Marmalade Daydreams

Alright, so I may have had lofty ambitions for that last post, but they've long since dissolved back into their component neurotransmitters, awaiting the next stir of the neural swizzle stick. Let it simply be said that it's been a week of surpassing goals that I set for myself, from making tele-turns down the sheer face of High Rustler to outperforming my target score on the GREs. Sunday night, to clear a little room in our brew-fridge, making space for my espresso-infused Imperial Aspirations Stout I bottled before Utah (which I've avowed to be the last batch I make without fresh ingredients), I finished the last 4 ounces of the first beer I'd ever made, Steiny's Trippel Threat, brewed almost exactly a year ago. It was seriously good; it had matured from a citrusy, spicy abbey-style ale into almost a barley-wine; flavors of port rose up that I rarely find even in the strong ales of the best breweries. Quite happy. Happy enough that I can put off griping about a dentist stealing the leadership of Turkmenistan and fantasize about Iranian ski vacations until I'm a little less exhausted. Bedtime.

Okay, so maybe it's not going to change anything politically (oh, why did Turkmenbashy have to be succeeded by Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow?), but tele-skiing is really fun. [NOTE: I'm not sure how long this post is going to be, but it's fairly definitely going to be devoid of any examination of the occult meanings of performance art -- I more or less just told you what it's all about -- Central Asian political drama and the exhilerating, if improbable, sensation of sketching a parabola down a smooth mountainside while in a goofy looking half-lunge.]

A ski instructor told me that the geology of the Cottonwood Canyons is nearly unique -- the only other place where storm systems move from a large body of water (like the Great Salt Lake) immediately to desert mountains (like the Wasatch) is in Iran, where storms apparently suck moisture out of the Caspian and drop dumps of dry powder on the Alborz mountains.

Okay, they're closing the bar where I get wi-fi. this is a post-in-progress. stay tuned.

Oh, everything's nice. The sun is at my back as I sit in a glass-enclosed atrium this Mardi Gras afternoon, surrounded by august snowy peaks, weary body slowly sated by pints of highly-hopped muscle relaxant, mind floating between the brass bands swinging out the bar's speakers and reflections on the three wild days I've had so far, soaring and swooping down soft mountainsides, weaving between trees and cliffs, literally floating inches above the ground suspended in a shallow sea of dry ice crystals. Yeah, I'll try not to rub it in, but...

Sunday was a sunny day where the locals were complaining of "ice" (in reality, slightly crusted packed powder), where I had a good time schussing and sailing in warm sunlight under bluest skies. That night, the snow started, and when it was all over, about 24 hours later, over a foot of the light powder for which this region is famed had covered every surface. Yesterday, between the incomperable conditions and my ever-growing confidence in the positive outcome of pointing my greased platforms straight down a steep declivity, could have been my greatest day ever on skis if not for the ceiling dropping around 2 PM, rendering the mountainside (and its resident obstacles) invisible. Either way, it was pretty stupendous -- invisible mounds beneath the soft snow directing my rented Volkl Mantras (om mani padme hum) this way and that, and I could just sit back (not too far) and enjoy the ride.

Today was also fairly wonderful, despite my aching body (though falls in this newly-cushioned world are immediately painless, pulled muscles play catch up while you sleep). I pushed through to explore parts of this mountainscape that previously intimidated me, either with aformentioned cliff and dense forests, or with the hike-to access. And now I feel fully satisfied -- I've expanded my limits, decreased my cowardice, uncovered the hidden areas, and worked my body senseless with two days to go. Perhaps tomorrow I'll either take some time off or try something new -- Snowbird's up the street, or I can turn in my rentals for telemarks... I guess I should also fill out my grad school applications. I'm sure it will work out. Another storm's supposed to roll in tomorrow -- I guess that might make up my mind for me...

I love being a teacher -- not only do I get to hang out with a bunch of twelve-year olds all day around whom (once a baseline level of mutual respect has been established) it's completely acceptable to be goofy and make bad jokes (wonderful for an exceedingly goofy jokester such as myself), and the inherent sense of accomplishment from "shaping young minds", but, on top of our ten "sick" days, we get all of these sweet vacations. I'm currently in the lobby of the Gold Miner's Daughter, at the base of Alta, a ski resort that's near the top of my short list of favorite locations on our planet. In case you don't know, Alta is home to the best snow in the region with the greatest snow on earth -- it regularly gets dumps of "champagne powder", snow so dry and light that its crystals effervescently sparkle in the air as a ephemeral memory of some lucky schusser's flight down the steep walls of Little Cottonwood Canyon. If that weren't enough, the GMD is an amazing spot -- regardless of its complete lack of pretention, it has a happening bar scene, great food, a couple of hot tubs and a decent pool table. Plus, since the dorms were full, I got a private room with a king-size bed for the same price. Nice.

Must be off to slumberland soon to ensure some early runs before it gets too soft tomorrow (spring skiing conditions as the temperature is expected to near 50 F), but wanted to quickly relate my experience last night seeing Sonic Youth at Webster Hall. The fifth time I've seen this veteran group of audionauts, and by far the best -- their explorations, setting layers of guitar dissonance and explosions over rhythms alternating between open-ended spaciness and tight funky rock, unfolded like a great page-turner -- I was continuously in a state of disbelief at how much I was enjoying myself, couldn't wait to see what they'd play next, and, despite wanting it to go on and on, I was completely satisfied at show's end. The superfans that I was standing next to were freaking out at the song selection and said they'd never seen a show like it. Kudos to Kim, Thurston, Lee, Jim, and Scott -- at the top of their game after 24 years. If anyone reading this happens to be in Burlington tomorrow (or in Mexico next week, or Japan in April...) do yourself a favor and blow your mind. For the rest of us, here's a clip of them playing one of my favorite songs from their last album at CBGB's before it closed. Concise perfection, and I love Kim's dancing.

Well, jury duty wrapped up nicely. Though it ended up being only four days off of work, I feel that the lax hours and my indulgent lunches downtown helped ring in a new era for my adult life. Plus I got a nice notepad that doubles as a datebook.

I have not been stressing work that much (aside from wanting to strangle a few children who have a serious aversion to conscious thought), I have been eating and drinking quite well (it all goes in the mouth, don't breathe while you swallow, all that good stuff), seeing great live music, and just generally enjoying the sensations and perceptions that make up this existence. There's a Master's program at the University of Amsterdam to which I'm excited about applying and I have various other projects brewing this month to fill my hours. Furthermore, I continue to encounter a seemingly endless stream of interesting writers and artists who make my brain hum pleasurably.

I recently finshed two books by Daniel Pinchbeck, a very bright and engaging author whose writing has somewhare crossed the line between a journalistic features piece on shamanism and prophecy to the writings of a shamanic prophet. Though I think his work must be taken with few grains of salt, I also feel it can not be taken lightly. His first book, a foray into contemporary shamanism in traditional and modern societies, describes his psychedelic experiences with invisible worlds which transform him from an alienated materialist urbanite into a shamanic apprentice with no incarnate teacher. He writes that the sickness of our society stems from a cultural wall that has been established beween our bodies and our spirits; despite our massive advances in technological applications of our understanding the physical world, our culture, having systematically erased ancient wisdom, has regressed in terms of our lack of spiritual technologies to a point where many feel beyond help. He ends the first book calling for some sort of archaic revival.

His second book picks up with the notion of how the acceleration of time that we are currently experiencing correlates to the tightness of the spiral's coil at the end of a gyre; in his consideration of theories of Mayan end-time and the return of Quetzalcoatl, Pinchbeck examines the mysteries of psychic phenomena and crop circles, stories of gnomes and alien abductions. It made me wonder at the structures of the human mind, the creative nature of our existence. Especially at the book's close, Pinchbeck references the Hopi and their conception of cosmic time, which agrees with the Mayan claim that we are currently reaching the end of a world in a series of worlds; as for Yeats, the end of each historic age contains the seed for the character of the next. But while I read, I thought of the Hopi's labyrinth, which, from my understanding, they saw as both a symbol of the earth and as the individual's life; as Hesse wrote, "a journey to himself". But on the Hopi path, though there are twists and turns, there are no wrong paths -- perserverence will lead to the center. And as Pinchbeck's voice transformed from that of a spiritual wanderer to that of an oracle, I wondered if the Hopi metaphor was accurate: was Pinchbeck's prophetic channeling of a Mayan deity simply part of his spiritual path, which will make sense in the context of hindsight or could he be wandering down a solipsistic path to mental illness -- had he taken a "wrong turn"?

Last week my sister and I went to see "Pan's Labyrinth", which was the most beautiful film I saw this year with the possible exception of "The Fountain" (which I never wrote about in this forum, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, especially as it resonated with many themes in Pinchbeck's books, which I was reading at the time). Even if you haven't seen "El Laberinto Del Fauno", you've probably heard its conceit -- to escape an unpleasant reality (living with a sadistic Fascist officer in 1944 Spain), a little girl descends deeper and deeper into a world of fantasy in which she is an incarnation of an underworld princess [I hate spoilers -- everything I've just said is revealed in the film's first five minutes]. Dark and moving, the film's central theme is the tension between fantasy and reality. Despite a small Twilight Zonesque detail at the film's end along the lines of "So it was all a dream... or was it?", the director leaves it up to the audience to decide what is real, as I feel it should. And as Funkadelic sings, "fantasy is reality in the world today."

Yesterday, we wandered over to the Brooklyn Museum and snuck in even though it was free for the first Saturday of the month. Why?, you might ask. I am unsure, but for whatever reason the authorities were herding the public into a labyrinthine crowd control device, and I'd be damned before I'd submit to such madness. We emerged from the elevator to find the theme of the day was the subversion of reality's boundaries. We entered the Ron Mueck exhibition (incredibly lifelike sculptures of the human form in preposterous scales (massive and tiny) of silicone and fiberglass by a former Jim Henson Studios effects man) where there was some sort of "happening" going on. Barefoot women in white cotton dresses circumabulated slowly, occasionally ringing bells. Rogue accordianists peeped dissonance atonally. "Fakes" (actual people) posed sculpturally in spaces where Mueck's bizarre simulacra were absent. The flesh-and-blood posing as sculptures ("she almost looks real!") and the sculptures that looked all-too-human was not the end of the tunnel, though.

On the second floor, Devorah Sperber's rendition of Da Vinci's Last Supper is, in my opinion, a master work in illustrating the grey areas in reality perception. Composed of over 20,000 spools of thread, themselves threaded on wires hanging from the ceiling, Sperber has created an upside-down pixellated version of the fresco; when viewed through a spherical lens, not only does the work acheive a remarkable three-dimensional effect, but its clarity is breathtaking. One can clearly see details in the image that are not actually "there" in the pixels. Sperber writes that her work has to do with "how the human brain makes sense of the visual world"; due to our familiarity with the original, we unconsiously fill in missing visual information to make our perceptions match the way it "should look". If you live nearby -- forgo the link for the full effect of the work in person. I found her website to be interesting, but to gaze at the image through the lens, which not only flips and clarifies the image (like the lenses in the human eye) but distorts it and allows the viewer's brain to "paint" in the details, is amazing.

In light of understanding the creative element in reality-perception, I'd like to end with a story that's related on an interesting website of crop circle hoaxers. Some of the circles that these fellows make are astounding, but, from my understanding, many of the most impressive ones share features that the definitively manmade structures lack. Regardless, the creators of the crop formations are, in my mind, artistic geniuses, both of design and execution. The site's author questions the divide between the subjects of artistic and scientific inquiry. The following is a quote:

I have always thought it a wonderful irony that America's Budd Hopkins, the ufologist who is arguably the chief patron of the art-form known as the UFO abduction story, is by training and profession an artist. Would that he could apply his artist's insight to the tales of his abductees, which as a ufologist he takes to be literally true. As an artist, he once recounted a gentle parable about the human impulse to confuse the products of the mind with exogenous experience and revelation: 'A kindergarten teacher asked the children in her class to paint whatever they wished. Later, she enquired of each child what subject he or she was painting. A picture of Mommy or my cat were typical answers. One child, however, said "I'm painting a picture of God." How can you paint God? the teacher asked. "No one knows what God looks like." "Wait till I finish my painting," the child replied.'