Past the winged atomic waffle house and casinos on the outskirts, the road opens up. It’s why you came. Basin and range. The map shows only a wandering pen stroke through blankness to the next circle, but knows nothing of rugged ephemera en route, dotted black with beef, grazing the edge of snow-tip mountains, nor power poles stretching like a picket fence, nor dirt roads that meander to scrub valleys and bluffs with no end. Must be something out here; some fantastic ruin or lost marker to a lost vein of gold. Something in the span itself over the end point; journey over destination and such. But the map is noncommittal. So you get a better map; one that shows windmills and hundred-year-old jeep trails, and you see that nowhere is never quite nowhere.
As you gain speed the pace slows; you’ll never outrun mountains. It’s why you came: inexhaustible hum and span. Beyond one ridge more ridges appear, dimensionless, adrift, standing alone like freighters on the open sea, and your wandering ribbon has no end. The map disagrees. Almost wish you hadn’t looked. Twelve, twenty, maybe a hundred mountains off, people in thick institutions inevitably deconstruct things and split hairs. Like the atom. Or lately, super-collided protons. Or innumerable poetic quarks, even bits of Shakespeare, all in search of a God particle, the indivisible truth, or maybe a good cliché.
The mountains jump here. Literally. They lie still for untold millennia, build up tension and jump up in one terrible instant, on faults between mountain and valley. So you’re on a camp stool one evening, medicinal whiskey chalice at hand, counting ravens or clouds, or weather-weary mighty corrugations rising far above, or scribbling some disposable manifesto under the influence of arid light. Soundless immensity coming down. Then a sudden rumble of deep energy, a booming locomotive along the base as the base unzips at shocking velocity down basin, fissures spread closer, and you spill your drink. In 1915 a sixteen foot gap opened in the sagebrush between Tobin Range and Pleasant Valley in central Nevada for more than twenty miles; not spectacular as far as these things go, though fearsome as one might expect in a random hundred-year window.
Mountains have jumped here for eight million years; mere toddlers by the geologic clock. No foothills on the leading faults; the scarps are too young. Profoundly battered, but fresh. The crust here is stretched and broken into mountain-sized behemoths, tilting at deep fractures, agitating white-hot mantle below, the rock engine, which boils up in unholy cauldron-springs at the margins and cracks. “Build your house on the rock,” as the hymn says. And the rock is alive and unstable: compressed, folded, lifted, beaten down, washed out, deposited, buried and compressed again. Mountains here rise about as fast as wind and rain dismantle them; an inch a century. So Tobin Range gained about twenty thousand years when it spilled your drink.
Time to reflect on time. The last sixty years of insanity. Six thousand years of fuzzy history. Three-hundred thousand years of prehistory. And eight-thousand thousand year old toddler mountains. Fluid and fallible rock. And what comes up when the ranges jump? Untold further eons, in mishmash bits; five-hundred-fifty-thousand thousand more years. Meaningless spans. Deep time. And that’s only the tip of the planet’s range. When Oquirrh Range jumped, it lifted remains of sixty-million year old mountains, parts of which bear scars of “ice age” cycles. These “ancestral” mountains, born of colliding rock, had their day before deep time took them down. And their constituent rocks spanned so far in time that they came from south of the equator! Build your house on the rock! The rock drifting on deep time, catastrophically at turns, spanning oceans and hemispheres, powered by eternal, hellish convections deep in the mantle and core, where mountains come and go like seasons.
Time to reflect on scale; a speck on a boundless sweep painted in pointillist sagebrush; in turn a fleck on the planet and its unimaginable trek around a star; in turn a molecule on the span to the nearest star; in turn a particle on the nearest galaxy; in turn a particle on this particular particle of the universe; in turn, less than a particle on infinity. You can’t accept that. Except you exist in equilibrium with infinity, presumably similar to the equilibrium in which the God particle, or “that which cannot be divided further,” the essence itself, lives in equilibrium with the near infinity of you. And not only here do such conundrums arise. Simple probability says there are eyes out in the flicker, looking back, wondering the same things in reverse.
"Lines and points"
"Lines and points"
Last edited by mnaz on April 20th, 2010, 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
the interminable search for infinity thru the exhaustive chaos of eternity to reach the hopeful void of peace that hangs like a ornament flashing SOS to all who seek comfort from the journey, that damned journey that so many fail and flail in madness while gurgling inanities like an ancient language long forgotten much less ever comprehended.
enjoyed the read, nazzerino... notes from time passed?
enjoyed the read, nazzerino... notes from time passed?
_________________________________
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Allow not destiny to intrude upon Now
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Allow not destiny to intrude upon Now
as good as anything I've ever read about the vastness of the universe, you remind me of a desert carl sagan....always engaging,
as we ponder the mysteries....great notions to consider here, the second stanza can stand as a poem on its own, in my mind....I like the contrast between the simple lines on a piece of paper and the reality of what surrounds that line, it helps sharpen the infinite nature of life..
sagan once said something that has stuck with me for 30 years or so as I paraphrase: There are more Complexes of galaxies than there are stars in our galaxy and there are 10 to the tenth power stars in our galaxy
that blows my mind, more complexes of galaxies than is really fathomable.....yes the eyes are watching no doubt.....I wonder what they think of us....ha !
as we ponder the mysteries....great notions to consider here, the second stanza can stand as a poem on its own, in my mind....I like the contrast between the simple lines on a piece of paper and the reality of what surrounds that line, it helps sharpen the infinite nature of life..
sagan once said something that has stuck with me for 30 years or so as I paraphrase: There are more Complexes of galaxies than there are stars in our galaxy and there are 10 to the tenth power stars in our galaxy
that blows my mind, more complexes of galaxies than is really fathomable.....yes the eyes are watching no doubt.....I wonder what they think of us....ha !
If you do not change your direction
you may end up where you are heading
you may end up where you are heading
thanks Cec, Steve...
... to the "God particle," or "that which cannot be divided further," or, "the essence," all is infinity. . . haha... there's some wacky midnight philosophy for ya...
yes, Cec... expanded from notepad scribbles from the long run of motelin' and/or campin' a few years back, as has been the case a lot recently. I put this one right after that bit about googie-doo-wop architecture I scribbled a couple months ago. Had to throw in the winged waffle house. . .
Steve-- I had no idea sagebrush and rock could be so mindblowing...
Re-reading parts of 'Basin and Range,' by John McPhee, lately. It's pretty technical throughout, but an amazing read. . .
... to the "God particle," or "that which cannot be divided further," or, "the essence," all is infinity. . . haha... there's some wacky midnight philosophy for ya...
yes, Cec... expanded from notepad scribbles from the long run of motelin' and/or campin' a few years back, as has been the case a lot recently. I put this one right after that bit about googie-doo-wop architecture I scribbled a couple months ago. Had to throw in the winged waffle house. . .
Steve-- I had no idea sagebrush and rock could be so mindblowing...
Re-reading parts of 'Basin and Range,' by John McPhee, lately. It's pretty technical throughout, but an amazing read. . .
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hester_prynne
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"the essence itself, lives in equilibrium with the near infinity of you. And not only here do such conundrums arise. Simple probability says there are eyes out in the flicker, looking back, wondering the same things in reverse."
Incredibly good read Mark, and these last lines, the perfect landing.
I mean, really, this is top notch.
H
Incredibly good read Mark, and these last lines, the perfect landing.
I mean, really, this is top notch.
H
"I am a victim of society, and, an entertainer"........DW
gracias for sharing it!thanks Arcadia. muchas gracias.
wrote/rewrote a couple more paragraphs. I'm always doing that..
Reflect on scale; a speck on a boundless sweep painted in pointillist sagebrush; in turn a fleck on the planet and its confounding trek around a star; in turn a molecule on the span to the nearest star; in turn a particle on the nearest galaxy; in turn a particle on a particular particle of universe; in turn, less than a particle on infinity. Can’t accept that. Except you exist in equilibrium with infinity, presumably similar to the equilibrium in which “that which cannot be divided further,” the essence, lives in equilibrium with the infinity of you. Scale is tricky. And not only here do these conundrums arise. Eyes in the flicker look back, wonder the same things in reverse; mere probability says so.
Not again. Spanned everything and nothing from a point on both, oldest Zen trick around. Odd the affect of vista, quiet to a point of disquieting. Odd how the lines and points compelled when you first dropped off the edge, your hum a little high pitched, caught in a mania toward Reno. You had to see it, the sign over the Strip, “biggest little city,” only three points away and great spans between each, hunched and driving, lust of map. When you got there you weren’t sure and bolted for sagebrush blur, traps of span, missing sculpture and vaguely south.
Farther south mountains don’t jump but sink in their own waste, weather closer to eye level, to playful, deadly roundscapes poked with peculiar points of rock. And the washes drop to such depths of strata as incongruent with witness, hard passage where bones and dregs collect and sear; the kind of wasteland where rogue men with wild eyes received the word, foretold consequences of idolatry, the desolate altars and broken images, cities in ruins, dead land and dust. And the coming oasis, rivers in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, as Isaiah put it. Natural in a place where mountains come to die. You expect great fossils or scrolls in the depths of baked strata, cosmic breakthrough. Mostly it’s solid rock being wasted. Time rains down, evaporates, crystals of once was into what is.
wrote/rewrote a couple more paragraphs. I'm always doing that..
Reflect on scale; a speck on a boundless sweep painted in pointillist sagebrush; in turn a fleck on the planet and its confounding trek around a star; in turn a molecule on the span to the nearest star; in turn a particle on the nearest galaxy; in turn a particle on a particular particle of universe; in turn, less than a particle on infinity. Can’t accept that. Except you exist in equilibrium with infinity, presumably similar to the equilibrium in which “that which cannot be divided further,” the essence, lives in equilibrium with the infinity of you. Scale is tricky. And not only here do these conundrums arise. Eyes in the flicker look back, wonder the same things in reverse; mere probability says so.
Not again. Spanned everything and nothing from a point on both, oldest Zen trick around. Odd the affect of vista, quiet to a point of disquieting. Odd how the lines and points compelled when you first dropped off the edge, your hum a little high pitched, caught in a mania toward Reno. You had to see it, the sign over the Strip, “biggest little city,” only three points away and great spans between each, hunched and driving, lust of map. When you got there you weren’t sure and bolted for sagebrush blur, traps of span, missing sculpture and vaguely south.
Farther south mountains don’t jump but sink in their own waste, weather closer to eye level, to playful, deadly roundscapes poked with peculiar points of rock. And the washes drop to such depths of strata as incongruent with witness, hard passage where bones and dregs collect and sear; the kind of wasteland where rogue men with wild eyes received the word, foretold consequences of idolatry, the desolate altars and broken images, cities in ruins, dead land and dust. And the coming oasis, rivers in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, as Isaiah put it. Natural in a place where mountains come to die. You expect great fossils or scrolls in the depths of baked strata, cosmic breakthrough. Mostly it’s solid rock being wasted. Time rains down, evaporates, crystals of once was into what is.
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