Figures born of line
familiar in shared simplicity
Of longings lost intent
Striving stilling falling.
Poised.
Arriving as we do on an edge we will not see.
Memory dissolves where does time go?
Journey we may whisper.
31 August 2022
16 August 2022
Contingencies of Stone
Peoples moving through country
placing stones in angular embrace
constellating vague terrain
mineral clouds congeal silence
molten oxides spark red patina
flaming brown starkly russet
each stone accidentally
atomic star-light dusted
lichen brushed… hushed…
shaped shadows drifting
ghosts eluding gravity
… no more messages
A Matter of Experience
These placed stones, near Dry River, the terrain of the central Oregon lavalands, are among uncountable thousands encountered over many years of wandering around sagelands — SE Oregon, Central Oregon, NE California, NW Nevada. Placed stones as I use the term is one species in the complex descriptive genus referred to as rock features, for example: rock cairns, rock piles, stone circles, ring sites, ambush drive walls, kill or traps sites, “vision quest” structures, “prayer seats,” “medicine wheels,” cache pits, rock art sites. Yet, nothing is as it appears…
Consider: World Observation
“In the first place, an observer observing herself in the act of the world observation will quickly realize that the results of her observation (her respective experiences) will depend on the different points of view accessible to her, and as there are always exists a potential infinity of such points of view, it follows that there will also be a potential infinity of representations (experiences) for each object of reference."
— Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, from Three Notes on Contingency Today (2022)
28 July 2022
Condensities
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
A solitary mark on an extended rim, playa-edge, west-facing; a playa where once i witnessing hundreds of grazing pronghorn while parent falcons shrieked me away from nested fledglings high above.
High above a deep stream-cut canyon, sunrise-facing
Manganesed basalt, fire within... congealing
One of two similar glyph-motifs, each side of a rough arch protecting a rock shelter above a wide creek-bed facing east and a red canyon wall
Further, consider ….
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
Now stand with the image: capricious and contingent
fissure the present
opening the place of no thing
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.
11 July 2022
Gliding...
Standing on this rim
watching hawks below in the canyon
gliding.
Hawks watching stone cliffs for movement.
What moves is the earth.
No rim.
No standing.
Only the gliding,
the gliding…
30 June 2022
What Does Lizard Know? 3
Lizard knows patience.
Desire.
Lizard knows they are not lizards.
Lizard-becoming knows stone.
Crackings.
Darkness bright; stillness glimpsed.
Cracklings.
Lizard sees you seeing.
iPhone photos (above)
Adapted from Woodward (1982) who claims “emergent lizard”
Adapted from Keyser and Poetschat (2004) who claim “spirit helper”
Not-lizard guesses a percent of reptile-extinction embodied in reciprocal recognition
You see Lizard seeing You
Not saying what cannot be said
Lizard not quaintly “emergent”
Lizard ain't no-body's “spirit helper”
Lizard-becoming as close as Dare.
iPhone photo (above) edited in DStretch, modified in MacOS Photos
Lizard sees you seeing.
Sees the attention economy.
The roll-on Columbia River.
The pulsing surge of server farms.
Dairy farms. Wind farms.
Lizard stopped counting eons.
Glacial floodings energy channeled.
Concreted dammings power corridored.
BPA budget borrowings corrupted.
Salmon lusting, waning, wallowing.…
Lizard knows The Swallowing.
Columbia River as Lake behind The Dalles Dam
In the distance The Dalles and Mt Hood
Lizard considers Critical Theory.
Seriously considers:
Philosophers, psychologists, and theorists of social interaction have long understood that recognition is crucial to Lizard flourishing. The idea that we can only be fully lizard if we are recognized by others is a central theme of the tradition of political thought, in which the political sphere is conceived not as an empty stage for individual pursuits but as a common realm in which we first appear to one another and find our completion as earth beings.
Google Data Center at The Dalles, courtesy Google
Photos by Douglas Beauchamp except as noted, click to enlarge.
NOTES
— Recognition paragraph above borrowed, with three alterations, from: “In Search of Recognition,” a review by Peter E. Gordon of Recognition: A Chapter in the History of European Ideas by Axel Honneth, in the New York Review of Books, June 23, 2022.
— Previous What Does Lizard Know? posts:
March 23 2022:
https://rockartoregon.blogspot.com/2022/03/what-does-lizard-know.html
May 1 2022:
https://rockartoregon.blogspot.com/2022/05/what-does-lizard-know-ii.html
Lizard ran out on a rock and looked up, listening
no doubt to the sound of the spheres.
— DH Lawrence
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)