Twentynine Palms, July 2011
Page 3: Of Outliers and Art
    |
Cloudy dawn.
Near solid overcast. High, with clots of heavier stuff embedded in it.
First one of those I’ve ever seen out here.
Seems like every time I come out here, all I ever do is marvel at things I’ve never seen before.
Which, I suppose, is precisely why I like it so much out here.
A check on the computer with NWS Las Vegas reveals the deck to be blow-off and debris clouds from a mesoscale convective complex that hammered Needles and Lake Havasu City in the wee hours of the morning last night. High winds, local flash flooding, the works.
Here, and now, it’s just a lovely sunshade, and yet another curiously humid morning is rendered exquisitely balmy as a result.
The air is fairly caressing me as I type these words.
Newt and Cathy would not appear to be quite so enthusiastic about it.
Right this second, I’m under the faintly-whispering tamarisk tree, sitting on a folding chair by the Bottle Wall.
Bonzo and Stella are wandering around, the air is barely moving, and the quiet is near, but not quite, complete.
Newt just showed up and is examining the fruits of yesterday’s labor on the Bottle Wall even as I type these words.
He’s got air-conditioning people coming over to look at a unit in his house here in a bit, which means I am relieved, until further notice, of my duties as designated strong back and weak mind.
Ahhh……………………..
It gives me time to consider.
And I’m slowly learning about the desert and the people who inhabit it.
We are all curmudgeons, I think.
That which draws someone to this vast expanse of lethal nothing, is also that which causes someone to not wish to be in the company of the Great Swarm.
We are outliers.
Evolution’s way of hedging its bets.
For the most part, being a lockstep member of The Group enhances human survival, and the odd-ducks and strays are relentlessly culled by the invisible hand of natural selection.
But not always.
Every once in a while, one outlier looks over at another, and then back down toward The Village, and says, “Damn. Looks like it got all of ‘em.”
Nature hedges its bets against things like having all of its eggs in a single basket.
And so the outliers, the misfits, and the nonconformists continue to show up in the breeding population, continue to cause problems for The Group, continue to get culled for the most part, and continue, every once in a great while, to serve as Lifeboat for the creation and perpetuation of the very Group they choose not to treat with on a daily basis.
As a result, a weird and wonderful, motley group of folks that all the rest consider to be “a little strange” has assembled itself, sparsely, out here squarely in the middle of nowhere.
These are my people.
But I am no more a member of this group than I am a member of any other group.
People out here are a bit standoffish, and that extends to one another, as well as to things like the horrifying hive that ceaselessly ebbs and flows a couple of hundred miles to our west.
We are, after all, every one of us, outliers.
-
I determine to take my opportunity under this unlikely gray sky with the camera, and go to fetch it.
    |
Another walkabout through The Art. Art finished, art caught mid-creation, and art that's still thinking about it.
   |
All of which is as usual, by turns and simultaneously, whimsical, sinister, beautiful, mysterious, enchanting, thought provoking, and other things, too.
   |
Wish I had more intelligent, more descriptive, more ….. something ….., words for it all, but I do not.
      |
Newt and Cathy’s work not only rewards protracted thought, it demands it. Under the weirdness and whimsy, many things lurk, perhaps unnoticed at first. Things that are well worth the time and effort you may put into them.
     |
These words and photos don't do it the least justice, but they’re all I have, so they’re all you’re going to get, too.
 |
 |
 |
-
Newt shows back up and we do four bags of concrete’s worth of Bottle Wall.
Ranchin’.
We follow that up with a drive into Yucca Valley and get ourselves a backup hard drive for Newt.
Not only will it give him a nice insurance policy for his irreplaceables, it might also serve as a conduit into the removed drive from the vanquished Mac.
We come back, and I go at it with everything I can think of, but the Mac drive resists my every effort.
The bastard.
The hours spent were instructive, but not productive.
Computer work turns out that way every once in a while.
The drive will be coming home with me, and there I shall have my way with it, employing a suite of proper tools and equipment, come what may.
-
Towards late afternoon, the overcast deck of clouds finally fragments and disappears and the heat returns, but it’s too late for the sun to really turn things up to a full broil.
The day winds to a close with an interesting sunset working the remaining tatters of cloud into a symphony of illumination, and I take the green folding chair and walk out into the creosote past the studio.
And sit and watch, and listen, until the color has faded for good, and almost all of the light has leaked away into the oncoming night.
Previous PageNext Page |
Return to 16streets.comMaybe try to email me? |