Go East To Find Sun

John Day Fossil Beds NM

First I should mention the rain, which in Portland wouldn't merit a sentence. But we were not in Portland we were east in the desert, sun country- John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Only there was no sun, well briefly on the first day, but that’s not really worth a longer mention. But for the most part we spent the trip dodging  bullets of rain- significant, impossibly, wet, punctuated showers that heightened our sense of experience.

It was a blessing of sorts.

On the first morning I (we) slept in...

blissfully unaware of the possibility of the creek rising near the dispersed campsite we were staying at. As I lay there, drifting through a scattering of timpani slumbers, slowly thoughts of slot canyons, flash flood warnings, and all sorts of other safety flotsam and jetsam rose to the surface of my mind and I soon began to calculate how fast I could pack up my gear and leave. In my head I would be like John Wayne herding

cattle through the storm, epic, big, muddy, and super sexy.  Except I am not John Wayne. I am bald, without a drawl, and I don’t think there would be anything romantic about a dripping tent that would inspire a dramatic, sweeping, boom of a soundtrack, much less the smell of hundreds of wet cattle being driven through mud and poop. Yeah.

There would be shivering.

That much I could guarantee. I motivated faster than I expected and with careful flips and twists to the fold of the fabric, I kept the tent and my stuff mostly dry. I was impressed, years of being grilled by my friend on how to, why we, and when to paid off. Then I realized I was by myself in this effort. My camping cohorts had yet to rise.  Dammit. I was ready to tackle the day. Make breakfast. Or do something. Anything but sit here in the consistent anti-dramatic rain. So I drew circles of ink in the passenger seat of the car and became 

intimate with the sage. Never truly 

noticing before how the leaves stick up from the twisted branches at 90 degree angles, like miniature telsa coils- an exercise in patience, meditation, and boredom. My droid did not get any service. So the multi-tasking crack of my life had been taken away, brutally.

Later after an awkward cup of coffee and sausage platter cooked at one of the viewpoints we hiked the boardwalks of the different formations.  

We were lucky. 

If it rained the painted hills changed to darker, richer colors as the clay soaked up the water, in some cases causing the rivers to run the green of the minerals in the soil. The sky, instead of being a mediocre blue, congressed in piles of storm clouds enhancing the sagebrush twist with a spice of haunt and eerie that gave permission to become aware of the gone-already-has-been-age the permeates the place. John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is host to several different beds, quarry’s, and assemblages of fossils from various epochs

in the past. At the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center visitors can walk through these different periods of time and see the reconstructed creatures like bear dogs or nimvarids and browse the multitude of fossils. It also provides a reprieve from the sun or for us, from the rain.

But.

I am a cloud watcher. 

I went outside anyway.

In the sun/ rain I could watch the storm pass over the features and shadow their colorful crevices or illuminate their grassier lowlands. While the place feels old, which might be because we are instructed to feel that way, or as humans we have an innate sense of the deep time, either way, watching the rain move through gave me a glimpse at the constant force of destruction. I was not interested in the rebirth cycle, not here, but

more in how the land wrinkled under the direction of the clouds. How it revealed under the direction of those clouds. How the wind ushered those clouds and time with it through. It’s difficult not to reflect on time or where we stand in the midst of the time’s storm. But it’s not what I am trying to say. Perhaps the rain is a catalyst to understanding. Perhaps  it’s because in the sun we move through this land so purposely, while in the rain our discomfort forces us to slow down and look, experience, run, hide, comment, frustrate, feel?

So- a blessing of sorts. 

Not the trip any of us expected.

Go east to find sun, we were told.

Hmphh. 

Peep Show (For Dad)

The petticoat thrills of hundreds of woman shine tawdry and ridiculous in the hot sun. This peep show feels better suited for a wet-streeted back alley theater, the kind where you end up and don't remember why. I am skeptical. And frown. I feel exposed. I am the youngest person wandering these rows, and around me I hear exclamations and thrills as they inspect the furled edges, and the explosion of color. It's almost too racy for me, and I am in need of a fan to combat the heat and hide the color in my cheeks. Names like Who's Your Daddy? All Night Long, and Poem of Ecstasy give the conservative in me, a smirk and a giggle.

My Dad sent me here, to the Shreiner's Iris Show Garden.  I know, it sounds like a child when I type it like that, but given this is his mecca, his shrine to the Iris gods, I thought I would pay homage for him, after all as he exclaimed I was so close. The show garden is only open for several weeks to the public, but besides being an opportunity to pomp and circumstance the vulgarities of color, it is also an opportunity to see what the bulbs look like in person, how do they fare in the heat, or how many blooms per stalk. See Dad I did listen...

I took a few requisite photos of the Iris's feeling a bit foolish, as if I was peeking at their legs, and had noticed a stray hair or something. Would I have been one to advocate putting the hem lines back down to the ankles? I came with my own tools though, and sat down to make a study of the lips of one of the purple and white varieties. It was as I moved the pastels in the directions of the veins that I began to notice how voluptuous the curves moved into and out of each other. The edges trilled with subtle color under the at-first obvious lip liner. Their throats were coated with shadow and they swallowed their own form. I could begin to see the attraction. I wonder how they would sell if the advertised the catalogue more like personals or perhaps maybe this reminded me of my own digital square pursuit of sex and love and what I chose to show of myself given my mood of the day. Suddenly, I am blushing again and I look around to see if anyone else notices, but I think, today, I am the only immature one in the art class.

Walking Sky- Fort Stevens State Beach

I am not sure if given wings to fly that I would immediately jump up into the air and flap myself crazily about. I would most certainly not be graceful about it if I did. I do dream, however of falling in flight. I do not remember if I smile when I wake up, but that might be worth the mental note to find out.  Regardless, wings or no wings, I still like to walk the sky.

Today I am at Fort Stevens State Park, on the Oregon Coast. I am walking in a world between two skies. My footprints behind me hesitate before disappearing into the clouds. Off in the distance the horizon smudges becoming more of a concept than a definition of an idea. When the waves roll out, people bend down to greet their shadows.

This is line I walk between the worlds, is familiar to me. I seem to be obsessed with the search for duality. When I was young at my elementary school there was a merry-go round. Late in the afternoons when I was waiting for my mom to pick me up, I would spin myself, lying my flat back to metal and falling, flying into the fathomless blue sky. The sensation of experiencing two places at once, the metal grounded earth and the equally airy blue sky, grounds me. When I lived in Alaska, I looked to the ice beneath my feet for glimpses at the cosmos, often drawing connections between the star patterns and the cracks in the ice. Here, along the Oregon coast, I look at the waves on the beach. When a wave slides back down the sand, a thin film of water is left, hovering, carrying a mirage of the sky. This is what I am walking upon.

The concept of duality seems to be emerging as a strong theme within my artwork lately. My suspicions are that since I came out, and accepted that once dual side of my persona that it gifts a clarity towards other aspects of my dual nature and it’s representation in the surrounding environment. There is a certain amount of distrust left within me since that experience.  I am grateful for the realization but also horrified by the mind, my mind’s capability to deceive itself. As I seek to understand the implications that has on my personality I find myself drawn to these sort of grounded sanctuaries where I can experience both sides of the duality at once, extroverting an expression of my thoughts as a realized environment.

 The beach is peaceful to me today. With the constantly moving energy of the coming and going of the waves, the tumbling and sifting of the sand, and the scrambling, picking about of the local volunteer group cleaning the beach, I would think I would be irritated and taking my anger out selfishly on a stowed away chocolate bar. But I am not. Instead I am at peace walking the between-the-worlds where the sun is a washed out negative and the sky ripples silver and blue beneath my feet. I am comfortable on the edge of this perceived sanity. I am comfortable knowing my shadow connects me to the ground and my feet connect me to the sky.