A Rainbow at Milestone 35

On January 1, 2008, five years ago tomorrow, I posted "A(nother) New Year," a short meditation on my 30th birthday and the passage of time. The piece closes with the following paragraph.

"It's a rare, curious thing when one's perception of life transitions from the regular line of past, present, and future to an ambiguous cycle of individual moments. This mode is necessarily fleeting, so difficult is it to reconcile with contemporary life. We flip through scrapbooks and retell stories of our youth; the ball drops, the clock counts down and the crowd's vague, anticipatory energy crescendos; a mark is made, the number changed; the owl falls on the quivering chaff. Ring in the year of the brown rat. I'll also ring in another decade."

Relative Birthday Abundance

Tundra (or Whistler) swans; Heron Hope; Locustville, VA; December 2010
As an enthusiastic amateur naturalist living in New York City, I grew fond of the hearty, adaptive species that populated the boroughs' streets, parks, and waterfronts: pigeons and gulls, rats and red-tailed hawks, starlings and squirrels. When I felt out of step with my urban friends and neighbors, as I occasionally did, I found that watching the animals helped. Chittering around the base of a corner garbage can, the sparrows and starlings chastised me for moping. The herring gull's shrill shout over the East River exhorted me to shake off my self-conscious alienation. All of these species were part of my urban wildlife support network. Watching them reminded me to get on with the business of grateful L-I-V-I-N', no matter where I might be. Now that I live in San Francisco, a town with greater biodiversity than NYC, I'm happy to have Steller's jays, Brewer's blackbirds, and ravens keeping me company, too.

Today, however, my girlfriend and I are visiting my parents on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Dumped on by the latest "snowpocalypse," we've been locked in for most of our visit. Not that I mind. Yesterday morning, I trudged through the snow drifts around my home ground, eyes squinted in the dazzling winter light. In the space of an hour, I saw thousands of snow geese rise noisily from a partially exposed barley field; turkey vultures sweep across the sky, scenting for an unfortunate victim of the biting weather; a woodcock flush from a hedge; coyote tracks that skirted a small cemetery; mouse tracks that emerged from under a snow-covered plow and lightly skipped across the snowfall's surface to a patch of open grass; a yellow-rumped warbler and a Carolina wren vying for position atop a perch; two tundra (or whistling) swans flying low overhead; Canada geese and green-winged teal gathered in the open water of the estuary; a cottontail peer from a tangle of grasses. It occurred to me, as I contemplated such abundance and diversity, that my urban wildlife support network, whatever its personal value, is but a shadow of what I witnessed this December morning.


Sunset; Heron Hope; Locustville, VA; December 2010
Last year, at this time, I wrote, "32 years on this Earth, and still I feel like I am opening my eyes for the first time." Now 33, that statement is no less true. Given my stubborn optimism, I presume that it will be true at 43, 53, or 83 (should I survive so long). Still, I wish that I could open my eyes to greater species diversity in the cities that I call home. We humans are an increasingly urban species, and we must take care not to forget about the world's collapsing biodiversity. It isn't just the country folks that benefit from it; we all do, whether we appreciate that fact or not.

All the same, I'm looking forward to hearing the belated birthday croaks from the ravens above the Inner Sunset.

Happy 2011, friends. May it be a rich, sweet, and happy year!


Snow Geese; Heron Hope; Locustville, VA; December 2010
Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2010

A Birthday Gift

Shell Beach; Sea Ranch, CA
On the morning of my 32nd birthday, I am sitting on the northern California coast, watching a great egret balance on a raft of dead sea grass. The grasses are held in suspension on the Pacific Ocean's surface by submerged kelp beds, and the white bird rises and falls atop the coastal surge, otherwise motionless as it awaits potential prey. A pair of brown pelicans glides north, just over the waves.

32 years on this Earth, and still I feel like I am opening my eyes for the first time.

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2009

Coasts

Steep Ravine Trail, Mount Tamalpais, December 29th, 2009

"The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion."

Elizabeth and I devoted the afternoon of my thirty-first birthday to striding down (and then huffing back up) the aptly named Steep Ravine Trail in Mount Tamalpais State Park. During our descent, we paused for a few minutes on a stocky wood footbridge spanning a shallow gully stream. I leaned against the bridge's handrail and appreciated the subtle play of sunlight on the forest's understory, then tilted my head far back to admire the towering canopy. A bird call punctuated the stream's casual susurration.

The impressive montane forest brought to mind a quotation I copied into one of my commonplace books some years ago. In his account of an interview with a Venezuelan native, the celebrated 19th century German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt claims that the Indian critiqued the Christian God of the European explorers and conquerors, observing, "Your god keeps himself shut up in a house as if he were old and infirm. Ours is in the forest and in the fields and on the mountains when the rain comes." Although no rain graced Mount Tamalpais this December 29th, the Indian's god was also mine.


Steep Ravine Trail, Mount Tamalpais, December 29th, 2009

Mount Tamalpais is located in southern Marin County, California, just north of San Francisco. The lush Douglas fir and redwood forests of the region are magical places. They served as inspiration for George Lucas's forested moon Endor and they call to mind the epic majesty of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. (In fact, some "Star Wars" fans reasonably suggest that Lucas named his verdant moon in homage to Tolkien. Tolkien, a celebrated linguist and scholar, invented languages for his fantasy fiction and in the Quenya tongue, one of the elvish languages he created, the word for Middle-earth is Endor.)

Of all Tolkien's creatures, the elegant and noble elves of Lothlorien especially appealed to me when I first read "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings." The elves are wise, fair and gracious beings, but also wild, intimately attached to the world of the hunter and to Nature's ambivalent magic. Twenty years after my first reading of Tolkien's fantasy epic, I still proudly characterize myself as a Nature worshiper.

The economist and sociologist Max Weber famously said that the secularization of society and increasing specialization of methodological inquiry had led to a "disenchantment of the world." Indeed, they have, but Baruch Spinoza's brand of naturalistic pantheism allows for a happy marriage of the material and metaphysical worlds. The two spheres, like the taijitu's yin and yang, are complementary parts of a whole. Necessarily, then, exclusion or disparagement of one of these two realms is limiting.

Although the Enlightenment's separation of reason and imagination, and of science and religion, has yielded exemplary human achievements, it also alienates us from the integrated aggregate. We no longer conceive of the universe (or our experience of it) as coherent or unified; since at least the 17th century, the prevailing philosophical current is Cartesian, depicting the universe as a random assemblage of disparate parts. As a result, those individuals who, like the brilliant 19th century critic John Ruskin, strive to reconcile "the broken harmonies of fact and fancy, thought and feeling, and truth and faith" are considered naive or fey. Even Gershom Scholem, the renowned historian of Jewish mysticism, described his philosopher friend Walter Benjamin's work as "an often puzzling juxtaposition of the two modes of thought, the metaphysical-theological and the materialistic." I align myself with the philosophical dissidents because, like Ruskin and Benjamin, I feel that the material and metaphysical realms are locked in a harmonious, reciprocal relationship. Framed another way, I believe that the mundane is the sacred; I deny the divisive "and."

"My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. So what we have to recover is our original unity."

Steep Ravine Trail, Mount Tamalpais, December 29th, 2009

That December evening, Elizabeth and I motored along Grizzly Peak's ridge line and, as the Pacific horizon took the sun, we admired the colorful strata deposited over San Francisco's hills, city lights and bay. Later, after a lovely dinner in Berkeley, we returned to Elizabeth's home and relaxed with her parents and brothers. It was a superlative day. Yet because I'm accustomed to spending my birthday in brooding solitude, it was also an exceptional one, and therefore I wasn't surprised when, driving to Grizzly Peak, I felt a twinge of regret.

To be sure, the day was nearly perfect, but I had to ignore the call issued by the deep blues and purples of twilight, an invitation to submerge myself in the gathering darkness. I remarked to Elizabeth that it felt very strange to observe my birthday without making space for rumination. We turned onto Grizzly Peak Boulevard. I watched the car's headlights rake across a stand of trees, frightening back the dark.


View of Berkeley and San Francisco Bay, December 29th, 2009

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton described his contemplative practice as "death for the sake of life." Merton may be guilty of rhetorical flourish, but one of contemplation's principal goals is the erasure of self or the death, if you will, of the self-conscious individual. I consider myself lucky; I once experienced release from the first-person, a rare gift in our culture of consumption and distraction. I consider those exceptional moments an ecstatic opening to The All, a glimpse of the integrated, infinite universe.

The word ecstasy is derived from the Greek word for "to stand out of place." On the dike at Heron's Foot, my conscious being was literally outside (or at least without) the self. For a time, the atoms, molecules, cells and organs that comprise "me" were undifferentiated from the greater web. Religious mystics usually refer to this variety of fundamental experience as "seeing God." That name bothers me less than it did in my militantly atheistic adolescence, but I prefer The All (or an apophatic counterpart, The Nothing) because the name possesses majesty and mystery but none of the unfortunate authoritarian baggage. Furthermore, the rituals of institutionalized religion and its "under God" subjects are no more or less valuable than the rituals of the heathen mystic. John Dewey's "live animal" might just as easily be awakened in the gropings of sex as in penitential prayer, and God is just as easily found in the forests of Mount Tamalpais as in the acolyte's cathedral. After all, there is nothing supernatural about ecstasy; it is only a mode of hyper awareness, a more immediate connection to the universe, or at least as much of one as our limited vessels can perceive.

Now, January already half gone, I sit at my day-job desk and look out on Manhattan's East River. The late afternoon sun's angled glow paints the 59th Street Bridge in peach-yellow and refracts off the west face of Citibank's glass obelisk in Queens. A herring gull flaps over Roosevelt Island and the river runs slack as it awaits the pull of outgoing tide. In "Rewriting Nature," an essay published in The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote "[Charles] Darwin disenchanted believers in Heaven, but he reenchanted lovers of Earth."

I concur.

"What we have to be is what we are."

Office window view; East River, Roosevelt Island and Queens, January 2008

Note: all indented quotations, Thomas Merton

Photo credits: all images, Hungry Hyaena, 2008

A(nother) New Year

Born shortly after the northern hemisphere's winter solstice, on one of the year's darkest days, I'm accustomed to quiet, contemplative birthdays, and my thirtieth was no exception.

After waking, I drove a short distance from my parents' house to a place where I'd several days before noticed a deer carcass dumped in a roadside ditch. My choice of subject intrigued the few motorists that passed. Their cars slowed to a crawl as they peered through rain-streaked windows, concerned eyes moving from the rotting mass of flesh, fur and bone to me, hunched over my camera in the cold drizzle. Hoping to allay any misgiving, I smiled cheerfully and waved.

Later, in fading afternoon light, I stood on the Heron Hope dock and surveyed the marsh and estuary while my father plucked and gutted three mourning dove he shot in a friend's field. The air was humid and chilly. I held open a bag and my father deposited the cleaned bodies of the little birds, one after the other. Some crows called from the southwest, and an impressive flight of black ducks passed overhead on squeaky wings.

After nightfall I shared a meal with my parents and a friend. We discussed presidential candidates, the increasing surreality of American elections, San Francisco's changing neighborhoods, and the ahistorical silliness of transplanting sports franchises without changing the team name. We bled two bottles of merlot before I switched to beer and watched some Dave Chapelle stand-up on television.

Pleasantly buzzed and heavy with holiday treats, I eventually lay down on the couch, another year older, but more happy than I've been in years.

It's a rare, curious thing when one's perception of life transitions from the regular line of past, present and future to an ambiguous cycle of individual moments. This mode is necessarily fleeting, so difficult is it to reconcile with contemporary life. We flip through scrapbooks and retell stories of our youth; the ball drops, the clock counts down and the crowd's vague, anticipatory energy crescendos; a mark is made, the number changed; the owl falls on the quivering chaff.

Ring in the year of the brown rat. I'll also ring in another decade.

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2007

Happy (warm) new year!

I'm a cold weather man. Winter days and nights possess an obscure magic that buoys my spirit and heartens my constitution. I'm particularly sensitive to this variety of dark enchantment when I'm alone in winter woods. We humans have grown complacent in our throne atop the food chain, and I enjoy my body's reaction to harsh conditions as I also appreciate occasional haunting by the specter of predation. Both are humbling, gratifying reminders of what we've come from, and of what we are.

But this winter has been unseasonably warm. As always, I traveled south to Virginia to visit my parents. The temperature on the morning of my birthday, December 29th, was 52 degrees Fahrenheit; by late afternoon, it was over 60. Yet still the talking heads on the local news speak of global warming as if it may be a fiction! Skepticism serves its purpose in science, and shouldn't be dismissed offhand, but whether we're attributing warming to human activity or to natural fluctuations, an examination of the data shows that the general trend is all too apparent.


A flock of about 800 snows departs the estuary in search of morning food
Because of the warm temperatures, the travels of migratory species are unusual this year. Last Thanksgiving, I watched four or five thousand snow geese (Chen caerulescens) pitch into the salt water estuary alongside my parents' house. The birds arrive in last light to roost, and they depart just after dawn, moving on to feed in the fields of winter wheat.

This year, by contrast, the late December roosts were limited to one thousand birds, give or take a couple hundred. The weather is warm enough that the geese, heading south from their Arctic breeding grounds, don't need to fly so far to find food and refuge. The spectacular flocks that I watched in the fall of 2005 probably took up winter residence this year in Delaware and New Jersey, or points farther north.

+++++


Photo of the heron's feet; monofilament already cut away
Walking my Virginia prpoerty two days before my birthday, my father and I came upon the decapitated body of a great blue heron (Ardea herodias). The beheading was likely the work of a fox or raccoon, but the predator was not responsible for the bird's death. The heron's legs and feet were knotted with monofilament fishing line. Two "toes" on the right foot were tied together. More serious was the mass of line that bound the left leg to the knot on the right foot. The bird had eked out a living by hop hunting. This is handicap enough for any animal, but, for a heron, a creature that specializes in water stalking, hopping surely cost the bird a great many meals.

Apparently this individual was tough. Just as a tree grows around a collar left on too long, so had the heron's flesh swollen around the fishing line as the bird continued to grow. I'm not knowledgeable enough to estimate the heron's age with any accuracy, but, by the looks of it, the line had bound the bird for at least a year. My father cut the monofilament away and we placed the heron's body in the middle of a trail, hoping that the vultures already circling above would descend once the two humans moved on.

Oddly, when I returned to check on the progress the following afternoon, the heron's body remained untouched. No raccoon or fox had returned to finish what they began, and the vultures had apprently elected to pass up this meal in favor of more filling options. (This winter's warm weather has left scavengers at ease and relatively heavy-bellied. As a result, they are less thorough in their clean-up efforts.)


Photo of heron's left foot w/ my hand, for scale

I examined the heron again, this time photographing the bird's marvelous feet. As far as I'm concerned, anyone familiar with both reptiles and birds must accept their common ancestry. The great blue's long toes and legs share much with those of some lizard species. As a friend remarked upon seeing the bird, "It reminds me of an alligator." Indeed. Ain't evolution wondrous?


Photo of heron's left foot w/ my hand, for scale
Photo credits: all by Hungry Hyaena

Pressing the Winter Flesh

Despite the holiday marketing craze, December is one of my favorite months. I'm always impressed by the surge of positive creative energy that December provides and the cold, but not yet frigid, weather appeals to my constitution. Last year a friend told me that I look healthier in the winter, though she wondered if the improvement might not simply be the result of a superior winter wardrobe. Whatever the case, I assume that my irrational relish for the month is fundamentally narcissistic; I was born on December 29th, another melancholic Capricorn who enjoys snow, cold weather, quiet nights in the studio, and contrary stances.

But December has also become a big month in the art world. ArtForum publishes its "Best of" issue, a coffee table essential for art-friendly urbanites, and during the first week of the month "everybody who is somebody" in the art world flies south for a winter weekend in Miami, Florida. Art Basel Miami Beach draws dealers, collectors, curators, and artists alike. All of these art world castes converge for some scenesterism, and for plenty of wheeling and dealing. Already considered one of the biggest, most important art events in North America - this despite a four year history - ABMB turns Miami into a center (if not the center) of art world commerce and consideration for one week each year.

Around ABMB, a number of smaller events/fairs have sprung up, most notably Aqua Art Miami, ScopeMiami, PULSE Miami, and the NADA Art Fair Miami. A quick survey of these names - Aqua, Scope, PULSE - and you might mistakingly assume that Miami's big art weekend is actually a gay Bacchanalia or a rave festival. Though it's neither of these, it is an orgy of consumerism and networking.

I'm one of a few artists that I know who isn't in Miami right now. Even though I received a couple of calls earlier this week, invitations to join artist friends in their trek to South Beach, I opted to stay put. I won't make any long-winded, pathetic excuses for not going. I'll just chalk my decision up to my preference for cold weather. It's too damned warm in south Florida! (Seriously, From the Floor is clear on why he elected to stay away, and suffice to say that if I can figure out a way to make a living as a working artist without ever having to go to this sort of event, I'll be a happy, happy man.)

I do feel, however, that I should keep my eye on the orgy, so I've been turning to more knowledgeable sources for information and reports. If you want to learn more about the parties, the celebrity sightings, the crowds, the money changing, and the ins-and-outs of trying to maintain your gallery mission while hiking up your thong and working it, I recommend the following blogs, all of which are covering Miami (a couple of which are good to excellent art blogs, no matter the season): Modern Art Obsession, Edward Winkleman, MetroBlogging Miami, MAeX ArtBlog, The Next Few Hours.

Photo credit: "Art Basel From Above," photograph drawn from SeanBonner's Photostream, via MetroBlogging Miami