desert aesthetic

simplicity,
just land and sky, sun and rock, night and day, winter and summer, pairs of nuance and dimension finding richness and depth in just a few elements instead of being overstimulated by too many details

but of course "simplicity" is a gross simpli-fication of landscape and imagination, for you can spend hours days lives crawling on your hands and knees looking for dinosaur teeth or sagebrush wings or coyote hair, there's such detail even there, in the sparsest place imaginable

even in a small white box, so many shades of white

Life as a series of parentheses

If I lived in a movie, the fluctuations in temperature, the changes in light would just be background effects meant to emphasize psychological turmoil. The waxing crescent moon in the sky, the flocks of crows in the fields, the rows and rows and stacks of books on sensation, perception, cognition, space, place, time, home, wilderness, pure science to pure fiction it's all too much.

The idea of too much is both beautiful and damning.

A few days ago, during a discussion of environmental ethics, someone happened to mention clear-cutting a forest as an example and I immediately recoiled in physical pain. Then during a discussion of fences and wilderness areas, I suddenly found myself standing there in the Painted Desert juniper in the wind and sun on my face and clay in my pores, I was actually there. Like vertigo, but real. My mind was so powerful that it defied all rules of time and space to transport my body. Then today, I was incapacitated by the words "laparoscopy" and "color," curled up in a tense little ball, yet in so doing found myself thinking detachedly "hmm, interesting that a mere phrase entered my brain, was computed and interpreted along some sort of neural pathway, associated with all sorts of abstract concepts, transformed into electrical impulses that involuntarily forced muscles in my abdomen and toes to contract." Then, of course, I thought, "hmm, interesting that my mind now recognizes that my abdomen and toes are tense, and finds that something to consciously ponder." Add to that the layer in which I'm now engaging -- pulling all of these thoughts out of my mind, stuffing them back into words and typing them out for some virtual audience.

I had to stand on my head (recognizing, of course, the sheer absurdity of that) to make myself stop thinking. Headstands or fresh air, distracted by clouds and cookies, there's too much to think about and the more that I want and try to learn, the less that my brain can function. Little sparks starting nuclear reactions, can someone think themselves into meltdown?

It's a poor excuse for an escape, but a little park nearby at least gives me the chance to stretch my legs, get out of the confines of this office and this city and breathe a bit, ruminate on footprints and turkey clucks. Last week it was too cold to carry a sketchbook (won't even begin to touch that subject, memorializing experience)(hmm "memory-a-lize," "re-member," as in re-body...)(see the problem?), so I tried a tape-recorder for the first time.

"Cold. Cold cold cold." was all I said, apparently, "Fingers freezing, breath burning," muffled through three layers of scarf, "cold but oh I needed to come, just had to come." Had to, needed to, voice breaking.

Why?

Tempting frostbite, internal monologue pouring out into the harsh reality of winter silence, but simply had to, needed to.

Oh, it's beautiful, fascinating, too much, I simply can't let thoughts feelings flow by without trying to grab and overanalyze them all, how do you turn the brain off? Especially when it's connected to the body? Which is physically philosophically part of the world?

Boots laced up, don't know if where how to go

"Everyone has "[an] ideal place, [a] right place, ... one true home" promises Edward Abbey.
"Find your place on the planet, dig in" says Gary Snyder.
"If we are not home, if we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put ... we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation" asserts Terry Tempest Williams.
"Are space and place the environmental equivalents of the human need for adventure and safety, openness and definition?" asks Yi-Fu Tuan.

I don't know my place, don't have a true home, can't dig in, crave adventure and openness more than safety and definition. Buffalo, New Hampshire, Arizona, Morocco, Russia, California, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, all home, all not.
I'm part snow, part water, part sunshine, part sandstone, part juniper, part coyote, part meadowlark. I'm part river, part forest, part desert, part grassland.

What if we're every place, and thus no place?
What if we need to move every few months, before who we are can catch up with where we are?
Barry Lopez would say "you must stay. This is the pain of it all. You can't keep leaving...What makes you want to leave now is what is trying to kill you."
I don't know what making me want to leave now, don't know how to keep it from killing me, so I'm sorry, I can't tell you whether it's better to sit still, to dig in, to find depth in the here and now or forever strive for answers in some there and then.
Please, I'm just lists of quotations, albums of photographs, a mind full of memories, a soul full of questions, an accumulation of rocks and leaves and driftwood.

Lessons for the holidays

1. It does not matter whether or not spiders are good luck. When company is coming over, everything must be vacuumed.

2. If you go skiing, you are not allowed to put your wet snowy boots next to the fireplace to dry out until after people leave, so they do not think we live like slobs. (Albeit slobs with warm, dry feet.)

3. Who would be so silly as to gather the pine boughs with the long needles when only the obviously short ones make appropriate decorations?

4. Thou must not encourage the cat to play with ornaments.

5. Only festive cut-out cookies this time of year. Dinosaurs are unacceptable (not just because the Stegosaurus's tail always breaks off when you try to frost it.) No, you cannot just squint and say the Diplodocus looks like a reindeer with really short legs and a long neck and tail. Wreaths and trees and stars only. (Maybe the occasional airplane, for Dad, so long as it's red and green.)

6. Never ever admit to your mother that you're happy to be home, that you too find a sort of joy in fussing over the little absurdities that make the season special. Your job is to rearrange the "N-O-E-L" blocks and steal camels from the Nativity scene.

Landscape in shades of white and brown

White, dark white outside with the faintest shadows of tree trunks fading off into the distance. Although the snow is coming down sideways, pine boughs whipping in the wind, there's an eerie muffled silence -- no cars, no planes, just the clackety clack of this keyboard and the insistent whispers of words in my head.

As Dad said, "a nice day to just sit by the fire and watch the snow fall outside."

Part of me agrees -- the part that took the dog for a walk this morning just so I could come back inside and take off my boots and wipe off my foggy glasses and heat up a cup of hot cocoa and nestle in -- the part that wants to say that winter is so delightful because the cold reminds you to be happy for warmth. Then part of me argues -- the part of me that says ahh, but it's only so pleasant because you know you have enough wood, enough chocolate, enough time to come in out of the storm, to be comfortable. My fingers are cold, out here in this room away from the stove, sitting in this midday darkness, where's the sun? I've been away from the warmth for too long and will tire of the season before it begins.

Dad just came in from snowblowing the driveway, has brushed the blizzard from his coat, is poking at the fire, unloading logs he'd spent so much time piling up. The work that went into those, even with all sorts of tools -- dragging the fallen trees from the woods to the yard, cutting them into manageable sections, then splitting them one by one, wheelbarrowing them over to the pile then neatly stacking them in an orderly cross-cross-layer patterns, the rhythm, the monotony, the backache, the tendon strain, just so we can toss them in and watch them burn. While he was doing all of that work, was he thinking of a day like this, knowing that he would be able to enjoy a day of sitting by the fire and watching the snow fall outside? I didn't do anything to earn this warmth, to earn the hot cocoa and the puppy and this view of white white white wind. Brown eyes, cold.

Science = sparks of creativity

It's that cold, dry time of year when everything just vibrates with static electricity -- sweaters and socks and bzzt I remember getting shocked every time I touched the climbing wall. Last night, watching my blanket sparkle with little blue bursts, I knew that it was just atoms neutralizating their electronic charges, not fairies dancing or elves winking or even lost lightning bugs. But I also knew that the phenomenon can occur on a much larger scale -- in effect, I was creating mini lightning bolts. That made me feel like Zeus in Fantasia, snuggling into a thunderstorm.

"Knowledge" doesn't dispel magic.

Little things should make you happy, no?

Smoothed rocks and driftwood and rich autumn leaves. Puppies and warm socks and piles of wood dry under the blue tarp. The smell of pine trees. Seeing the sun rise, seeing the sun set. Soft rain and softer snow. Chocolate chip pancakes, a warm cup of cocoa, a mug that fits in your hands. A bottle of red wine and bread baking in the oven. A fresh box of crayons, a new book, a letter from a friend, a phone call.

What do you do if these things don't make you happy, if you surround yourself with photographs and quotations and sensations and still feel empty? If you can never feel happy with what you have, where you are, can never be content with contentedness but crave require adventure, are doomed to forever seek something elsewhere? Must keep moving, every few months, pile all of your plants into your car and try out all of those places you've never been, maybe happiness will be there?

They say that happiness must glow from within, that your environment, your possessions, even your friends and family can never illuminate your core. Surrounding yourself with little delights -- nope. Striving ever onward, if not upward -- nope. Asking questions, delighting in thoughts and words -- nope. Reveling in tastes, smells, sights, sounds -- nope. Simply turning inward, thinking like a rock in a stream, letting life flow around you as it will, sometimes cold and wet, sometimes dappled with sunshine, what kind of rock would I be? I wouldn't be one of those giant granite boulders, just a happy little pebble, smooth and grey, swirled with ribbons of color from eons past, sitting a pool of water, watching the fishes and skies dance above, forever wondering what it would feel like to be alive.

(I'm sorry, all of you rocks and branches and leaves, that you're sitting on my desk, removed from your place at the bottom of the stream or on the lakeshore or in the forest's carpet in a futile attempt to make meaning tangible.)