Reverb (again)

[mnaz]

Today is 9/11/02. At the foot of Stillwater Range I crawl on a chalk white sea known as Carson Sink; another magnificent Great Basin dead heart sump. God's country. A lone rock flutters on the playa's silver fringe-- Navy bombing target. It should have laid down lower. But lower is hard to come by even in such depths four thousand feet above the ocean, safely removed from its designs on the world. Streams come here to die. I creep along pure white space as sufferers' lyrics creep in and out of murmured reverb... an old Soul Syndicate dub... "every day cost of living gets higher", which I hear as, "cause a living desire". I should toughen up. Every town square holds a memorial to utter waste today, but I'll stay in this dead heart. Fringe existence.

People ask if I pack a gun into the desert, you know, to shoot at glint or fight people in places where there are no people. Good question. I've seen cowboys punch dust across U.S. 95 toward out there, but out there is a singular trial, or maybe a chemistry experiment. If I took a gun it might alter the reaction beyond recognition. Or complicate its light. "The living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock", as Ed Abbey put it; master of the unseen expanse.

I cop to it. I favored a gentle hangover, enlightened at every seventh truck stop, moved like freight on blinding tan. I know what fools me gently and banishes deadlines to hills and detritus and glow before they're sold off in units of one, or the other. Monster heatwaves boil duality for a living in Eden, but they play out eventually. Pure white ebbs as I climb into scorched auburn and penetrate my best illusion on a trail under the powerlines... bridge to fringe. I go there to miss the point, though I won't climb the towers. They light a distant city (pick one) when it does the same... three more ridges until promised rock, and wires snap crackle like peace. I'll have them to myself. It seems few came to Nevada for Nevada, but to crunch numbers.

But the road turns toilsome... I can't hear it... until murmured reverb seeps through again, turned down low as it fills the expanse with echo, ricochets between mountain ranges and canyons, lays out the land, coats it in a long, wistful fade. I ride it over a jagged rise across the divide; earth to echo, and back. In humbler times King Tubby conjured a dub reverb portal in a Jamaican ghetto using a beat up four track mixer and other spare parts: materials at hand... thunderous, quiet pulse. I misjudged the horizon and I'm left with stolid granite. And reverb. On a stripped bedrock rhythm that brought me. Tubby spared few lyrics in the mix and I steal what he spared... "Going to Africa, Africa to-mor-row"... stolen repatriation to Nevada dust.

I take only what I need from the rootsman, or so I believe; his faith tested by barren sweeps and affirmed by longer views, where despair wrote of faith in a massive earth rhythm, the kind Glen Brown wrote in self defense. In the dead heart his rhythms attack me. They fit long arcs of obliteration and heat, lack of color and definition. Songs of thirst fit times of drought. As Sly Stone wrote, "You have turned into a prayer; I can feel I'm almost there"... He wrote of love, denied simple. He wrote of a long powerline trail, insane from heat, buried in Ward Valley's colorless, unstable curves, the ones I saw when I heard the song... supplication to barren earth. God's country.

[mtmynd]

God's country. Stripped of human reality and folly where Truth sings in the winds that carve a barren land into monuments of solitude.

Write on, mnaz.

[mnaz]

just something I had to get out... a frozen moment... or several. (we've all had them). stands out fairly clear in my recollection.

thanx Cecil.

[creativesoul]

when i read you t is as if i am there
i feel what you feel
see what you see
i like the voyage
and i do not ave to wait in long lines, mess with luggage or take my shoes off to fly