Synesthesia - |
| The end of the Namibian desert as it meets the Atlantic Ocean (Namibia, 2004) |
PrefaceAfter any trip, I feelthat a part of me is not with me anymore. My eyes have not returned. I stroll on the beach or shop in the city or tend to my garden but my eyes are still far away. I see my hands trading money for food with street vendors, I see my legs walking up the steps of the temples, I see my body sitting on a crowded bus, and dusty roads unfolding outside the window. The life that I thought I left behind me is still ahead of me. Life lives forever. My eyes will never close. |
PrefaceBlindness should be blessed:it makes all seasons winter, it stores memories elsewhere. I have been in many places. I have heard many stories. I have seen and I have been. Elsewhere... Is it elsewhere that I have just come from? I wonder if there was a first story, how it was, what story it told. The story of all stories, perhaps. A story that begins and ends with itself. Endless. No ending but its own beginning. No ending but its own ending, which is not an ending because it never began at all. I wonder if elsewhere there are endings. I wonder about the first man who wrote the first story: the first man who loved the first woman. I wonder if his story and my story are the same, or two or more. And I wonder if I am like him or unlike him. I wonder if, perhaps, I am him. I wonder if I unfold into his past, or into my future. |
| Race Track in Death Valley (California, 2006) |
Death Valley 2006(Pictures)How odd that we experience the past before the future when, in fact, it is the future, not the past, that we're interested in. And how odd that we are so eager to learn the future when, in fact, the ultimate future is our eternal death. |
| Inside the Grand Canyon (Arizona, 2006) |
Grand Canyon 2006-07
(Pictures)I wish i could remember
the words of the wind
at the trailhead. Alas,
my psyche is already
flirting with the notion
that i am this draft
and that this cold night
is nothing but a warped
mirror image of my life.
The canyon opens below me,
its music, that only gods
can hear, a fossil record
of tiny events that changed
at least the entire universe.
Distant petroglyphs smile
at the shadows of the rim.
Everything i ever wanted
to know about nothing rests
inside this giant cavern.
Half asleep, i hardly pay
any attention to the oracle,
carved in the moon's shadow,
who clarifies the point
of not coming all the way
only for the sake of being here.
Likewise, there is no sky tonight
to blame for the future or the past.
Just fluttering breezes that descend
on the traveler from the heights
of the monumental gorges where
dawn and rock melt into faces
of ferocious supernatural beings.
What is truly terrifying is
that everything i see and hear
shall outlast the memory of it.
Nearing the end of the hike, the once
distant top, where the surly stones
and the loveless sand have mutated
into green layers of hope and affection,
the creek's hushed singing sustains
the tone of this collective soliloquy,
of all nature revisiting the pain
after surviving the tragic ordeal
discretely articulated by the dead
leaves along our trail. Which one
is for us, the sign or the message,
the admonition or the welcome,
the regret or the relief, the sunset
that will soon envelop all of us,
alive and dead, or, finally, the blood
that flows and pulsates madly
under the skin of all of us,
alive and dead, ready to soar into
countless more sunsets in countless
more landscapes of countless more
worlds for countless more centuries?
If the world is not itself,
am I myself?
| Tide pool of Point Reyes (California, 2007) |
Point Reyes 2007
(Pictures)I see everything everywhere.
What hovered above us
that night by the stormy beach
was not a cloud of stars or moons
but glimpses of our unlived lives
streaming through the blue dunes
and scattering grains of sand
over the naked body of the camp.
At sunset the ocean erupted
while the rising shadows
changed the landscape
as well as our identities
I don't remember whether it was i
or the waves that whispered "At last!"
I could still hear the cries of panicking seagulls
amidst the wind's terrifying admonition
as we buried ourselves in our tents
The underwater world revealed in the afternoon
by the low tide sank again, taking with it
the sea anemones and the starfish, patterns
and metaphors that reorganize themselves,
tinkling filaments of consciousness
(the fragile wavering membrane
that separates the outer world
from our inner thoughts)(objects
(can enter my mind by vibrating
in unison with that pulsating skin).
The beach became a hall of mirrors
reflecting its absurd shape,
waves drawing circles around the sculptures,
grooming zen gardens
around improvised temples,
each time leaving behind
shining fragments of the abyss.
The sea breeze blew through
the arched cliff into the miniature bay,
setting fire to its sand.
The smoke billowed up
to the ridge of the ravine.
It all looked like the mirror image
of someone we used to know,
and, to our relief, was no more
among us. The point being that
life does not go on.
Life, like Time itself,
invokes and succumbs to the sea,
and endlessly flows back
towards the unknown center,
each and every drop of water
contributing to the overall sense
of oblivion and being lost forever.
Trying to grasp the sun before it set,
i was instantly turned into ashes,
rainbows melting in my pupils.
While countless suns
tumbled down from their stems
into the horizon,
the nature of reality
became irrelevant.
I was being swallowed
in a dark pool of time;
flown away by the wind
like the tiny speck of dust
whose life is no more
than a painful convulsion.
Words like these
separate the inner world
from the outer world.
| Snow sculptures in Mt Lassen Park (California, 2007) |
Mt Lassen Park 2007
(Pictures)We don't know what we don't know.
Winter had sculpted
white temples and gates
in the dull stillness
of our consciousness.
A swirling dust of sunrays
rained on the crystal lattice,
on trees wrapped in kimonos
on bouquets of glittering snowflakes.
The mind, jumping back and forth
between the dimension of reality
and a world of metaphysical mirages
that hinted at a different kind
of existence, was a playful tool.
But our determination
concealed in itself
the trigger of its own
demise. Their faces
were walking towards us
only to disappear before
we could identify them.
The signs in the snow were
not footprints but puddles.
The gentle budding of icicles
blurred the boundaries of our imagination.
However, the mountain, by just standing there,
had the faculty of controlling our thoughts,
of demonstrating the mutual complementarity
of the natural order and of everyday life,
the transparent structure of the world.
That the essence is absence.
| View of Mt Tamalpais from the coast trail (California, 2007) |
Mt Tamalpais 2007
(Pictures)The breeze wove our shadows
into the fabric of twilight.
As we reached the top
we could see them all,
the multitudes of fireflies
trapped in their nests
all around the silent bay,
a council of frantically
pointless forms,
the uncoordinated design
of all those stories
looming upon us like
countless premonitions
of one momentous event
that would impose
a new magnificent order
on the surrounding chaos.
However, the vast dark skies
of your eyes reflected
a different world, one
without them.
I wanted to tell you
that the invisible becomes
visible from the summit.
Seeing the unseeable
seemed a logical way
to end our journey.
But your smile was asking
for far less: atoms of sense
to crack the obscure koan
of the future.
(When you looked outside
to the distant hills
you missed perhaps
the blooming flowers
behind you).
I watched you plant
the seeds of sunrise
into the heaven (amid
the receding rumbles
of a postponed
apocalypse).
Let us walk
to the end
of the world
and find out
what lies
beyond.
| Wildflower of Los Padres National Forest (California, 2007) |
Pimkolam Peak 2007
(Pictures)The last time
alone in the grass
listening to the universal clock tick
were dancing among the clouds
indifferent to the gods and legends
that we invented to explain your
indifference
a speck of retina that nerves
no longer connected to the brain,
no longer harbored from the chaos
of life,
and saw a hole in the fabric of spacetime,
a tunnel of whirling receding silent light
that
like an ancient echo between two worlds
that had never communicated before:
the sef
no matter how identical their shapes,
each one the portrait of the other,
each one trying to assemble the truth
about the other from the few ephemeral
fragments revealed and distorted;
of missing universe was the only reason
to see,
| Yucca of Ventana Wilderness (California, 2007) |
Ventana Wilderness 2007
(Pictures)Sometimes the geometry of Nature
reflects the geometry of the heart
as it fans out in all known directions
in its vain quest to grasp the essence
of Nature and rediscover the unknown,
in the process realizing that we are
but a vehicle for gods to carry out
and win their cynical game of chess.
| Cathedral Lake in Yosemite (California, 2007) |
Yosemite 2007
(Pictures)The lake
appeared
when i
did not
expect it
anymore,
out of
the snow
that hid
the footprints
of the past,
its granite
shores
blinking
like gold,
its icy
crust
drenched in
dark clouds.
Everything
looked
like a
beginning
except that
this was
the ending.
Once
the destination
is reached
the journey
is drained
of its purpose.
Going back
home
is a way
to surrender.
I
shall
be
here
forever.
| Santa Elena Canyon (Texas, 2007) |
Big Bend Park 2007
(Pictures)Likewise,
the echoes
in the narrowing
canyon
seemed
to assert
a life
of their own,
a spasm
to persist
or a yearning
to exist
in the absence
of the speaker:
were they our voices,
or were we theirs?
The waters
kept flowing
reflecting
the clouds
in the same way
that the walls
had reflected
our words.
Something
was missing
in that solemn game
of complementarity,
perhaps
just the fact
that it was not
an ordeal
but the natural order
revealed to us
by an invisible
prophet.
| Cactus blooms (Texas, 2007) |
Big Bend Park 2007
(Pictures)(You can start reading the poem from any line. It is a loop).
... but the rainbow that sprouted
as we were driving away
from the last ashes of sunset
over the prairie's cemetery
of sobbing shadows
unequivocally pointed the way
to a point in curved space
at the center of an infinite
well of snake coils
(we make constellations
out of stars, but what
do we make out of rainbows?),
a digression to the debate
between past and future
that had taken hold
earlier in the day fueled
by the pink cactus blooms
that littered the peak,
and by the myriad ghost
butterflies spiraling
out of the granite puddles
of the dry river bed,
all of them protagonists,
as well as victims,
of the tragedy of eternity
but the rainbow...
| Boulders at the top of Mt Brewer, Kings Canyon (USA, 2007) |
Mt Brewer, Kings Canyon, 2007
(Pictures)(You can start reading the poem from any line. It is a loop).
...the intricately sculpted
face of the mountain,
descending on me
like a sunset at sunrise;
a murky palimpsest
of disembodied boulders
and ephemeral chiaroscuro
apparitions. Space and time
were not real. The mountain
just did not look like
a mountain. Today did not
feel like today, or, for
that matter, a day at all.
It happened in a dark
room of an old wing
of the campus.
When someone said to
the physicist "there's no
tomorrow", the physicist
replied "there are only
tomorrows".
It is not that nothing
is what it seems, but
that nothing seems
what it is.
Nothing presented itself
the way it was going to be.
Everything was misleading:
the flowers, the rocks,
the logs dancing before
the dive of the waterfall,
the fish that had lost
its way in the concentric
waves of the lake.
The physicist smiled at me,
from wherever he was,
a point in the sky:
"Tomorrow will be
someone else's
yesterday."
I was there. or, better,
the summit was here.
As i raised my head
to breathe pure sky,
the sky shouted back at me
like in a mystical vision...
| Flowers of the Sierra Nevada (California, 2007) |
Shepherd Pass, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)The peace that we longed for
when we started our journey
soon revealed its other face,
achieving nefarious dissonance
with the very natural environment
that we thought its prerequisite.
It struck me that the difference
between the microscopic world
and the sober macroscopic world
that, despite physics, arises
from the other's drunkedness,
is a difference in harmony,
as the organic blending of rock
and life yields forms, contours
and colors that lost the ability
to create themselves. Mountains
and lakes are monoliths of death
that harbor myriad of tiny lives.
Every rock is a sign for every
flower to understand, but no sky
can decipher the sparkling tide
of a spider web in the cold wind
of the butterfly's first sunset.
| Owens Valley (California, 2007) |
Split Mountain, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)The ghost of you lingers
long after you have been
devoured by the thought
of another feverish sun
that never truly set,
long after the tedious
frail progress of time
has relented its grip
on my unwelcoming mind.
We stare at each other
across this miniature
universe that centuries
of geological disasters
sculpted like a sublime
marble monument to death,
knowing without knowing,
butterflies who flutter
for a day and think
it is forever.
| The Piute Creek near Piute Pass (California, 2007) |
Piute Pass, Eastern Sierra 2007
(Pictures)(Chant of the Moon's Loneliness)
Life is about
finding solutions
to solvable problems.
What would be
more interesting
is finding solutions
to unsolvable problems.
Exploring the absolute
entails knowing where
the absolute resides.
The certainty of sunrise,
its tedious inevitability,
spoils the meaning of it,
because meaning, by definition,
involves a degree of ambiguity,
and a loss of virginity.
We don't know anymore
what sunrise meant to us
before it molded us
into what we now are.
| Peaks of the Grand Teton (Wyoming, 2007) |
Grand Teton 2007
(Pictures)The giant shadow fluttering in the storm
smiles at our disoriented looks.
There exists only one substance:
the lightning that grants us a glimpse
of the mountains further up the trail,
the rain that wove tiny rainbows of pebbles
and wildflowers by the shallow frosty creek.
We sense and permeate the throbbing heart
and the heavy breathing of the sky.
For a moment we are all part
of the same reality.
For a moment all are monsters
in the same horror movie.
Darkness makes up multiple.
Light makes us one and whole.
A thread in the spider web,
an incandescent thought.
The reflection of moonlight
on the white granite veins
of the glacier acts like
the beam of a lighthouse
scouring the cruel territory
for signs of impending life.
The wave that connects us all.
| Flowers near Pebble Creek, Yellowstone (Wyoming, 2007) |
Yellowstone 2007
(Pictures)On the Nature of Spacetime
Oddly enough
the ugly crack
on the windshield
mocks the pattern
of a spider-web,
possibly the clue
to a law of nature
that applies to
a whole category
of unknown lattices.
The spider, that most
common of nuisances
that has always
been with us,
might, after all,
hold the solution
to the ultimate riddle
of the universe:
the elusive fabric
of reality.
Glass is, after all,
the ultimate material,
immaterial, an optical
miracle, a molecular
wonder. It comes
from sand that is not
transparent itself.
What happens
to the atoms that
lets the light through?
And why does a stone,
hitting the glass,
reveal the spider-web
that was invisible?
The senses are not
powerful enough
to comprehend
the transition
from architecture
to nature.
Could spacetime
be a spider-web
extending out
from the observer
to capture events
and private horizons
of other observers?
The spider does not know
what permeates life,
the terror and the agony
of the victims.
This is, after all,
a universe of blind beings,
that do not see the trail,
nor the destination.
The blind live
in the world
that they can hear.
They visit a place
by listening to
its sounds.
They inhabit space
that is alive, only
when it is alive.
They too are made
of time, Jorge,
persistent time.
They hear
the ticking
but they
cannot watch
what happens
to the minute hand
of the clock
as it gently drifts
towards Dali's desert.
To the blind
every tick
is the same.
Blindness is the absence.
The absence of reality;
the absence even of absence.
| Cliff houses in Dogon country (Mali, 2007) |
Teli, Mali 2007
(Pictures)The skies of Africa
(there are many, one
encircling the other)
mirror the joy
and sorrow sown
by ancient people,
who were fluent
in magic, for us
to harvest, fluent
in science.
| Dusy Basin (California, 2007) |
Thunderbolt Peak, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)The horizon consumes my dreams.
| Mt Whitney's mountaineering route (California, 2007) |
Mt Whitney, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)Why do places
that have long
ceased to exist
still survive
in our memory?
The mountain radiates
a sense of familiarity
that induces a false
sense of knowing.
Proust's
telescope of time,
memory, amplifies
distant echoes.
Remembering
is compulsory
time travel.
The journey
is endless
and involuntary.
Why is the past
so important
that we have
to revisit it
forever? What
makes so inevitable
the impossible?
We can neither
abandon nor continue
the journey.
We must reach
the destination
that is not
a destination
but merely
a silhouette
of what it was
before it became
our destination.
Who will deliver
the message
to the messengers?
Who will be
the witness
for the witnesses?
I confused
my metaphors
again.
The watch reads no time.
Space dissolves into
one large all-devouring
shadow.
Pure silence descends
on the anchorite's gaze.
| Hungry Packer Lake (California, 2007) |
Mt Darwin, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)Microscopes
and telescopes
allow us to see
the unseeable.
They inject
a new mind and soul
in our body to feel
the unfeelable.
Human knowledge
is bounded
by the inadequacy
of our senses
to connect
with scales
larger or smaller
than ourselves.
We only know
the dimension
that communicates
through forms
of energy that
our bodies can
intercept.
The meanings
that we assign
to the very small
and the very large
are mediated
by the tools
that we invent.
Science translates
an incomprehensible
foreign language
into the vernacular
of our daily lives
by replacing our
sensory experience
with terrible visions
of worlds that are
homologous to ours.
Our imagination
cannot imagine
the ontology
of the world
that contains us
or of the world
that is contained
in us. Life as
we know it is
not life.
| The Cottonwood Lakes (California, 2007) |
Mt Langley, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)As the horizon becomes
a mere abstraction,
light floods my eyes
from every direction.
Shadow, we forget,
is the absence
of light.
Time exhales light
like silk flows
from the moth
that feeds on
mulberry leaves.
Light is inextricably
bound to the perception
of time.
The clairvoyance of silence
envelops my future,
a butterfly caught
in a hurricane.
Fear and pride
fuel each other,
like the lowest sun
casts the longest shadows.
The immobility of existence
is an optical illusion.
| The Palisade Crest (California, 2007) |
Scimitar Pass, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)Having left behind
the moral cacophony
of the city,
the virginity of the mountains,
the tenuous fragrance of the snow
the labyrinthine pomp
of the withering glacier
restored my mind
to the primordial spleen
of the geological stripes.
We failed. Humbled,
we learned that maps
don't lead to places
but merely let us
imagine them; that we
succeed inasmuch as
we fail.
The irony: we
wanted to
change the world
and the world
changed us.
We had no
choice because
all we had
was choice.
| A sub-peak to Mt Keith (California, 2007) |
Mt Keith, Eastern Sierras 2007
(Pictures)The sky was morphing into us.
A conflagration of sunsets
reminds me of a conjecture
that was never proven
by the ancient scholars;
that we roam not a world,
but merely our mind.
That we inhabit
the world of prior
existence. Or inexistence.
Or both.
But it seems to me
that the center
of the universe
is a mirror.
We pace back and forth
through it, cross our own
footsteps, repeat ourselves,
like a spider weaving
its web.
At the end we have
seen nothing else
or more than ourselves
toiling frantically
to bestow a map
on a flat unbroken land.
The possible infinites
are reduced to none.
The world is not an idea,
Arthur: each idea is
a world.
| The view from the summit of Cone Peak (California, 2008) |
Cone Peak, Ventana Wilderness 2008
(Pictures)Arches of time
link the two ridges
of the canyon,
one in the shade
and one in the sun,
like a meeting of matter
and antimatter,
that attract
and self-destruct,
the river buried
by the darkness
that slowly engulfs
the other side,
by the collision
that was inevitable,
by the future
that we would
rather forget.
| The moon over the Ventana Wilderness (California, 2008) |
Los Padres National Forest 2008
(Pictures)There are no birds.
Not even a wind to
speak to the ghosts.
Chaos lurks everywhere.
One can hardly
discern the path
in the dead forest
of stinging shrubs,
towering yuccas
and octopus roots;
or dispel the notion
that we are lost.
The world from here
is a terrible creature,
its bowels overflowing
with shapes and colors
that scratch and burn,
the very antithesis
of geometric beauty,
a euphoric mayhem
that tears the blue
canvas of the sky
and lets us peek
at what lies behind it:
the silence of the cross.
Have i experienced
this before? I feel
the absence of the birds.
We need to conquer
the nightmare, so that
we can resurface to another
bleaker nightmare, to a
far more decisive chaos,
of words and faces.
We reach the creek,
and find its water
devoid of fish.
From down here
life looks like
a gross mistake.
| A hill of the Ohlone Wilderness (California, 2008) |
Ohlone Wilderness 2008
(Pictures)Nuut creates the starry night,
the roof of the world.
I wrote a poem that blends
Quantum Theory and Relativity,
but people will mistake it
for one of those nature
poems that turn a landscape
into a state of mind.
I have turned a state of mind
into the only landscape
that can possibly exist,
and now i wonder what,
if anything, is left to do.
A light appeared behind
the rainbow of life.
At first i did not
comprehend the meaning.
Why me? and why here?
and why now? It felt
as if someone had switched on
the light in the universe
only for me to roam it.
I'm still roaming it.
Like a butterfly
in a flower garden,
i envy the bees
who have a purpose.
Nuut swallows the stars and
lets the scarab push the sun
up and down the eternal hill.
| Sculptured Beach (Point Reyes, California, 2008) |
Point Reyes 2008
(Pictures)The sculptures
that emerged
from the sea
were simple words
in the language
of the tide.
Nature talks
to everyone
all the time.
What we comprehend
is only a fraction
of what we are told.
Our existence is
a constant stream
of meaning from
the world to our
souls. However,
each species' brain
can only access
a set of those
cryptic symbols.
If human lives
are refracted
in the prism
of the future,
then the living
world at large
is feeding on
the eternal now
whose opaque
shadows sculpt
the landscape
that we roam
in a vain quest
for the absolute.
(The fragile organisms
that cling to the rocks
are a metaphor for our
own titanic struggle
of creating an authentic
self in the absence
of any divine guidance).
I waited for a question,
not an answer, until sunset,
until the statues vanished
in the rising waters. By then
the multitude of moon sparks
in the ocean looked like
someone else's tomorrow.
| A tree by the estuary (Estero, Point Reyes, California, 2008) |
Point Reyes 2008
(Pictures)A sea is, ultimately,
a hole in the mirror.
A labirynth of destinies
swims in the surfs, defying
the all-embracing symbolism
of the beach, a prison for
dreams, a reliquiary of
untold stories. The seagulls
are strange messengers. They
know, but they don't tell.
(Is it possible to write a history
of one's life? Or does the notion
of life having a history refer
to such an unlikely event that
it is best left to the worms
of eternity who will consume
the last flames of the soul?)
I hear the cries of those who
have been deprived of salvation.
I see the twitching of a poet's
metaphor. I feel the pain
of the immaculate ending.
And i behold the goddess
of these seas, the thinker
of the very first thought,
silently staring at herself
in the mirror.
The theology of death
unfolds in front of us,
anxious spectators who are also
indifferent protagonists.
What we are today
is a special case
of what we will be
tomorrow.
| Yucca flower (Botchers Gap, California, 2008) |
Ventana Wilderness 2008
(Pictures)The golden trees
emerging
from the mist
that is crawling
up the canyon
are telling us
a story that is
about them
as well as
about us
listening
to them.
They are both
in the past
(when they talk
to themselves)
and in the present
(when they talk
to us).
The forest
is both
a mirror
and a window.
Eventually
leaves
reappear.
Their
fragrance
diverts
the mind,
unable
to discern
a reflection
of our past
from a glimpse
of a new
direction.
| Mt Tyndall and the Williamson Bowl (California, 2008) |
Mt Williamson, Eastern Sierras, 2008
(Pictures)The witch with the arched nose
at the top of the gully,
protruding above
the fat dwarves
of fossil snow
that shape
our route,
is quarreling
with white
swirling clouds
(life made of light,
twitching filaments
in the sky).
At my feet
a necklace of clocks
curls like a snake.
Visions undo
visions. The mind
is a factory
of illusions.
However i sense
a logic behind
the mirages.
It feels as if
i have been still
all the time,
while all else
has been traveling
towards me.
As if the world,
that had always
been moving
in one direction,
had suddenly
changed course
and retreated
its steps.
It feels so high,
so close to the sun,
that i wonder if we
would we be better off
without the sky.
| The Young Lakes and Ragged Peak (Yosemite, California, 2008) |
Mt Conness 2008
(Pictures)(Nature is a poet
that never uses
the word "I").
The magnificent firestorm
of the red thistle
feels like a tornado
that picks up debris
as it circles and
radiates petals of light
and vanishes beyond
the brittle horizon.
(How much time must elapse
for the dew milked
from a cobweb at dawn
to waver and wither
at the distant tremor
of some solar flares
that momentarily blind
the whole galaxy?)
When you enter the sphere,
the expansion begins.
A sky observed by humans
is a multi-dimensional
experience. The contrast
between what lies above
and what lies underneath
creates waves of meaning.
(If i had your wings,
bird, i would not
fly: i would, instead,
ponder what wingless
beings would do
with my wings.)
I started listening
to my own breathing,
to the lost verses
of the supreme poem.
| Wildflower along the Piute Creek (Eastern Sierras, California, 2008) |
Piute Pass 2008
(Pictures)The moon never
sleeps alone.
I lit the fire.
Infinite skies
reflected it
to the rest
of the world,
and the world
was forever
transformed.
Dawn does not
just happen.
I happen. Life
is a subtle
interplay
of me asking
the questions
and the world
responding.
Life is an algebra
of symbols that entail
each other ad libitum,
jugglers of noumena
and emotions deceived
by supernatural forces.
You can see a random
image of yourself
in any dead organism.
A mirror is the cruellest
messenger: it is Time
that disintegrates
and buries itself
in the birthpangs
of other images.
My fire has died out.
Its ashes are swallowed
by the giant shadow
that emanates at night
from the corpse of Shiva,
his many arms forming
a dome of glittering
pebbles and shells
inside the overcast eyes
of the sun and the moon,
his frenzied dances
infinitely reflected
to every corner
of the labirynth
that we entered
when we exited.
Suddently it is time
to go home again.
How fitting that "home"
be on the opposite side
of where i came from.
| Gardiner Creek Canyon (Kings Canyon, California, 2008) |
Kings Canyon 2008
(Pictures)And Schroedinger
did not believe
it either that we
can be and not
be at the same
time. He heard
the sound but did
not recognize
the language
that was spoken
to him. Did he
at least know
the speaker? I
have often found
trails that are
and are not.
They lead to both
nowhere, somewhere
and everywhere.
They lead back
to me, to my
mother's womb,
to the dirt that
we all were
before anybody
was even born,
and to this unknown
place where i lost
my trail, to the
night that has
to elapse before
i can return to
any certainty.
We were and
will be, but
perhaps we never
truly are.
| The Minarets region from Ediza Lake (Ansel Adams Wilderness, California, 2008) |
Mt Ritter 2008
(Pictures)I often imagine
buildings
that cannot
be built.
I wonder
if there exists
a mountain
that cannot rise
or a river
that cannot flow.
The impossibility
of being
is the secret
of being.
Being is
neither time
nor space.
| The McClure and Lyell basins and Lyell Canyon (Yosemite, California, 2008) |
Mt Lyell, Yosemite 2008
(Pictures)The mirror
doesn't know
whom it reflects.
And yet a mirror
is still someone,
although someone
else, not itself.
And, of course,
that is true
of each of us.
Shroud the mirror.
Bury its soul.
Release the ghost.
There is more
to life than
life itself.
(Everything
is a mirror:
the glacier,
the sky, my eye,
a sea, my memory,
a word, a thought.
Each truth. Life
revolves inside
a hall of mirrors.
A recursive symbol,
a baffling diagram
of chaotic lines).
| The Barrett Lakes from the North Palisade (Eastern Sierras, California, 2008) |
Palisades, Eastern Sierras 2008
(Pictures)I am seeing sounds.
The navel swells.
We have suddenly
entered
an upside down
world
where one
can bring a dead memory
back to life,
each massive boulder
a motionless
living being that stares
at my comic inability
to stand still.
I am hearing light.
| Finger Lake (Eastern Sierras, California, 2008) |
Middle Palisade, Eastern Sierras 2008
(Pictures)Sitting on the top
of this mountain,
i doubt the unknown,
i doubt there exists
anything the lens
of my eye cannot
read and decipher.
On the contrary,
i'd like to teach
the clouds how to swim.
I'd like to thread
beads of sunshine
from the remote lakes
and knit the beaches
and islands that we
can only visit if we
believe they exist.
Ghosts of birds slice
the bleeding horizon
infinitely. Thunder
choked with withered
winds heralds autumn.
As i rest like a castaway,
swallowed by the heavens,
everything collides with
the impenetrable forest
of my memories. Propelled
to a higher orbit, to
a deeper root, my shadow
howls for a sign of death.
| Darwin Canyon (Eastern Sierras, California, 2008) |
Evolution Region, Eastern Sierras 2008
(Pictures)The last glimpses of sunset reflected by the snow patch
feel like the beam of a lighthouse searching for the shipwreck.
I am only an opaque mist of thoughts, some other me,
that descends the gully towards the enchanted basin;
enough to disenthrall myself from the spell of the lake
that maps geological eons with its veins, each waterdrop
abducting the collective past and hinting at life elsewhere
in the absence of matter that would truly warp spacetime.
In the advancing darkness, trees and creeks fade in and out,
while hieroglyphs of galaxies hover high above my head.
We are all players in the universal game,
we are all entangled in the same web.
When we cross the border,
we dwell in our graves.
Our footprints multiply
and return
until we tire of our
selves.
| Mt Shasta from Mudcreek Canyon (Mt Shasta, California, 2008) |
Mt Shasta 2008
(Pictures)Waiting is a state of mind.
So many search for his hostile
presence. They expect him
to reveal himself; an endless
misunderstanding.
Like a bird flying
above the high cliffs
and playing a game
with its own shadow.
We would not recognise him
were we to see him.
This mountain is mostly
made of stone, not of
water.
We are incomplete,
and wildly
approximate.
We are containers
of images and sounds
who elicit them
from the surrounding
insentient nature.
Reality is anesthesia.
We are defined
by what we lack.
A hypothesis is not
a thesis.
There are questions
that we have to answer,
whether through satire,
mythology or biography.
If he were to arrive,
we would not exist
anymore.
Not today, perhaps
tomorrow.
A metaphor for myself
(a futile space in which
nothing happens).
He has always
been here.
Nothing
is a thing.