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

Back down to Blue Lake for another definitive workout doing the full length of the lake twice. The far end is shallow and covered with a fine mud with nodules of organic material, almost like crypto-biotic soil, and extending the hand into the mud, it’s warm, though I can’t tell whether that is an affect of the heat-flow driving the upwelling action that has generated the spring, or merely sun-warmed sediment. The water temperature is perfect, right around 82F, with the air temp at 50F, a great combination for working out.

There is a shallow play of fear when getting into the water — snakes? big fish? underwater dangers? Loch Ness monsters? It’s deep and not absolutely clear as it normally is because of the heavy wind and dust. The depth is indicated, though, through the deepness of the blue. In the middle it feels deep: gravitational fluctuations operating on the body. While overhead, the F/A-18′s fight gravity and each other.

Then a short photo trip to do a portrait of Wendover Will and some images of the casino landscaping. Plenty of material there! But somehow I am tired of simply illustrating western society in wasteful and dis-connected abandon. I’ve seen too much of it, and there simply is too much out there!

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.

can’t think of a better place to be than here at the ski house with my godson Simon, my old friend Bill, and a few other folks. chorizo and eggs for breakfast, then everybody else heads out to ski. I stay at the house and do some snow-shoeing through the deep snow in the ‘back 40,’ and otherwise, chill out.

this is the way I enter the New Year, hat thanks to Zander.

self portrait in bed, waking up to celebrate a birthday with a glass of tea. in a silent and empty house. <sigh>

The time of a man’s life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. — Marcus Aurelius

and hardly anything to be said about this place. no textual naming enough. walking the riparian canyon with clear running water. not too much, but enough. not too cold, but enough. harvesting a few spring fronds of sage. not sure exactly why, but just to have, perhaps for future blessings. climbing to the smallish cave that overlooks the end of the access canyon at Echo Park. turns out it is not really a cave, but a hole into a face to a whole slice of open fracture plane. open to the sky. the whole small canyon follows a massive fracture plane cutting across the formation. these energy configurations. we are so used to, so comfortable with, pre-configured energy packages. that the raw flow on all scales, at all levels, under all conditions, is just too much to bear. while the wind blows across skin. and the skin is raked by the radiative solar flux. and this machine starts its own fan. the environment too harsh for it. couldn’t take outside into the wind and dust, that’s clear. soft device. needing the feed of electric energy to keep it functional. at all. or it becomes a paper-weight only. to fight the wind.

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

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

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

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

a primary movement among the Big Trees. cycle. creating a momentary vortex to dynamically lock self to place.

Marcel and I run across a web project operating in a shop window in the center of Zurich — one that uploads a web-cam shot to a server. no notes on what the project is. too short a visit to Switzerland to think.

drone of trucks coming from and going to Russia on the highway near the house. combined with a very high-pitched almost-but-not-quite continuous whine of the hot water pipes makes for a very bizarre environment in the flat/room. I can work with the whine, although it is quite loud, sleeping I do not even try, just start with ear-plugs. sensitive hearing and loudness. noise. how is it that I can trace, identify, and enjoy the well-flowing energies/works of others, yet cannot make such works myself? I have an instinct for Others whose energies flow less turbulently (more laminar flows, cogent, read-able, absorb-able?) than mine (I think!?), meeting them, speaking with them, enjoying their presences and their products. and engaging in energizing dialogues.

40th year comes on slow through the thin white curtains with blue Light skin and Lightning dreams. and the heating musk of body intertwined and motionless or so. the river running under two bridges and over one dam. definitely not frozen, and with a tannin color that invites a bitter root drink. horizontal clouds differentiated in cool and flat warm tones. above the Arctic Circle. and the day ends, blue as the beginning in a silent place on a lake, a sauna sweat, two or more fires. burning. white birch with the crackling oily skin flares dry and makes fast yellow flames. silence, with a cosmic movement. a bright red toadstool grows in the yard all night — I look at it once in the dim Light, out of the kitchen window, inside I stand naked and cool, drinking a glass of cold water.

the ankle only causes me problems when I try to torque it with any power in the same direction that it was sprained. Loki and I make a 40 minute hike up the hill and around back down yesterday and this tires it out. wavering thoughts on the suitability of the schedule I have coming up and how to deal with this. but plane tix are plane tix and they are not changeable at this point. Loki has to get home, I have to get to work. nothing else will do. the way events are linked in living. and accidents, and chance meetings that lead to dancing for hours and hours which leads to talking and walking and trying to keep each other warm which leads to ? I am here, I am not here. my body tells me I am here, I try to connect with the sun, the clouds (absorbing Light from voluptuous cumulus masses soft-filtered through sheets of gray-falling precipitation)

He who binds to himself a Joy, Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the Joy as it flies, Lives in Eternity’s sunrise. — William Blake

I have made a net, now what do I do with this admirable set of humans? is there anything at all theoretical to be done? or can it only be a praxis that ends in the grave? this thought crosses my mind. comparing the forms of existence of those around me.

hike with Mark and Loki. first we drive from Boulder up through Gold Hill and on to Wild Basin. I suddenly realize that since Wild Basin is actually within the boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park, there will be a ten dollar use fee which is just too much to deal with, so we turn around and head for Brainard Lake which ends up having a five dollar use fee. both these developments are new — at least within the last five years. things change. we do a leisurely circuit of Long Lake before having to race back for dinner with

EJ, Bridget, and Eliott. ice cream and a stroll on the pedestrian mall. Colorado has this possibility of massively splendid scenery within a short drive from urbanity. the big weakness is the absolute cultural vacuum. and too many Californians moving into the state. ah hmmm. and the University suffers from the following malaise:

Institutions of higher education have not taken advantage of the resources and energies circulating beyond the walls of the academy. As a result, cultural analysis is separated from the very condition of its own possibility. To overcome the isolation of the intellectual critic, it is necessary to enter the mainstream of culture by leaving the confines of print. — Taylor and Saarinen

is startling to me because the telematic event described in their book Imagologies takes place in 1992-3. it makes what I am attempting as educator/activist/artist seem dated and lacking an experimental edge (a feature of much of my creative work — it appears retro and staid somehow). of course, I stand by my thesis that the being of dialogue is a condition that is regenerated or reborn in each successive moment, a condition that gives the edge of immediacy and presence to all communicative attempts, but what about the actual results of what I am doing? With the knowing that success in telepresence is predicated on attention, concentration, and focus, events that I facilitate directly address these factors and push the envelope.

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

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

Kathleen sees a samurai-helmet-like aura exploding from me head while I do some yoga on the grass of her backyard next to the Delaware River, not so far from where Washington made his legendary crossing. she banishes or outlines it with a sage smudge-stick. I am aware, but feel bad later, when making a joke at dinner that this helmet is related to my desire to play Toshiro Mifune in a Kurosawa flick — the one I recall so vividly, The Hidden Fortress, I believe, where Mifune is galloping bareback, sword upraised with the two-handed hilt gripped directly and unwavering in front of his right shoulder. I am stressed about the Shaman situation. I am not able, in the time available, to unwind enough to engage the psychic energies that I have available, except. I am able to ponder that I have had a previous incarnation within the geographic confines of Scandinavia. a quick reduction tells me that, yes, indeed, I could have been a Viking. or a simple inhabitant with business to finish in the Northlands. takin’ care of business now. pacing pacing pacing that land, beginning to know it better in a distributive and global sense than the locals. strange (I say to myself). a word I use often to describe events of the external world. but it is a nice time, and Loki appreciates it all. he continues to theorize about the Lightning Woman, and the Rain Man, and the Cloud Woman from the huge bed in the bright white master suite with the balcony overlooking the river. the four of us (Anthony, Kathleen, Courtney, and I) throw him up and down in a blanket immediately before he and I get in the car to drive to Lawren’s place in Alexandria.

alien nation. night train really isn’t. leaving the flat at 1745 by taxi. leaving Tornio by bus at 1810. leaving Kemi at 2000, trudging in Light to the South, but noticeable dimming within the roaring grinding cabin, high whine of air movers, both the two bunks too slim for two, but two forced to be in one because of need. needs of fate, needs of whatever. I do not know, needs of time, beautiful in sleep, beautiful upon waking, stretching away, and the shyness that for me is an inscrutable hidden in language and culture difference and herself. her silence given to searching for words, and that thing I know well of Babylon — the excretory hubris to attain God after the language leaves. maybe this can never become anything other than what it is. and for that I am thankful, for it to be what it is in the moment of when it is enough. the word romantic surfaces, but this is only a poor shake of letters not touching on the actuality. romantic movements are gritty-eyed, skin-burnishing events. hallucinogenic Light flashing through the trees when the shades are opened in the morning, well, at the 0500 hour because sleep is not possible for me. last car in the train. yeah, the language difference, something I am too familiar with, and the limits of expression. can we substitute one form of expression purely for another? the example being the susseration of skin-to-skin, a touch-language (this has been thought of for years: and acted upon more than once), instead of this ancient way of going that would never be now — constructs of letters making sound, making sense and dissonance. the shaping and imprinting, wanting to remember the feeling (do we ever have memories of feeling?) hand moves back and forth, pressing the body-wall of Other, never knowing what it is to be. the conflict of sensory feeding and sensory survival and sensory overload and sensory subjugation and sensory purpose. goodbye is goodbye when the first meeting is only days in the past. saying goodbye is unspeakable. the way one looks at the Other. the eye as receptor (not transmitter like history gazing on itself) nor ear as receptor, only a transmitter of attention. The body and the voice as transmitter (touch, the receiver and transmitter.) Light emissions. (voices move) through the containing ether. shaping the words to trace an outline of being on the vacated space of that body once known or thought to be known or thought to be anticipated (memory of loss. and loss of memory.) anticipating that I would. or just anticipating what it was. shoulder, arm, wrist, finger. ring.

At lunch today, MB comes home and we go together down to some official state office here and finalize our divorce which has been simmering (well, hardly) in a separation for almost two years. The disjunction of the union was as quick and as easy as the official union way back in the summer 1992 with our friend Nick visiting from Colorado as the witness in the city courtroom. (the glum looks: I with 1st degree burns on both my legs from a crazy accident falling into super-heated mud in a thermal area, hiking on the first day Nick arrived, and MB at 7 months pregnant. not auspicious for a start.)

the marriage really only lasted a few years, these last two we have been legally separated. Loki is the most critical force operational between us, but whatever, it is remarkable the coolness both of us (don’t) show during the proceedings. We are cool people, I guess, after what MB characterizes as a bad marriage. Her second. My first. At any rate, I guess it frees us both up for the future, whatever that might bring. After that, Loki and I walk around town where I visit the GilFelag, an arts/culture organization who put a call out for exhibition proposal — I wanted to talk to them about doing an exhibition of laser prints later in the summer. We also paid a visit to Lara Stefansdóttir, a colleague that I met at the Icelandic Educational Network (ismennt) an Internet activist who is now consulting with the University of Akureyri.

The next morning. Slow. With some warmth. Sunday in Georgia. The party last night downstairs limited sleep. Morning. Chilly with the dampness of the seaside pine groves. The river. Winter. Late October. Bet it gets really cold here by February. The exhibition last night was by one Bernie Casey, a painter. Work titles ran like Strong as a Tree, Missing Thumb, and Land Stories . Stories that openly the Land can tell. History speaks with a partial tongue.

A mind is … A heart does … A hand can … Education is …

head up to Storm King sculpture park with Randy and Amy, great weather and a good break from the deep-lab printing regimen. necessary. else exhaustion sets in. or maybe it has already. did we play frisbee? we must have, it was a perfect place for it!

I had extensive second-degree burns on my ankles with painful edema in my legs after falling into a mud-fumarole area where the ground just collapsed under me a few days ago. I had to hike out seven km. to get back to the car — mostly walking in the cold river to staunch the pain. Got married during MB’s lunch break, Nick didn’t know he was going to be witness. No happy looks from the newlyweds. A portent?