Writing by Shannon Flood
Epiphany 2: Untitled
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Epiphany 1: Untitled
A jumble of rocks lay in the center of a room. They are made from earth mixed with blood and baked in unrelenting sun. Scattered in a 20ft diameter, the stones are an old man hunched from the cold. On the wall next to the ramshackle pile, the word ‘attack’ is written repeatedly, seething across the plasterboard. Another wall holds an ashen eyes, staring indifferently at the old man. The iris’s wrinkles are an aerial view of Nevada with its unassuming parallel ridges.
We students settle like windblown ash between the decorated walls and before the hardened mass. “What words come to mind when you see this art?”
Hut. Earth. Bomb.
This is an exhibit at the Nevada Museum of Art entitled “Mushrooms/ Clouds” by the environmental artist Chris Drury. The curator provides context for the works around us; the pile of rocks is piece entitled “569 shelter stones” constructed of rocks taken form near the drying Pyramid Lake, near where we have set camp. The words on the wall are not words at all but the genetic sequencing of the only organism known to withstand the nuclear testing in the Nevada desert. It is a discordant jumble of the letters, “A”, “T”, “G” and “C” painted in dirt form the nuclear test site. The eye on the wall is the enlarged imprint of a mushroom’s underside drawn in ash from beetle decimated trees and the museums AC system’s dust. As the curator continues to illuminate the concepts behind these pieces, their absurdity gives way to meaning.
Now, sitting in a nylon blue chair circle, at the beginning of our first writing section, presented with the task of writing, I feel anxious and my chest feels tight. As we are released to wander up a mountain to see a sacred space in which to write, I am alone with my relentless thoughts; I am frustrated by the fact that my pen is a deficient conduit unable to convey even one tenth of what I see, feel, think and love. The act and result of writing is absurd. my mind wanders back to the art exhibit made of used up dust. But soon, while the sand gives way beneath my feet, the long hike defeats my self-defeating thoughts.
I arrive at the ashram and situate myself on a rock looking over a wooded ravine. I watch those western looking trees cling to grubby, granite fingers lurching up into the sky.
I begin to write and banish those frustrated words to my journal in a contorted ink blot. The blot bleeds uncontrollably covering page after page unabashedly. I slowly begin to relish the fact that I’ve harnessed my frustration to shake out not an unbeautiful blot. While my frustration with writing is not as significant as nuclear testing; creation for both chris drury and I is a way of defying absurdity.
Writing at the ashram this morning, stirred up some of that settled nuclear fall out. I am greatful to the artist for utilizing wasted, sterilized things . conveying something wordlessly in form and color. I am grateful to him because it means that I too can build a structure from stones.
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Epiphany 2: Untitled
Just down the dusty highway from Jackpot, Nevada, a group of government workers, ranchers and students assemble on an incongruously green lawn in front of the kind of house that has seen children grow up. This is the home and ranch of the Boies family, who are hosting the annual Shoesole group- a collaborative effort between bureau of land management workers, ranchers and environmentalists to promote holistic ranch management.
The Boies’ give this group a tour of their ranch, exhibiting some of the tactics used to restore willows to damaged riparian areas, increase plant diversity in a trammeled pasture and mellow an incised stream. Following the methods prescribed by Allan Savory, the Boies’ use holistic land management to make their ranch more economically and ecologically sustainable. While many ecologists have largely refuted Savory’s science, the pieces of land shown to the hoesole group do look healthy. However, a trained eye would undoubtedly be able to determine ecosystem health more astutely than I could. While these parcels of land may not pass an ecological physical with flying colors, it is far from dead, which I more than I can say about some of the sites we have seen in the past few days on different allotments.
Much of the Boies’ holistic ideology can be traced back to the environmental thinker Wendell Berry. He encourages his readers to “think small” when it comes to environmentalism. He reasons that it is more effective to make meaningful lifestyle changes than to promote grandiose gestures on behalf of the environment. It is essential to eschew typical, American hyper-individualism and alienation from the land that impede healthy land and communities. Berry would define a community, as a supportive network of neighbors who could rely on each other or locally owned businesses for their basic needs. Every individual must make the choice to facilitate a new and environmentally minded culture.
Currently, the Boies ranch is being sued by Western Watersheds Project, a litigious environmental advocacy group headed by Jon Marvel, on the basis that the Boies holistic ranch management program is in violation of multiple use agreements for public lands. Jon took us to the completely over grazed Salmon allotment not far from the Boies ranch. The barren land showed many signs of abuse: a deeply incised stream channel, grasses grazed to stubble and evidence of browsed sage brush- a sign of starving cattle. At the sight of a dead owl floating facedown in an illegally installed livestock trough, Jon’s hands rose to clasp his face and his air of self-assuredness gave way to sincere grief. His passion for preserving public land is manifest in his aggressive and litigious tactics, which rely heavily on lawyers and little on compromise.
While the Boies’ would face considerable economic setbacks if they were to loose this case, lack of community poses more of a threat to their ranching culture. Twice, the Boies’ have tried to sell the meat they raise themselves, but have failed to find a market strong enough to support them in the area. This includes the nearest town, Jackpot.
Clinging to the border with Utah, Jackpot is a less classy version of Reno, which its self is a less classy version of Las Vegas. Approximately 90% of the people who spin the grimy gears of business and entertainment (perhaps one in the same in casino-ridden town) do not live here- most commute at least an hour from the bustling metropolis of Twin Falls, Idaho. This fact underscores the essential environmental problem the Boies’ face. How can the Boies’ continue to operate in a sustainable fashion if there is no market for their product? Many, including Jon Marvel, would cite the economic difficultly of raising cattle in an area extremely maladapted to the practice as evidence enough that ranchers should be booted off public land.
However, beef is here to stay until the greater American public first understands what public land is, then, conscientiously decides to stop supporting grazing on it with every Big Mac they buy. But until that day comes, the Boies’ actions are more applicable and effective than aggressive litigation in helping to positively change an embedded aspect of American society.
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stuck here on this island of cold teeth and bones,
you ask me to build an artful shelter.
I would build one beautiful if these bones were infinite,
but how could they possibly not run out?
Let me off this boat, or don’t,
with or without these books, with cumbersome corners.
But the words ‘thank you, thank you, thank you,
are a special arrangement of sounds that make the muscle under my cheeks un-heavy.
Tempt me like the top of the stairs
and I will repeat that special arrangement of sounds.
Now, so that you understand (but this is all actually for me):
I evolved us to have two parts,
divided by a line of uneven symmetry.
The first, forms calculated, wordy things.
It is an orchestrated ant colony and I hold habitually to this windy place.
But rattlesnakes and sex snap that ready switch at the base of my skull
to the second part.
The ant colony reaches for this switch determinedly
with spindly bookish fingers longingly
to smoosh it flat like plastic packing bubbles.
They never will smoosh that switch, but maybe, someday, they will.
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Things That Scatter
Marbles- There is a table full of marbles
at a toy store on the corner of 29th and Guadalupe,
trillions of antique novelties are captured in glass orbs
of all sizes and compositions.
Piled so deeply
as to make me want to push my kid fingers
through their cold
because I know the pool is infinite
and my small hand will never reach the grimy wooden bottom
This treasure table is held on 4 good legs
so as to keep these bold trinkets from hitting the floor
and disappearing never to be found underneath ceiling high shelves of wooden dinosaurs,
metal lunch boxes,
or behind piles of doll-shaped carrots
and plastic frog alarm clocks,
the employees, in their fairy wings and pointed glasses,
would stop spinning goat’s silk and stacking glass thimbles
and bend on knees to scoop up the toys for many minutes.
Only fake glowing starts stuck tacky to the ceiling
will quietly know exactly where that last marble lies,
under the counter next to a long-forgotten toy soldier
poised for action.
Memories of Deserts/ Art Supplies-
Was it pyramid lake
or dinosaur national monument
where I lost it to the wind again?
layered dirts can give me many colors of clay
and bases of paints
that I will use to depict the place in pottery
They are tenuously tied in pigment sinew
but wind cant touch these vessells
like it steals my peace and words (not that I had them to begin)
Shards I see on hikes with Joe Pachak-
Artful vessels held seeds
long before these curmudgeon junipers around us had even begun.
Origined from somewhere beyond the ridge
they traveled deliberately for a short part of their existence
Now, in many pieces,
they are subject to tumultuous air, land and hands.
Only footless folks in white sheets
keep them company in caves
shaped like a fish’s mouth.
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Weathers Reports
1.
I saw the world this morning in 33 millimeter film
a sky still empty of truth telling sun
let me see the wind move silhouetted seed heads
frame by frame
this is ancient red spatter handprints
and shoot ‘em up westerns
including me in their mythology
2.
orange cupcake melts on that distant table
and drips into the cold that bothers my bones in a different way
that the sinew traffic jam in my back
but I take take take the bothersome air
I know that I should go where it came from
and wiggle my cozy fabric plastic loose.
to find the crusties outside that hold to the rock
like dry skin clings to my legs
not to the sole solitude beauty of blotches of life
in algae colors before baking in the sun
3.
you really need to wear shoes
when you get up in the middle of the night to go pee
or else you will step on cactus.
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