Visions and Vignettes

Vision

California is on fire.

I wake up to the smell of wood smoke. The sun is an alien sun; not ours. It looks warmer than it feels. I imagine I'm on another planet. It's redder and oranger and more unfamiliar than an eclipse. I tell myself it's these clouds, but what if that wasn't the case?

The orange sun cannot burn through these clouds. No, these are no ordinary clouds. I hear it rumored, “pyrocumulous clouds” they call them. Speaking of their origin; fire clouds.

I shut my eyelids, freeing my mind's eye to float up into those clouds. With microscopic vision, I can examine the clouds. They are made of up bits and pieces—tiny motes of debris. Here is a little black speck. I drift closer to it, focusing on the speck, the rest becomes a blur. It's just black. I know they call it carbon. The basic building block of life, but here it is stripped bare, and life seems anything but a possibility.

I am omnipotent in my mind's eye.

I rewind time, but instead of my eyes returning to my body, they follow that black speck. A day returns to tomorrow, and I follow this speck through updraft and downdraft. I drift away to gain context. This speck, this one particle that will in a day become part of a cloud so great that it blots out the sun, this one speck is now living. It's a host of cells that form a small patch of bark on a sapling in a meadow.

There are loud pops all around, crackling. Fire is nigh. Then the sapling is engulfed. The sapling and this patch of bark are submerged in the heat, adjacent to the fire. Roiling, the flames are casual. They do not rush. They know they have gained dominion here. They will consume that which they so desire.

This sapling, its rich leaves and precious moisture, so carefully kept, so fastidiously gathered—it presents a small challenge to the flames. It is defiant in their march of destruction.

Lo, its green leaves do wither, and it loses its small branches, but it does resist. A tree not yet, but neither a small seed. There is power in the life of this small thing.

The fire is great, though, and it corrupts the life around it, infecting it with heat and reaching out with tentacles of flame, the visual manifestation of a ruthless destroyer. As the fire corrupts, it gains strength. It adds fuel—a cold word for things not yet burned—and the heat becomes greater, demanding more fuel and more to consume, lest the fire itself die.

This sapling, and that small patch of bark are summoned by the all consuming need of the fire. Finally, there is not enough life left in this young thing with ambitions of becoming a great tree. Though it may have lived for hundreds of years, as its younger brethren may do after this calamity, this not-yet-tree is not destined for longevity.

With a crackle the outer skin begins to shrivel and blacken! Pieces fall to the ground, and are lapped up by stray licks of fire. The heat from this burning life is infectious, and as it dies, it spreads fire to the kind perennial flower that kept it company these few years, and the friendly mushroom which sought shade in its meager leaves. These things too, are corrupted.

Finally, that small patch of bark shrivels, blackens and with a pop! it releases from that dying sapling, and floats into the air, burning. The chaff falls off, and once all but the naked carbon is burnt away, this speck begins to rise on the heat of its burning mother, drifting into a lonely nothingness.

There is a quiet purgatory here. Individuals floating their own ways. Some up, some down. It depends on the wind; does it wish to carry them? This speck it favors, and the speck is carried past those that are beginning to fall. Down, down, they float. They are heavier, or they have a greater density, and they are too much work for the lazy wind.

But not this speck. Barely anything, it begins to float, not in purgatory, but now in the amorphous river of specks and vapors that are beginning to coalesce into a great body of things. They cloud together, and begin a new journey, divorced of their pedestrian origins, they are transformed. This speck is amongst brethren once again, yet these brothers are not the same as those it once called its brethren.

Once full of vitality—life, literally—this speck would only have considered other living things its brethren. The leaves and the other patches of bark adhered to the mother. Those were its brethren. The perennial’s purple petals that sang spring songs—those too were its brethren. Now, to belong to this speck's kin, those things must be transformed as it was. Burned, desiccated, and adrift. A new kin, a new kind.

Far below this speck is another, but upon closer examination, that speck is me. Time has passed us both.

Tomorrow become yesterday.

Eyes closed, imagining the short life of this former patch of bark that now casts a mote of a shadow, blocking just a little bit of light from my eyes, which do presently return to me. I open my skin shutters, and the weak light of a wan sun warms my face windows.

Clear Vision

With feet aflame I commit to a journey that cannot be reversed

Stoic, upon high place, I look out into that desolation that soon will become me

Lo, it has crept to my feet, pulling me toward its abyss

These days are wavering

The ashen sky, grotesque all day

It hides the blue with smokey clouds the sun cannot burn away

This place burns

Throbbing, momentous, the energy to survive is steady and low

Like a long saw, the energy is steady and rhythmic, its teeth tear away

The resistance that is each day

Steady, strength in its flexibility, the long bow of the saw wavers, forward and back

It cuts through the hostility of each day

Energy against energy

Mine against thine,

I wade into it, let it surround me

I am overcome

Wash over me!

This unholy thing

I travel on

Salomé Jump

Mogollon Rim, Arizona, 2011

The Salomé Jug. If you live in Arizona, you might have heard of it. It denotes a section of the Salomé creek.

In the spring and late fall, it's a water park. A pink granite slot canyon, smoothed and carved as only time and nature can do, falling toward the man-made Roosevelt lake. The water rushing through isn't too cold to enjoy, and so as one descends the canyon, the walls growing high, they slide and plunge into pools, the canyon laughs with you, and you know that nature is happy sometimes, too.

I discovered this place alone.

What was meant to be a trip for two became a trip for one. An argument or a breakup? I don't remember. Does it matter?

The place is fabled, and I was drawn by its projected power. I felt the need to explore its curves, taste its waters and immerse myself.

I drove alone in the dark of night, slept under an immortal blanket of stars. In the morning, I ventured down the steep banks of the water shed to the canyon side. In the heat of an approaching Arizona summer I stuffed what could not be doused in dry bags, and I took the plunge into crisp cracking cold water.

I began to venture down into the narrow canyon, descending with the water.

It was a fantastic place! I was wading and sliding and jumping. And I was alone.

I was smiling and happy and exploring a new wonderland. And I was alone.

It was everything it was said to be, but because words are flat, this place, it was more grand and full than I had imagined.

Abruptly, I stood at the top of a precipice: a waterfall of some 20 feet, down a narrow shoot that opened into a pool below.

I brought ropes and a harness. I knew of the 20 foot jump to the pool below. Not too high, really, but I was an Ohio boy then. I guess I still am. It was something I'd never done before. I was afraid.

Yet, here I was, I thought. I had made it this far alone, and I wanted to jump, but I had brought the rope and harness in case I was too scared. I didn't want to be stuck if I wasn't able to jump.

But I wanted to jump!

But I couldn't jump! I kept looking down, and looking at the hard rocks on the side, below. I'd have to run and aim the jump to clear the obstacles. I was really scared. I couldn't work up the nerve. I wasn't sure if the water level was normal or if there were rocks below the surface.

I stood, looking, for several minutes. I didn't want to repel, but I was feeling the comfort of the idea start to take hold of me. “No!” I thought. “I want to jump,” it was just scary and new. I knew if I could just see someone else go first, it would fortify me and I could do it. I could just copy them.

Being a trailblazer in this sense was hard.

In the moment, I realized this fact: that as long as I had the option not to jump that I wouldn't, I made a decision. I threw the pack—with the ropes and my car keys and everything else I needed to get out of that canyon—into the water below.

The clock started ticking. The current of the waterfall was carrying the pack at a leisurely but steady pace, and in a couple of minutes it would round a bend and disappear.

As I watched the pack floating away, I had two new fortifications to help me jump.

1. I had just watched my pack make the fall, so I knew it was possible, and I knew what the trajectory should be.
2. If I didn't jump soon, I would lose that pack and I would be very inconvenienced and slightly stuck in that area until someone could tow my car or help me find the pack in the open lake (assuming it didn't sink)

So, with time ticking, scared as I ever had been, I jumped!

It was the first time in my life that I let out a yell from shear fear. Not the kind of yip you might make when your brother scares you as a kid, but the kind of yell you cry when you think you might die.

I had climbed before, and fallen on the rope. Scary sometimes, to be sure. But I'm a “suffer stoically” kind of guy, and was always proud I didn't scream on roller-coasters or when falling off a climb.

This time, the yell was extracted from me. I couldn't keep it in. It was high-pitched and anxious. What a feeling, to do something so outside of your comfort zone that you lose control of your own body!

Suspended in air alone, it seemed to me that my yell and my guts stayed stationary as my uncovered them, falling down around beneath them.

Then I hit the water. Not the rocks, not the bottom, just the water! I was OK!

I popped up—exhilarated—and swam after my pack, not too far away, but I had waited long enough that it wasn't close, either.

Then I swam over to the rocks, heaved the pack up, then myself. I sat for a while, contemplating the jump (which looked much shorter from below). I was proud of myself.

No one there to goad me, no one to tell me it was okay. I made decisions and they got me down. Certainly, I did know that people commonly made the jump, but not everyone. So I wasn't a true trailblazer, but I felt like I had done a common thing differently nonetheless.

It was a teachable moment: you have to figure out what will motivate you. Then do it. I figured it out. It was a do-or-die (or be really, really stuck) situation for me, but for others it might be having options. Whatever the motivator, it's important to know what you want. If I didn't know if I wanted to jump or not, what would I have done when faced with that final situation? Maybe contemplated a long time.

There's no right way to descend that waterfall. Rappelling, jumping, who cares? As long as it's what you want to do. Hitting the rocks is the only wrong way. The point for me was I wanted to challenge myself to do something. I wanted to unlock something within me.

With that in mind, today I stand on a new precipice, and I have thrown the pack before me. I want to embark on a new journey and it's one I've been scared to commit to. It means being alone again, and it means jumping into the unknown. But it's all worth it, if it unlocks a part of myself that I have been unable to access any other way.

Reflections

A creature of a kind normally capable of sight, but unable to see, we call “blind.” There is a distinction between sightless and blind.

A creature of a kind normally capable of hearing, but unable to hear, we call “deaf.”

These states can be transitory or permanent, but the perfective forms imply a certain permenance to the conditions.

What of a creature of a kind normally capable of feeling, but unable to feel? We call a temporary loss of feeling, “numb”, but I'm speaking of the more metaphoric use of the word feeling, the usage that connotes emotional feelings.

But is there a loss of feeling that is as permanent as someone born blind? Perhaps paralysis is the ultimate loss of feeling, but that is problematic because it also implies a loss of locomotion and agency.

What do we say of a person who is born without emotional feeling? Somewhere between Asperger's/Autism and sociopath.

A strange thing to wonder at, I know.

Emotions are synthesized feelings. They are correlated to input, but they are not a reflexive reaction. Input must be processed first before we get the output emotion. If we reprocess, we can even change the output. We can change the emotion with reflection. Emotions seem to be on their own level in this sense. Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, those things all seem to exist on a less alterable level.

If we had a bond amongst us all, a bond where we all felt what each other was feeling, wouldn't we all do our best to avoid pain—as we already do—but even the pain of others, since their pain would be ours too? It seems to me that such a mechanism exists.

Albeit in the prototype phase, I would call empathy and sympathy social feeling mechanisms, useful for promoting desirable behavior toward others.

I'm going to leave it there. We already have a sophisticated mechanism to promote positive behavior toward each other, but we have to see with it. We have to use it—look through that lens. When we don't, we're capable of great harm toward one another. I know. I've been on both sides of not using our capacity for sympathy and empathy. It's painful.

I'm gun shy now, afraid of people for their great capacity to do harm. Afraid of my own capacity to do great harm. The monster is in us all. Yet each of us can also be the greatest of healers. We humans, we humans. We have so much potential.

I Maintain

“There's no place to run and no gasoline.”

Stuck, this world sometimes feels like it's stuck, but I'm still moving.

Sometimes I float through this world, watching it all go mad.

I've found my peace again. Quiet and sure, together my peace and I, we walk through this place, holding hands.

Perception is reality, they say.

When the world shakes, and everything is a blur, I choose to believe that I remain the same—that the world shakes around me. No longer am I shaken. A Copernicum Shift.

Sometimes you can slip between the sheets of reality and surreality and come out on the other side not knowing the difference. It's like walking through a hall of mirrors, seeing versions of yourself in grotesque extremes, but in the end, your reflections return to you, and you exit as you entered; one single, whole man.

Reflecting. . .

Several things have affected my perspective, lately.

Mortality and death have been walking around me, whispering to me that life has an uncertain end.

It's alright, my peace is not so weak.

I maintain.

Running through Oregonion hills, I happen into a frontier cemetery, the lineage of families etched in stone. Moss and trees try to hide these souls from our world, but if you slow down as I did, you can commune among the voiceless names. Stories are told in dates and names. The adversity of frontier life evident for anyone to see, so long as they can sympathize with the dead.

Most men died in their fifties and sixties. Several men died younger. One was my age. He was middle aged by the standards of the era.

Time passes.

The news comes that my cousin-in-law's brother was struck on the side of the road. He is a year older than I. I knew him. He had a family. He was not an old man by contemporary standards. To use a qualifier, he “should” have had much more time on this earth. He was a good man.

My grandfather passed away last month. My father's father.

Families are ephemeral entities, floating through time, usually no more than three generations at a time. We try to outrun our mortality by lighting new fires, but death is behind us, poised to extinguish any fire before its cold wind.

Sometimes, a family will fall behind, and death will overcome it. They fall into history. Dates and names.

You only know where half-way is once you've finished your journey. There are absolutes like young and old, but the promise of a future is false—albeit necessary to acknowledge its possibility. The outer edges are concrete. I know I began my journey 28 years ago, and it won't go further than a humanly possible 120 years (although it's much more likely to be half of that). Everything in between is an unknown.

I have an uncanny ability to forecast the future, and an even more extraordinary ability to ignore my own prophecy when it flies in the face of my desires. I'm coming to terms with accepting things that I wish weren't true. It's a process. I've been losing my innocence. No longer an innocent, I cannot deny the realities I live in. My reality, your reality, our reality. There is a place where they all meet, and that line gets pushed one way or another depending on the will of those involved.

I have passed beyond my youth and youthful outlook. Ages are arbitrary, and the experiences associated with particular ages are approximate. Regardless of my vintage, I am no longer a “young man.” For some the turning of that page comes earlier in life, for others, it never arrives.

It's okay to acknowledge the possibility of a future, and to prepare for it, but to live for the future may be a costly error. With nothing guaranteed, I'm more inclined to seize my goals, those that are immediately obtainable.

This far in, I cannot say that the pain and disappointment I've experienced has been worth the highs. If I died tonight, I'd come out of it with a negative balance. Red ink.

It will take concerted and determined effort to reverse my fortunes. It will take time—time I am not guaranteed.

Yet, I will try. For now, I have decided to do what I can. That is all that I can do.

For some time, depending on my progress, I will still be at a net loss. Eventually, I may reach a tipping point, where I am back to positive. I was there a year ago. It had been a long road there. I lost ground, though, and I have twice as much ground to make up now.

Current Events

I am both proud and disappointed in myself for working 5 weeks straight. 35 days straight without a day off. I'm putting it all into the moment, trying not to think too hard. The distraction of work is welcome.

I started playing guitar. I learned chords ten years ago, but never learned a song. My mom mailed my guitar to me for Christmas (thanks, Mom!), and I picked it up last month. I haven't put it down since.

To be sure, in the future I will be sharing my progress as I become more proficient and capable of expressing myself with this instrument.

Time is passing. I came in spring, I watched the mountains thaw their doors and invite us humans to play at their feet and to dance on their heads. I watched the green grasses grow golden, verdant hills turn to rolling gold fields.

The skies ignite, up here in the town of Auburn. The clouds huddle around a dying sun in the evenings, seeking warmth, and they almost catch fire, but so often, the sun goes to sleep before the clouds have fully begun to burn.

The spectacle of the chilly clouds and the dying ember of the sun is something I will remember well from my time here.

The mountains are preparing to close their doors, though. To me at least. I don't want to play in their snow. I want to see new things, and I will move on when the time is right.

The future is possible, but it is not guaranteed to me. Yet, I look to the horizon.