And there was light.
To begin from the beginning, we have to look to the start, in order to be able to see the origin of the beginning. And along the process we find that we are all bound by tight ropes to this ground and stone we call earth. And so then we must learn to compromise, and along the lines of reason weave our convictions into the fabric of time with careful strokes. Keeping the light of our mental horizon at bay, and not at some high state of inertia , overlooking reality. So then we can realize ourselves in the dreams and reality we must deal with, as the years bring on evolution of environments and people we forget in the wake of time. Happiness is the truth of each individual at times of fulfillment, and as we accept the honesty of our world, our body, and mind. So death too can take its toll and swallow up into their memories of light and shade in days when love grew at tables of memories. To sort the world in the mind is not the easy game we tend to play in books or at diaries of youth but in the heart of reason and honesty.
Some great passion dwells inside the heart of an artist, to find the honest truth in the human being. Not like the trivial subjects who display masks for themselves and parade in words that fit their time, and wear the costumes of some group it thinks to belong to. Passion is death. Passion is love. Passion is sacrifice and expression. Passion is a colorful smell filling every cavity full of nothing with its smoke.
And so here is where it begins :
I heard my teacher say, " write your name down on this piece of paper . "
So then I was selected. By him I got here, and I thank his faith in a not so brilliant kid.
I did what I had to, and took my space to be brief and exacting.
Acceptance and briefing.
The Oddesy began with a plane, and some words on paper to my friend expressing my apprehension with the situation I had accepted to be put under with seven other strangers from other towns in the country. And the I landed with a jerk of the plane and a long walk to the gate of the next plane where I met the first partner I would have, Nicole. Then Rumman. And as we sat in the plane to our strange destination . 3 hours.
Touchdown to a desert of dry heat and Indian natives in houses of earth and earth. To meet the rest of my partners to this mission of blind expectations and a mentor who I had only read in the briefing. To mountains I had only looked inside me. To see skies and green only here at my home of two weeks of excursion from home.
Here gathered, Nicole, Rumman, Tim, Jim, Ed, Cathy, Lauren, and I. Like rocks fallen from a volcanic eruption unto the surface of New Mexico. We ate together with Donna and Galen's wife at a restaurant in old Albuquerque. And then on a ride to our final destination in Los Alamos, a few thousand feet off the level of the sea. A city made of bombs and physics, off the Manhattan Project during world war two, it was a secret site were the first atomic bomb was developed. Gathering famous scientist from the world over.
A week after having met with all the other students, I feel like I belong here still at times I wish my mind were not so much the way it is. I suppose this only helps to keep harmony to the whole equation, of the situation. I miss home less and walk around alone more often, or to say I feel less restrained now.
We have explored lot of things in this time, including observations at Milagro, and another site which we explored less because the seeing was so bad. The Milagro site was great, we could see the whole night sky well. we got to observe star trails of the milky way and using the Mead telescope we took some pictures of binary stars.
Conversations was the best that night we talked about college and choices, I mostly listened to the talk though it did not apply to me in some areas, I still listened with closure to maintain myself awake. Among our self talk seems to slide back to movies and school and teacher and ultimately our position in the class. I don't comment in this last one, it sound like I would be boasting about some of the positions I have in the classes I hold.
Obligations are little and fun, we have gone hiking twice and I loved it immensely. Getting to know the region with your feet is a great way to feel like part of the land on which you walk. We looked at some petroglyphs yesterday afternoon, and the walk went on for a long while. The night before we went to Santa Fe, to see A Winters Tale, which was great for the small town, Galen Gisler our mentor / supervisor / coordinator / baby-sitter, played several instruments in the small wooden music box for the play.
Cassiopeia, is a W with a crooked leg in the sky, I can now tell where it is at times not always thought, I suppose I like this one the best because of the song and story behind the name. The Oddesy is a great story maybe too long at times, But is is unbelievable the length of time that she waited for her husband to come back and held her position. She could have remarried and given the land that belonged to her husband to one of the men promising service.
Destination
Walk?
Destination?
In the ink of fortune I feel left.
Pixels to pictures to frames of light, then vanish?
Forget the remembered in the wake of a dream.
Blindly suggest time does not break, and gives none to those who abide by it.
Tread the sky with an eye and a wondering hand to feel the forgotten.
Then, again walk.
Arms stretched, and hands stretched, and eyes stretched to the infinite order?
Chaos!
Order, of order, of order, of order then deconstruct.
Assemble and bind the assembled, them order the ordered then?
Deconstruct.
Open the eyes.
Reality stretched to the eyes of the seeing blind.
Structure the life and the death and the living order of a life, then.
Deconstruct.
Brick over brick over brick, and so it came crashing down.
Celestial beauty in its pure disorder.
Something out of nothingness shows, the blind see the darkness.
And from the darkness, eyes lift the skin and lust for light.
He, the light is precious to the eyes, light from light and light for eyes.
As gold, to those who seek and do not find the yellow metal.
And so we find the broken, the shut, the open and the crushed.
All too clear to the eyes of Chaos.
All is decomposing.
All is not at pause.
All is Deconstruct.
today the 29 of July
we are sitting here in canyon school looking for something to do with our limbs. I have tried in vain to put this page on the web but it doesn't want to work. Last night we had some fun, over at Milagro. We didn't get anything done the sky was all dark like a cape had been spread over the stars. There we only 10 minutes of stars they said, I left early we had to get some laundry done.
July 31 97
Well it seems like we got rained out of going to Pajarito peak today too, we are running out of dates to go there and we are praying that tomorrow will clear up for the night at least. Yesterday we went to see the VLA. very large array. It consists of a bunch of radio antennas hooked up to one another in line. We got a tour of the inside of the actual building and were all that data is processed, and were it is all stored. This sited was where they filmed the movie Contact.
Well on our way back we stopped I don't how many times to look at the double rainbow in the sky and then well ect.. We ate at a really great restaurant in the Val Verde Hotel. In the car on our way back we got to singing and well we sang our way to Los Alamos. It was so nice I felt so at ease, even Galen was singing with us.
today the 2nd of august 97
"The end is near the bells I hear the people all exulting." Walt Whitman.
And them there was darkness. With the night the value of the light was appreciated and became again a memory in the shelf. A page in the book that we write as we tread the surface of the earth with our shoes.
Like the curtain to a show, that lasted as long as the life of a flower, it bloomed and then it wilted as the sun took its toll on the complexion of its petals. And left alone to the dry, the bare benediction of time, and appreciation.
I think we all have learned some great things along the way, personally I wasn't able to relate a lot of times but I tried to keep focus. I enjoyed immensely the talks and the lectures that turned to discussions. I have been able to touch the science I might have never have gotten a chance to touch, the reason and complexity/simplicity I have seen has given me valuable points of views. Reason follows simplicity, follows logic for steps we must take, and check for its integrity, nothing too quick, nothing too slow.
In applying all this to me, or the discipline I plan to follow, seems more than clear. Patience for disappointment, ingenuity for structure, simplicity for plan, clarity for understanding. In the words of Louis Sullivan " form follows function", Mies Van Der Rhoe " less is more." all seems to wind up to the same position, and in application this puzzle solves all sketches to clear picture.
Meeting the people too has given me a chance to learn from people my own age, from minds from my own generation. To know that there are others with the same knowledge and interest made me feel like I was whole and a part of the larger picture, of which we often forget. I shall not let this experience collect dust. This chapter is part of this year of discovery for me. The people, vivid pictures of persons with whom I lived and shared words with, shared eyes with, shared air with.
This is merely the end to what was put to roll in this last two weeks, it will only gain momentum and like a torrent of life, gather others with it and grow. I don't know how to conclude this for it doesn't seem like the end to some thing but the tip of very large animal. So here I leave it open to the wind, to the air that ran through me, to the light that has shone on me, to the hands and limbs that have shared my burden.
Switch on.
The skin twitches in rage jealously.
Scraping the bottom, he turns.
With eyes like devils.
Flames flicker in the cambers of him.
Waltzing in an endless charade of heat.
He pours.
And in heaps of tears the devil crystallizes.
Blue yields.
Making way.
And the maiden darkness enters.
Grace in its uttermost affinity.
At a trot like walk she makes her way.
The bride in black.
Loveless opposition.
And as she knelt above the altar stone.
Her figure petrified like rock.
A state of reality?
A sculpture from human flesh?
Her face came undone in pieces of shattered marble.
Then she came undone under the altar stone.