A Place Of Elegant Contradictios

Upon the brink of the wild stream
He stood, and dreamt a mighty dream.
--Aleksandr Pushkin (1799--1837)

It is late. The air is thick with light, that time of day among these canyons when the sun goes as soft as sand and the river flows the color of gold. The edge has dropped off the heat and shadows have begun to pool on the ledges like dark, clear water. We will camp just downstream, our last camp, around the bend not far, and so we drift.
In my hands the oars feel as solid as good axe handles, worn to a sheen at the oarlocks by the battles with the rapids upstream--Lava, Crystal, Hermit and others. But here it is quietwater. Our five boats drift slowly and silently as thought--thoughts of the place we have just come through: the Grand Canyon.
From one of the boats ahead there is laughter, sharp and sounding like the click of pebbles on the cliffs. Nearer, someone is reading from the Powell Journals of the first trip through the canyon by river. On this date 114 years ago Major John Wesley Powell and his men were drifting toward their final campsite. With a few burlap sacks of moldy flour but "plenty of coffee," the expedition was drifting out of the "Great Unknown" and into history books as one of the most daring chapters of western exploration. Powell writes:
The relief from danger and the joy of success are great. The river rolls by us in silent majesty; the quiet of our camp is sweet; our joy is almost ecstasy. We sit till long after midnight talking of the Grand Canyon.
Our camp at mile 220 is about 50 miles short of where Powell and his men stopped for the night, a section that is now choked with the fat fingers of Lake Mead. That's not all that's different--the pork chops on the grill, the slivers of ice for our whiskey--but the river still rolls by us in silent majesty, the quiet of our camp is just as sweet, and until long after midnight the talk will be of these canyons.
To those who have been here, it is the canyon and explaining why to someone who hasn't is a little like explaining poetry to a rock. It is simple enough to spout out the statistics: 277 river miles through a canyon that is a mile deep in places and averages nine miles wide (18 miles at the widest), cradling a river that drops 2200 feet through a hundred rapids, some rated Class V.
But numbers no more capture the spirit of the Grand Canyon than the tangle of lines on a topographic map capture the beauty and spirit of Mount Everest. The canyon is too much to be confined that way. Despite Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon has not been totally tamed. It can still be a difficult place. The Colorado is still a cold, powerful river cutting through a landscape of silent rock and heat that can shatter bone. There are rattlesnakes, scorpions, wild box canyons. There are shadows as deep as the river and light that turns to strings of gold at sunset. It is a place where you can feel the claws of thirst ripping at your throat and you can stare at a river full of water a thousand feet below and a day's hike distant. It is a place of elegant contradictions.
--Jeff Rennicke
River Days: Travels On Western Rivers

I Ask To Be Melted

The sight of the Nut Meadow Brook reminds me that the attractiveness of a brook depends much on the character of its bottom. I love just now to see one flowing through soft sand like this, where it wears a deep but irregular channel, now wider and shallower with distinct ripple-marks, now shelving off suddenly to indistinct depths, meandering as much up and down as from side to side, deepest where narrowest, and ever gullying under this bank or that, its bottom lifted up to one side or the other, the current inclining to one side.
I stop to look at the circular shadows of the dimples over the yellow sand, and the dark-brown clams on their edges in the sand at the bottom. (I hear the sound of the piano below as I write this, and feel as if the winter in me were at length beginning to thaw, for my spring has been even more backward than nature’s. For a month past life has been a thing incredible to me. None but the kind gods can make me sane. If only they will let their south winds blow on me! I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the metals that they tender to the fire that melts them. To naught else can they be tender.) The sweet flags are now starting up under water two inches high, and minnows dart. A pure brook is a very beautiful object to study minutely. It will bear the closest inspection, even to the fine air-bubbles, like minute globules of quicksilver, that lie on its bottom. The minute particles or spangles of golden mica in these sands, when the sun shines on them, remind one of the golden sands we read of. Everything is washed clean and bright, and the water is the best glass through which to see it.
--Henry David Thoreau
journal entry for April 11, 1852

To And Fro In My Dreams I Go

as down the glen one Easter morn
to a city fair rode I
there armed lines of marching men
in squadrons passed me by
no pipe did hum no battle drum
did sound its loud tattoo
but the Angelus Bell
o'er the Liffey's swell
rang out in the foggy dew

Clancy Brothers: Foggy Dew / Drums Under The Window / Easter 1916

the bravest fell
and the Requiem bell
rang mournfully and clear
for those who died
that Eastertide
in the springing of the year
while the world did gaze
in deep amaze
at those fearless men
but few
who bore the fight
that freedom's light
might shine through
the foggy dew

back through the glen
I rode again
and my heart
with grief was sore
for I parted then
with valiant men
whom I never shall see more
but to and fro
in my dreams I go
and I kneel and pray for you
for slavery fled
o you rebel dead
when you fell
in the foggy dew

Arcady / Frances Black: The Bold Fenian Men

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed

and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
--William Butler Yeats
from Easter 1916

We're Only Passing Through

Dino Valente: Tomorrow
>

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers.
She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer.
When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging.
She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.
Tigers above, tigers below.
This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.
--Pema Chödrön
The Wisdom of No Escape

PILGRIMS OUTSIDE CREMATION CANYON
BRAHMA AND ZOROASTER TEMPLE
INNER GORGE NEAR AGATE CANYON
GRANITE RAPID WITH RAFTERS
A SMALL BRIGHT SPARKLE AT THE END OF TIME

The Great Song Of The Thousand Vices

Buddy Miller: Wide River To Cross...9/20/05

And when Siddhartha was listening attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om: the perfection.
--Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha

HOPI POINT FROM OUTSIDE BOUCHER CANYON
COLORADO RIVER NEAR COTTONWOOD CANYON WITH ISIS TEMPLE
GRANITE RAPID AND DANA BUTTE

Halfway There When The Rain Came Down

Arcady: The Rocks of Bawn

Van Morrison: Shenandoah

When I come out
on the road
of a morning,
when I have had
a night's sleep
and perhaps a breakfast,
and the sun lights a hill
on the distance,
a hill I know
I shall walk across
an hour or two thence,
and it is green
and silken to my eye,
and the clouds
have begun their slow,
fat rolling journey
across the sky,
no land in the world
can inspire such love
in a common man.
--Frank Delaney
Ireland

Mundy / Sharon Shannon: Galway Girl

Done With Bonaparte

Mark Knopfler / Emmylou Harris:
Done with Bonaparte...Verona 3/6/06



we've played in Hell
since Moscow burned
these cossacks tear us
piece by piece
our dead are strewn
a hundred leagues
though death would be
a sweet release
and our Grande Armee
is dressed in rags
a frozen starving
beggar band
like rats we steal
each other's scraps
fall to fighting
hand to hand
save my soul from evil
and heal this soldier's heart
i'll trust in thee to keep me
Lord, i'm done
with Bonaparte

what dreams he made
for us to dream
Spanish skies
Egyptian sands
the world was ours
we marched upon our
little Corporal's command
i lost an eye at Austerlitz
the sabre slash
yet gives me pain
my one true love
awaits me still
the flower of the Aquitaine
save my soul from evil
and heal this soldier's heart
i'll trust in thee to keep me
Lord, i'm done with Bonaparte

i pray for her
who prays for me
a safe return
to my belle France
we prayed these wars
would end all wars
in war we know
is no romance
i pray our child
will never see
a little Corporal again
point toward a foreign shore and captivate
the hearts of men
save my soul from evil and heal this soldier's heart
i'll trust in thee to keep me, Lord, i'm done with Bonaparte

--Mark Knopfler

The Heart Of The Desert

Ray Charles: Ol' Man River

That Lucky Old Sun


We took a few steps, and the whole magnificence broke upon us.
No one could be prepared for it.
The scene is one to strike dumb with awe, or to unstring the nerves; one might stand in silent astonishment, another would burst into tears.
There are some experiences that cannot be repeated--one's first view of Rome, one's first view of Jerusalem. But these emotions are produced by association, by the sudden standing face to face with the scenes most wrought into our whole life and education by tradition and religion. This was without association, as it was without parallel. It was a shock so novel that the mind, dazed, quite failed to comprehend it. All that we could grasp was a vast confusion of amphitheatres and strange architechtural forms resplendent with color. The vastness of the view amazed us quite as much as its transcendental beauty.

We had expected a canyon--two lines of perpendicular walls 6000 feet high, with the ribbon of a river at the bottom; but the reader may dismiss all his notions of a canyon, indeed of any sort of mountain or gorge scenery with which he is familiar. We had come into a new world. What we saw was not a canyon, or a chasm, or a gorge, but a vast area which is a break in the plateau. From where we stood it was twelve miles across to the opposite walls--a level line of mesas on the Utah side. We looked up and down for twenty to thirty miles. This great space is filled with gigantic architechtural constructions, with amphitheatres, gorges, precipices, walls of masonry, fortresses terraced up to the level of the eye, temples mountain size, all brilliant with horizontal lines of color--streaks of solid hues a few feet in width, streaks a thousand feet in width--yellows, mingled white and gray, orange, dull red, brown, blue, carmine, green, all blending in the sunlight into one transcendent suffusion of splendor. Afar off we saw the river in two places, a mere thread, as motionless and smooth as a strip of mirror, only we knew it was a turbid, boiling torrent, 6000 feet below us. Directly opposite the overhanging ledge on which we stood was a mountain, the sloping base of which was ashy gray and bluish; it rose in a series of terraces to a thousand-feet wall of dark red sandstone, receding upward, with ranges of columns and many fantastic sculptures, to a final row of gigantic opera-glasses 6000 feet above the river. The great San Francisco Mountain, with its snowy crater, which we had passed on the way, might have been set down in the place of this one, and it would have been only one in a multitude of such forms that met the eye whichever way we looked. Indeed, all the vast mountains in this region might be hidden in this canyon.
Wandering a little way from the group and out of sight, and turning suddenly to the scene from another point of view, I experienced for a moment an indescribable terror of nature, a confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in such a presence. With all this grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation seemed in a whirl. With our education in scenery of a totally different kind, I suppose it would need long acquaintance with this to familiarize one with it to the extent of perfect mental comprehension.
The vast abyss has an atmosphere of its own, one always changing and producing new effects, an atmosphere and shadows and tones of its own--golden, rosy, gray, brilliant, and sombre, and playing a thousand tricks to the vision.

I was continually likening this to a vast city rather than a landscape, but it was a city of no man's creation nor of any man's conception. In the visions which inspired or crazy painters have had of New Jerusalem, of Babylon the Great, of a heaven in the atmosphere, with endless perspective of towers and steps that hang in the twilight sky, the imagination has tried to reach this reality. But here are effects beyond the artist, forms the architect has not hinted at. The explorers have tried by the use of Oriental nomenclature to bring it within our comprehension, the East being the land of the imagination. There is the Hindoo Amphitheatre, Shiva's Temple, Vishnu's Temple, Vulcan's Throne. And here, indeed, is the idea of the pagoda architechture, of the terrace architechture, of the bizarre constructions which rise with projecting buttresses, rows of pillars, recesses, battlements, esplanades, and low walls, hanging gardens, and truncated pinnacles. It is a city, but a city of the imagination. In many pages I could tell what I saw in one day's lounging for a mile or so along the edge of the precipice. The view changed with every step, and was never half an hour the same in one place. Nor did it need much fancy to create illusions or pictures of unearthly beauty. There was a castle, terraced up with columns plain enough, and below it a parade-ground; at any moment the knights in armor and with banners might emerge from the red gates and deploy there, while the ladies looked down from the balconies. But there were many castles and fortresses and barracks and noble mansions.
--Charles Dudley Warner
The Heart of the Desert 1891

Light Which Lives On What The Flames Devour

PIKE'S PEAK *

A STORM IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS *

SUNRISE, YOSEMITE VALLEY *

Boccherini: Cello Concertos **


A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest--
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art.
--Federico García Lorca
Stigmata of Love

SKETCH *

* ALL PAINTINGS BY ALBERT BIERSTADT



** AMONG THE SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS

You Must First Invent The Universe

Grateful Dead: 2/24/74

If you want

to make

an apple pie

from scratch,

you must first

invent

the universe.

--Carl Sagan

Isn't It A Lovely Day, Mr. Bukowski?

Woody Guthrie: Talking Hard Work

it was Philly and the bartender said
what and I said, gimme a draft, Jim,
got to get the nerves straight, I'm
going to look for a job. you, he said,
a job?
yeah, Jim, I saw something in the paper,
no experience necessary.
and he said, hell, you don't want a job,
and I said, hell no, but I need money,
and I finished the beer
and got on the bus and I watched the numbers
and soon the numbers got closer
and then I was right there
and I pulled the cord and the bus stopped and
I got off.
it was a large building made of tin
the sliding door was stuck in the dirt
I pulled it back and went in
and there wasn't any floor, just more ground,
lumpy, wet, and it stank
and there were sounds like things being sawed in half
and things drilled and it was dark
and men walked on girders overhead
and men pushed trucks across the ground
and men sat at machines doing things
and there were shots of lightning and thunder
and suddenly a bucket full of flame came swinging at
my head, it roared and boiled with flame
it hung from a loose chain and it came right at me
and somebody hollered, HEY LOOK OUT!
and I just ducked under the bucket
feeling the heat go over me,
and somebody asked,
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
and I said, WHERE IS YOUR NEAREST CRAPPER?
and I was told
and I went inside
then came out and saw silhouettes of men
moving through flame and sound and
I walked to the door, got outside, and
took the bus back to the bar and sat down
and ordered another draft, and Jim asked,
what happened? I said, they didn't want me, Jim.
then this whore came in and sat down and everybody
looked at her, she looked fine, and I remember it
was the first time in my life I almost wished I had a
vagina and clit instead of what I had, but in 2 or 3 days
I got over that and I was reading the
want ads again.
--Charles Bukowski
Looking for a Job

ALL THE WAY BY THE
OUTER FENCE

WE SEE THIS EMPTY CAGE
NOW CORRODE

OUR REVELS ARE NOW ENDED

THE LAST DAYS OF THE
SUICIDE KID