Asklemmy

I’ve seen lots of beautiful places.

The coast of Wales just north of Port Eynon im 2000. A walk alone through deep mud. Most of the time there’s grass to stand on, but it gets more and more sparse. It’s windy and cold. Grey sky. Craggy cliffs down to the ocean, which is crashing against them. It’s overcast, in October. Sheep or maybe goats stand there looking at me as I walk by.

Rainforest hike with my summer roommate in Oregon. I think near Cannon Beach, maybe? Summer of 2003. We’re somewhere at the coast hiking a trail he picked out. Soft needle bed underfoot, so much green foliage everywhere, golden-green light diffuse throughout. I remember thinking of the earth as a pole in four dimensions. I imagined life growing up the pole as time progressed. Then I imagined it growing down the pole(ie into the past) also and I imagined life starting earlier and earlier in history, as life pushed its way into the past by somehow hurling information backward to affect previous evolution, to make the RNA strand that got it all started happen sooner.

Burning Man 2006, first night there. We had arrived in the morning, and we were amazed, but people kept grinning at our amazement saying “just wait until night!” Then it was night and we saw this endless puddle full of glowing microbes. A primordial soup of lights bobbing and waving off into the distance. And as people would finally appear, it was as faces dimly lit, and all of them glowing with the same sense of awe we had. And then some days later a spider mech walked by, driven by some guy just showing off his garage project, which was an eight-legged robotic walking vehicle. And that was just par for the course. I didn’t even blink by that point, because seeing a working mech for the first time in my life was no biggie. Seemed totally normal by that point.

So many more too. Lots of moments of beauty in really mundane places too. Just a state of mind. Back in college I was really depressed but would sometimes have what might have even been some kind of seizure. Suddenly everything would be so fucking beautiful and I’d feel a profound sense of joy. Those lasted like 10-30 seconds. I’d just stand there wondering at whatever was in front of me, wondering at all of existence with a dopey slack jawed face on the sidewalk. Then I’d feel it coming down, and I’d be back in my crushing depression, just slogging along through the grey world.