Author: Joseph

It is now 1:20am. I am entering the stage of hypnagogia. I will now continue to write stream of consciousness, but more abstractly … listening to “Loscil – Gymnote” …

Mysterious fog/mist/cloud on the landscape of mine/consciousness/heart. Purple and blues greyed by the fog. Wet and damp. Cold. Green ferns tickle my feet as I walk through. It is quiet except for my own footsteps rustling through the vegetation and stones. I look behind me and can only see so far. I look ahead and can only see so far. But as I walk further I see more. But then see less behind me. I realize that I am hidden by the shroud of mist. I can do whatever I want. My clothes disintegrate as I realize this. I look at my body and see it in it’s perfect radiant young form oscillate to it’s oldest form then back to present then back to child. I am naked. There is something sensual about being naked in the mist. Reminded of the mermaids of ancient times. Mirrors all around. The clouds are mirrors to me. I see myself multifold. But they are individuals themselves. Living different lives. But they are me. But they are them. They fade away as I sink to my bare knees on the cold ground. I pick up the wet stalks of plants around me and taste it. They are vegetal and bitter. They taste green. And the mist tastes grey. I think of other senses. I taste the stones. They taste like the mist. I taste the hummus of soil. Dry. I get up and look up at the faintness of the moon – or is it the sun? I can’t tell because of the thick mist. Redwoods. They know. They consume the mist. Redwoods they know. As do the fungi that live beneath them. Electrical synapses between them. The worms know. They are blind yet they know. The owl in the tree yes, he knows as well. Hmm. Ancient signs carved into wood signs, the weather has erased meaning but you know it was once a sign for something. What is the point. Web fingered things like salamanders run on the water. Water skippers – how do they? Cambian layers. Layers of books. A book lays in front of me it’s pages turning randomly by the wind back and forth, wind can’t do that – can it? Perhaps something else is turning it. It’s an old book, I see things written, but as I approach they fade away. Only blank pages. What is the meaning? Disintegrates in my hands. Why is everything disintegrating? Tears. Why do things disintegrate? To be eaten by the earth and mist. Can’t I hold on to anything? I see my own body becoming transparent. I try to grasp something, a branch of a tree. Holding on to reality as my own tears evaporate into the mist. But to what point to hold on to anything when I myself am becoming invisible. But wasn’t it good enough to be invisible in shroud of mist? Why be invisible? What is doing this? Everything comes and goes. Everything manifests from the nebulous and back into the nebulous. The oscillations. From chaos to order and back again. One cannot resist. Allow yourself to be carried by the clouds. Floating floating. Weightless. The naked body manifests in perfect form yet again but now weightless floating. The stream of clouds they are hard to explain. Only known when standing on top of a mountain as the wind blows clouds around you. Wind whispers. What is it saying? The same thing the sign said. Whatever that was… Words cannot explain. Nothing can explain.

Being pulled downward downward. My body stretches like being pulled through a black hole – inescapable power. I become a stream of liquid going down some cosmic drain. Ooooohh into the earth I slip. I percolate. I meld. How a drop of water is absorbed by the ground. Down. Down. Where the roots are. Down towards some center. Some destination that all things seem to go towards. Things on the other side and all directions they seek that center as plumb seeks the same. Oscillations. As the trees are swayed by the wind. What does that feel like? To sway by the wind. To be danced by something beyond you. Something intangible. Something you cannot grasp … yet moves you. Water. From the high mountains it waits to greet the sun. The warmth of sun on the stones. The lizard waits and watches. The lichen they creep. Time speeds up and the lichen colors become alive as the seasons change they oscillate. Oscillation. Vibration. Polarity. Swinging the plumb bob becomes a pendulum. The ticking of a clock. Footsteps. Trace the footsteps back so far and they vanish. Into the mist they go. I take a deep breath and let it out feeling the invisible that sustains me go on to life a new life. Painted colors upon the wall. Black, grey, white, brown. Refraction in the crystals splits in rainbows of colors. To think all these colors are in every ray of light. Light only visible when it touches something. Like how music does not exist in the vacuum of space.

Planets. We think trees’ and mountains’ time perspective is vast. Planets … what do they feel? What is a season to Earth? Is it a breath? Is is heart beat? Unexplainable. To see without opening eyes. To hear without listening. To feel without touching. How? A consciousness beyond a brain. A consciousness outside of the confines of body. Just as fungi digest food outside of itself and we digest inside. There are many ways of being. How to understand something beyond thought. Beyond understanding?

Freedom freedom. To the realm of unknown. Dimensional onion layers of overlapping essence like those who taste wine to sense an undertone of leather and overtone of honeysuckle. Develop your senses. Senses. Develop. Take inspiration from the animals. They know. Take inspiration from the deer, and the wolf, the birds in the sky. From worms and termites. The ants and the aardvarks. The platypus. The fish deep in the ocean. The squid. The whales. How do they sense? How do they find their way? What do they know? Feel them feel all. Develop your senses by blunting your senses. Develop your senses through silence. Through fasting. To stillness. Develop through slowness. Develop through gentleness. Gentleness is the way for sensitivity.

Technology is powerful. Technology has been used by powerful people who have lost their way. Control. Has created zombies and has over stimulated the senses and awareness. Avoid. Avoid. Reduce. Be free. The antenna within. The reception within. The mind’s eye exceeds all screens. Develop it. The inner reception exceeds all other reception.

Foot steps on the cool soil. A circular clearing. My circular clearing. Heart beat of my own. Heart beat of the heart. I stand here naked before you my brothers and sisters. My mothers and fathers. My cousins. My childrens. My ancestors. I stand here, you can see me for who I am, see me my core. Understanding. See myself. See my cells. Gratitude is what I feel . Thank you.

Protectors of spirits in these circles. The place where music comes from. From where dance comes from. For guiding to me to the special places which make me pull off the road.

No need to compare. Be yourself. Sit with knowing. Do your work. Do the work you were meant to do. Do the work you were chosen and that which you chose. The work. Protect Nature. Speak for Nature. Speak for the old ones and the new ones. The familiar ones and the odd ones. The local the remote. The real and the unreal. The straight and the crooked. Speak. Communicate. Translate. Reception reception Reception. Take time to receive. Have time to receive. Take time to be. Close your eyes and allow. Abilities must not go to waste. And they won’t.

All things can be done if you listen. If you receive that which you need to receive. There is always time for it.

A weird an uneasy feeling in my stomach. A feeling of wanting something different. Goose bumps develop on my skin. Pin feathers begin to sprout from my skin. They are itchy. But soon unfurl like spring fiddleheads into colorful feathers on one side and demure feathers on the other side. I have wings. I have flight. Effortless. Like I was meant to I fly towards the sun, things don’t like to look into the sun, I can hide in shadows as I can hide in the brightest of bright. Why hide? Hiding is only a term for stillness and silence. It is why the cougar showed itself to me. Wait and sit. To watch is to receive. High from a tree I stand. I see the landscape from the perspective of all. Able to focus on any thing and all things. The winter is coming, but don’t worry it will give way to spring. This is why oscillation resilience is important. To be in the heat and be in the cold. Extremes. Oscillation. Coldness of winter. The pureness of snow gives way. The pureness of sprouts give way. Bear. I am bear. The bear hibernates. The bear awakens. The rabbit and the deer. They know. They accept. The smell of conifers in the air. The echoing call of robins. Red wind black birds.

If you sit on a stone long enough, you’ll become the stone.

2:02am

Having spent my life in awe of Nature, I am fascinated with plants, animals and micro-biota. The stories and science behind each family, species and individual.

Despite my love for nature, I grew up in Kennewick playing in the industrial realm of steel and fire. Forming hard iron into sculptures since I was 14 years old using welders, plasma cutters and angle grinders.

This represents my interest in dichotomies. Masculine and Feminine. Night and Day. Birth and Death. Reception and Transmission. Light and Shadow. But it is where polarities meet where there is most power – between past and future is Now.

Now I split my time between Kennewick and White Salmon. This move brought me into contact with a new and softer art medium … trees.

Trees are a powerful sculptural forms. They are perfect. Sometimes when I look at trees, flowers, mushrooms and the landscapes they exist … I wonder why I’m an artist when nature has such beauty and meaning.

But through art, I can illustrate the parallels between trees and humans.

Humanity often perceives nature as competitive, but we are learning that nature also cooperates in nuanced ways.

When wolves were introduced to Yellowstone, they reduced the elk population, this allowed trees to grow near stream banks again, which provided food and materials for beavers to use, beaver dams flooded to create riparian zones, and these riparian zones aided the overall biodiversity and resilience of the ecosystem.

Trees are known to signal other trees of danger through scents. When other trees “smell” this, they start producing bitter compounds to dissuade the pest.

Many plants, especially legumes, host bacteria that pull nitrogen from the air into the soil thereby increasing fertility.

Tree roots create symbiotic relationships with the fungal network in the soil. Where trees provide sugars and the fungi provide minerals and water. This fungal web also transmits electrical signals at a speed of a third-of-an-inch per minute.

Through this fungal matrix, trees give excess sugar to their cousins who aren’t getting enough; because the health of the forest determines the health of the individual trees. Loosing your neighbors allows sun to parch the forest floor and creates a hole for wind to topple other trees. You never know when the tables turn where the once little trees may help the once big trees. Some old tree stumps remain alive for hundreds of years despite no leaves. This is because it’s children are pumping sugar and life support to the mother’s stump.

The chain is only as strong as the weakest link.

Perhaps humans in societies can learn from trees in forests.

My spires series sculptures speak to this. Each spire represents a tree in the forest and a human in society. The physical form of carved wood shows how the choices of carving are influenced by the circumstances of wood grain. This is the union of freewill and determinism. And provides the foundation where stories and personality are layered over time. The clothes we wear, the things we say, the dwellings we create, the movement we dance are akin to the paint and objects on the spires.

I salvage fallen trees or ones destined for cutting. I then use a chainsaw to form the rough shape on-site and take them back to where I can carve and sand them into their final shape. Over several months, I apply layers of paint and objects or stain and linseed oil. During this time, I also expose them to dance and music. Exposure to experience is what gives them life. I feel objects retain a memory of where they’ve been and thereby come to life.

Please sit with the individual spires, ask them questions, touch them or dance when no one is watching.

Listen to the wind in the tree canopies and the mountain streams over beaver dams.

Words are whispered just as the faces appear on the rocky cliffs of the gorge.

Look at the textures bark of old trees, can you see the symbols the trees are trying communicate just as our own signs.

Feel the sand on the beach. Perhaps it is braille. But do we have patience?

The electromagnetic waves of the variable heart beat transmits a frequency modulated radio transmission. But are our instruments attuned?

As soon as there is one thing. There becomes the opposite – or not that thing.

And as soon as there is such dichotomy, there is the infinitely small space between the two. Therefore one becomes two becomes everything.

A past means future. And the two meet at present. Yet presence is the only one to actually exist. It is our skin separating our insides from our outsides that allow us to feel.

The soil like breath on an apple which allows life to exist.

Flip the coin, but perhaps it is the edge of the coin that matters.

Left and right hemisphere and the corpus collusum.

Zeros and ones but let’s look in between.

In breath and out breath, the pendulum swings but where it changes direction for a moment it is still.

Like the equinoxes and solstices. No wonder the ancients paid attention.

Where masculine meets feminine.

Where the ocean meets land.

Where sun rays meet leaves on trees.

Where rain drops on lichen.

Open the door to peer at the space between.

Paradox.

They say know thyself. So I go sit on a rock with the ravens and moss. It is here that I connect with my foundation, my base. It is here that I know freedom, self-responsibility and sovereignty cultivates the greatest self-expression. The epiphanies that result are like a horse that recognizes itself in a mirror.

Like a horse with no name in a sun-drenched desert. Expansive is human consciousness. The magnetic field of infinite potential collapses into real experiences. And from experience comes empathy.

When we are still and silent we develop empathy for the stones. When we know interconnection we have empathy for the forest. Footsteps of time venture ever deeper in search for nourishment deep within the Earth. Going through layers of sediment and rocks from different eras. Pulling upward the wisdom from that time. So that everytime we eat from the Earth from beets to cauliflowers, teaches to stay centered as the prayer wheel cylindrically turns.

Every woman is all woman.

And for every action, word and intention towards one affects all.

What if every word we said could be heard by all?

Every compliment and criticism was to all?

To empower, support and inspire one person is a life well done.

That starts with oneself.

Gentleness and compassion and forgiveness. These are our rights with being alive.

Gifts of listening.

Be permeable and others will join.

Solid as stone but ungraspable as water.

We share the same ephemeral air of which births Clouds.

Clouds as dream like symbols.

This is why I Love the Mountains. So I can breath the Clouds of the Sky and Rainbows.

Origin stories from the woman who rode the back of a turtle on a completely oceanic planet and created land.

Origin of the stork delivering babies.

Of Adam and Eve in the garden of eden.

Only stories can come close to answering the question.

But the pointing finger is not that which it is pointing to.

Children know the right question.

“Why?” and then they ask “why” until “why?” can no longer be answered.

When I ask why as to the essence of all things, I arrive at Love.

Love is the answer. Love is essence. Love is source. Love is the center of the onion layers of consciousness. Seen how an untouched baby will die.

Seen as the plum tree gives fruit.

Felt when watching the rising sun.

Sensed as we wonder how the unity of two cells sets forth a chain reaction to create new life.

The family tree with all the stories seems infinite.

But from the perspective of the moon , Earth is preciously contained.

What is the birthday for a seedling?

Is it when the warming temperatures and spring rains collide to coax a hard seed to venture forth with its little white tongue?

Is it when the first green parts push through the soil?

How about for the mushroom?

Is its birthday when the spore first sets our mycelium?

Or when mycelium create primordia nodules?

Or when the fruiting body first sees the light of day?

Or when the cap opens leaving a veil remnant?

Is a caterpillar born once it becomes a butterfly?

Can we be reborn?

Maybe light at the end of a dark tunnel is the process of being born.

Maybe what lies beyond blackholes is the birth of a new universe.

Of waking, tea and tying shoes.

Of driving to another and knowing landmarks.

Of journaling at night.

Of writing dreams.

Of walking step by step.

Of decocting elderberries.

Of fermenting cabbage.

Of welding steel and sanding wood.

Of dancing and drumming.

Of lighting sage.

Of drawing circles and spinning circles.

Of sitting near a stream.

Of lighting a candle.

Of opening a window.

Of holding a butterfly.

Of painting a color.

Of holding a baby.

Of watching the moon.

Of celebrating solstice and equinox.

Of marking importance.

Of deep work.

Of reconnection with old friends.

Of present communication.

Of healing.

Of touch.

Of breath and rhythm.

Of stillness.

Of reverence.

Of specialness.

Ritual is not like other time.

Ritual to solidify memory and embodiment and knowing.

Of being here now.

I awake not to singing birds but to the rumbling and clunking iron tracks of bulldozers and rock crushers. With a combination of anger, sadness and loss, I run with moccasined feet toward the machines of “progress”.

What was once open land and home to coyotes, rabbits, birds, butterflies and ancient wild flowers.

Is in dust.

I come back to the now desolate landscape soon to be paved, lawned and streetlighted in the evening to hear the the sorrowful song of mother birds missing their home and children. Trauma to the land never to be the same. Migrating birds must pass this former respit as they have with other fallen land.

One by one the vacant fields go. Most people pass by.

But the children who live nearby, the field is their place of wildness, of not structure. Where they can find themselves.

The greatest national parks are important. But the vacant fields next door are equally so.