examination

On all your fingers, a memory.

The thumb remembers the hammer which aimed for a nail and missed, the moment of painless shock before the throbbing began, the bag of ice and the determination to finish the project, pain be damned. The dog house that resulted from that long Saturday afternoon still stands ready in the corner of the yard near the house, weathered, now, but all the joints still holding true, none of the lumber warped. He was a good dog, a faithful dog, a patient dog, a dog taught tricks to and taken on vast expeditions, a dog who grew grizzled around the muzzle and still with arthritis, a dog who never really caught anything but always tried anyway. The dog house has been vacant for several years, and while there's been talk of a new dog, there hasn't yet been any action that way. Maybe in a few years.

The other thumb, oh, the other thumb could tell any number of stories, but has the discretion to know not to divulge. The other thumb was the hitching thumb, way back before there were dog houses and dogs, that thumb had a frequent traveler number all its own, and it logged miles that would put executives to shame. The other thumb saw Cadillacs and Buicks and Chevrolets and Fiats and Puegots and Jaguars and lorries indifferently; where others saw horsepower and torque and fuel efficiency and self expression and power that thumb just saw that there was enough room for a passenger and a backpack and it was off. That thumb never called a cab or bought a train ticket or went anywhere near a bus station; that thumb had a vague sense of places it wanted to go, but it was open to some detours along the way. New York to Miami by way of Nashville, Barcelona to Rome through Berlin, Casablanca to Cairo by way of Sardinia, it may not have been efficient when plotted on a Mercator projection map but what was the value of efficiency to an itinerary composed of half-remembered lines of poetry, old country songs, famous photographs from National Geographic? That thumb was fearless and determined and young enough to believe that friends outnumbered foes, and the thumb met grandfathers and nuns and fraternity boys and burned out hippies and any number of decent folk out seeing the world for themselves. That thumb only had to form a fist twice, and both times the fist did what it needed to do, then went back to being a thumb.

Then there's the index finger, not that hand, there, the other hand, that index finger. The index finger that held firm against the fingerboard of the violin, that learned to feel through callus and without guidelines where it needed to go to make notes ring true. It wasn't mature enough to understand how sharp fell into flat, but it could feel when the tone wasn't true, and it anchored the hand in space and time. Through the early, tedious days of lessons on notes and scales, through the forced marches of practicing on clear sunny afternoons when everyone else in the neighborhood was caught up in a block-wide game of hide and seek, and there were no teams because hide and seek is an amorphous quivering mass of intention and delusion, where ready or not, ready or not fought vainly against the slower passages of Bach's minuets, pieces whose performance could only ever truly be understood and translated if allowed to change from flats to sharps on the page into the verbalizations of here I come, here I come. And the minuets always won, because they had to, that was the rule, strictly enforced, the index finger anchored in position as the house was surrounded by the shadows of half-hidden children.

Now the index finger, the first index finger of the dominant hand, the index finger that does the work of an army, standing sentinel as needed as General, guiding the pen or the knife or the fork, sternly determining the course of everything that will happen, directing attention. The command of the finger concentrates and executes the will of the mind and so many millions of chores is it simultaneously accomplishing that has any one ever stood out? It is the finger with the callus on the tip, the finger that probes the earth to see if the soil is damp and requires watering, to verify that the ground has thawed for planting. It is the finger that removed ice from the windshield wipers and is apparently the secret key to graceful use of the chopsticks, although according to the diagrams on the chopsticks wrapper, other people use their index fingers in quite a different manner when they hold a pencil.

Still staying with the same hand: there, focused now on the middle finger, the finger with the indented callus between the first knuckle and the nail, from holding a pen with such a grasp for so very long. This finger and this callus are my memory of you, of all the letters I wrote to you across so many years and so many miles. This finger bears the memory of an address scripted onto envelopes and packages, of return addresses that varied with the season, of news and stories and announcements that once seemed so very pressing but now all of which I can no longer recall. You must remember, you who have carefully read and saved each line of each letter, finding so much value in what I did for a host of confused reasons, of guilt, and obligation, and pity, and, somewhere deep and only tacitly acknowledged, abiding attachment and fond affection. week after week, postcards, letters, clippings, scrawled with what can generously be called the best of intentions, and now that you are no longer here, I can admit to love.

The other middle finger has no room for such sentiments, not that it has ever been raised in anger, but that it has a job to do and it gets it done and gets out of the way. The truth is more subdued; this middle finger here is the seat of anxiety, it is the finger that worries about the stove being left on and the windows being open and the bills being paid and the car running out of gas and the reservations being overbooked and deadlines being missed and being surrounded by a vast chaotic universe where there is no order whatsoever. So to compensate, this finger gets things done. If there were a string around a finger upon which were reminders of doctor's appointments and grocery lists, this is that finger. The middle finger is the concentrated beam of the to-do list, obsolete as soon as it is written but full of the intention to live in a calm, rational world, while fundamentally aware that this is an existential impossibility. This finger carries the miniscule short term memories that prevent forest fires and empty gas tanks; it doesn't have space for memories of emotions and connections.

It is right next to a finger brought to public attention by a de Beers marketing campaign, a finger that reveals as much by not revealing as it would by parading a dog tag of ownership. The misfortunes of the nondominant ring finger! To not be allowed any memories of its own, because it is already spoken for by the metaphors of society. Let us give this finger a memory, concrete, personal, owned, a memory that is always and only mine, and not subject to the interpretations or intentions of others. This finger is the memory of flying a kite, a child of four, a scrawny young thing, a vast yellow field with my father, alive and vibrant and outdoors.

The dominant ring finger! It taps impatiently on the table. It doesn't have time for an essay that originally wanted to be a story about a man in the evening of life, it is disgusted that the emotional middle finger next to it co-opted the plot, it has no inclination for rants or arguments with a world that has too many opinions already. The dominant ring finger, accustomed to being ignored and over-ruled, tucked silently and obediently into the palm. It is happier in the realm of the physical: the finger that recalls the feel of woven wool, the texture of tiny smooth black stones on the beach, the cold cold cold of the ocean and the barnacles on the oyster shell, the smoothness of the window and the surprising warmth of a tree branch in the sun.

There remain the memories encased in the pinkie fingers, fore and aft; the former the memories of school and lessons, of spelling bees and multiplication tables and the scratchiness of the wide ruled paper we used to write out our homework, the memories of making Valentine cards for everyone in class and the excitement of back to school shopping, not because everything could be different but because everything could continue, the long storyline of history and the unexpected discoveries of science, the pandemonium of the five minute scuffle between classes and the sound of a locker being opened. Its equal but opposite, the finger of the great voids, of recess, of summer vacation, of Christmas holidays: running through sprinklers and reading novels and taking swimming lessons even though the water was far too cold and long stretches of being filled with the wonder and deep boredom of being here, and now, and alive. The finger held daintily aloft, as you instructed, drinking coffee and eating figs, here on the porch in the late summer sun.

---

reading
there are books; they aren't open

weather
how-to-stay-alive-when-capsized lessons!

how to do the impossible

Here I am: here, here, on top of the world and about to take flight, and all I can think: will my wings hold? Is the wind in the right direction? Is the sun neither too near nor too far? Are those birds vultures or raptors or eagles, will they see me as prey and hunt me to feed their young? Is the mountain too high and the air insufficiently dense to support me, or is the mountain too low and the air currents will not draft in the proper direction, and suddenly I have taken one step too far and there is no longer ground underneath my feet but it doesn't matter.

Newton was wrong and da Vinci was wrong and the Wright Brothers were wrong and this is all there is, me and the air and far beyond me the land, what may have once been a mountain or a skyscraper or the Golden Gate Bridge or just the bank of a small creek in Tennessee, but none of those exist anymore, except as concepts definable only by their previous existence.

Now everything has shifted, not only the colors and the wavelengths of the visible spectrum, where radio waves are what can only be described as the deep russet brown of the earth of a garden that has been lovingly tended for generations and is full of earthworms and manure, but not only is it the warm, deep hue of the earth but it is also on fire, burning with an intense burgundy red; these are radio waves, and the ultraviolet rays that are normally filtered out by the atmosphere are iridescent like a firefly and a dragonfly and an oil slick on asphalt after a summer rainstorm, the ultraviolet rays which for years we were cautioned against and guarded against and took violent steps to avoid exposure to: they are beautiful and clean and crisp as perfectly tuned machinery.

There are so many sounds when not earth-bound, the heavy clunking and churning of the tides and the grinding and breaking and shattering of plate tectonics are not sounds that can be heard until they are no longer present to muffle out the sounds of the motion of the universe. The earth makes a steady whirring noise as it turns on its axis, not the high pitched whine one might expect but the satisfying click click click of a perfectly geared bicycle. There is the deep chuckle of the sun, a guffaw as noon approaches and a quiet giggle at night, when the coy moon starts whispering scandalous and seductive thoughts that pull gravity towards her.

The comets titter back and forth, and the stars, the millions and millions of stars, cluck like chickens and cry like peacocks until the heavens are full of an astral aviary of more noise and color than could previously be observed. Stars are not white, they are every color of every spectrum, and the twinkling was not caused by the presence of the earth's atmosphere but by the sequins and strobes and mirrors that feather these birds of the sky, perpetually preening and flirting and fighting.

The earthly birds, who had been such a concern before flying, turn into aerial fish, swooping, diving, turning, heeding a call all their own, calling the wind currents to them when they wish to change directions, and it is only here, now, as their equal, that the entire ecosystem of the sky comes into focus, the millions of tiny and medium and large creatures that can't be seen when obscured by a terrestrial viewpoint.

There are insects the size of mosquitoes, but instead of buzzing about drawing blood and spreading heartworm, they are a crimson red color and have three sets of wings and they hum arias from great Italian operas, feeding their young the nectar of the ether.

There are birds which roughly approximate bluebirds, only they are larger, a nine foot wing span, and the brightest, most electric neon blue imaginable, and they warble like the deep bass tones of an old parlor organ with a slight leak. I cannot imagine how we cannot see these birds, with all of our instruments and devices that scientists have brought into being, until I realize that the birds only exist in the ultraviolet spectrum, that they are dispersed into nothing but waves of energy as they filter closer to earth. The adolescent birds use this effect in a dangerous game of tag and hide and seek, as there are upper layers where the atmosphere is just thick enough to make them invisible but not so thick as to dissolve them, but this game is affected by solar storms and the earth's unpredictable weather, and a chance misfortune can vaporize a bird with unfortunate timing.

There are birds that look like bats, that seem to have the furry bodies of cats and the sense of direction of the blind, but that are very small bats, just as earth bats can fit into the palm of your hand, and it is not sonar that they use to navigate but a call and response system, which sounds remarkably like the childhood game of Marco Polo. Each bat is assigned three birth-mates, and each quartet of birds has a specific tonal range, from which they can triangulate their own location when flying through space. Marco. Polo. Marco. Polo. Marco. Polo. And so, to home.

Insects quite like caterpillars climb and clamber upon the solar rays, jumping from asteroid to asteroid, over-careful to flee any asteroid that is headed to a fiery destruction on the earth. These caterpillars are speckled, drawn, doodled, so they resemble nothing so much as tiny insects covered in henna tattoos, and I have not seen any sign that they ever mold into cocoons and hatch into something entirely new, but I have not yet been flying here for a lifetime and so cannot say.

The asteroids, as they grow slower and slower when entering the atmosphere, then regain momentum as pulled by gravity, are a Fourth of July fireworks display of staggering proportions. The rending of the atmosphere as the asteroid breaks through echoes the cannons of the 1812 Overture, and sparks begin to fly as in a blacksmith's forge, hot metal burning and being pounded to fit new dimensions. The colors are spectacular and otherworldly, watched with a sense of awe by all the wildlife in the area, fantastic displays of gold and silver and copper, echoes of verdigris and lapis and platinum, dissolving into deep, deep amber, the void in the air filling with a slow, dramatic tinkling until whooshing back into place.

It happens incredibly slowly and yet is over immediately, for not being bound by the solar clock of the earth's rotation, everything happens simultaneously quickly and still takes centuries. The sense of then--now--soon ceases to have any meaning, for it is always then and now and soon, and what will be the future overlaps with what once was the past. There is both a frustrating sense of being caught in a Möbius loop where nothing ever can change and the dizzying sensation of not being able to focus anywhere, on anything, as everything is in constant flux, changing immediately from past to present to future as soon as one state has been realized.

The birds are flying, nesting, fighting, eating all at once and not at all, still as statues; the song of the universe is a tuneless drone and a virtuosic performance; I am flying and being transformed while I do not exist but may once have been and could become again perhaps one day.

My body, once harnessed by the forces of gravity and the constraints of metabolism in the visible spectrum, has grown clear, translucent, stretched well beyond its human standard deviation, until it works almost like a cirrus cloud or a sidewinder snake or a slinky toy, moving incrementally solely through the thought of motion in a particular direction, observing the environment not through seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing, but by becoming a part of that new thing, which was a foreign other but for just right this fraction of a moment or maybe forever the two things, myself and the other, become enmeshed, the arrival of the fog permeating a sunny afternoon. In that instant or eternity I become the other, in a way that exceeds any sensory knowledge science could ever hope to quantify, and I know that I am both the first and the last person to become a part of the workings of the universe, until that moment passes and my individual identity returns, altered by the experience of being the other but also unchanged.

There are more worlds, more universes, and as I learned to fly once, I know their gate, their secrets, may be read as well. Look for the precipice, and let go.

---

reading
Flaubert's parrot / Julian Barnes
[I love reading this book. And am saddened by the thought it will end.]

weather
strawberries!

Expedition Report

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Fifteen states, three weeks*. Strong coffee and a ukulele.
Day bacon set on fire, one. Days camped in snow, 3. Days camped in rain, 1. Nights camped in howling wind, 2. Campsites surrounded by mosquitoes and gnats of extraordinary size, 3. Observed bears, 1.75. Photographs lost to user error and a dirty lens, innumerable.


{Boston.}


{Las Vegas.}


{Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater. Recursive loop.}


{Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater. Cantilevered series.}


{Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater.}


{Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater.}


{Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater.}


{The House on the Rock, Spring Green, Wisconsin: Frank Lloyd Wright on acid. Cantilevered series.}


{The House on the Rock.}
{Photographs don't do this place justice. Read Neil Gaiman's American Gods for some sense of the destination.}


{The House on the Rock.}


{Minneapolis. Cantilevered series. Also note mirroring of cantilever and broken hallways.}


{Minneapolis. Bridge series.}


{Las Vegas. Bridge Series.}


{Bryce Canyon, Utah. Bridge series.}


{The Badlands, South Dakota. Window series.}


{Bryce Canyon. Window series.}


{Zion National Park, Utah. Rock series.}


{Zion National Park. Rock series.}


{Zion National Park. Rock series.}


{Zion National Park. Rock series.}


{Zion National Park. Rock series.}


{Yellowstone National Park. Rock series.}


{Yellowstone National Park. Rock series.}

{Yellowstone National Park. Rock series.}


{Arizona. Rock series.}


{Sequoia National Park. Rock series.}


{Yellowstone. Tree series.}


{Grand Tetons. Tree series.}


{Grand Tetons. Weather series.}


{Yellowstone. Weather series.}


{The Great Salt Lake.}


{Zion. Tree series.}


{Central Valley, CA. Tree series.}


{Central Valley, CA.}


{Salt Lake City.}


{Sequoia National Park.}


{Sequoia National Park. Tree series.}

*Current location: undisclosed west coast. The above photos are in no way representational or comprehensive for the trip, nor are they presented in sequential order of visitation.