To testify to simplicity
Not asking what this mark means
Look
The mark floats in the densities of stone
In the making without asking
Power humor presence prayer
Modern words stream
In an obedient search
Wait
The mark rises in immensities wind blown
Contrail jetting to Phoenix
In the sky below
Having fallen outside the realm of the familiar and the useful, these landscapes were overtaken by what Henri Bergson called the “powerless” past, different in nature from the “sensori-motor” present, which propels the body to action. This past, which is without immediate utility, emerges from consciousness and forms the matter of time, Bergsonian “duration”: prepared to return, but only capriciously and contingently, it looks for a fissure in the present.
— Maria Stavrinaki, in Transfixed by Prehistory: An Inquiry into Modern Art and Time 2022
Petroglyphs: A sampling of images on basalt rims in the high country of Lake County, Oregon. Photos by Douglas Beauchamp
CODA, A gloss
— Condensity: The state of being condensed.
— Simplicity: The state of being uncompounded.
— Immensity: The state of being immeasurable.
— Contrail: An artificial cloud made by the exhaust of jet aircraft or wingtip vortices that precipitate a stream of tiny ice crystals in moist, frigid upper air; condensation trail.
