almost nails a dove. not clear how the dove escaped, or why the hawk didn’t pursue the prey. could be that once the surprise element is gone for the hawk, the dove is a more agile bush flyer, where the hawk is best at clear-air dive-bombing ambushes.

today I cycle a few miles further in, towards the Arrastra Mountains Wilderness area. intersect a small corner of it. it encompasses a huge area of hard-core desert landscape. I come across an automatic 600-watt solar panel unit connected to a well in the dry wash, there is a 300-meter-long steel pipe connected to two water tanks and a water trough. there is also a broken Aeromotor windmill pump set over a concrete holding tank that is still filled with water.

discover a large area where there are numerous fragments of botryoidal quartz, some with crystal vugs, but mostly with characteristic milky-white-to-clear amorphous silica in those organic forms. from a high-point near the water tanks, I can see on down the valley towards Alamo Lake, about 20 miles away. distance is relative. crossing this area on foot would be, literally, hell during six months of the year, and chilling the other six. either way, unless you carried water, or made caches, or knew for sure where the tanks and springs were, and whether they were full, you would die.

back to base and then, after a small lunch, to an overland steep climb to a resistant outcrop with what appears to be a cave. always expecting to see/hear a rattler, but aside from an over-sized lizard, and the scattering of birds, nothing is confronted. deer tracks in the dry mud of an arroyo, very small. why be here when they can be in the ponderosa only a few tens of miles away. although, for the moment, the desert floor is green. period. bright green vegetation everywhere. along with the psychedelic splashes of blooming things. I can’t recall being in the desert at this time of year. usually I’ve been elsewhere, teaching. middle of the end of the semester. or so. (more images)

and small guilty feelings about not being in a ‘regular’ job in the moment.

… nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. the pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the individual student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see. — Georg Simmel

as per usual. workshop adsorbs any spare energy away from jotting here. different dynamic than last year, but similar. workshops in Germany are always more intense as far as the intellectual challenge goes, but on my side is the pressure to challenge what are not intellectual but rather other psychic spaces. Frieder and Susi are away to Karlsruhe for his opening at ZKM, so I have a routine of walking five minutes and catching the bus at 0748 to school, 15 minutes away. not feeling up to doing the bicycle thing. too spoiled by my own mountain bike in Arizona. finally over jet lag, and caught up on sleep. and body rhythms synchronize: hunger times corresponding to feeding times.

The Alvar Aalto vase in the corner of the room is full of a bouquet of tulips I picked up at the Market before getting on the ferry a couple days ago. Why so rare that I buy flowers? Un-necessary expense in a tight year, and all recent last years have been tight. Seems all years have been tight. And yet here I am living rent-free in a small flat in a UNESCO World Heritage site complex, getting a small stipend to be an artist.

But anyway. Pure silent morning, even the far-away sound of the city has vanished, warm, the frost on the roof across the courtyard is only lingering in the shadows. Probably should do a ride this morning with the vidcam. Pick up some quiet ambiance. But will take the day slow whatever.

Son(net) subterfuge over. Didn’t get a debrief from Josephine yet. Seemed to go okay, I had one VDMX glitch, and a restart, but since she also had a stream from NYC, it seemed to work okay, from the limited view I had of the performance via their QuickTime stream. Choreography could have been tighter — at least my knowledge of the cycling — but overall, I think it went well. Probably the most formal outgoing streamed performance I’ve had before. I was nervous even!

19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young
– William Shakespeare

new year. up for a mid-morning ride from Iron Springs into Granite Basin. a phat hill-climb on the first mile, some ice on the road, uphill. don’t have a hill-climber’s stamina, and the downhill was cold, glad for the balaclava on under the helmet. find some bike trails, good conditions, an inch or two of snow over the fine granite gravel, breaking tracks even, through manzanita, scrub oak, piñon, ponderosa, yucca, and prickly pear. easy ride, will probably climb Granite Mountain tomorrow. or the next day, or the next.

what should I write about here? no blogging spew to be had, not that I really care about putting something down each day, hardly have done that in the history of this whole work.

spending time on the archive. looking through old 16mm family films. there are more than 4,000 feet of silent Kodachrome from the 1950′s. mostly Alaska. researching the telecine process going from film to digital video. want to get them all transferred so that folks in the family can actually see them. there used to be a 16mm editing console (manual splicing and viewing unit), but that has long since made its way to the Goodwill or so. so I manually spliced the remaining 100 foot reels together onto 400 foot reels, there are ten or twelve of those along with “The Alaska Movie,” as we call it. a 1600-foot behemoth 45-minute-or-so series of fragments of hunting polar bear by air, Inuit dancers, glacier break-ups, family parties, sledding, trailing moose in the car, panning gold, and on and on.

part of this increasing tendency to archive these days. bought archival storage cases for all Dad’s and Aunt Mary’s slides, amounting to about 7,000 or so. numbered boxes for much of my own small archive of negatives, prints, and other art stuff. seems spurious, out of all the things to do in the world.

so cycling 20 miles in the 100+F heat seems the other thing to do. winds make the difference. with the wind downhill, against uphill.

much time spent taking Dad in for his almost daily hospital visits to get his leg wound looked after. really shocking. shows how much more difficult it is for the body to heal as it ages. eventually there is not enough energy turn-around to bring order back to the system.

reading IEEE Spectrum, NSPE, Science, and all that stuff. The old Encyclopedia Britannica, playing chess with Loki using the old Japanese ivory chess set. Finally he beats me. twice. I made him work for it, but he came through with not too much complaining. and ends up beating me all the time thereafter. monsoon season maybe did start up today. actually got wet, but it evaporated within an hour. the respite from sun was welcome, clouds are okay, too, nights warmer for the insulating effect, but highs are lowering. mountain biking today, and swimming, that’s good. necessary. gotta do a longer ride tomorrow.

the “P” on the side of the mountain south of town has been changed from all white(wash) to stripes of red, white, and blue. this area of Arizona has many veterans who started migrating to the area following World War 1, seeking a dry climate for health reasons. the Veterans Administration established a hospital in Prescott on the site of Fort Whipple, an early outpost for US military control of the native American ‘situation’ in the region. the Yavapai Indian Reservation abuts the Fort, and extends in a rhombohedral shape that sticks into the middle of the east side of town. between that and the “World’s Oldest Rodeo,” it’s cowboys and indians here.

helping Dona move into her new apartment. a ride up the river. mid-day. record high temps — 105 Fahrenheit. on the bike path, each piece of pavement in the sun, re-radiating a shimmering solid exhalation of unlimited infra-red expanse. no limit to heat. sun. the essence of infinity radiations. of all. (which is life).

watching the graduation procession wander by the Art Building. strange to see a local cultural tradition. they seem very fragmented in Amurika. tenuous, changeable. fragile. a Nobel prize-winner talks to the commencement crowd. but I miss it, instead, go up to the Lab to discover that a video-projector has been stolen. and school is done. sky hazy, shaded with far-away roiling raked clouds. an edge on the air, yet. and no water falls from the sky. being in the pool. 50 minutes for the 3000 yards. cycling. meet Mark, Joe, and Mikhail. they have sushi because the coffee place is closed for a private party. we talk about the future and how things are. a B2 bomber flies over 1500 feet above us, people run out onto the streets to see. seven months after 9/11. and the silent skies that ruled for four daze. everything shakes in the roar. it is for the graduating Air Force reserve officers. zoomies.

endings and and endings. beginning understandings, but understandings not able to materialize. because materialization simply stood in the way. presence not consummated. in the spiritual plane. because the spiritual takes no place big enough in life. that old disconnection which I experienced in a broad scale working for institution. (not regardful whether “corporate Amurikan” or “euro-cultural”). like same as another.

and imagine saying to my son,

watching clouds is an important thing in life. maybe the most important thing.

but knowing that those words will be more than canceled out by the noise in the relationship. noise carried from father to son, perhaps in debt, but neither conscious enough to see the pay and the receipt.

donate my old Nashbar mountain bike to Goodwill. at fifteen years, it’s about time, it was a second-generation mountain bike, so, was pretty primitive but I liked the frame geometry and size. it survived five years in Iceland as well. I snagged a new one at a phenomenal price, thanks to a student who lets me know that Schwinn was going out of the business of high-end bikes and the shop he worked at was having a big sale. I get the last one in my frame-size. and save USD500. cool.

new bike, the Nashbar 5000 now 15 or so years old. still running, in need of some new parts, though, so I will contribute it to some charity. when in Amurika, upgrade. to what end? newness (an energized statement against entropic decay). but it requires an energy input. constantly. that’s what makes gold so desirable, that it requires almost no input over time to retain its luster. you only have to get it.

Education is a process that necessarily entails an interpersonal (not merely interactive) relationship between people-student and teacher (and student and student) that aims at individual and collective self-knowledge. (Whenever people recall their educational experiences they tend to remember, above all, not courses or subjects or the information imparted but people, people who changed their minds or their lives, people who made a difference in their developing sense of themselves. It is a sign of our current confusion about education that we must be reminded of this obvious fact: that the relationship between people is central to the educational experience.) Education is a process of becoming for all parties, based upon mutual recognition and validation and centering upon the formation and evolution of identity. The actual content of the educational experience is defined by this relationship between people and the chief determinant of quality education is the establishment and enrichment of this relationship. — David F. Noble

a feeling. that the social matrix. well. never was a home. but then, what is a home?

at the end of this month, there will be another annual turning point. this travelog will transition into its seventh year. stasis-log. or traces of biking down the hill to school, and the deep breathing of the constant uphill home late each evening. writing about the different houses along the way, the different routes taken, depending on which turns are made. the crying bitter wind chill of the descent.

convivial dinner with Chris and Scharmin and the kids this evening, don’t know where I’d be without them around, an anchor to real life. and then, despite Scharmin’s insisting on Chris giving me a ride, a cycle home in the beginnings of a big snowstorm, a slog up Baseline. feeling good to be tussling with the elemental beings. even at this simple level.

but otherwise, the month ends. in the hearts of space. nothing profound, but Venus begins to hang as the evening star; vague memories of a time earlier in these wanderings when Venus guided many steps.

most of the texts that I have been absorbing in the last weeks deal with creativity as a discontinuous (non-cyclic) and anomalous event rising above the normal “level” of daily life. this view is an obvious artifact of materialist thinking that treats life as a linear (singular) trajectory and that the expressions of that living can be wholly reduced linguistically to various statements and formulations. accepting that this view IS true within its own limited framework (the history of rational thinking), a critique would have to deconstruct the whole facade of Western philosophy in order to make a substantive attack on the position. this writer is neither qualified nor interested in making such a frontal attack which would simply be tossed aside in the dumpster of academic discourse. instead, understanding that to even name a philosophy or a philosopher that stands supporting that edifice would only give power to a system that I believe is fundamentally flawed, I have chosen to proceed intuitively, and perhaps poetically, making enormous and possibly scandalous generalizations, leaving the normative conventions of the English language behind, and simply dive into thoughts that are reflecting through waters muddied by 42 years of thrashing around in a world that seems more intense and striking everyday. by this methodology, combined with a desire that these texts be only the opening for a dialogue with the Other who might come on it, here in the sea of hyperspace, I will begin.

not being a practicing Buddhist, it is dangerous to rely on the familiar and frequently mis-understood and mis-interpreted dialectic of East – West. however, buried in the residual mudflats of surrounding language, there are things that stick between the toes as one wanders between the tides.

tides return to smooth all things into harmonic ripples, the size and orientation of which are determined by the velocity, depth, and laminar deviation of the liquid flow and alignment of the planar particles of complex alumino-silicates.

there appears to be a fundamental difference in these flows.

there is lacking the recognition that with creativity (creation) there must come loss or destruction (decay). the suddenness of the creative impulse is mirrored (in time or not) by a natural tendency (of the Second Law of Thermodynamics).

suddenness, speed, quickening, all relate to special conditions being met in the movement of energies. humans are specialists in the dangerous play of resistance to universal flows. at the same time their energy-sensing systems are highly tuned to the movements of energy around them, their internal ego systems distort and filter. this dichotomy might be explained by the intervention of ego-forces which distort the reading or interpretation of the raw sensual mechanisms with often dire results. observing children moving through their lives, one sees a more or less direct line between sensual experience and reaction. age gradually moderates this.

results of this resistance are so manifold and compound that, well, what’s the point in exploring the obvious.

at any rate, this resistance to flows is also illustrated obliquely in natural systems where all processes are in fundamental movement, and there is simply scalar differences between different events. earthquake vs fertilization of an egg. while an earthquake is considered a precipitous event of violence, it is a result of continuous forces cycling on scales that are beyond human capacity to imagine. fertilization could be seen as an ultimate violence. or ultimate expression of the cyclic nature of energy movement. but there is never a resistance, only the expression of the true nature of the material configuration of energies.

Buddhist thought provides a more accurate model to follow. at least it makes sense as translated across the gap of language and culture. ego is the source of resistance. or there is something that causes us to resist. and construct complex mechanisms for justifying the resistance.

stretch and bend. images for nowhere. not finding. and so on. notes. undirected speaking at self instead of with Other. cleaning glasses. pick up sticks. associative words. not carving much of. and else-wise. activity. suggesting things. actions. or others. words the world of words. the other world. is it possible to bring what is expressed in words into practice? what is alluded to. what is suggested, instructed, what is dreamed. what of the world without images or words?

everything is potential energy.

on board the MS Gabriella, just left Stockholm, imagining that there will be an open window of time while en route. plane flight from Iceland, the usual 0415 wake-up to catch the 0730 flight, east to Europe. waking and sleeping are the same state. car, bus, plane, bus, bus, boat, taxi. will be the cumulative way. and little thought. except for the cycling of separation from Loki. my boy. we decided at bed time last night that I should wake him for a hug and kiss before I went out the door this morning. after exactly three months together all the time, traveling so many kilometers, now yet again, leaving. no less easy than five years ago when I did it the first time.

wandering around. Stockholm, the airport, the bus terminal, the ship, here, there.

using the model of energy — life energies, quantum energy fields, chi — life looks different, but still the gap of praxis is massive. like there is a chance there, a minuscule crack in a plate-metal covering. for the Lightness to slip through. for meaning to replace the vacuum of materiality. (how can this be? that I conclude material presence is a vacuum? presence is an absence? what is absence? maybe impression, the leftovers of presence are the traces of the energy that has been transmitted to the surroundings (to the Other) in the time of presence. take care of the conditions of presence, or else absence can be devastating. we all spend all life in both conditions simultaneously. (boat listing rhythmically, we are in the open Baltic, though it is only as deep maybe as the ship is long. a sea, no ocean. it would be different sailing over the Marianas Trench, it would feel different. like on my second visit to Iceland. Stefan’s family has a summerhouse in one of the most revered national locations in all Iceland, Thingvellir. it is the location of the original outdoor parliament site, literally astride the mid-Atlantic Ridge in an area that technically is a classic spreading center — a fault-graben structure characterized by long north-by-northeast-south-by-southwest trending faults, frequent seismic and volcanic activity, and constant subsidence. we go out there on a short weekend trip in late summer. there is a rowboat that we take out on the enormous spring-fed lake. for the only time I ever go fresh-water fishing in Iceland, the first cast and there is an enormous hit on the line, and I bring in a very large lake trout. a farmer on the shore is watching us suspiciously. the slow sun-going makes the lake pass through millions of form and color permutations. we drift. Stef then says he has to show me something and begins rowing north along the coast past the summer house. there are some small linear islands a meter or two across and maybe 20 long. he rows between two of them. there is the sensation not of sinking, but of being drawn downward, body amorphous, without a center of gravity. the water which is absolutely clear, even with the bottom 10 meters down, turns black, there is no bottom.

tipsy, riding home (a relative term) from Mari and Esko’s place, after a sauna and dinner and some wine (Chilean and Spanish), it is a white night. midnight, the sun only just below the horizon, no wind, the clouds and rain of the day gone, but it is cold, only 6C. piss behind the oil-fired power plant, must be a 10 megawatt station. overtake a body doing a drunken side-step on the bike path. and children standing in a playground, standing looking mute, expecting a parley with the drunk, but that is some minutes and eons off into a future that is made certain by the lack of wind and in the moment of the Green Hour. L’heure verte, Green Hour, it came and here it is, jumping into a loose narrative that leaves being and presence far behind and instead wobbles into an uncertain future in a nowhere locus. silent, except for the drunks, furtive night-day children who are learning to be drunken and hidden at the same time. running in packs, or desperate pairs, no, at least threesomes. the river as high as it has been in 30 years. at the one meter mark on the bridge pylon. I theorize what the construction standards are for those same structures. deep seated– all the way to the glacial bedrock?

La fée verte, at L’heure verte, from the times in France when the consumption of the brilliant green and bitter drink Absinthe made from wormwood (Artemisia absinthium). but also when the air stills, in the northlands, and the color of day wanes, sun dropping into the red of humid sunset. a state of being.

heading south for the weekend at ArtGenda in Helsinki. the ice broke sometime in the last 24 hours. riding to the pool on Thursday evening, the river was still solidly covered with rotting ice scattered with a long winter’s worth of jetsam — beer bottles, Christmas trees, newspapers, even a pair of blue jeans. it is impossible to imagine the scenario that resulted in their arrival on the river ice. as the sun melted the ice from the top, the jeans gradually rose on a small column of ice. like an offering to absolute presence. there they ARE. jeans. in the middle of the river. fair to say that the river is a well-used north-south transport route once the ice is thick enough to carry snowmobiles, and through April. but anyway, all those fragments are gone from the surface. 24 hours later. again riding to the pool, as far as can be seen south towards the Bay of Bothnia, downstream, is free of ice. there is perhaps a half a kilometer of ice standing upstream of the mid-town bridge, but further upstream is also clear. an hour later, on the way home, the entire river is choked both up- and down-stream by surging blocks of ice as far as the eye can see.

decisions, decisions, decisions. floating in the grand scale of living. letting pathways open before me, rather than seeking to walk a certain way. remember when, at the opening of a photography exhibition I had in Aachen, back in December 1988, when Hans Werner was introducing me to the opening-night schwartz-lederhosen crowd, he said I was a pacifist (in German), and I immediately countered, saying I was an Activist! but, in retrospect, he was right. another fragment of evidence lies deep in writings I make — where I constantly use the passive voice in constructing sentences. passivity can be a strong position if it is grounded in flexible action (not rigid re-action). can’t say I am so flexible under most circumstances, despite the outward impression of being a resourceful and observant traveler. who cares? the teaching this time falls flat — for what reason? well only flat by measuring reactions. still have not gotten comfortable with silence. when putting ideas out on the table. understanding what it is, but being unable to expect less as an interactive component of a classroom dialectic — did Socrates conduct his sessions among Arabs? joke. but can the Socratic method function in a second-language situation? who cares. not even a theoretical issue. (funny, I am not even interested in what I am writing, it seems so far away from … me). dialectic energy exchange presupposes a same-language situation. unless both students and teacher are in a highly tuned state of sensitivity — something I have not attained (and may never). my comfort lies in language. and to rise above that would be … leaving school after dark, Polaris straight overhead, Venus setting, Jupiter rising, Mars rising, too, maybe? plenty of stars. cycling the 3 kilometers from school, stop to take some photos of the rapids that run through the middle of the town, or, perhaps it is the town that is built around the rapids. most likely. they are dry, a dry rocky chasm a few tens of meters wide, and perhaps 300 meters long. upstream is a dam, downstream, on the east bank in the old hotel, built for the Czar, evidently. the entire scene is brightly lit in the dark. right after making those images, I am cycling to the grocery store, crossing the street, I have to accelerate to get across ahead of some cars, but the bike is old, and the chain slips, dropping my foot, almost sending my flying, somehow, computer on my back, and Nikon around one shoulder, nothing happens except I hit my upper left ribcage, hurts like hell, and I wonder if I cracked a rib like back in judo class in Golden. taking a deep breath is uncomfortable, stretching is not.

critical look at the workshop. the dynamic lost in the busy-ness of the institution (a little piqued that my workshop is not so important to the students) but understanding it is a greater question and not something that results from any particular structuring of the situation. probably the simple lack of structuring — which, in fact, is a cool aspect of this academy. the idea of structure/control and the lack of both those factors is a grinding fight for me. within the act of entering a space I am predestined to experience a strong motivation to modify the material layout. it seems nothing is in the proper alignment. like, what is the proper arrangement of elements? is there a single penultimate constellation of objects in a room? is there a proper use for every object? if so, how do we experience the knowledge of what that use is? are there useless or purposeless objects in the world? what is it about an object that communicates its proper function? seems like too relative a criteria to drive such obsessive rearrangement of THINGS around me. who cares? Odd loans me his cycle. immediately I identify that it needs the bottom-bracket bearings re-packed with grease and tightening — as well, the handlebar headset also needs repacking and tightening. the seat doesn’t go high enough, and so on. (that is the second level of awareness of the gift — purely as object and its inherent functionality). the first level is being psyched that I have wheels! cool, takk, Odd! it brings an immediate feeling of liberation. never was a walker. bipedal transport is boooooooooring. except for climbing mountains where I am a wimpy mountain-biker anyways unlike some of my thrash-out hardcore friends. wheels. groovin’. immediately cycle up to some fort on the hill overlooking much of the city. people are there hanging out in the late afternoon hazy sunshine. green ramparts, a stiff wind brings a smoky haze off the unseen open ocean that lies west over a smallish mountain. on the fjord itself to the north this smoky skin hovers against the hills at the far side. they are only silhouettes.

logfile

the cafe9 project seems to be coming in to its own condition. there is an inherent flow moving me towards some kind of stability in Helsinki. if I can keep my energies in a state of alignment, this has become the absolute question. keeping surface explosions, well, holding onto the long enough that they dissipate and do not throw bad energy off at other people. heightening the awareness of others’ energy so that the flow and movement of the combined intersection is balanced and positive (when that is the needed condition). helping Harri on his thesis for an hour or so, I am rushed. cycling over to the pool, fast, the attendant is not in the cash cage to take my turquoise-blue 10 FIM coupon that I buy at the college cashier, the normal price is 25 FIM. good deal. but nobody is in the cage, and it is before eight. I wander around and one of the lifeguards comes over to help. I am a little surprised that his English is so good, as I have frequently had some trouble communicating with local people here. he takes care of things, and so I race in to the locker room, change and get into the water, thrashing a quick kilometer before the 2030 closing time. cycling home across the pedestrian bridge, I watch the ice on the river. it is disappearing rapidly. it will be all gone in two days.

the pointproject crew in Trondheim collab with Annie Abrahams to perform the I have only my name? irc event, I act as a facilitator (they have no background with IRC) and participant.

a long bike ride with Bill today, I am pretty beat, but it felt good. out of shape. body wishes it hadn’t been abused. and tomorrow the weather turns BAD, at least that is what threatens, the clouds spoke so today during the ride. it was warm, but the clouds said SNOW! all positions are necessary — if only as place-holders for multiplicity/plurality. ALL positions are necessary. the exhaustion of no meat in the belly raising the exhaustion of raising a text to some reasonable being. as here in the restless night. pen-point scraping with an astonishing speed. driven mind-to-hand. and the frustration of un-pointed being. unfocused being. keeps me from seeing. and the restless night continues. I tell Linda that people should begin to LOOK at the world that is moving by, and really look at it with a quiet mind and then form their own opinions about how it is, rather than having the media — a cesspool of secondary opinions and observations — drive what they believe they are seeing.

my mother responds with this text:

Yes, I remember that day too. I was there and in charge of these thirteen sixth graders from the rural elementary school. I had to be sure they each got a hot dog to eat and a ride on the Ferris Wheel. The biggest job was to get them all back on the right school bus. Those good old days!!!! I still hear from Officer Gililand who was my boss from the police department. I also remember that year at Science Camp when I was to pretend that I didn’t know you. So that you could feel the freedom to be yourself and I could be free to be myself. I always had a great time after all the sixth graders went to bed. We used to leave the camp and go in town and get a real dinner and sometimes go to a movie. We would square dance until it was almost time for you kids to get up. Hey, boy I always had a GOOD time!!! This is the side of your Mother that you did not know about.

Structurally, things are different. Days have a different insistence of being which drives them, weeks likewise. Never thought too much about months and years, except now I have to make teaching and travel plans up to ten months in advance. The spring will be another sequence of movements — Iceland, Finland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Lapland, Sweden, Iceland, and then finally back to the US in June with Loki for the summer. Being relatively immobile here in Colorado with the exception of the drudgery and stress of car-commuting 20 miles to Boulder three or four days a week, well, life is different. Cycling around is a joy, here in the middle of October, the sun is still brilliant and warm, the air, well, during the day, is still warm, though there have been several nights of frost already. Colorado has become back into memory and sensation a realness which draws me out. Looking backwards to the times in Iceland, how I could lose my social being, my need for others completely unfilled, the interjection of the jealousy of the ex to keep others at bay. And how different I feel here, watching Self and Others age gracefully. Careers formed. Lives forming. Eah, but nothing that I can mediate by language pulls me close to what is REALLY happening. There is a vast flux of human society that is completely un-represented. Representation. Why even care? It is possible to move powerfully in a region of … (case closed)

In a real conversation, a real lesson, a real embrace, in all these, what is essential takes place between them in a dimension which is accessible only to them both … If I and another “happen” to one another, the sum does not exactly divide. There is a remainder somewhere, where the souls end and the world has not yet begun. — Martin Buber

And there it is. Life in the offing. I had a rough week. Intense actions. Friday evening, I end up shopping on the way home. that is a concentrated activity that I don’t enjoy. food. shopping. I hated it in Iceland, for sure. but more here. Like going shopping for anything, it just doesn’t seem to be fulfilling … telephone call … I strike my forehead after I hang up. she was a real love of mine, but I guess I never told her. undeclared love is such a lost anomaly. always rooted in the past, that vanishing of any knowing. ahmmmmmmm. but the recognition, the coming-to-know of the past is such a rare thing. anyway, I never knew what love was then anyway. I start thinking of the area in Italy that has been seeing so many earthquakes. I’ve spent a fair amount of time there (although not since 1994). I am bummed that a good friend, a painter, Claudia Piell, has two houses in Umbria where that terrible series of quakes has been happening … Another sculptor friend in Finland was going to be doing a collaborative show with Claudia in Venice around now. No email and the regular post for both of us is forwarded multiply, so I won’t hear from them for some months. Kaisu, the Finnish artist, sends me a photo and letter. I miss Kathryn’s visit to, Finland in June and July to see Kaisu and do a workshop there. But I wonder about the places where Claudia and I were in Umbria in 1989. I need to revive some of those images. before time passes too much.

Late in the evening I drag out my father’s smaller telescope (a four-inch reflector) and set it up on the built-in pedestal on the small round flagstone patio to the south of the house. It has a tracking motor in it, and actually is quite a good device. Marvelous to look at Jupiter and Saturn, and simply cruise along the Milky Way. When they moved here 13 years ago, the Light pollution was practically non-existent, compared to now where even the small town of Prescott has thousands of bright street Lights. Although it is beyond the near horizon, there is a substantial glow. My father chose to live here primarily for the clear night skies for optimal viewing. Progress impinges on dreams. He doesn’t do too much observing anyway, as he is too busy maintaining the house and trying to finish his larger 14-inch computer-driven telescope. The means obscure the goal? At any rate, I enjoy scanning the heavens, and I highly recommend the activity — if you ever have the chance to use a telescope, do so. To see the rings of Saturn crisp and clear. The planet hanging like a cut-out mobile with its moons. Jupiter massive, striped, accompanied by many moons, the four major ones can be seen as planets in their own right, disks lit by the Sun and the reflected glory of their huge partner… I got another good swimming workout in today. Two more days of it before hitting the road again. I like getting into half-way decent shape before jumping back out in to the world. Wish I had my mountain bike with me here — there are so many place to ride, and I have hardly done any hiking. Mediated by speed! More mediation. Telescopes. All this material intervention! It is everywhere!