These two are the opening acts for the year’s Main Event, which will unfold toward the end of the year.  Comet ISON may be spectacular, one of the brightest objects in the night sky, perhaps even visible in daylight; or, it may disintegrate as it makes its close passage by the sun.  Only time will tell!

Image: Yuri Beletsky (ESO), from the Atacama desert in South America.

I think there is an essential heartbreak at the core of modern human life. We have made ourselves alone as creatures. We don’t remember anymore the languages of the bobcats, the black bears, the weasels and frogs, the kingfishers, crows, voles, elk and rattlesnakes who are our closest relatives on this planet (not to mention the trees and grasslands, fruits and flowers without which none of us would be alive at all). They speak and sing, love, fight, nest and rage, scream and suffer just as we do, but we don’t know how to hear them. We don’t think we are supposed to. We have made ourselves believe we no longer belong, that we are apart, that this is a good thing, and meanwhile, some ancient grief has lodged straight into our cellular tissue, our dark marrow, and won’t leave. That’s why, the very first time I came to the beach with a teacher and began to read a trail of coyote tracks, in a side-trot, through sand, I woke up later that night with my eyes full of tears.

This is part of our heritage as human beings, part of our tangled psychological and biological make-up: we were made to read the tracks and signs of animals as they move through ecosystems. We were made to do this before we ever passed on mythologies, or wrote down songs. Our brains themselves developed as we followed elk tracks through sand, as we ate and worshipped and sang to the animals that we depended on both for our survival and, I would like to argue, our sense of self.

Suppose the molecular changes taking place
In the mind during the act of praise
Resulted in an emanation rising into space.
Suppose that emanation went forth
In the configuration of its occasion:
For instance, the design of rain pocks
On the lake’s surface or the blue depths
Of the canyon with its horizontal cedars stunted.

Suppose praise had physical properties
And actually endured?  What if the pattern
Of its disturbances rose beyond the atmosphere,
Becoming a permanent outline implanted in the cosmos—
The sound of the celebratory banjo or horn
Lodging near the third star of Orion’s belt;
Or to the east of the Pleiades, an atomic
Disarrangement of the words,
“How particular, the pod-eyed hermit crab
And his prickly orange legs”?

Suppose benevolent praise,
Coming into being by our will,
Had a separate existence, its purple or azure light
Gathering in the upper reaches, affecting
The aura of morning haze over autumn fields,
Or causing a perturbation in the mode of an asteroid.
What if praise and its emanations
Were necessary catalysts to the harmonious
Expansion of the void?  Suppose, for the prosperous
Welfare of the universe, there were an element
Of need involved.

Pattiann Rogers, from Firekeeper: Selected Poems
(originally from Expectations of Light, 1981)

Image: Kathleen Perelka

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it.
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?

Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. — As for us:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we are made from.

by Robinson Jeffers, 1929
Image: Lovell Birge Harrison (1854-1929)
Sunburst at Sea, c. 1913
The Johnson Collection

Click here to hear the first Van Allen Belt “song” to be released (30-second MP3)

The current recording is brief, and researchers stress that they are not recording audio in space; these are radio waves, with oscillations at acoustic frequencies of up to 10kHz (humans can hear from about 20Hz to 20kHz).  The Van Allen Radiation Belts are often energized by solar storms, spurring dangerous concentrations of high-energy radiation, including “killer electrons,” which can disrupt satellites; the radio waves being studies here are thought to be one of the key energy sources that create these perilous zones.  Meanwhile, though, the sounds offer a tantalizing audio glimpse of the dynamic, energetic sheath of electromagnetism that forever pulses around our seemingly-solid planetary home.

Last year, I was caught totally by surprise, flabbergasted and enraptured, when I looked out the window and saw the yard full of tiny tinkerbells; see this earlier post for that initial befuddlement, along with the research I did to discover the details of the annual ritual flight.

This year, I could step past confusion (and its flip side, “trying to figure it out”)  and right into reverie at the fleeting wonder of it all, along with some close observation.  I sacrificed a couple minutes of pure experience in order to get a few pictures to share.  The story they tell is well worth the trade-off!

The earth here is always teeming with the tiny black ants that today spawned some new colonies; literally any square foot that you lean down to take a look at will be laced with diligent workers traveling this way and that, intent on their place in this instant of the colony’s extended embodiment here in Lower Cañoncito.  This morning, the ground was scattered with patches of the newly-winged messengers:

Some rose right from the ground, though most seemed to seek at least a pebble to climb to the lip of, and a few scrambled up tufts of grass:

All this was exciting enough, but then I looked closer and discovered a bit of extra delight, mystery, and drama….

My most exciting discovery was one of the holes that the new ones were squeezing their way out of, often two or three at a time, and always followed immediately by more:

And wait, who are these baldheads, neither winged nor normal adults – yet legged, not quite larval?  What are they up to on this Day of Days?

As the flight wound down, and few of the travelers remained on the ground, the drama revealed itself – the terrestrial workers had decided the Winged Ones were a threat, or perhaps just a ready meal!

As usual in ant attacks, they really ganged up on ‘em:

Here’s one that didn’t get off the ground, its moment of glory reduced to tattered shreds, wings scattered left and right….

Camera stashed on the porch for the second time (I’d gone back for it when the grisly dismemberments had begun), I returned to wide-eyed wandering, scouting around a bit to see how widespread the hatch seemed to be.  The flight had dwindled dramatically, but a few young queens (still princesses?) were aloft wherever I went.  (I also noticed what seemed to be more bird activity than normal on the ground all over the place, as well….)

Just like last year, the flight occurred the day after our wettest single day of the summer (interestingly, in both years, we’d missed out on any torrential summer storms, and the peak rainfall day fell exactly a week earlier this year than last).  Today, I imagine the lucky few survivors busily engaging in the pioneer work of carving out their new underground kingdoms, assuming they found any spots where they could get started on that before being overrun by the existing population…I wonder whether some of the queens are accepted into colonies with aging matriarchs?  

Once again, I look around this familiar valley with a deepened appreciation of the mostly invisible lives that go about their business here every single day, season after season, hidden underground, or in the trees or the dark….neighbors all, each its own size, with its own mobility and rootedness, its own sensations and its own giving and receiving, each and all combining to play our equal parts in the whole that is this larger body of a valley.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was Tom Hirons’ rites of passage workshop. After talking about his own experience of a wilderness rite of passage and introducing the ideas behind it, Tom sent us off into the woods for half an hour. We were asked to choose between two ‘tasks’: either to walk through the woods praying (silently or out loud) or to dig a hole the size and shape of your face, about 6 inches deep in the earth; to lie down with your face in the hole and scream. ‘Whichever of the tasks is more challenging to you,’ he said, ‘choose that one.’ I chose the hole. What a strange, ridiculous, hilarious, powerful, emotionally overwhelming thing to do! It took me a while to lie down. I felt self-conscious and daft. Someone had followed me into the thicket. I spent a few minutes making the hole a ‘more perfect’ shape. But when I lay down on the earth and screamed into the hole I’d made, I almost immediately ‘lost’ my sense of self. All around me in the woods, other men and women were howling and screaming into small, earthy holes. More than anything else, I wished that everyone in the world would give themselves permission to do this, to let go, to express themselves at a most fundamental level. It sounds unlikely, downright odd even, but screaming into the earth opened in me a profound sense of compassion. After a while, I realised I wasn’t screaming but making a kind of whale-song and my lungs seemed to have quadrupled their capacity; I could hold a sound for what seemed like minutes.

Anyone who hasn’t done this, or something similarly wild and strange, might be tempted to reject it as hippie nonsense. All I’d say is, try it for yourself and see; or better still, sign up to one of Tom’s workshops. I heard that one man had scribbled a sign on a piece of paper and laid it next to him while he howled: ‘I’m OK!’

For more about the weekend: Charlotte Du Cann shares a richly woven “postcard from the woods” about the festival, and here’s a recollection with images from Jeppe. Below, an image by Jeppe, Funeral for a Species:

No life is single. Around and beneath each life is the living presence of these adjacencies. Often, it is not the fact of our choosing that is vital, but rather the way we hold that choice. In so far as we can, we should ensure that our chosen path is not a flight from complexity. If we opt for complacency, we exclude ourselves from the adventure of being human. Where all danger is neutralized, nothing can ever grow.

To keep the borders of choice porous demands critical vigilance and affective hospitality. To live in such a way invites risk and engages complexity. Life cannot be neatly compartmentalized. Once the psyche is engaged with such invitation and courage, it is no longer possible to practice tidy psychological housekeeping. To keep one’s views and convictions permeable is to risk the intake of new possibility, which can lead to awkward change. Yet the integrity of growth demands such courage and vulnerability from us; otherwise the tissues of our sensibility atrophy and we become trapped behind the same predictable mask of behavior.

~ John O’Donohue
from Eternal Echoes

This entry comes to us courtesy of Dean Keller at The Beauty We Love,
one of the online repositories of insight that I visit on a regular basis 

Image: e.e. cummings, New Moon

Wendell Berry, from Standing by Words, 1983

So, anyway, this DVD been on my shelf waiting to be written up for awhile now.  In 2007, Elton celebrated his 60th birthday by playing his 60th show at Madison Square Garden.  But this wasn’t a typical Elton concert, and certainly not the show he’s settled into in his residency in Vegas. The three-hour extravaganza dug deep into his early catalog, with only 8 of the 33 songs originating after 1975 (and 17 from Don’t Shoot Me and earlier), making this a great treat for those of us who love the classic Elton-and-Bernie years, but haven’t found much use for the later Elton (but note: The Captain and the Kid is worth a listen, and this electro remix album with Pnau, sampling from his whole career, hit #1 in the UK this summer).  

The band features his old mates Nigel Olsson on drums (“Nigel! Outasight!”) and Davey Johnstone on guitars and mandolin; the arrangements are laced with cello from Martin Tillman, along with a huge youth choir.  Elton’s vocal commitment and intensity shines throughout (though his range has definitely shifted lower since his heyday), and his playing is rich and rollicking.  Rarely performed old gems include Where to Now St. Peter, Ballad of a Well-known Gun (“we haven’t played this one for maybe 30 years…”), High Flying Bird, and (yes!) his beautiful ode to New York in the early 70′s, Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. Here’s a taste, picking up in the climax of Holiday Inn, with maybe my favorite jam of the show: cello, mando, piano (sorry, Flash-less tablet viewers; YouTube’s time-stamp embed doesn’t work with their html5 code; skip to 1:50!):

  Other highlights include the great revolutionary anthem Burn Down the Mission (by turns majestic, angry, longing, and determined) and a nice guitar/piano/cello jam at the end of Levon.  

The last hour of the show, while not lacking in energy by any means, slips back into what seems to be his more standard repertoire, and becomes noticeably less compelling.  But skip on through to the climactic Funeral/Love Lies Bleeding, in which Elton and the band feed off the energy of the night to bring it all to a rousing close.

The video editing is excellent, dynamic but never distracting or frenetic, shifting fluidly between arena-wide shots of the stage and backdrop videos, tight shots of Elton’s hands dancing the keys or face as he sings, the sidemen (especially Davey, Nigel, and kids in the chorus), and the audience – a mix of random folks dancing and singing along (with a concentration of Gay New York early on), and mostly more subdued celebrities including Ozzy and Sharon Osborn, Michael Caine (!), Brian Wilson, a singing and phone-recording Anne Hathaway, and Bill Clinton. 

The double-disc DVD is wonderfully rounded out with a generous helping of 24 archival videos, many of which are a real treat, too.  A 1970 Border Song, in the classic TV music show style of the era, has fans sitting real close all around, and Sixty Years On from later the same year features harp and chamber orchestra.  And from the live debut of Honky Chateau, a fresh Mona Lisa shines (Davey on mando, Dee on sweet bass): “I thank the lord for the people I have found…”

A couple more tastes: