Well, it’s that time of the year when flowers bloom and the birds and the bees flutter in the gentle breeze as tall grass sway, and a young man’s thoughts turn to the sublime whispers in the twilight hours when shadows engulf the remote passages, echoing the drumbeats of time, sprinkled with melodies of light!
On the 18th I will begin my journey to confront myself as an individual bereft of civilized crutches before the winds and the shadows. I will go to the deserts of the Southwest to capture the numinous and the transcendent; I will shed my cultural garb and stand naked before the sun and the silence and hope to steal a glimpse of something beyond the constructs of man and our much acclaimed yet misinformed societies!
However, much to my consternation, and due to my grandiose hypocrisy, early in the morning on the day of my departure, I will don my Gore-Tex boots and drive my Volvo to Reagan National and board a United Airline Boeing Airbus, and land in LAS and rent a Jeep, fill it with fossil fuel dispensed by Exxon Mobile, fill my reserves with REI tools and food, pack bottled water from Evian endorsement here — charge my Canon 1Ds and pack the IS L lenses, and pack copious gigabyte chips, along with the Manfrotto tripod, the Apple iPod, The North Face backpack, satellite maps and a GPS card for the Treo mobile, and much, much more!ha! And then drive westbound on Route 66 onto the South Rim and beyond!
Did I say naked before the winds? Remember that scene in The Matrix when “Reagan” chose the taste of bloody meat and wine over Zion? We’re forever broken, as individuals we no longer exist without the matrix and fabric of society and the State. I suppose the answer is to find the sublime as a modern man? Is this an act of contrition in compromise or pragmatic suspension of disbelief in the vagaries of Maya? Capitulation? I dunno!
As I were… Once saturated with the icons and landmarks, my Jeep will hit a shifting dune or get lost in a ghost town and there!, there I will perhaps see a ray of light skimming the top of a butte and sparkling in the surface ripple of a fresh rain puddle, and, below the surface an awakened toad looking up, reflecting the clouds in its princely eye! Ha! High as a kite, fucked up to the bone, lust in the fringe, maybe we can fix this broken man after all!
-I.A.T.
