To behold the dawn of the universe

Webb will always face Earth’s night side to keep its infrared detectors as frigid as possible. … At 1 million miles away, the Webb Space Telescope is more than four times as distant as the moon.—APNews, January 24 2022

And if the Further Heaven— 

Be Beautiful as they prepare 

For Those who worship Them— 

It is too difficult a Grace— 

To justify the Dream—

—Emily Dickinson

                    And the Earth keeps up her
dancing and she is neither perfect nor exactly in time.
She is one of us.

And she loves the dance for what it is. So does the Sun who calls the Earth beloved. And praises her with light.

—Joy Harjo

Photos Malheur County, SE Oregon, Douglas Beauchamp

NOTES

The OTHER Side: Of Signalings and Metaphors

—The telescope was launched from French Guiana on Christmas.

—Besides making stellar observations, Webb will scan the atmospheres of alien worlds for possible signs of life.

—The primary mirror has 18 hexagonal segments, each the size of a coffee table

APNews: New space telescope reaches final stop million miles out. Marcia Dunn, Jan 24 2022. https://apnews.com/article/nasa-james-webb-telescope-arrives-space-9ea15e4bddaead131d4fcb6b07c53529

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/

—Joy Harjo from her poem In Praise of Earth in How We Became Human (2002)

—Emily Dickinson’s poem:

I reckon—when I count it all— 

First—Poets—Then the Sun— 

Then Summer—Then the Heaven of God— 

And then—the List is done— 

But, looking back—the First so seems 

To Comprehend the Whole— 

The Others look a needless Show— 

So I write—Poets—All— 

Their Summer—lasts a Solid Year— 

They can afford a Sun 

The East—would deem extravagant— 

And if the Further Heaven— 

Be Beautiful as they prepare 

For Those who worship Them— 

It is too difficult a Grace— 

To justify the Dream—

what will they know

Through fractured terrain patterns of movement. 

Namings Dry River Crooked River Eons.

Basalting lava congealing yielding.

Marking red melding cracking stone.

Smoothing.

These days uncertain calculatings.

Drought.

Rains once waters again scour and heave. 

Shape gravity waves.

Seethe.

Find salt seas inland and ocean. 

Minerals remembering push through veins.

Red crystalline blood desiring.

Who will feel what will they know.

Photos: Dry River, Crook County, Oregon. Circa 21st c. CE

VEXICON 4: Desire Anyway

leave something

Remember

Desire is involved with the not yet and, at times, the not anymore. In many desire-based texts there is a ghostly, remnant quality to desire, its existence not contained to the body but still derived of the body. Desire is about longing, about a present that is enriched by both the past and the future. It is integral to our humanness.  — Eve Tuck

SKATE POR VIDA

DON'T MAKE ME 

& PRAYERS

!?

Axis Mundi

Through most of my life I would have interpreted the growth of the prison system and the diminution of the commitment to public education as evidence of how California had "changed." Only recently did I come to see them as the opposite, evidence of how California had "not changed," and to understand "change" itself as one of the culture's most enduring misunderstandings about itself.  — Joan Didion (1934-2021)

BE THE

and I promise

Out Of Order

RULES

ANYWAY

not allowed without the written

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose,

And nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free,

— Kris Kristofferson

SOLIDARITY

FOXES HAVE DENS

Love is composed

THought I MIght

Outline RED

STREET FEED

VEXICON drifts freely among the public Lexicon: signals from the edge of center, 2020-2021.  VEXICON 4: Eugene Oregon Jul-Dec 2021.  Previous VEXICONICS on this blog: Oct 9 2020, Jan 25 2021, Jul 2 2021. In ordinary revelation truth be told. 

NOTES

— In memory of Joan Didion (1934-2021). Above excerpt from Where I Was From (2003)  

— Eve Tuck, from Suspending Damage in Harvard Educational Review (2009) evetuck.com

— Kris Kristofferson.  According to the Rolling Stone, Kristofferson was inspired to write “Me And Bobby Mcgee” after seeing Federico Fellini’s 1954 film La Strada, Italian for "the road.”

And the time will come when you see we're all one

And life flows on within you and without you

— George Harrison

EDGES: Being Solstice

Edges::Becoming Solstice::White River SE Nevada

Consider Charles Foster’s wonderment:

The winter is the time of palpable edges: viable/doomed; black/white. Tree spikes stab the wind. In fact, everything in the natural world is about edges. … Yes, there is a whole, but a whole that's complete only because of the vibrant individuation; because of the edges. 

… We think that we're in a fast-changing world. Well, perhaps, but humans aren't changing in the way that the Upper Palaeolithic changed us. What we think of now as change is angst and dissolution. The changes on our watch are not the multiplication and refinement of nuance or the deepening of understanding. They are acts of vandalism: the spoliation of things, places and modes of being that are ontologically superior to us. 

...

Charles Foster.  Being A Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness.

2021. p69-70

Glyphland: A maze-like journey

“Rock inscriptions at Roosevelt, Washington, except for one maze-like inscription covering several square feet of rock surface, are nondescript and have apparently little value as an archeological key.” — Herbert Krieger, Ethnologist, 1927 Columbia River survey for the Smithsonian

Glyphland: The strange story of a century of speculation and promotion, and the unlikely journey of the Roosevelt, Washington, petroglyphs.

In sum… In the early 1920s an Oregon newspaper announced discovery of “Picture Writings” near Roosevelt, Washington, on the Columbia River. A popular 1921 volume, Oregon, provided drawings of petroglyphs from the site. In 1928-1929 The Oregon State Motor Association promoted it as destination for vacationers, via ferry from Arlington, Oregon.

Thus began “Glyphland” and nine decades speculation, promotion, displacement, and documentation. The John Day Dam project in the 1950s and 1960s sparked relocation of 27 of the riverside basalt boulders to a civic park near Roosevelt. After forty years and visits by thousands, neglect motivated a 2003 move under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers, in consultation with tribal and park representatives, to Horsethief State Park (now Columbia Hills), across from The Dalles, Oregon. 

In 2012 these 27 boulders, cleaned then moved again, joined other petroglyphs displaced by The Dalles Dam in the 1950s to become part of the Temani Pesh-wa Trail. Today this display, along with the nearby Tsagiglalal petroglyph, is a popular heritage attraction.

"maze-like" boulder situated at Horsethief State Park since 2012 -- its fourth move since the 1960s.

(Figures lower right also originally from Columbia River near Roosevelt.)

NOTE: For this paper and others:

https://independent.academia.edu/DouglasBeauchamp