Big Island Hawaii

As Mauna Loa opens rifts and flows molten lava, and with a bow to Pele, petroglyphs from the Ka'u district, near South Point, Big Island

Ancient figures near grinding slick

 Papamū, a stone board for the game kōnane; located in shelter protected by a bouldered wall

Above, petroglyph figure facing the sea; detail below, note small head and waving? hands

Appearance as power figure.

Above, two figures looking to the sea; detail below.

This style more recent than the rectilinear-style figures; style may determine a general chronology.

NOTES
— Ka’u, Big Island Hawaii, 2009, photos and notes, Douglas Beauchamp
— Recommended:  Spirit of Place: Petroglyphs of Hawai'i (1999) by Georgia Lee and Edward Stasack
 

Addendum:  Configuration of Stone
Configuration a word. Description founded on a quest for understanding. As all words.
Stone an image of stone, an appearance of fundament beyond language.
Configuration as word seeks to grasp appearance beyond the boundaries of duration.
 

Consider figures in place. Consider a stone game board played with white shells smoothed by the sea.
 

Consider variations on “Configuration” per Wiktionary:
— Form, as depending on the relative disposition of the parts of a thing's shape; figure; form factor.
— Relative position or aspect of the planets; the face of the horoscope, according to the relative positions of the planets at any time.
— The way things are arranged or put together in order to achieve a result.
— The arrangement of electrons in an atom, molecule, or other physical structure like a crystal.
— A finite set of points and lines (and sometimes planes), generally with equal numbers of points per line and equal numbers of lines per point.

Metamorphosis

The Past Parts Per Million

Soaring we imagine

Seeing far we think possible

The slightest movement

Sweeping wings precise

The scheme of leaves

Of fur

Of feather

Later the beak

The bones

The earth of air

We imagine

Soaring

The Now Parts Per Million

The Future Parts Per Million

The Ghostling Parts Per Million

The Rebirth of The Unknowable

Divided by The 8 billion

Becoming

The Vanishingly Small Parts Per 

The Ten Thousand Things

NOTE

On November 14 2022 the human population of This One Earth arrived at 8 billion; since January 2022, a net increase of 60 million (Births minus Deaths).

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Dome

Looking in

Seeing with figurations enfolding place, time. 

How boundary dissolves between seer, seen.

Was there once such a boundary?

Such wondering will get us no where.

Stone dome, base of basalt rim. Basin-and-Range country, near what-is-now the boundary - as imagined - between Oregon and Nevada.

(click photos to enlarge)

Indian Land

Lizard ex/claims Indian Land. 

A trace as tracing. 

Red Lizard becoming sign on sign. 

Bound up in space becoming place. 

Time hovers as ghost immemorial.

As longing, as stones and bones.  

Obverse of the sign:  Geology Oregon:Abert Rim.

Sign faces US Highway 395, looking west over Abert Lake

In 2011, sign on US Highway 395.

Two ways of imagining, of mattering...

Spirit guardians lean into Future, 

grounding Abert Rim, one of the highest fault scarps

in US and the longest exposed fault scarp

in North America.

Grinding slicks on basalt boulder overlook the ancient lake,

a salty terminal basin, remnant of Pleistocene Lake Chewaucan.

Translucent point, photoed and replaced

2012, a year later, chalked outline

and naming Indian Land erased.

Lizard abides...

... by 2015, sign disappeared,

Geology dismissed, Lizard displaced. 

Notes

— In recognition of Indigenous Peoples' Day

— Prints of the Indian Land and Oregon Geology photographs purchased from this writer by the University of  Oregon Law Library in 2017.  Two of eight purchased for permanent display in the Library’s main reading room at the Law School; the other six are photos of petroglyphs, Oregon Northern Great Basin aka Indian Land.

— The above Indian Land/Geology sign photos from 2011 appeared prior to the now popular Land Back movement which emerged in 2018. 

Land Back

All beings abide

What Does Lizard Know? 4

On the scales of your life, give as much to forgetting as to remembering. Watch for their point of equilibrium. 

 — Juan Ramón Jiménez

Lizard knows evennight; the glimpsed light, the unblinking dark.

Equinox. The crevice, crack, disappearing, mirroring an appearing; equilibrium?

Twinning between worlds, Lizard/s consider/s mythtime/s. Know they weren’t heroes, won’t be.  

Lizard eyes forgetting of stone, gazes, remembering bone.

No heroes, only the here, and the gone.

Lizard dreams the before, and after

Click to enlarge photos