long drive transitioning through myriad dry environments and social settings. the two most impressive being the Manzanar Internment Camp and Hoover Dam. and in between those two, Death Valley. no time to do the Las Vegas strip in the process, though it was on the near horizon at one point.

Manzanar lies on the eastern flank of the Sierras in the dry rain-shadow cast by the 13000-foot-plus range. humidity is typically in the single digits most of the year. following Route 395 south from Independence, one parallels this flank, not only dry from the air, but also dried out through the efforts of the City of Los Angeles who, early in the development of that metropolis, bought up much of the land in this area so that the rather abundant water streaming eastward down from those peaks could be tapped off to feed the golf courses and car-washes of the City of Angeles 300 miles to the south and west. with names like Owens Valley, Paradise, Dogtown, Convict Lake, and Rovana, what were older ranching and farming communities were literally drained and dried up. it’s parched now.

along after this war on the land came the WWII contingency of the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans from their lives elsewhere to the Manzanar Internment Camp. there is almost nothing left of the camp today except the dried-out foundations, grid streets, scraggy plants and trees hanging on the outwash plain below Mt. Williamson. there is a visitor’s ‘interpretive’ center, and a three-mile driving tour with small wooden signs saying where different buildings were. it is depressing after stopping to meditate in the remains of the hospital garden to hear pairs of F-18′s screaming and rumbling around directly above, dog-fighting. the war continues.

attenuated transitions, on the same route taken two months previous almost to the day. across the Central Valley, and the ascent of the Sierras. not too crowded for a Saturday around peak season. so much drier than two months ago. most creeks in Yosemite are dry washes. fill the 10 gallon bladder with water from the high-pressure spigot at the east end of the Tioga grade. fill the water bottles and the 2.5 gallon tank as well. and drink a good fill. cold, damn good water. courtesy the Donner Electric Company. there are two spigots, another man is filling a large bladder in the back of his SUV. when I’m done, a pickup pulls up, the guy mouthing “get outta the way!” to me as I get into the cab of my truck. contorting my mouth into a variety of shapes, without using any particular language or vocabulary, I then smile and slowly pull away, waving. on down the road, south on 395 past Mono Lake, being passed by cars moving at excess of 80 mph most of the time. going backwards whilst going forward. one sedan passes. I vaguely notice the occupants. fifteen minutes later a tableau reveals itself. several cars parked on either side of the road, and that same sedan flipped over in the median, a group of people milling around. the D200 records several shots as I pass, transcendent. to Bishop. from Bishop one heads a bit south then east into the White Mountains on a very steep and twisted paved road which ends up in the Deep Springs Valley passing the mythological Deep Springs College. about half-way to the College is the turn-off into the Bristlecone Pine Wilderness area. a 40-mile trek on a bad dirt road. to the locked gate. tooling along, following the principle that wash-board surfaces are best negotiated as such a speed where the tires only have contact with the wave peaks, not the troughs, you get a smooth ride. while filed at the back of mind, another maxim taught/learned during the School of Mines summer field camp — “driving on a dirt road is like driving on ball bearings.” suddenly that mushy feeling with handling. hmmm. slow down. damn. a flat. the fourth this summer. good thing yesterday I had replaced the previous spare which had a 3-inch slash from an unknown source. the current flat tire has a similar gash. changing it as fast as possible, damnation, get covered with the fine pale beige dust. twiLight somewhere shortly off, and another 25 miles to go before getting to the locked-gate/trailhead. I had to think hard whether to continue without a spare or turn around and get back to paved life. with a uncertain heart, I went ahead, trundling along at no more than 5 mph. well, at least it gives a nice view of the passing scenery. consequently, I didn’t get to the gate until well after sunset. there were a couple other cars. there was a hard breeze blowing though with the air around 4% relative humidity, it didn’t feel as cold as it actually was, but it was plunging fast. the daily fluctuation can easily be 40 degrees F (30 C). ground cloth (a heavy black plastic sheet), three back-packing sleeping pads, the wool poncho from Colombia, bivouac sack, down sleeping bag, sheet sack, pillow, down vest, and fleece jacket. after a quick dinner of re-heated pasta from the night before, I crawl in, leaving a small slit to watch the stars through. only just warm enough. over-tired from the drive and the altitude, stunned awake by the stellar intensity, hardly sleep, catching a few scattered Perseids. I’ve not seen stars like this in years. this particular location, aside from the modest amount of air pollution from the rest of California to the west, is as dark as can be found in the lower 48 states. that and being up at high altitude. the stars were not positioned as in a dome of sky. rather, they appeared without perspective, nor were they simply pasted, flat on a black background. they appeared full and with depth and an obvious shading of dark matter obscuring the center of the Milky Way. enough overall Light to see easily. I had the feeling of plunging forward into them, clearly manifest as a space, a cosmos that I was floating into, chill wind flushing any illusions of being on a planet. flying despite the gravity of the chunk of rock pressing against my back.

Break down and have (huh?) to buy Loki a copy of the Harry Potter book (uff, even writing the name here is annoying). Why? Because each summer for the past however many that have been a target for the marketing of Rowling’s tale, some one, me on several occasions, has gotten him the latest installment for an early birthday present for the first of his usual two or three birthday parties. He always has one party in Amurika, sometimes with cousin Lexie, though she’s not here now, used to be that Amma Lillian would make him a nice cake, too. Then, when he gets back to Iceland there is one party for his friends and then another one for the adults in his family. But what is so annoying is the feeding of Rowling’s billion-dollar fortune. At the expense of the local, the personal, gradually but inexorably being stripped from culture. I realized this too late in my child’s upbringing (and my own consciousness) to alter the trajectory to any significant degree. But the idea that parents (elders!) spend time telling stories to the young. Those stories, and that process of telling, spending time (not money!), is a core value itself. The sharing of life-time. Where nowadays, parents are kept too busy to tell stories, and the kids are too jaded to listen anyway if the personal story doesn’t have murder and mayhem with 5.1 Dolby sound effects and less-than two seconds between cuts. One point of realization came gradually when a 90-minute story that I made up and taped while driving alone across the US from New York to Arizona seemed to have made a heavy impact on my child a third a world away in northern Iceland. It is still mentioned long into teenager-hood as something memorable despite the tragic distance of mediation.

I still remember the stories that my mother told me at bed time, sometimes featuring the exploits of my “Teddy” — always full of adventure and to my recollection, completely spontaneous.

But here we are, standardized stories translated into 75 languages, the forcefully marketed imaginations of one English house-wife-cum-writer. Not that I think her stories are bad in that polarized way of thinking about the world (if you’re not with us you’re against us). The content is not the issue. Not that I object to the effect on reading enthusiasm among media-headed tots, that’s not the point either. It’s the hole that they fill in contemporary culture. It is a hole of our own passive making. And we are falling into it, blindly. And it represents yet another fundamental body-blow to idiosyncrasy. Imagine when every bedtime story from Denver to Chaing Mai, Trondheim to Auckland is the same? What then do we have left?

I read at least three of the books cover-to-cover aloud for Loki, readable, adventurous, yup. And I did manage to read aloud the Lord of the Rings trilogy to him as well, just before the movies were deployed. What I just can’t stand anymore is the hyped marketing hysteria that practically every media outlet participates in trying to sell us something or another. One nasty effect is the complete and utter exclusion of the unfortunately shrinking percentage of children who don’t participate in mass culture. To be accepted at all, you HAVE to buy a copy and read it. This is the tyranny of the intellectually impoverished masses as instigated by the greed of the phenomenally wealthy few and compounded by the synchronized choreography of Media sycophants. Try being the parent who doesn’t buy their kid a copy. Unless you really have a hot song and dance, you stand no chance, and even if you do, someone else will buy it for them because it’s necessary. We have been effectively taught that our own freakish or dull ideas should be subject to those of the placid group, that sameness, the same bland rules.

Storytellers are indispensable agents of socialization. They picture the world for the child and thus give both form and limits to his memory and imagination. — David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd

Here’s to telling stories to kids — any stories, risque stories, challenging stories, flamboyant, outrageous, ridiculous, complicated, intelligent stories — they need to hear local voices, local stories. Stories of the like of the News from Lake Wobegon but not from Garrison Keillor or American Public Radio, instead from Aunt Mary or Uncle Al, grandly embellished with innuendo, gossip, faulty memory, and outrageously defective objectivity. Here’s to the propagation of rumor, tall tales, and exaggerated experience. Here’s to speaking with one’s own voice. And connecting that process of inspiration and expiration, deeply, humanely, with the next generation through the stories of the ancestors.

get one of these fantastic super-nice mikroPaliskunta reindeer t-shirts from the collaborative cultural project that Mari is working on. for women in sizes S – L and for men in sizes M – XXL. Colours: black-on-orange, orange-on-black, and orange-on-lime. raakaa ajoa means, liberally translated, raw driving … price only for you 10 euros (non-profit) plus postage. you can reach her at mkk ||at|| katastro ||dot|| fi.

Stonehenge, in a stiff wind. fenced, parking lot closed. the Place looms, well, not looms, but appears between oncoming lorries and a small wood. small and along on a gentle slope that opens up on closer approach. we can’t park, so Jo does a u-turn (aaaaaaa, on the wrong friggin’ side of the road, IMHO!!) and parks on an available pull-out. a full 180-degree rainbow appears over a flock of sheep across the way, almost along the sight line of the standing line stone. there is a hooded figure appearing and disappearing around the base of the main circle, beyond the chain-link fence. I have a sacrifice stone to image there. and some panoramas, but the wind and light rain makes any absorption of the Place not so easy. sunset Light appears, horizontal brilliance cutting from the southwest. clearing the air. there it is. there we be.

I run back to the car, kicking and wiping the beige chalk mud off my boots. getting in , the wrong side always. and fighting the urge to grab the stick-shift even though I don’t have the wheel in front of me. a few missed turns so a larger circle homing in on Huntsham Court. dark, running the hedgerows. machine-trimmed close and tight. especially with the van that we are driving. high on each side three or four meters. a chill, cold dark. small pullouts for tractors to turn into fields, or leading to stone houses. finally the manor appears. massive stone building with many many windows, stairs, halls, and rooms. three floors, 20-foot ceilings.

we’re not the first to arrive, Jo’s parents and a couple family friends are there trying to stay warm around the enormous fireplace in the Great Room.

elk and impala heads, jaguars, leopards, bronze owls with glass eyes. swords. closed doors open to reveal more and more incredible rooms. a snookers room, library, sitting room, dining hall set for seventy-five, and on three floors above, the bedrooms and bath, each unique, furnished with a scatter-shot mix of period furniture from stuffed animals to magnificent Tudor oak woodwork and 18th century porcelain bath accoutrement. not to mention the two lions at the front door. wow!

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

long day yesterday starts with packing up, more conversations around breakfast, and then on to UCSC to meet with Margret, chair of the Digital Arts / New Media program. good sushi for lunch. that and a couple of fine muffins that Isabelle packed for the ride south, alright! arrived in Santa Barbara after a longish drive down the 101 — slowly getting acclimated to the car culture, though with some guilt feelings about carbon footprints and all. no time to do the legendary Route 1. met August at UCSB in a dark parking lot and were in good

time for a presentation by Takuro Mizuta Lippit, one of the Artistic Directors at STEIM. cool to be reminded of the vitality of euro-culture while far-away here in SoCal.

arts birthday comes up in a few hours…

Adriene’s CD, Mauve Desert, based on the novel of the same title by Nicole Brossard, circulates around the space that is this place: the desert. I’ve never found it circumscribable with my own texts, or in images that I’ve been able to spin out from the hours and days spent wandering in these liminal locations. images, with still attributes seemed to have some potential to gather the loose photons but hardly re-present the fullness. nor do they touch on the possibilities that allow the heart to be monitored by internal ear. finding indescribable a surmounting way of this time of life. where a complex mélange of life problems flow through each day. job, location, art production.

The desert is indescribable. reality rushes into it, rapid Light. The gaze melts. Yet this morning. Very young, I was already crying over humanity. With every new year I could see it dissolving in hope and in violence. Very young. I would take my mother’s Meteor and drive into the desert. There I spent entire days, nights, dawns. Driving fast and the slowly, spinning out the Light in its mauve and small lines which like veins mapped a great tree of life in my eyes. — Nicole Brossard

Adriene’s compound, Hobe Chobe, on the outskirts of Twenty-Nine Palms, is a funky array of block houses, sheds, a 1950′s vintage travel trailer, a Buddhist bee hive, and assorted spaces shaded by some nice eucalyptus trees. dusty, I’m wishing for the fat shop-vac in Prescott to tidy things up from the infernal entropic advances of the desert system on this modest infrastructure. Adriene calls it humble, but Brad and I find it quite inviting, and in the end, after we figure everything out, comfortable. the weather is perfect for the situation — a bit warm for the season, high 80′s during the day, low 50′s at night. as the full moon wanes, the stars begin to appear.

winter closes in. early. Stef contacts old amiga Mary who encourages me to stop by and stay in their Steamboat condo until the Echo Park road re-opens in Dinosaur. haven’t seen her since 1989 perhaps, she and her husband and kids are based in Laramie, about a two hour drive from Steamboat. the drive from the Front Range to the (north)Western Slope is routine. scrolling landscape behind windshield and tinted windows. but winter seems to have come faster and heavier than is recalled easily. thinking there is some risk to be moving around without chains at this point. chainless.

things have not really started for ISEA’06, but I head down to San Jose on a shake-down run and to see who is around already. the drive and parking logistics are a bit complicated, so it is good to construct an operational head-map without the pressure of schedule. public transportation in central San Jose is revived along with the recent urban renewal that appears to be taking place. a re-colonization by huge shiny-skinned office buildings, no real community thriving are the foot of these gleaming beasts. just restaurants to cater to the convention crowds. food shopping? no chance for that in this infotainment core. immediately outside there are the remains of a pre-existing indigenous community.

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.

Embarking on the traditional trek across Indian Lands, Four Corners, to Gunnison to meet Chris and Scharmin at their cabin. Solo in the car, though, on this transit, without Loki it is sad, instead with Sage, the mild-mannered and warm Aussie.

The raw earth, impinging on sky, fills many gaps in motion-saturated being to a fullness not reached under any other circumstance. More about that later.

Make it across the reservation, across the heated spaces, rapidly. 60-70 mph. But stopping more frequently to check on Sage — to see how she is handling the heat in the back of the truck in a crate. She seems unfazed, and completely carried away by the smells at each stop. So much so that she can hardly go potty. Too many good odors to follow up on. The landscape is, as always, stretched taut between earthliness and heavenliness. Light traffic, few tourists. Shiprock shows up on the southern horizon on the stretch of road past Four Corners. And I try to make the connection between that apparition and the video I shot of it five years ago from the same vantage. All is apparition. All is unrevealed by Light shimmering from the sky. Seeing people only far off through a reversed telescope. And now that all gas stations are direct credit-pay, there need be no interaction between Self and Other. Not even exchanging money. It’s a change in the social fabric, a deep change. Another alien-nation manifestation. Flagstaff, Navajo Reservation, Ute Mountain Reservation, Cortez, the Dolores River, Lizard Head Pass, Telluride, Montrose, the Black Canyon, Curecanti, West Elk, and finally here to Soap Creek. The main decision upon arrival, whether or not to sleep on the ground. The choice bounded by limited knowledge of the local wildlife, but south 30 miles into the Uncompaghre Wilderness there are definitely large carnivores, must be here as well as Soap Creek is a trailhead dead-end into a wilderness area. The thought of being wrapped in bivvy sack, sleeping bag, liner, and clothes, zipped up, and becoming a meal. Uff. But the desire to be prone, between earth and stars, with ponderosa silhouetted, black on black is of opposite attraction. No moon. No moon.

Learn sorrowfully from the network (from Karen (T.)) of another passing. John Wester was a great friend from junior and senior high days. we maintained contact after the college diaspora and when we were both living in Los Angeles after college (he doing his law degree, me finishing my tenure with corporate oil) and later through email, thinking that at one point we would cross paths. an obituary is a terse framework that little shows the life, only the social situation. I’ll add some words and, if I can find some, photos soon. Karen calls — the first time we have spoken in, what, maybe 30 years? nah, a few less than that. it is strange and nice to hear a voice that slowly stirs older memories — of those humid summer days down at the North Shore dock of what was a not very large lake in one of the first planned communities of the 1970′s, Montgomery Village. I would cycle down Brink Road from home to the Village on occasional summer days before a drivers license made more of the world available. At the dock, John, Richard, Taryn, Karen, Mark, Gary, Bruce, Sharon, and others would hang out — some of them working (boat rentals), some like myself, just hunting for summer friendship.

I think I first got to know John in Mr. Mordensky’s Earth Science class in 8th grade when I transferred back to MVJHS from Baker JHS. Mr. Mordensky (aka Stan the Man) was all of 23 years old, maybe, he was renown forever after he threw an eraser at a bunch of us who were cutting up in class — I distinctly recall it was John and myself, Gary, and Bruce. so much for becoming a geophysicist. I think John was also in my French class with lovely Miss Sears, je pense que… And in that English class, what was her name, can’t recall. We had to do a reading of Romeo and Juliet in class. then on to Gaithersburg High School. often going to John’s house after school, hanging out with his sister, Karen, and his spunky mom, always lively conversation and laughing. John was very sensitive, very smart, and a concentrated student it seems from this vantage. and actually, it is interesting to be recalling those times. how unaware I was — that I can’t answer basic questions about people that I spent plenty of time with.

driving around with my old 1966 Beetle with some of those same people stuffed into the back of the car.

and I can’t find a picture of John in my archive. he was painfully shy about his appearance. and was prone to flush brilliant red if any special public attention was paid to him.

the news of his passing revives for at least a few moments a nascent network of people who were heavily involved in each other’s lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, between 30 and 40 years ago. having conversations with some of these people, across that expanse of days seems easy but short on depth. missing the complete face-to-face of being a teen-ager in the 1970′s. no cell phones, no telecom networks. telephone, but very much fixed line. otherwise, plans were made between classes or at someone’s house after school. where do the days go?

this in the Washington Post:

John Francis Wester Jr., 47, a specialist in health-care law at the law firm of Sidley Austin in Washington who defended companies accused of Medicare fraud and abuse, died March 7 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He lived in Fairfax County.

A spokeswoman for the Fairfax County medical examiner’s office said the cause of death is pending further tests.

The son of a Navy officer, Mr. Wester was born in Oak Harbor, Wash., and graduated from Gaithersburg High School in 1976. He was a 1980 graduate of the University of Virginia and a 1986 graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles law school.

In 1987, he joined Sidley Austin as a tax-law specialist. In recent years, he held the position of counsel at the firm, a rank between associate and partner, and became a leading legal expert on durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and oxygen tanks.

He did volunteer work for the Odyssey of the Mind youth program, the Boy Scouts of America and the McKenna’s Wagon soup kitchen. At the Spina Bifida Association, he served on the board of directors and acted as its counsel.

Survivors include his wife, Sharon Henne Wester, whom he married in 1985, and three children, Lauren Wester, Amy Wester and Zachary Wester, all of Fairfax County; his father, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. John F. Wester Sr. of San Juan Cosala, Mexico; his mother, Polly Wester of Richmond; a brother, James W. Wester of Richmond; and two sisters, Robin W. Jorgensen of Malden, Mass., and Karen W. Newton of Rockville.

and this at the Spina Bifida Association web site:

The Spina Bifida Community lost a friend and advocate on Tuesday, March 7 when John F. Wester, Jr., Esq. passed away suddenly at the age of 47. John leaves behind his wife Sharon and three children Lauren, Zachary, and Amy.

John served as SBA’s legal counsel, but above all, he was a valued mentor and supporter. Doug Sorocco, SBA’s Chair, said, “John was a tremendous friend to all of us on the Board and he was an enthusiastic advocate for our Spina Bifida Community. John truly believed in what we are accomplishing and gave freely of his time, skills, and resources.”

John was counsel in the Washington, DC law firm of Sidley & Austin, LLP and his expertise in health care was invaluable to SBA. But it was John’s compassion, and especially his affection for children with spina bifida that will be best remembered.

The words of Alex Brodrick, Past Chair of the SBA Board echo our feelings of loss.

“My friends, I share with all of you the pain over the tragic loss of our dear friend and fellow Board Member John Wester. He has been a quiet warrior for our movement for years who worked behind the scenes relentlessly to help us achieve our mission of reaching and helping all who are affected by spina bifida.

“He was always available for counsel and support and assisted us in ways most will never fully understand and appreciate. We have lost an incredible advocate.

“I pray with you for his family, loved ones, and friends, and for all of us who while in pain are much richer for the life he shared with us. For the many gifts he gave to us, and for his gentle way of touching so many lives.”

The Spina Bifida Association is most grateful to his family, who requested that donations be made to SBA in lieu of flowers. A special fund is being created to benefit children as a lasting tribute to John.

Donations may be sent to SBA, 4590 MacArthur Blvd, NW, Ste. 250, Washington, DC 20007 or may be made online. Please note that your contribution is being made in the name of John F. Wester, Jr.

gathering impressions from Barry Lopez from his collection of essays “Crossing Open Ground” and recalling the desires to aid the imprinting of the natural world on the child’s sensitive nature. in order for those impressions to guide the evolution and understanding of the inter-connectedness of human life and all that which is beyond the power of humans to erase or destroy completely.

The most moving look I ever saw from a child in the woods was on a mud bar by the footprints of a heron. We were on our knees, making handprints beside the footprints. You could feel the creek vibrating in the silt and sand. The sun beat down heavily on our hair. Our shoes were soaking wet. The look said: I did not know until now that I needed someone much older to confirm this, the feeling I have of life here. I can now grow older, knowing it need never be lost.

The quickest door to open in the woods for a child is the one that leads to the smallest room, by knowing the name each thing is called. The door that leads to the cathedral is marked by a hesitancy to speak at all, rather to encourage by example a sharpness of the senses. If one speaks it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all this fits in together, to indicate what a long, fierce peace can derive from this knowledge. — Barry Lopez, from “Children in the Woods”

Loki has decided not to come to the US this coming summer. it will be the first time I have had a summer off, and the first time he hasn’t been with me for the summer since he was 2 years old. it will make for a long short summer. he feels the gravity of teen-age friendships drawing him away from prospects of hours in heat-filled places, driving, walking, hanging out. looking at clouds, thunderstorms, rocks, and wind devils.

keeping an email flood at bay. what for.

just got Christian on a plane to Detroit and on to Paris and Hamburg to Steffi. after a few short days of jumping around the local landscape. Sycamore Canyon, Toozigoot, Baghdad, 7up, and Perkinsville, among other places. places. and the sun, sky, moon, a few stars not drowned-out by the fullness of the moon, coyotes howling in the early morning. sleeping on the ground is cold even with the bivvy sack, but the back holds up to that test. Bella-boop accompanies us for some of the touring. dirt roads are tough on the truck. dusty. but the driving is something to get into. more of this kind of travel soon. after cutting losses and moving on from AZ to other places. loosed-feet. and free fancy.

I don’t normally post long passages of other writers, but Alan (Sondheim) posted this to nettime today: it penetrated the fog of hypo-texts that floods a typical day in front of screen-life.

The power grid provides 60 Hz here at approximately 115-117 volts; this is maintained by dynamos driven by steam or coal or oil or hydro held together in a malleable grid. The grid enters the city, where electricity is parceled out through substations to cables continuously maintained and repaired. Here, the cables are below ground. They drive my Japanese Zaurus PDA which utilizes an entire linux operating system on it. The Zaurus connects to the Internet through a wireless card that most often connects to my Linksys router, which is connected both to the power grid and the DSL modem by a cat cable. The DSL is operated by Verizon with its own grid at least nation-wide and continuously-maintained. The DSL of course connects more or less directly to the Internet, which is dependent upon an enormous number of protocol suites for its operation, the most prominent probably TCP/IP. The addresses of the Internet, through which I reach my goal of NOAA weather radar, are maintained by ICANN and other organizations. These organization are run by any number of people, who employ the Net, fax, telephone, and standard mail, to communicate world-wide. (more …)

Nina Linard, the host for the weekend program Alma del Barrio on KXLU passed away this week. so many memories of the Sunday program, on those foggy mornings, slow, sun seeking through during a breakfast out on Lincoln Blvd, finally breaking out, so head home, grab the board and head to guard-stand 13 on Santa Monica beach, or jump into the Spyder, top down, cruise up PCH to Malibu, everywhere warm water, warm air, palm trees, sunshine, and Alma blasting.

living on the back. no longer an upright animal. except part-time. and no driving for another couple months. perspectives are limited. constant aching. phone calls with empathetic Others, emphasizes the distance of distributed being, how help is only visceral. hmmmm.

1.2 GHz G4 Powerbook, my mainstay for mobility and the core machine of an array of three other machines dies today. ignominious, blanked gray screen demanding a restart that will not take place. stupidly take it in to the local authorized (and monopoly) Mac repair place, Argosy West, run by Gary Beverly, one of the most arrogant and disagreeable persons that I’ve had the misfortune to run across. seldom anything but a condescending comment. last I’ll see of it for more than three weeks and $1.5K later.

hadn’t made a primary backup since before leaving for California three weeks ago. whups. so the data on the drive along with the drives integrity suddenly leaps to the foreground. older data is backed-up with triple redundancy. after the two historical drive crashes (1996 and 1999?), aside from having alternative off-site storage for a third rotating backup, I am religious about regular backups. period.

the month starts. hottest temps, dry. and a fire on the southern horizon that occasionally resembles a volcanic eruption. it’s threatening to become the largest in Arizona history. no danger here, but as always, people start to get nervous with dry grass and tinder all around the area. just takes a cretinous smoker of off-roader driving without a spark-arresting muffler. instant conflagration. the party weekend looms.

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

make a blitz into downtown to meet Sirpa and check out her exhibition in the Mission. we met nearby at her friend Alice’s home and drove down to the gallery, the Mission 17 Gallery. parking is a hassle, with my boat-length pick-up. not used to driving it in compact urban settings. walk down Mission, thinking that this setting is almost identical to Brixton in London when I was there with Pete. urban complexity, noise, confusing information flows, mixed cultural impulses, chaotic surface intersections and orientations.

the gallery space is a beautiful second-floor room with first-growth straight-grain pine flooring, can’t find that anymore. looks like the material that Aalto used in Villa Mairea. on either side wall there are a dozen or so color photographic prints, large. English text fragments are posted on the third wall along with stereo speakers, the fourth wall are large windows overlooking Mission, itself another scenario. Sirpa explained that the sound system is not so satisfactory for the work, but there were no options, and it just arrived a few minutes before the opening the previous week. there is a one-hour ambient audio piece playing. the environmental portraits are intimate, varied. some of them easily strong image works unto themselves. Sirpa starts the audio and we listen and chat about the project. the premise is that she asked people that she met to take her to a place of personal importance, she asked them on tape, while in the place itself, to describe the place and its relation to their life, and then she made a 35mm color portrait. half the works were done in Moscow in December, the other half in San Francisco in summer. might be called polar-ly opposed locations. the audio was mixed in fragments, not completely cut up, but the segments were short enough to maintain a flow of interest in the sonic material and intercut in pairs. the acoustic of the room is somewhat problematic, where the sonic material got garbled by hot and reflective surfaces reverberating. I would have preferred headphones to fully catch the ambiance, but Sirpa felt it was important to have the free-association possibilities of spatial movement, which is understandable. in that case, a less sonically active space would have been more appropriate. not much to be done about that, though. as I was with the artist, she made connections between the sounds and the images, something I might have done, but perhaps not. it would be a challenge to match all media to it’s respective situation. and I wonder what the matching would accomplish? it is better that the effect is more random. to give all possibility to each example. cross-correlation in randomness.

the exhibition takes time, I gained by staying for the whole audio duration. it’s a bit hard to imagine, in the rush that is California, at the beginning of the decline of the Age of Oil in 2005, that an American audience would take the time to engage. unfortunately. another testament to the cultural width of the Atlantic, or, perhaps in this case, the divide of all Asia and the Pacific between Finland and California. perhaps feeding the work in a different form, say, on the web, or as a audio/video installation would be speed-appropriate. of course, it would lose the intimacy that less mediation leaves. maybe intimacy is the first energy level to be lost when mediation takes the place of presence. communicating intimacy and place. how to suggest this. how to give this. place. locative media. audio recording puts you in the place of the microphone. a photograph puts you in the location of the camera. the two devices, under the observation of the artist, eliminate the indeterminacy of the self-experienced and lock it into a definite outcome. making a reality materialize. the characteristics of the materialization are literally subject to the observer. the collaborator who uses the tool to make the observation. the energy of the images is surprisingly modulated — there is a reflected difference between the images made in Moscow and those in San Francisco. do they simply reflect a difference in the observers state-of-being? it’s not clear. and also, to eliminate the effects of the sampling tool, especially the camera, it would have been helpful to see printed images of the same genesis. the largest prints, Sirpa tells me, were made by a soon-to-retire printer in Helsinki — a print-maker clearly with quite some skill. it’s a pity he retired before the rest of the images could have been matched in size and quality. that would have removed an artefactual difference from the manifestation. allowing the viewer to see situational, posited differences more clearly.

the sounds bring voluminous information and ambiance to experience. it is closely modulated by the human connection and makes concrete the essence of place. images alone are too explicit. sound suggests. and the remembering of speech brings to a crux the personal placement. the three are a tri-partite unity, lacking nothing. having explicit, implicit, and soul-full presence.

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).

driving around town, spotted a van with huge signs on the side and back with the texts:

IN ISREAL JEWS TORTURE CHILDREN

and

SUPPORT PALESTINIAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS

and

THE JEWS ARE THE PROBLEM

the US is a complicated place. freedom of speech and all that. but somehow it is offensive. but combined with my knowledge from Elias, a Palestinian Jew who was representing the PLO viewpoint in Iceland. the whole situation seems endlessly tragic. including the whole historical and present US role.

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor's note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 which set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. (more …)

a trip into the Hopi reservation with the objective to get to Grand Falls on the Little Colorado with Uncle Al and some friends from his church, Mike and Debbie. no chance. there is a heavy south-west wind blowing on the drive up to Flagstaff, nice to have a tail-wind going up the hills. but when we get onto the reservation, we cannot see very far east, from I-40 there is a plume of tan sky originating towards Walnut Canyon and stretching north as far as can be seen: sandstorm. the wind increases to probably 50 mph as we are heading down the last 15 miles of dirt road. but as pebbles the size of peas begin to rain onto the car, and visibility goes to zero we eventually have to turn back. end up mostly driving around, to Wupatki (Anasazi ruins above) and Sunset Crater National Monuments instead. though even then, the wind and sand makes any activity unpleasant.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! — H.D. Thoreau

down to the City, delivering the kids to Jason, stay the night, and return to the mountains late today. Camelback Avenue is lined with 1950′s – 60′s architectural jewels, many which have been razed in the last few years during a gentrification (replaced with horrible mega-stores and strip malls). this car dealership sign is about 30 feet from top to bottom of the flying wedge. it’s a beauty — an embodiment of the triumph of hydrocarbon-fired living!

driving to the furnace of Phoenix (116 F), on the way to the airport, a day early, with a small party for Loki with Lexie, Sara, and Trey, along with Aunt Janet and Amma Lillian.

paying the price for an escape from the highlands at the end of a long holiday weekend. about seven hours for a four-hour drive, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way from Dillon to Idaho Springs. starting before noon. shhhheeeeee-it!

smartmoblogsociallocativefictiongpsteredmedia creatures feeding one on the other, in a frenzy of “what’s next that’s cool” and built for speed. (which ultimately will move ‘it’ on to the next “Next Big Thing.”) seems like another wave of meme-hype reverberating around the extraordinarily limited space of global telecom networks (in collaboration with military satellites). is the price to be paid so removed and hard to comprehend? seems so. I have run across exactly zero critical words about this phenom. instead a flood of vacuous phrases and spin terms that are kept afloat in a social sea by the flatulent buoyancy of affluence, global capital, and ex-military industry. STILL. “radical decentralization” for autonomous consumption of text, image, audio and video — the re-presented and ultimately consumable world. autonomy for re-presentation and re-production of reality — one that fills the belly with gas and the head with language peddled by those same tired techno-utopian spin-doctors. technology always looks its ubiquitous best in the eyes of the über-class. as I click through the verbiage at locative.net (no longer extant) it feels like RedHerring from 1999 or so — so much interlocking terminology leading in a head-rich circle of hype-logic. headmap drops phrases like “everything in the world, animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, has thoughts attached,” “every place has emotional attachments you can open and save,” and “life flows into inanimate objects.” and behind these words (more and more of them) there is no awareness of or anticipation that there was/is an essence that is a substrate for knowledge and abstracted/systematized human apprehension. that something comes before knowing. and the vitality-draining construction of a Babylonish Tower is an ongoing exercise that society never quite purged from its mind. the path that re-creation bumbles along is not the same one as creation. not even in the same forest.

When people consider the dangers of the chaos of a free intensely networked spatially augmented augmented world, they should also consider that like all technological advances it offers tools to both sides of any argument. ‘ends appropriate means’ may seem ominous but the ends can just as well be social advancement. Even in a critical situation, disaster response and recovery in a world of spontaneous peer to peer mesh networks, running evolved social software, seems like a sane option for coordination of local efforts to recover and help from outside. The homeland security initiative raised the point that a citizen owned spatially aware communications network could be invaluable in a crisis. — headmap.org ideolog

what kind of crisis? when shopping is compromised? what can be meant by the terms ‘crisis’ and ‘homeland security’ being used in the same context? and, invaluable to whom? a threat to the status quo? or is there a radical suggestion that the masters tools be used to displace the master? funny, though, the effect of wielding a tool is perhaps the same, regardless of the wielder. that is, on the wielder, not on the hapless victim!

and what if, just what if these technological deployments are subsequently used for command-and-control, will everyone be surprised and taken aback? gee, we never imagined…

and the other core issue — whether you believe that all things are connected by a relatively un-knowable (or un-circumscribable) substratum or whether you consider that phenomenal existence is populated by discrete and completely independent objects, actions, and beings. that driving an SUV in Chicago rush hour has absolutely no connection to the presence of an M1 Abrams tank parked on a bridge outside of Falluja. that typing these words on this keyboard into this device has no connection with degradation of ground water in the Kwale region of Kenya from titanium mining.

recalling the time, Kevin and I driving the rental truck full of Conran’s Habitat furniture and location gear from NYC to Acadia National Park for the catalog shoot, stopping in to see Bern, but he was out. cruisin’ around the town, found a place to buy Maple Syrup which I loaded up on to take back to Iceland for French toast and corn bread later. I took a picture of Kevin in front of Bern’s porch. don’t have that neg scanned, but it does exist perhaps as an artifact in Kevin’s collection of my postcards. or actually, I think I sent one later to Bern as well.

Bern says:

I finger zero, readjust my couch in a void that sloth built, the better to do nothing.
…
Obsolescence revolts me. The alleged modern is a repetition of the ancient decorated in chrome, styled with air-flow and color-engineered to abomination.
…
Thus, communication-wise I junk drum beats, smoke signals, semaphores, flag codes, light flashes, telegraphs, telephones, radios, television sets and all other such systems, devices and developments for my own sensory organs wherein desiring to make known my wishes I merely think them in a frequency universal and in a tongue world known and whomever wishes to hear, receive and understand does so.
The spoken word, printed and tele-dramatized word becomes a particle of thought energy.
The drawn, photographed, painted and kinescope-picture becomes more of the same.
All of the devices of locomotion, subterranean, surface and aerial equally reduce.
I am at all places, in all forms, at all times.
What were books became word sequences screen projected, then free-floating vibrations which impinged upon my mind as I desired them.
What was art left museum walls to become gaseous fusions in color similarly projected, then all prevailing rhythms of radiant energy that stimulated my eye whenever I wished them.
What was poetry became equally transformed to responses for feeling.
Architecture became constructions of ether and light.
Clothing a logical extension of skin without embellishment.
Theatre a pageant of masked spectators.
Automobiles, body rockets.
Toys, fondling in the dark.
No civilized thing was left unmodified or unreverted to its natural, logical and true state.
I transformed the world and in so doing I found myself.

spent much of yesterday online, remote. talking with the http://archive.reboot.fm crew during their collaborative re-streaming project from Berlin. Thomax from the old orang.orang radiostadt project was there as irc host, and many net-amigos dropped in during the course of the 12-hour stream. by day’s end. though, I was wondering about the effect of a full day online, again. ‘the price you pay’s a very general and deep issue regarding technological implementations, technological consumptions, technological deployments anywhere, anytime, anyhow. the cost that is extracted from the individual and collective psyche is always there, this is a principle. as soon as one begins to make a re-configuring of the natural conditions of flow, that re-configuration itself, because at least part of it is contrary to the flow, costs in that the self has to expend internal energies, or, to get Others to do the same. huge discussion to try to launch into here, now. part of that greater schema that I have been promoting on a granular lever in teaching.

it may be that the schema never gets to a formal representational package beyond the actuality of a stand-up/taught lecture/discussion. the process of re-presenting it at a higher level of social order may require too much energy, more than I have. though Frieder is really inspiring me with his questions and reflections on the new thesis proposal, it is incredibly difficult to get much done about it.
‘
now have to run to catch a boat. not the ferry to town, but I am making a new short video work, another simple ambient work called action at a distance which is a single shot somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge on the island over a smallish inlet. when the large cruise ships go by about 100 meters away, through the very narrow channel that guards the main harbor, there is an intense though subtle oscillation of the water levels that slowly moves the remaining chunks of rotting ice back and forth. an example that human perturbations in the world are not only felt in the immediate vicinity. but that they reverberate and extend themselves in subtle forms, perhaps infinitely. and that is the question. is it possible to devise a work that tests/illustrates the idea of simultaneity. where quantum suggests that any change in the universal energy continuum anywhere is simultaneously ‘experienced by all points in the continuum. seems only an accession to Buddha-hood would contain the ‘ proof.’ and just this morning before I started writing, I had this strange impression that my need to ‘prove’ my model is a total caving-in to the scientific method, that dominant driving model. sheesh. how to avoid that and remain socially viable? might not be possible.

in conversation with Sophea last night, I realized that, yup, I do have a streak of anti-sociability. it does not affect individual relationships, per se, but it affects abilities to interface with the socially mandated pathways of institutions, and the positions that individuals carve out for themselves as a result of participating in such structures. hmmmm.

back in the air again. with hope that the storm apparently bearing down on New England is not epic. or ever remarkable in any way except in the deep sense of disappointment that it brought to weekend skiers for it’s failure to live up to any expectations of precipitation.

looking forward to a visit with Stefan and Ellen and family in their new home. been a long time.

and in a week, will already be submersed in the first European workshop in 26 months. after the two-year retreat to Babylon.

down into the inferno to finalize a deal on a new(old) car. to get me on the Amurikan Road in Western style. a black pickup truck. a foreign make, though: that will keep me from donning shit-kickers and a beaver-felt Stetson. haven’t bought a car in a long time. at least for myself. the cars I have owned in a regular-driver position: a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle, a 1975 Toyota Corolla wagon (Cal plates SGTPPPR), a 1982 Toyota Corolla SR5 Sport (bought new at the start of the Big Oil career), a 1980 Fiat Spyder, a 1984 Toyota Corolla Sedan, a 1988 Lada Sport 4×4, a 1979 Toyota Corolla wagon, and now, a 1995 Toyota Tacoma pickup. a reluctant consumer. but addicted like any good Amurikan. at one point, many years ago, maybe half a life ago, I calculated that I had spent 100 days in a car moving at 55 mph so far in life. above, the odometer ticks over another 100,000 miles.

and now a brief memory of a death last summer, no, two summers ago already. seeing Ingvi one evening, talking with him about the future, what he’s interested in doing, then two days later, the young teenager is dead in an automobile accident where his father was driving. in the countryside of Iceland.

driving in from dinner with Jim and Dona. standing on the side of the road, a fellow, bundled up with mismatched and tattered layers and a cardboard sign. it reads it’s all an illusion, the world’s a white rabbit. he flashes a vee-for-victory sign as I drive past, I give him a thumbs-up with my ski-gloved hand, driving this old car with the leaking heater core off and out until I feel like fixing it. so it goes.

drivin’ down Federal Ave. south-bound, in the old green car, heard Scotty doing Origins, Orgy in Rhythm (Sundays) on KUVO. gotta contact him, it’s been 10 years since I heard him dj-in’. cool. about the most uplifting dj I’ve ever heard.

another hop. psychically have finished in Finland. a quiet departure, dinner with Mathias and Sylvia, emotions are mixed. frustrated on the part of the doctoral work. on to Iceland for a week, then back through Helsinki (cheap flights) to Frankfurt and then Phoenix. to another maelstrom of life.

meanwhile. Finland recedes in a rear-view mirror that I don’t have. no driving away, just the hermetic transfer by air. snowy chill and frozen streets. bank accounts, currencies, and all that lies behind. after losing 9% of my bank account because of a plunging euro — all in ten days. often seems I get screwed by currency exchanges. the little people always do. but now that Caesar is the EU in Brussels. well, I leave that newly unified place. on the eve of expression of their unified aim — monetary policy. money. to be able to face up to the US. monetarily. and I return to Amurika. in its confusion and ignorance.

sotto voce: sitting at a rickety table with a brown and beige tablecloth or table-vinyl to indicate the actuality. out the dirty window there is a sun that barely has presence behind driving rain and low Baltic clouds. a smokestack rises from the low building across the street. the street itself is not. there are two broad sidewalks, but the street is just a mess of mud, half-dug holes and parked machinery. all things are half-done, even those things that are done. like god’s first thought was seven days, and later found out that there were really only three days, and everything had to be slapped together to a deeply unfinished state — not a coming-into-being state either.

pieces of a puzzle or perhaps an example of seeing what one wants to see: I have still only seen two instances of a woman driving a car with a man sitting in the passenger’s seat. and one of those was when the woman was driving up to pick a man up. then Harri mentions he is going to a funeral tomorrow, of a 46-year-old man who had a heart attack. he said this area of Finland specifically has a very high incidence of heart problems among men. hmmmmm. then later, I meet an elderly fellow in the sauna who tells me, among other things, he has had a triple bypass and a stroke, explaining why his English isn’t so good, the blood to that part of his brain dealing with language was interrupted — he had to re-learn Finnish as well. piecing together bits of a strange puzzle in this place that was on the front line of the Winter War.

unsatisfying swim (a workout in a public pool is a metaphor for life always: I like a lane to myself or with someone who is sensitive that they are sharing a lane!). I have opinions, I have points-of-view.

such a tired way to go. and this text is so poor in the actuality of living, the stresses, (where is my sense of humor, no clown alive no more). Scandic living cooled all that right out of mind and soul. here in the heat. seeing everything new and clear. nothing to be spared. heat waves: vibrashuns. repainting the bathroom. work is meticulous with what is there. what is available. that’s also the result of living in a conservative environment too much. but it is a solid lesson — to create with what is there. nothing more or less clear than that. okay, because of the ultraviolet shift in Light at high latitudes, the wavelength of the cumulative radiation adsorbed is short, intense, and accurate. in the equatorial latitudes, the red, IR shift is long, wide, and soft, casting everything seen in voluptuous shimmers of distance between the wind devils racing across the dirt parking lot of the Yavapai horse racing track. between that and the moto-cross track where a race is laconically kicking up clouds of Light-tan dust that later traces the advance of the wind devil. all things are clear, whatever the wavelength, and where ever they fall on the ground, scattered by monsoon weather coming. desert monsoon.

but really, the things that could be added here, as I scan images from my Aunt Mary’s collection of mostly Kodachrome images from the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s of her life, as she saw it. creating an archive in digital form from analogue boxes of things. turning the color tracings and reducing that to patterns of magnetic polarity. that is energy. period. driving life and everything else forward.

head-cold, and only 36 more hours here. looking at another year of being elsewhere. adding fictions to fictions here and there. sheesh. looking around as if from the bottom of a well, or at least with two toilet paper rolls stuck to the eyes. no binocular vision here. just monocular reception. nothing correlated. all things appear as they are. and are not things, but manifestations. more and more I run across texts that confirm my suspicions. how to take away the toilet rolls and move, viewing and being in a world that is unrestricted?

churning all that has sensually been absorbed, along with that-which-is-there-inside, and hunting for the evolutionary keys. start the car and drive away. there are those venting points for energy that has been gathered, but I know almost nothing about this, and recognize myself as less than a novice on a spiritual pathway. in some way even a blasphemer, as I know, but do not practice. as being buried alive.

chop chop. fever reminds me of every text I have ever read. flickering by the inside of the eyelids. murmuring from upstairs, a dinner party, and I feel other-worldly. not here, but on my way somewhere else. mind floating in a messy sewage of misguided inputs. and ports are still open, waiting for the vessel to swamp and slowly settle to the bottom. nothing changes. thoughts travel large distances to people in many places, but this is useless exercise. if all the universe is aware of all the rest of the universe, and all things react to all other things and events, simultaneously, then what can be done that is not already?

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

forgot my sun glasses over at their place.

start the New Year in Hualapai Mountain Park, near Kingman, Arizona. up at high altitude in the Douglas Fir. granite boulders. a campfire of pine cones and needles with a few branches. quiet and cold in the night. no other people camping in the campground. a Black Widow in the heated bathroom. driving on the “historic” Route 66 from Kingman to Seligman. not seeing much, except that the “historic” roadbed is not even being used — too many curves and grades compared to the straightened and leveled new “historic” Route 66. so it goes. into the Grand Canyon Caverns. seeing a mummified bobcat grimacing in pain after falling into the caverns 200 feet beneath the surface. designated fallout shelter stocked with k-rations during the Cuban Missile crisis. a mimeographed sign on a bulletin board in the cafe asks for anyone in the nuclear test areas nearby, or downwind of them who has developed cancers in the last 45 years should contact…

Campbell gives a call from Phoenix. will meet tomorrow in Prescott.

flash fire, morose carving up of temporal remains. moving and moving. Helsinki for some hours on Saturday, enough to have breakfast at Fazer with Sanna, then drop by Tapio’s place to leave some material offal. then back to the airport to head to Copenhagen, landing a kilometer from the Oresund Bridge that threatens to bind Denmark and southern Sweden in (un)holy matrimony. faced the sad fact of the total sum of money that I have spent carting around about 3 cubic meters of belongings since 1989. first from Colorado to the East Coast, then by boat to Iceland, then, five years later, shipping it back to NYC with almost the same stuff, putting it in storage in Newton, New Jersey for five years (at U$D40/month), and now, finally (?!?) driving it all back to Prescott, Arizona to reposition it there to cook in the desert heat. basically don’t even know what is in the boxes, but with the sum total of the money invested in it, damn well ought to be valuable! but likely not. just stuff. weight, mass, to be acted upon by gravity and the entropic effects of time. the storage unit in Jersey is marginally exposed to rain water, and combined with the humid and hot summer climate, I have the feeling that everything is at least partly consumed with some form of microbial critter. decay, rotting stink.

but anyway, Loki and I take a visit to the cockpit of the B757-200 for some time. wow! the pilot is quite friendly for my moderately intelligent questions. the view is intense, a strange feeling of vertigo, but not vertigo, realizing that to be in the front of the plane has something to do with whether the thing will stay up in the air. feeling the power of the outsides, as we sail over Goose Bay. ain’t see no geese up here! Light snow on the ground, in patches, but nothing serious, it’s warm in Gander. 20C the pilot says. while NYC is only about 13C. stormy on the whole East Coast, I am hoping this doesn’t mean anything serious about the landing situation.

Raitis’ brother, Artis, has a car, so we pile in for a trip to the Baltic seaside after stopping at Normunds and Ilva’s house for a short visit. Brrrr. It’s COLD, it’s March, but there are plenty of people out strolling, or purposefully taking a walk by the sea.

massive busy-ness over the weekend with the ~/Connected conference at the Lasipalatsi. Tapio had asked me earlier if I could help out with activities on the ground, and although I was pretty busy anyway, I was around to help, then ended up being quite involved in the discussions, and even made a short public presentation at the end in Bio Rex, dealing with best-practice scenarios for education/learning situations. Polar Circuit was held up as that model in learning situations, along with the idea of open-platform, socially balanced situations.

/~Connected press releases for local and translocal use

Cultural industries and independent media cultural production are of primary importance for Finnish policy development, as a new program, “Content Finland” is being drafted during next year. In each European country, goals of both national and transnational media culture have been met with different strategies. Through /~Connected knowledge and shared experience, it is possible to form models of best practice – and principles for both national and European policy.

The driving force behind this event and series of other meetings prior to it is the ECB, European Cultural Backbone (http://ecb.t0.or.at/, http://www.e-c-b.net/). It is a network of media cultural organizations, centers, and active individuals throughout Europe, not only European Union member countries. To quote Dr. Peter Wittmann, Austrian State Secretary for the Arts, “The European Cultural Backbone is the logical extension of this ongoing dialog between cultural practitioners and policy makers regarding strategies of “practice to policy” on both national and European levels.”

The Main organizer of /~Connected, the Lasipalatsi Media Center, also seeks to discuss how European media centers could increasingly collaborate. How to best connect venues of presenting media culture and sites that produce it? Support of networks, bandwidth, mobility, distribution and production are key factors for policy discussion.

Traditionally, in a European democracy, public space has been defined through access to public institutions, freedom to move in city spaces and through the existence of certain democratic instruments such as public libraries and publicly supported broadcast media. New media, Internet in particular, has made it possible to more actively shift content production to smaller units or groups. Creation of public space can mean support for content production and communication that does not focus on a single mass audience, but particular communities (or consumers) and layers within the larger society and the networked world. Major issue for debate is thus to consider, how to best connect various models of best practice and policy that enable cultural production in a networked, changing Europe.

The seminar takes place in the very center of Helsinki, in Lasipalatsi Media Center (http://www.lasipalatsi.fi). Meals during the conference program are provided for by the organizers and there is no attendance fee. We are providing air fare and accommodation for a group of participants that comes from smaller media centers and organizations. We are happy to assist your travel arrangements by providing information on accommodation and flights.

/~CONNECTED brings together practitioners, producers and policy makers within contemporary media culture in Europe. Its attempts to create exchanges of experience and information between organizations and individuals from different fields: media cultural organizations, media centers, policy makers on a local, national and European level, media art organizations, corporate research labs and university researchers.

Following events such as P2P conference in Netherlands and Networking Centers of Innovation in Austria, it explores the ways in which local experiences can be compared, exchanged and rewritten to form models of best practice.

The event will officially launch the ECB, European Cultural Backbone, a network based on trust and a shared interest to promote a rich media cultural practice, which already flourishes in Europe. The network proposes that an Internet Backbone or a set wide bandwidth would be subsidized by the EU in order to enable transnational media production, broadcast transmission of events and inexpensive communications. The ECB acts as an advisory body for the policy makers nationally and within the EU.

/~CONNECTED is very much about the goals of the ECB:

1) Bandwidth for media culture
2) Support for models of best practice
3) Active investigation of what European media culture consists of
4) Enhanced networking between media cultural organizations, individual hubs” and policy makers.

/~CONNECTED refers to the ways in which media cultural local practices and organizations create collaboration, projects, discourse and policy across and partly independent of national borders. Emerging networks, projects and content are no longer international, but translocal by nature, already connected.

morning, Jane makes a breakfast for the first year students. social contexts and interactions. the day is spent in individual discussions with a few students. A cycle ride around town in the late afternoon takes me by happenstance first to St. Olav’s cathedral and then on to Dora I and Dora II — more monuments to the War. German u-boat slips. massive, massive structures with a gravitational force far beyond the same volume of the densest basalt. bunkers hidden in ornamental bushes overlooking the slips, and steel doors leading underground into every hill. two cylindrical towers with steep conical tops. heavy reinforced concrete. relics. on the North Sea. monuments that will last for the future of human existence as we know it. is Germany building, driving another Fortress Europe? nah, not yet. I cannot comment on this stuff anyway.

workshop starts slow, inexorable. Christian is taking care of much of the business, but I see that the school is muddling along, crippled by its own historical structure. as I write there is a mechanical pile-driver in the harbor about 75 meters away rhythmically ramming a pier into the sandy earth under the water.

already my time here is gone. today vanishes into the strong north wind that blows all day. french toast for breakfast, Loki likes that a lot. we play on the computer for a time and MB comes to take him to see Peter Pan at the children’s theater. I go swimming, as I usually try to do the day before I leave Iceland. soak in the water that was one of my only refuges when I lived here. driving around town is strange. for a second I tried to picture living here again, but couldn’t. just too small and I could never integrate into the culture. but I don’t know the meaning of that phrase anyway — integrating into the culture.

and looking forward, there is:

When we have loved, my love, Panting and pale from love, Then from your cheeks, my love, scent of the sweat I love: and when our bodies love now relax in love after the stress of love, ever still more I love our mingled breath of love. — ancient Sanskrit verse

yet another special dinner at Simmi and Hildur’s. this time their traditional New Years Eve meal of wild (gray) goose, two of them with an incredible sage stuffing. fabulous! driving home, through the city, past the harbor, huge fishing trawlers, port windows reveal green house-plants inside. strung with Christmas Lights (Light tubes are the most popular item this year, aside from the traditional candelabras in windows). fireworks still going off regularly, although nothing like the madness of midnight when the entire area erupts in a madness of explosions and Lights. emergency signal flares (expended often before expiration, just for the hell of it) slowly drift seaward in the Light breeze, creating drifting constellations that are punctuated by thousands of greater or lesser explosions.

Loki finally retreats into the house, and when I go back in some minutes later, after the boys have spent their collections of pyrotechnics, I find him crouched in the living room by the couch, sobbing. ever since his first New Years, he has been terrified by the noise. later that same day, I find myself looking at this website again, wondering just what to do with it. I find the older sections like the portrait works, and other documentation work to be just too dry. yet I don’t have an idea of what to do — either just scrap them or somehow integrate them with other areas of the site. it is just that the writing is too glib and amateurish to have much soul. something akin to how it is when Loki asks me to tell him stories each night (or during the day when there is a chance) — I make long ones up (sometimes based on stories that I have read, like the C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books) that span several days and feature some of his best friends as partners in adventure. but in the end, I don’t think I am much of a storyteller. although it is something that he connects with in me — I think mostly because the combination of my absence in his life, and the long series of audio tapes I have made for him of either reading stories or occasionally telling ones. he listens to the tapes, and apparently gets a bit obsessed by them at certain points, listening over and over to a particular one until he has it memorized. so when I read him something when I am visiting, he can mouth the words and now is beginning to pick out the written words on the page. I try to peer into him, to understand what the conditions of our relationship have imposed on his spirit, but I cannot see clearly. he is an Other. and the only way I can cope with the whole thing is to show him what little I have come to understand is something called love.