A Walk About the Rocks

Part I

You are here.

Why, he has a bit of a funny face, doesn't he? Don't forget your hat or coat; it's a bit chilly at 4:09. Go get your cane-turned-walking stick, as the path can be rough going.

Sirens blare at the front of your consciousness until they are overtaken by the white-noise of other vehicles, the parted breeze, and the onset of dead-time. Grand Avenue is everywhere and nowhere. You are not even really on Irving or State.

Turn right and shamble up the steps, spy the dirt-mount at the foot of Silver Taurus, and stare into the path ahead. Take a moment to smell the dying sunlight.
Can you see those rocks, just to the right of the tree? Look closely, as they can easily get away from you--take it from me. If the fire in the center draws you near, go there for a time, but tread lightly. You will pass this way again, but not before taking others. Try to remember a day when you decided not to go there. Now you have a friend, so the going will be easier than before.

Your shamble shuffles the earth about, crunching October cheat-grass beneath your feet. It is unavoidable. The thud of your staff balances the whirring breeze against your ear-hair. Spy your friend's grumble as he contemplates the oblivion-ground.

Go left, toward the fire. See how it has gone out. See how your friend stands at the precipice? It reminds me of a place he stood once, not long ago and long ago. You can't see the drop, but can't you see it? Your friend, enveloped in the trick-flame, sees it, and contemplates.

Don't be fooled by the waves; let them crash between your ears and up your nostrils. Pull away, slowly, and let remain a dried, salty husk. The earth is there, but you can't smell it really. Go to the precipice. That's where we are.


There's the blood-red bush we could have easily mistaken for such a mighty glow earlier. It has receded, assailed on all ends by the lichen-covered rocks. Like the sun, it fades for a time. Before you can continue, you must shrink yourself. That is a massive wood, those rocks are mountains. Can't you see yourself, and your friend, at the base? Are you climbing, or heading back down? You are climbing.


Go back into the shade, the sun is coming down anyway. The clustered formations remind me of a time, long ago, when my father took my brother and I back into nameless places. We bounced in the back of his pickup, grasping for whatever we could just to stay in. None of us were afraid. Do you see that cleft at the right? We are speeding along the edge of it--long ago--but moving still. Jed is no help though. Damn dog.

Your friend grumbles and rustles about.

Yeah, it's time to get over to those rocks. Turn right after you ascend--don't forget to become normal sized again. The light is stabbing them.

The sound of your slide explodes the quasi-silence, the industrial din characteristic of machine places. You can hear the flame and the phosphorus rustle in disagreement over who is more beautiful.

Can you sense that there is more to this than meets the screen? Break out of that, and compose yourself. I highly recommend A minor.

Hear what I mean?


A door slams in the distance. Are you an invader to this place? You passed through no gate, and bear no intention of arms, though you have them. Your mind hears a dog barking, but its only a memory.

I remember riding my bike up a slope like this one. I was far more athletic in my youth. A good thing too, for the Rottweiler ran very fast. Hopefully so are as well--do you want to get bitten?


Thirty, forty, two-hundred paces to the west. Hug the rock wall so that you do not fall. Around the corner, to your right, you will see this path. The shards of broken glass hide from you. The beer can scurries back into a crevasse, where you will later poke it with your cane. Something should catch your nose. Turn left.







Friend: Think about what would happen if these rocks came down.

You hear yourself respond. I wonder what you say.

Friend: I don't know where that road goes. Looks like its just behind people's yards.

Don't go down there. That place is not yet for you. Look behind you instead.


Aloof, the conical stone seems to stand apart from its other rocky brethren. It's tip seems to jut desperately away from the earth, bathing what it can in sunlight.

Let me away. Erosion will take me anyway. Let me away.

What would you say to this thorn, this rogue, this potentate? Bow down before it, for it doesn't speak to you. Crawl under its feet. The dust you kick up rockets into your nose-tubes, and creates a burbia half-way down. Do get up, I feel as if I should not send you to these places.

Friend: Do not.
Do.









Go from here, West! Stand on the brink of the rock's ending. There is nothing left--only everything after it. You see houses stretch for miles along, and that road you spotted below before runs up now, but alone. There are no trees, no fire, no phosphorus, no rocks.

Friend: This is where the good rocks end.

Look down. Go back, go up, and then look down.



The dirt-river comes this way, it seems. Bits of grass with patchy hair creep up, but only with reticence. You have been below, and you are above, still expecting to hear the door slam and the dog bark, your cover has been blown. No cover is needed, but you should go down there anyway. Have you been there before? Is being there from below the same as being there from above, even though you stand in the same place. Go. You saw that beer can scurry away. Find it.

Turn left, and look east. Stare at the focal point of the light; look closely as you possibly can. See nothing, but everything else.


Did you focus on the small center, or the rather large and obtrusive luminescent triangle in the upper right? The beer can is behind you, cowering in a cave. You already poked it. Blue and white pollution mark the territory of other border steppers, those who are march-rievers. They did not come from the fens. If you make yourself small again, be wary. The portal at the end of that tunnel leads to places where you have already been.

Friend: Come on up here.

Me: Naw, I am going to check out that road again.

You: [well, say something].

Friend: I agree. Let's go check out that road.

I can't tarry at the road for too long, it doesn't lead to anywhere I can go. Maybe since I have been up that hill many times, I do not want to go. However, not all roads lead to the same spots, even though they head the same direction. I look for expanses, for planes beyond boundaries. I can see homes on either side of where that road goes. What possibly could be interesting in between? Yet these places today step between; they are assailed by the asphalt miles around, but somehow remain. But those beer cans, paint, and glass...

I can't bear it anymore. Look down, and remember my memory.



I have to admit, things get a bit fuzzy from here. That short expanse of yard and those three teeth remind me of home, though shrunk. Cotton-wood and Poplar towers garrison the east and north marches, while Russian olives and willows are on the west. Magpies, starlings, robins, peacocks, dogs, killdeer, quail, and others perform in a concophony of background checks. I can feel the snail-plant and its cream-of-wheat innards disintegrating between my forefinger and thumb. It smells sickly sweet.

Those teeth are blunted now, the towers chopped off. I remember pulling some of them down--they were falling on us. At least the pines out back will last quite a bit longer.

Back to here--these won't fall for a while, but they will fall. Yellow, green, and orange bursts flow through. Can you see the fire burning in the corner?

We are near the end of the road, but not quite there yet. Something wells. Borrow the tendrils of my brain-monster to graps those memories, then eat them. It's renewable consumption, until it rots.

That's the spirit! Look, here!






We found this gate at 4:39. Somebody made it.



I would say go through, but it's only a picture after all.




Part II

"Nature is the vehicle of thought", so says Emerson. Essentially, the arch transcendentalist distills this sentiment by insisting that "we are assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings." What Emerson successfully argues is the contextual nature of language, how it is both arbitrary and yet concrete in that our speech is shaped by physiological processes while meanings are derived from comparisons with other things. Any dictionary can illustrate this solipsistic understanding of language--meanings are based in other meanings, and Emerson assumes that those initial meanings are somehow rooted in natural objects.

Cardiff riffs on Emerson's postulation, pointing out that "voice is language of its own." For both authors, context is everything. In Cardiff's walks, we hear a voice that conveys intimacy and quietude--she speaks as if she is very close to us, even within our heads she suggests. She is creating an environment that we assume in her art, and context molds her speech--Language based on natural objects and speech that inspires the cognitive environment while it is inspired by nature. Cardiff maintains that aspects of voice make up the landscape.

The most difficult aspect of Emerson's argument to reconcile with Cardiff's notions of sound is his privilaging of visuals:

The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well-colored and shaped globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose is round and symmentrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful.
(Nature 13)

However, Cardiff rightly points out that sound-effects "carry their source of time and place with them", therefore affecting the overall perspective. Wheras Emerson maintains that perspective is created through light, Cardiff emphasizes that sense which cannot perceive light. My own walk privilages light, almost to the point that it obscures perspective. Additionally, Emerson does not seem to allow much for smell in tandem with sound; he even goes to far as to suggest that "Even the corpse has its own beauty." Corpses are not so beautiful when smell is considered--an essential aspect of perspective. Moreover, soundscapes often paint vivid pictures: the mind's eye compensates for the lack of visual. This is not to say that Emerson ignores the imagination. He maintains that beauty is intergrally linked with intellect. However, his argument is still bathed in light, as he maintains that light is beauty, and beauty is virtue, even priviliging visuals in the scope of imaginative powers.