18 Days in September in the Mothership
They arrive with questions.
How did you get here?
Where did you come from?
What it gives and takes away.
When you don't have to do it right. When you walk in wonder.
All that.
The Mothership and what it makes possible.On the road. And off
road. Especially off-road. The Dodge. One thing though, you've been with this
word for fifteen years: Storypath/Cuentocamino.
Karen wanted some beaches on the way south, into and
through, Oregon. To a destination point. An off-road art retreat week at
Emandal Farm fifteen miles outside of Willets, California, carrying her sewing
machine for a collage-landscape quilting workshop.
We stopped that night, inland, at Tillamook.
And there it was. First of the Meditations. Walking past the
rabbits with my camera, I was just looking around. The sound of water. Not just
slowing down. But stopping. Getting closer. Paying that much attention. How
long can one hold the camera steady. Sometimes you can't carry a tripod.
Sometimes you can.
They arrived like poems.
They arrived with questions.
Meditation on the stone in the ocean. The surf and the stone and the camera during September. During the time of the fires. The first day of clearing. All that comes up and what it looks like. And the beach stone. The second meditation
My own history with cameras. Following the poem.
I come into the museum deaf and blind. Not knowing. Not how
or what. Disconnected. Connection. Putting the camera down, on my walking
shoes, that's an accident born of camera etiquette. Still, my biases, fully
present.
Tomas Orn Tomasson is the musician in the bathtub.
From Munson Creek into the Tillamook River. Past the rabbits
and blackberries, looking around, maybe for stones. Maybe just looking around.
How did we stop here? Where are we? And why? How long can I keep the camera on
this water? Holding it, yes. Being steady for the music. Being here. Listening
for instructions. First of the meditations.
An instrument of objective seeing. Not objective, but
practice in the objective. Another way into wonder. After the first meditation.
Invitation everywhere. First take.
MOMA SanFrancisco. "The Visitors" by Tomas Orn Tomasson, Video installation with sound 64 minutes. This meditation is from one watching and listening, one entering not knowing where one is, a participant among participants, with museum patrons also listening and watching. This is one take, as is "The Visitors." 31 minutes in this experience.
Descending Mt. Tamalpais on the Bolinas-Fairfax Road, we come upon the historian of the road, Brian Crawford, and his friend, Jim, coming from the chaparral. Chaparral itself a meditation. Meditation on what we find in September Meditation.
Mt. Tamalpais, pilgrimage and reading. Thoreau's Journal, and David Hinton's Wilds of Poetry: a reading from the ones moved by Mt Tam and our world. By the sacred ones. The ones moving me. Snyder. Whalen. Jeffers. Rexroth. The community that speaks for us.
Thoreau and His Journal: Beginning four nights and five days in Jackson Demonstration State Forest on the North Fork Big River with Thoreau's Journal. Isolated and one-on-one. Nothing but community here. Storypath/Cuentocamino.
According to the odometer, the map, and the forester's instructions, this is where I should enter. I cross the creek, follow the trail. At the clearing, I'm sure this must be it, where the ancient trees will be found. I soon discover myself in a place I probably shouldn't be. Where I turn around, and the meditation turns.
Eel River Warming. Famous for its Suiseki stones, something else on this morning invites a listening.
Humboldt State Park. Dizziness and vertigo in the presence of the elders.
Harris Beach Sunset appears as fire. Color, surf, one bird, and firefighters from the Chetco Bar Fire. Romance arrives as beauty, surprise and wonder, but Karen Bodeen found the firefighters at the end of their day.
Kelp in surf
Robinson Jeffers' poem "New Mexican Mountain," sets up this meditation on the Southern Oregon Coast at Harris Beach
From Munson Creek into the Tillamook River. Past the rabbits
and blackberries, looking around, maybe for stones. Maybe just looking around.
How did we stop here? Where are we? And why? How long can I keep the camera on
this water? Holding it, yes. Being steady for the music. Being here. Listening
for instructions. First of the meditations.
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