The Realm
Posted: August 11th, 2005, 6:35 pm
This empty realm.... what brought me here? It was a chance for a true conversation in private; an opportunity much too valuable to pass up. And I've grown accustomed to such easy speech, taken in as family by each late-afternoon rippled ridge, across a fair expanse of the wasteland, which drew me around each curve.
The realm, which is painted sufficiently timeless, screams a sermon of here and now.... its sole purpose. The views are held at a soft, incalculable span.... treacherous scale of desire.... a seductive round-scape which bends space. I reach the crest and the earth drops away in a divine arc. The far side ascends as a vision.... muted shapes, feathered into a real-time dream, where the full depth of the arc is realized. I want the dream, so I follow the arc. With some effort I might reach its soft, detached promise.
But to chase it is to lose it. I descend the arc and the far side compresses mysteriously. The soft shapes gradually release their hold on a dream state, until, upon rising up the far slope, it becomes impossible to recognize what I sought. I look backward across the arc for clues.... a delicate fringe on a bright incline which eluded me as I passed by.
Las Vegas was a flash, burned into my eyelid.... no plausible explanation for it, or the enormous curves of glowing desert just outside the gate.... those which offer every bit as much deception as the Strip itself. They undulate and twist over epic dimensions.... ambitious sweeps which nearly wash over mountains and leave odd lumps of rock which poke sideways out of preposterous ramps and domes, all watched over by that moonbeam shot from the point of the Luxor pyramid. Take one of those trails and witness the round-scape, firsthand. It is the greatest desert.... graceful, and stripped to its core.
Vegas is the Southwestern hub, despite its absurd culture of the Anonymous Road to Ruin. It is surrounded by an array of unique deserts.... the capital of all unholy noise, engulfed by oceans of simple peace, which isolate it and help feed its high-wattage delusion. From the Strip, head southeast into the Sonoran, or southwest into the Mojave, or northeast into steep-walled red canyons, or straight due north into the Great Basin, where you may pause to consider your good fortune.
They are different states of mind, these destinations. The Sonoran expanses tend to run dead-flat, punctuated faintly by nondescript peaks, worn down to the nub.... thick with palo verde and stately Saguaro cacti.... too thick, mostly. I encounter a low forest of hard souls out there, which scares the hell out of me. I am being watched in those places. It is the classic ideal of desert beauty, though I've always thought it a compromise.
In fact, in my current mood, the Mojave is a fifty-year-old cowboy picture show, and those aforementioned steep-walled red canyons are but a long-running cartoon. It is upon the spare slopes of the Great Basin where quietude attains the next level. Head out across a lifetime of peace.... a portrait of origin. Descend into an ancient lake bed and witness an unfinished baseline of creation.... a measureless plane of invention, from which Dali's apparatus might arise, trapped in the field. Take the pulse of this rock.... breathe it in, as it was, before breath.
The realm, which is painted sufficiently timeless, screams a sermon of here and now.... its sole purpose. The views are held at a soft, incalculable span.... treacherous scale of desire.... a seductive round-scape which bends space. I reach the crest and the earth drops away in a divine arc. The far side ascends as a vision.... muted shapes, feathered into a real-time dream, where the full depth of the arc is realized. I want the dream, so I follow the arc. With some effort I might reach its soft, detached promise.
But to chase it is to lose it. I descend the arc and the far side compresses mysteriously. The soft shapes gradually release their hold on a dream state, until, upon rising up the far slope, it becomes impossible to recognize what I sought. I look backward across the arc for clues.... a delicate fringe on a bright incline which eluded me as I passed by.
Las Vegas was a flash, burned into my eyelid.... no plausible explanation for it, or the enormous curves of glowing desert just outside the gate.... those which offer every bit as much deception as the Strip itself. They undulate and twist over epic dimensions.... ambitious sweeps which nearly wash over mountains and leave odd lumps of rock which poke sideways out of preposterous ramps and domes, all watched over by that moonbeam shot from the point of the Luxor pyramid. Take one of those trails and witness the round-scape, firsthand. It is the greatest desert.... graceful, and stripped to its core.
Vegas is the Southwestern hub, despite its absurd culture of the Anonymous Road to Ruin. It is surrounded by an array of unique deserts.... the capital of all unholy noise, engulfed by oceans of simple peace, which isolate it and help feed its high-wattage delusion. From the Strip, head southeast into the Sonoran, or southwest into the Mojave, or northeast into steep-walled red canyons, or straight due north into the Great Basin, where you may pause to consider your good fortune.
They are different states of mind, these destinations. The Sonoran expanses tend to run dead-flat, punctuated faintly by nondescript peaks, worn down to the nub.... thick with palo verde and stately Saguaro cacti.... too thick, mostly. I encounter a low forest of hard souls out there, which scares the hell out of me. I am being watched in those places. It is the classic ideal of desert beauty, though I've always thought it a compromise.
In fact, in my current mood, the Mojave is a fifty-year-old cowboy picture show, and those aforementioned steep-walled red canyons are but a long-running cartoon. It is upon the spare slopes of the Great Basin where quietude attains the next level. Head out across a lifetime of peace.... a portrait of origin. Descend into an ancient lake bed and witness an unfinished baseline of creation.... a measureless plane of invention, from which Dali's apparatus might arise, trapped in the field. Take the pulse of this rock.... breathe it in, as it was, before breath.
