2013 Somerville Open Studios

with W Benjamin Bray

May 3 – 5 :: F 6 – 9p / Sa – Su 9 – 9
44 Highland Rd., First Floor [ MAP ]

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Radio Boston’s 2012 review of my work:  LISTEN  (skip to 3:22)

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It’s my pleasure to welcome everyone to my studio as part of Somerville Open Studios, May 3 – 5. This year, I’m offering an additional viewing period Friday evening before the main event.

I’ll have past projects on display and for sale, including framed photo prints from recent expeditions, small installations, and glass sculpture. I’ll also be talking about my current project involving experimental cartography of climate change (working title: “A Texan’s Travel Guide to the Polar Eternities”).

Pre-ordering of framed prints is available via my re-designed Image Gallery, which now offers views of prints as they would appear in various frames. Orders placed by April 26th will be ready for pick-up at Open Studios.

SOS Info: http://www.somervilleopenstudios.org/artists/artist_profile.php?artistID=791

One of my current projects involves the study of irrigation systems in US regions experiencing dramatic environmental and sociological stress due to climate change and Arctic melting.  Since early March, I’ve been working with blown glass tubing to make analogous conduits for light.  The two photos that follow are from the northern tip of Cape Ann at sunset, where the sunsets are long and it’s easier to highlights the optical capabilities of this tubing.

Below are photos of an initial test of studio glass tubing as irrigation conduits for light, that show how light of different spectral composition is scattered and filtered by the glass through the flow path.  The light source on the left end is a set of LEDs, and on the right, a single incandescent.

“Frontal Zones” and “Watercolors”

Since returning from Barrow, Alaska last October, I’ve been exploring relationships between the Arctic and tropical climate regions as an Eulerian point within a flow of social media. Given the innumerable ways that Arctic melting and climate change affect the way we live, I took the personal route in terms of parameters and perspective and focused my attention on water sustainability in particular locations.

A couple of things I’ve realized: 1) Central Texas (where I grew-up) is at the leading edge of an advancing front of environmental and sociological change, and 2) there’s a bit of an EOF (Empirical Orthogonal Function) relationship between this region and where I’ve lived since 1995 (New England). Below are a couple of figures from a 2010 Tetra Tech report on US water sustainability that stood-out for the way a frontal zone seems to exist across the Great Plains down into Texas. Without breaking-down the methodology and conclusions of the report, I can say that its application of spatial downscaling, choices of time scales, and comparative approach with regards to the influence of climate predictions made for fertile ground in developing a method for understanding relationships between regions within the US.

“Frontal Zone” involves a tree planted in 1980 in Central Texas, and cut down last year after drought and disease killed it. This photo presents a record of water sustainability at a single Eulerian reference point. The closely‐spaced rings near the end of the tree’s life resemble the arrangement of isobars on a weather map signifying an advancing frontal zone.

I’m also interested in renderings of climate change that resonate with people whose only geospatial knowledge of their surroundings may come from the TV weather forecast, and as a former TV weather intern in Brazos County, Texas, I often referred to the county border in presentations, weather warnings, and discussions with stakeholders. The sequence of “watercolors” from right to left are of Brazos County as presented in the Tetra Tech report, with steps 3‐9 indicating values contributing to the sustainability indices reflected in steps 1 and 2.

In the coming months, I’ll continue experimenting with parameter and perspective in the context of climate change, as well as rendering figures of latitudinal water distribution forecasts in blown and cast glass. Hopefully I’ll have a few works for display at Open Studios in May.

Twice during my walk from Barrow to Freshwater Lake, I was warned by passing vehicles of the heightened risk of walking un-armed away from town. But it was such a vast, open tundra under a clear, dark blue sky that I didn’t feel any risk of being surprised – I didn’t get a sense that anything was rushing me. But this was my desire for a mysterious journey trumping logic – polar bears would most likely see me before I saw them. Don’t do what I did.

MORE PHOTOS

Judging how far of a walk it was to the lake was impossible without map, and even if I had one, it wouldn’t have really served any purpose other than to describe the general relationship between places, rather than the lake and I. It seemed close for much of the walk – like a mirage – shimmering – I lost any sense of scale miles before, just past the radio antenna array south of town. A repellant wind blew against me as I approached, which grew to a roar by the time I reached the water. There were Arctic Turns walking, feeding and gazing out upon the lake along its thin, shore-less periphery, as whale hunters do during whaling season out upon the Arctic Ocean, gazing for signs of Bowhead whales. There was something in nothing – what I came to this lake to see. I actually departed for the lake with hopes of recording video of birds feeding, for another project involving boundaries, and that was exactly what the birds allowed me to watch them do, for well over an hour, and at times quite close. The surrounding landscape reminded me of the Texas Panhandle, though with short grass rather than long, and saturated with water everywhere. But appearance was the limit of similarity between Arctic tundra and the farmland east of Amarillo. What partly defines the boundary to the “Polar Eternities” that I often refer to is the temperature-driven, geographical limit of crop growth towards the poles (North, primarily – Antarctica, while polar, doesn’t share a border with any land capable of hosting crops.), and the predominance of permafrost.

The driver that stopped to warn me of bears as I was returning to Barrow works at the National Weather Service office near the antenna array that I had passed, and after learning more about the individual he feared might soon be eaten, disclosed frustration in his attempt to earn his meteorology degree via an online program run by Mississippi State. Like everyone else that I had met in Barrow, he stopped to ask what I was doing first before warning me about walking around without a gun. Later that evening, I found fresh bear tracks where I had been working the day before, and the video session the next morning was enveloped in nervousness, and having to continually scan up and down the coast for bears swimming, exiting the ocean, and walking around. This is why some of the video of birds feeding at the Arctic Ocean was recorded from some distance – so that I could stay close to town and quickly exit the beach.

I owe much gratitude to Lillie Paquette, who loaned me her HD video camera without hesitation, when it was apparent that the one I bought in 2006 wasn’t quite up to the trask.

One of the things on my to-do list for Barrow was coastal photography involving the glass replicas of Arctic sea ice from Svalbard. My initial inclination was to work further down the coast away from the town, but that would have been a mistake for two reasons. The first, and most important, was that I was warned about the high frequency of polar bears spotted strolling the coast, and the further I was from civilization, the fewer exit points from shore there were, and the more likely it would be for an encounter. The other reason was that, despite my working alone a lot, this project was a sociological study, and I wanted encounters with beings lacking large teeth and capable of being reasoned with.

MORE PHOTOS

While setting-up for a photo, I met two Belgian artists named Tom and Leonard. They were visiting Barrow for nine days to begin work on a documentary, and we talked mostly about the sociological dynamics of this unusual community, and why Barrow is so interesting as a focal point for climate change study – answering each other’s internal question of why we were drawn to such a place in the process. Perhaps we were all interested in places involving flux and transition. Barrow is in two related states of this sort, of atmospheric warming altering its environment in noticeable ways, and of people involved in one of the mechanism driving it, which I often refer to as “Tahitians”. Unfortunately, a couple of Tom’s bags, containing lenses and some sort of converter, were remained in a state of transition, and I really hope they found their way there from Anchorage before he had to leave. The right kind of lens can really come in handy in places like this.

The Arctic Ocean actually did claim of my glass ice pieces as a gift, despite my attempt at de-gifting. As I was photographing all five just within the “wave zone”, a larger-than-expected wave came along and swept them out into the surf. I was lucky to retrieve four, otherwise Brian, Dylan, Aaron, or Simeon, ages 9-10, wouldn’t have been nearly as photogenic. They were playing soccer on the coast not far away, and wandered over to see what I was up to.

“Are you a scientist?” “Sorta. I’ve studied science and work a little in it, and I’m also an artist.”
“Where are you from?” “Do you know where Massachusetts is?” “Yeah!” “I’m from Boston, Massachusetts.”
“Do you know about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?” “Yeah!” “That’s where I work.”

Left-over from my experience working with the ELMO Project at Northeastern University was the habit of handing people things to motivate conversation, so showed them the glass sea ice. When asked if they knew where Norway was, half of them responded in the affirmative. Who knows if they actually do know, but by asking, at least they get exposed to the terms and place names. I always enjoy asking little kids geographical questions, especially those in little towns. I told them that I went to the Arctic near Norway last year and scanned Arctic sea ice, and that they were holding the glass replicas, which explained why they were holding what looked just like ice, but which refused to melt in the above-freezing Autumn air. Normally the daytime highs in Barrow are below freezing by this time, so global warming worked to my advantage in this case. But despite the fact that it was clearly above freezing, and the mutual agreement that what they were holding was NOT ice, the youngest of the group still decided to probe the unusual objects by putting one in his mouth.

I’m lead to believe that these guys knew exactly where Boston, Massachusetts is, due to the fact that they brought up Thomas Edison shortly after my mentioning where I work, followed by lightbulbs, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, mentioning dates for each when they knew them.

“Have you seen bears?” “Not yet”, I replied. “There was one around here earlier today.”

Eventually, the age thing came-up, and asking them to guess my age was a mistake. “52″ they said. Colleagues at the Sea Grant conference just a week earlier couldn’t believe I was a day older than 32. But I have noticed that I do look more wrinkly and older in photos where I’m working on an Arctic coast. Who knows what it is – the increased coffee intake, the reduction in sweat passing through my pores, or maybe this is simply what happens when I work in the Arctic.

I left a half-piece of glass sea ice with them, under the promise that they’ll share it (you gotta give them chances to do so). Now I need to contact their teacher so that she’ll believe them when they explain their new possession for show-and-tell (Do kids still do this with physical objects, or is everything done on Facebook?).

On Sept 22, one day short of a year since departing for Svalbard, I’ll return to the Arctic (Barrow, AK) to celebrate a milestone in one of my current projects, “Arctic Sea Ice in Glass”, and begin a project relating the Arctic coasts and tropical environments.

This project began in the context of boundaries, and the edges of existence. By the Fall of 2010, after reading a few books involving exploration of unknown environments, watching hours of footage from lunar exploration missions, and venturing to the New England coast at night in the depths of winter, I had acknowledged an affinity for being at boundaries that may be considered primordial, null, or serving spaces so vast and different that we’re overwhelmed by the sense of being there, where winds blow across a nearly discontinuous gradient. When I was invited to participate in the 2011 Arctic Circle Residency, the chance to continue a polar trajectory to the boundary between tropical culture and the Polar Eternities presented itself.

I brought along few expectations other than to observe, and to enjoy the liberties inherent in doing so with whatever tools I found even remotely useful, such as 3D scanning. It’s used primarily as a means to an end, and in this case, documentation and cloning of what would be considered fossils. Scanning Arctic ice was considered part of the observation process, and a way of translating ephemeral matter into a relatively permanent context, or simply replicating it in its own ephemeral material.

The scanning system I built was very simple, using DAVID laser scanning software that connected to a camera and laser mounted on a tripod. In testing the system at various scales and levels of crudeness, errors revealed the interesting and peculiar nature of how the system saw the world presented to it. An obvious analogy is slit-scan photography of dimensions Y (or X) and time, with 3D scanning simply adding the depth dimension. One can, of course, scan motionless objects and record a realistic 3D surface or object, like I did with Arctic sea ice.

Despite numerous unexpected technical obstacles, I was able to scan palm-sized pieces of Arctic sea ice retrieved from two locations around Svalbard. These scans were used in “Shunyatan Flow” (2011), a 3D animation describing a wind driven by temperature and ego. Body scans were also rendered as ice, as symbols of ego undergoing simultaneous transformation and wind-driven erosion at boundary.

Doing anything for the first time involves at least one degree of freedom that’s not fully understood, and this project had about two dozen. Fortunately, and quite possibly miraculously, each was manageable, and consecutive critical deadlines were met that allowed me to finish the project with the least possible expense. Three weeks ago, I was able to 3D-print an ice tray of the Arctic sea ice forms scanned last year, from which I made wax positives for feeding the casting process, and ice replicas of the original forms. And over the last two weeks, six beautiful glass replicas were produced. Despite being about half the size of the originals (due to 3D printer limitations), they otherwise look and feel just like the originals. While photographing them outside on the sidewalk, a woman with her toddler passed by and asked if they were ice, to which I replied that they indeed were, before handing a piece to her daughter.

When I bring these glass Arctic sea ice replicas to Barrow, AK on Sept. 22nd, an idea will be realized.  But in the context of reliability and scale, this project is still in its infancy. Scanning objects even in tropical conditions requires significant control and supporting materials, and Arctic scanning adds the known obstacle of temperature, along with the unknowns inherent in a place that remains beyond the boundary of permanent expansion of tropical culture.

Special thanks to: The Arctic Circle Residency, Mike Soroka, Chris Watts, Nancy Adams, and MIT

I’ve added a couple of new albums to my website gallery, Vols. 9 and 10, the latter being from a recent visit to the Pacific Northwest and Neah Bay.

Volume 9 / Volume 10

Here are a few notes I took during my brief visit to a place that continues to beckon…

In the context of color
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Native American culture (reds, oranges, blues; weaves)
glass
fire
cool, moist air
logging (red)
espresso
the Pacific Ocean
trees / rain forest (greens, yellows, reds, oranges)
water
islands
Dale Chihuly (all colors)
gardens (all colors)
overcast skies (even illumination)
active volcanoes (red)
Japanese glass fishing floats
airport art

Rain forests of tall, swaying trees, abutting the Pacific Ocean, together creating a singular sonic ambience.

There’s a drug problem throughout Neah Bay, among an indigenous community established at a remote boundary, made poor and desperate by waves of progress washing over it.

I’m fascinated by what’s involved in this –  drought, temperature, population, investment, glaciers and polar ice caps, etc.

The distribution of water throughout the state is a function of demand, political influence, and supply, and the complexities of its sociological dynamics further complicate matters and re-shape formal infrastructure.

I’ll be exhibiting a new work entitled “Shunyatan Flow” as part of the COLLISION17:transformer group exhibit at Axiom Gallery in Boston, MA, March 2 – April 7.  This is actually an animation comprised of 3D scans of Arctic sea ice acquired during my recent Svalbard residency, as well as scans of my body.

Opening Reception: Friday, March 2 : 6-9 pm

Other exhibiting artists include:  Natalie Andrew, Ryan Boatright, Sophia Brueckner, Alicia Eggert, Juan Escudero, Joseph Farbrook, Antony Flackett, Ben K. Foley, Dave Gordon, Rob Gonsalves, Lori Hepner, Wei-Ming Ho, Faith Holland, Annette Isham, Arnold Koroshegyi, Victor Liu, Andrew Neumann, Bob Kephart, Jean-Michel Rolland, Mark Stock, Wayne Strattman, and Topp & Dubio.

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Axiom Gallery address and hours:

141 Green Street (The Green St. T-stop on the Orange Line)
Jamaica Plain, MA

Wed 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Thurs 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Fri 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Sat 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
and by appointment

I walked up and down that street over four days, either to meet a few colleagues who were performing in the 2011 Insomnia Festival, or to wander and enjoy my last days in the Arctic. I had arrived in Norway in late-September, met a few people in Oslo, and then the main contingent of 20 in Longyearbyen. For two weeks, we sailed up and down the west and north coasts of the Svalbard archipelago, as artists-in-residence exploring the hyperboreal land and ocean. When we returned to Longyearbyen, we dispersed over several days, and it was eventually in Tromsø that I was alone again.

Had I exhaled too much over the past month, left without enough oxygen to remember those resonant spaces in the past that I used be nostalgic for? As I walked down the cold, dark, damp street towards the bridge leading to the Arctic Cathedral, I wasn’t holding on to anything, having crossed a boundary, and beyond the grasp of any conclusions I had methodically composed before this vacation in Norway. Perhaps this boundary was crossed earlier, in Oslo, or during the voyage. I remember looking ahead, down the street and seeing no one. Sometimes, I would see someone in an illuminating store (e.g. the apoteks). Tromsø is known for its nightlife, but that’s not the nightlife I’m referring to.

Tromsø Bridge was the longest cantilever bridge I had ever crossed at night. There wasn’t room on either side for more than two people to pass, and the outer railing was high enough to prevent people from accidentally falling off. I passed at least two people going the opposite direction during each crossing. On the return trip back to my hotel, looking off towards what seemed to be the south, I witnessed the twinkling tips of planes descending through the clear night. I couldn’t see the lights of the airport, however, since it was situated on the opposite side of a mountain.

New works exhibited in Mediating Place are now available online, along with a gallery of photos taken during my residency in the Arctic Circle :

“Arctic Water Column” (2011)

“Three Tahitians at the Boundary to the Polar Eternities” (2011)

Photo Gallery – Arctic Circle Residency

New works resulting from my Arctic Circle residency are now on display at the Harbor Art Gallery at UMass-Boston, through Oct. 25, as part of the group exhibition “Mediating Place”.

Other exhibiting artists include:  John Craig Freeman, Dyllan Nguyen, Ann Torke, Jane Prophet, Miriam Dym, EcoArtTech, and Richard Bertman

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Harbor Art Gallery address and hours:
Monday – Thursday: 12:00 – 7:00 P.M.Friday: 12:00 – 4:00 P.M.
Harbor Art Gallery, c/o Meredith Hoy or Kevin Benisvy
McCormack Building
University of Massachusetts, Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd. Boston, MA 02125

You wouldn’t expect someone walking alone down the main highway of Pyramiden, Spitsbergen, in October 2011 to be pondering the significance of his arrival at the terminus of a lifelong trajectory.   But what began as a childhood curiosity in Texas about the northern US has resulted in a series of unrelated opportunities tracking across northeastern coasts, and ultimately to a road covered in spilled coal, detritus from what turned-out to be yet another Soviet folly towards cultural expansion further into the Arctic.  I’ve never seen such an expensive “false-start” of a town before – the years of opening advertised prominently on the front of each building seemed to imply that they foresaw a century or more of prosperity, even in the shadow of centuries of failure by tropical (“Tahitian”) culture at developing into the Polar Eternities.

My solo ascent to the forecastle comprised the final steps of this artist residency – written in the striated condensations spanning the amber, high-latitude afternoon, and accompanied by the white coffins floating peacefully past the ship as we left the bay towards the open Arctic sea. I was at the boundary to the Polar Eternities – witnessing the white, icey death.  Since August, I had been preparing as continuously for this voyage as methodically as I had for any previous years’ future unknowns.  When I walked outside, however, the wrinkles in my cheeks harmoniously resolved the radials emanating from my eyes, no longer a symptom of any negligent indulgence, and I breathed the first air of my Second Adventure.  Even as tight as we were squeezed, sleeping in shared cocoons, and eating as a large families, we were all on solo voyages, starting from different places within a place, mine leading to an ending within an ending.

New work created during and after my Arctic Circle Residency will appear alongside “Expanding Tahiti” at the Harbor Art Gallery at UMass-Boston.  The exhibit, entitled “Mediating Place”, will run Oct 5 – 25, and starting around the 17th, I’ll augment maps and notes already posted with digital projected work composed from Longyearbyen and Norway.

Other exhibiting artists include:  John Craig Freeman, Dyllan Nguyen, Ann Torke, Jane Prophet, Miriam Dym, EcoArtTech, and Richard Bertman

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Harbor Art Gallery address and hours:
Monday – Thursday: 12:00 – 7:00 P.M.Friday: 12:00 – 4:00 P.M.
Harbor Art Gallery, c/o Meredith Hoy or Kevin Benisvy
McCormack Building
University of Massachusetts, Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd.Boston, MA 02125

Greetings friends,

The Arctic Circle Residency will begin in roughly two weeks. I would like to sincerely thank all of my current supporters (see below), and provide a final update before I leave.

My trip will begin Sept 26, and include a week of traveling to Longyearbyen and prep work, two weeks of sailing and exploring, and then about a week of compiling observations and wandering around southern Norway, before returning to the US on Oct 26. Our cruise will consist of 1-2 days of onshore work for each 1-2 days of sailing around the western and northern regions of the Svalbard archipelago. Since September is actually the month of minimum sea ice in the Arctic, sailing conditions should be ideal and allow for maximum flexibility in our itinerary.

To summarize my current artist statement regarding the expedition, I’ll collect 3D scans of ice chunks and surfaces, record sounds of electrical waves propagating through the atmosphere from the tropics, talk with other members of the expedition about why they are exploring the archipelago, study the geopolitical forces affecting the Svalbard region, and take photographs. We will not have internet access during the cruise, so I won’t be blogging, unfortunately.

To donate in exchange for “rewards”, visit:  http://www.benbray.com/payment.php . The underwater ROV I had mentioned previously will not be making the trip, so I’ll have to substitute some other interesting artifact for underwater video as part of the reward set.  If you have any suggestions, please send me an email, or include a note in the process of making a donation.

Special thanks to:
Aimee Ash
Andreas Randow
Dan Nissenbaum
David Bryant
Don Bray
Georgina Lewis
John Pound
Kitt Hodsden
Marcela Rodriguez
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michael Soroka
Nancy Adams
Yuka Otani

The 2011 Arctic Circle Residency that I’m preparing for has a new partner: the Council for the Arts at MIT.  With the help of their $2000 grant, I’ll be able to begin development of a remotely-operated underwater vehicle (ROV) for exploring in and around Arctic ice formations, while recording cool video, taking pictures, measuring water quality, spying on the other participants etc.  Thank you, MIT!

This still leaves about $7K that I’ll need to cover via additional grants, donations, and personal savings. The Kickstarter.com project I began two weeks ago is still very much open for new contributions, so please spread the word, and help me close the gap.

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Listen to “Arctic Inspiration” , a Studio360 broadcast by 2009 participant Matt Holzman.

photo credit: Janet Biggs

Go to portfolio…

The Ice Farm

Worrying about the little block melting too fast…

Worrying about the big block becoming unstable, breaking stuff, flooding my apartment or the gallery, or injuring a gallery visitor…

Being driven insane by the drip, but sad to hear it silenced.  We want the Polar Eternities to die quietly…

Being sad about all of the EPS I’ve used, sad when some of it fell into the melt….

I was going to need large (32″ x 15″ x 7″), translucent ice slabs to project imagery onto. So, I set-up a table in the backyard, amidst the coldest Boston winter I had ever experienced, and lined a strong cardboard box w/ plastic to hold the water.  I tried a few powders to make it cloudy (incl. baking soda and powdered milk), before simply letting plain water freeze.  Eventually, what was left of the milky concoction froze-up whatever cracks existed in the box, and I had a working ice farm. Over the many days that I grew slabs, I covered the box with a tarp to prevent weekly nor’easters from smothering it. I eventually figured-out that cloudy ice is made by rapidly freezing several thin layers, and occasional cracking created beautiful bubble patterns.

The Gaze

From Moby Dick…

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. Tomorrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nor Rome’s accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. ‘All is vanity.’ ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly; not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.

But even Solomon, he says, ‘the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain’ (I.E., even while living) ‘in the congregation of the dead.’ Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”

Perhaps “Tahiti” is the embodiment of what we lust (e.g. Melville’s “Tahiti”, and the “Tahiti” of Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou, and Laurie Anderson), a false illusion, while the ocean is a vast embodiment of the harsh truth in life, and the frozen poles are the infinite regions where mankind cannot extend nor proliferate, where time does not exist for mankind.

The human race has been working to melt polar eternities since we began and since we discovered fire.  Ice is the boundary between mankind and infinity.  The further away we push the polar eternities, the more we can expand and proliferate, in hope of reaching Tahiti.  We expand into areas once covered by ice because we can: ice is water, and water supports life.

We gaze at the boundaries between land and ocean, the tropics and the poles, light and dark, and Earth and space.

Somewhere on the Moon, there is a high ridgeline hundreds of miles long, beyond which everything is in a shadow lit only by stars millions of light-years away. Can you imagine climbing to the top of this ridge, with your back to the setting sun as you pass into the infinite darkness of the Moon’s shadow?

The Boundaries

At the boundary, facing the truth of the infinite, to which I am truly connected.  That which understands through non-syntactical thought. Lit directly by a high-latitude sun, covered by shallow lakes, stretching from the edge of humanity to the edge of the earth.

At the boundary, I sense a resolve.  Death looms less as and ‘end’. It’s like I’ve walked a thousand miles north to find where a singular individual resolves themselves, extinguishing all sirens for a free-floating bandit.

I have an affinity for high latitudes and oceanic boundaries – the boundary to the edge, as if that’s where all of humanity resolves itself, simply by addressing its limits.

From Moby Dick…

“When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an inhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. “

“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here.”

Perhaps there is truth to this polar-coastal trajectory, to be found at the boundaries we find the most formidable.

From Michael Collins’ autobiography Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys…

“He found truth in orbit, not down below in the streets of Calcutta or above in the monotonous black void.  He was positioned in the cosmic arena, on the boundary between the conscious reality and the infinite subconscious.”

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Infinite Environments

At 9:15p, I found myself at the Massachusetts coast amidst a blustery November, under a tumultuous sky.  Was I drawn to this boundary because of the ocean? Where there is water, there is hope, and life. Its cold, salty flow is a baptism through the pores, through the vessels, water in air merging with our watery selves, pausing our hysteria. Are we drawn to salty food as a pacifier?

From Moby Dick…

“The three mastheads are kept manned from sunrise to sunset; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the masthead; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner — for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.”

Later that evening, as I watched video of the crew of Apollo 15 collecting rocks near Hadley rille, and the lunar dust being sifted through their gloves and returning to the surface for eternal solitude, I could feel my body exploding from the force of an environment who’s time scale for change is greater than the earth’s by orders of magnitude. Our bodies live in a system of change tied to minute scales of time, on a molecular spatial scale. In contrast, the Moon is a relatively infinite environment, completely devoid of biological events at any scale.

From Moby Dick…

“But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through — It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale — It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements — It’s a blasted heath — It’s a Hyperborean winter scene — It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.”

Watching the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour, STS-130

The second night…

We had already gone through a scrub the previous night after communing in the cold early morning for more than four hours. Given all of the circumstances that I learned had to fall in place for an ISS shuttle mission to happen, this endeavour entered the realm of absurdity.

So, in setting out for Kennedy the second night in a row, my expectations for seeing anything spectacular seemed almost discontinuously low. Everything that seemed welcoming the first night gave me the cold shoulder on the second. The air seemed colder, the ground seemed damper, the other people seemed ambivalent towards not only the prospects for launch, but also the program’s future. The feeling in the air was that it’s time to move on to a NASA-less world.

Every reaction was easily composed from a familiar emotional palette: ambivalence toward rationality and hope, retreat from discomfort, and admitting fatigue

About two hours into the second night, the emcee for the night’s festivities announced that in contrast to the previous night, that night’s weather situation was less dynamic, and the thick ceiling that smothered us the night before was breaking to the east and moving towards Kennedy. That was undeniably good news, but we had no reason to believe yet that we would see the space shuttle launch.

At about an hour before launch, the sky cleared completely, and the international emergency landing sites reported ‘green‘.

At about 30 minutes before launch, we realized we were going to see a shuttle launch. People started to come out of their cars and find a spot to watch.

At about five minutes before launch, our pre-existing emotional palette began to fail in the glare of the reality that the shuttle is about to launch. There was a little bit of confusion over what to think and do.

At thirty seconds before launch, we felt completely inadequate and crazed.

And then the countdown started. I felt this weird painful heat swell-up inside, and experienced a shock of anticipating something awesome that I was completely unprepared for. I had had dreams on numerous occasions over the past decade of the ten seconds before witnessing a distant nuclear explosion, and this may have hit upon that. The ignition certainly resembled the horrific growth seen in my nightmares. Oh my God. But as it rose, this shock was immediately replaced by awe of a spiritual vision, the visualization of Greek myth. A flame was audaciously rising through the cloud-filled sky in hopes of reaching the Heavens, and we cheered it. The higher it went, the more was at stake.

And when it reached a point where it had left us behind, we said goodbye and good luck. I realized that the light in the sky wasn’t going to land somewhere else – it was going to keep ascending, for a long time. And it was going to orbit the Earth.

Humans / Nature

Is human life unnatural?

Like many other life forms, we are aware of our influence within the grande scheme of things. Guilt and insecurity causes us to feel bad and correct our behavior when we negatively affect other life directly or indirectly.

When we separate life into humanity and nature, though, we define nature as all Earth processes excluding humanity, for the purpose of understanding the effects we have on them. But we are as “natural” a process to Earth as any other that has, or will occur.

When we differentiate humanity and nature, it’s as if we are declaring that humans were applied to Earth by an extraterrestrial process, and that we are only guests.

Pg. 702, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages (7th ed.) :

“The contradiction between the formal villa and informal gardens was apparently not at once felt; for one thing, in the early eighteenth century the meaning of “nature” had not been agreed upon; was it, in the classical sense, a regularity of proportion, or, in the newer sense, the irregularity of growing things with their wildness and accidents – in a word, their picturesque or even their primitiveness? In the end it would be decided that all historical styles are “natural”, since they evolved historically from the artistic instincts of peoples, who are after all part of nature.”