And when he had put his hand
on mine with a cheerful look, wherefrom I took courage,
he brought me within to the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding through the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible utterances, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and faint, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls always in that air forever dark, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.
There was only one catch
and that was Catch-22,
which specified that
a concern for one's safety
in the face of dangers
that were real and immediate
was the process of
a rational mind.
Orr was crazy
and could be grounded.
All he had to do was ask;
and as soon as he did,
he would no longer be crazy
and would have to fly
more missions.
Orr would be crazy
to fly more missions
and sane if he didn't,
but if he was sane
he had to fly them.
If he flew them he was crazy
and didn't have to;
but if he didn't want to
he was sane and had to.
Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. That's some catch, that Catch-22, he observed. It's the best there is, Doc Daneeka agreed.
--Joseph Heller Catch-22
PANORAMA FROM LIPAN POINT
ILLUSTRATION BY KENNETH PATCHEN
SPENCER TERRACE FROM NEAR GARNET CANYON
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip.
After a good meal and two bottles of red wine, they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later Holmes woke up, nudged his faithful friend and said, Watson, I want you to look up at the sky and tell me what you see.
Watson said, I see millions and millions of stars.
Sherlock then asked, And what does that tell you?
After a minute or so of pondering Watson said, Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically,
I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Metereologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day today.
What does it tell you?
Holmes was silent for about 30 seconds and said: Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!
I worried a lot.
Will the garden grow,
will the rivers
flow in the right direction,
will the earth turn
as it was taught,
and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong,
will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing,
even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading
or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning, and sang.
--Mary Oliver I Worried
Houston, Texas: 1988
if i had a buckskin stallion
i'd tame him down and ride away
if i had a golden galleon
i'd sail into the light of day
Push up some mountains.
Cut them down.
Drown the land under the sea.
Push up some more mountains.
Cut them down.
Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. Unconformity is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one billion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time, John McPhee once observed, it may only be able to measure it.
--Keith Meldahl Rough-Hewn Land
Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the spirit of the Mountain was thinking; and looked up and saw jackpines in the moon, and saw ghosts of old miners, and wondered about it. In the whole eastern dark wall of the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great western slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs, and dropped, and led you to the eastern Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. And beyond, beyond, over the Sierras the other side of Carson sink was bejeweled bay-encircled night like old Frisco of my dreams. We were situated on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night, eastward over the plains where somewhere a man with white hair was probably walking toward us with the Word and would arrive any minute and make us silent.
--Jack Kerouac On the Road : the Original Scroll
My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories.
I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land.
But most of all, I remember the road warrior, the man we called Max.
To understand who he was we have to go back to the other time,
when the world was powered by the black fuel and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel — gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. Cities exploded — a whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men.
On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice, and in this maelstrom of decay ordinary men were battered and smashed — men like Max, the warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything and became a shell of a man, a burnt-out desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.
--The Road Warrior opening narration
Jackson Browne: For Everyman
This you know: the years travel fast, and time after time I done the tell. But this ain't onebody's tell. It's the tell of us all, and you've gotta listen and to 'member, 'cause what you hears today you gotta tell the newborn tomorrow. I's lookin' behind us now into history back. I sees those of us who got the luck and started the haul for home, and I 'members how it led us here and how we was heartful 'cause we seen what there once was. One look and we knewed we'd got it straight. Those what had gone before had the knowin' and the doin' of things beyond our reckonin' — even beyond our dreamin'. Time counts and keeps countin', and we knows now: finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride, but that's our trek. We gotta travel it, and there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna lead. Still in all, every night we does the tell so that we 'member who we was and where we came from. But most of all we 'members the man who finded us, him that came a-salvage. And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there'll come a night when they sees the distant light and they'll be comin' home.
--Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
What can I tell them?
Sealed in their metallic shells like mollusk on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can’t see the desert if you can’t smell it. Dusty? Of course it’s dusty – this is Utah! But it’s good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that piece of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk – yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it’ll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over the rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills – yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk –
walk – WALK upon our sweet and blessed land!
--Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
VISHNU TEMPLE WITH PILGRIMS
MENCIUS AND CONFUCIUS TEMPLES WITH NOMADS
ELVIS SIGHTING WITH CHEOPS PYRAMID AND ISIS TEMPLE
OUTSIDE HANCE CANYON
Bruce Springsteen: This Land is Your Land...9/30/85
A storm was coming, that was why it was dark. The wind was blowing the fronds of the palm trees off. They were maples. I looked out the window across the big lawn. The house was huge, full of children and old people. The lion was loose. Either by the wind, or by malevolent human energy, which is the same thing, the cage had come open.
Suppose a child walked outside!
A child walked outside.
I knew that
I must protect him
from the lion.
I threw myself
on top of the child.
The lion roared over me.
In the branches
and the bushes
there was suddenly
a loud crackling.
The lion cringed.
I looked up
and saw that
the elephant was loose!
The elephant was taller than the redwoods. He was hairy like a mammoth. His tusks trailed vines. Parrots screeched around his head. His eyes rolled crazily. He trumpeted. The ice-cap was breaking up!
The lion backed off, whining. The boy ran for the house. I covered his retreat, locked all the doors and pulled the bars across them. An old lady tried to open a door to get a better look. I spoke sharply to her, she sat down grumbling and pulled a blanket over her knees.
Out of the window
I saw zebras
and rattlesnakes
and wildebeests
and cougars
and woodchucks
on the lawns
and in the tennis courts.
I worried how,
after the storm,
we would put the animals
back in their cages,
and get to the mainland.
FAINT RAINBOW OUTSIDE HANCE CANYON
HAUNTED CANYON COTTONWOODS
TAMARISK NEAR BOUCHER RAPID
CLEAR CREEK REFLECTION
PHANTOM CREEK WITH MONKEY FLOWERS
Frank Sinatra: The September of My Years
The secret of Zen masters
is discovering
the path of return
to such moments,
and knowing how
to pave the way
for such moments to arise.
The masters know how
to use the dazzling light
of those moments
to illuminate
the journey of return,
the journey that begins
from nowhere
and has no destination.
--Thích Nhất Hạnh Fragrant Palm Leaves:
Journals, 1962-1966
