Descendentalism—Diving into the Wreck of the Floating World

Salutations, Persistent Vikings!

Over the last half dozen years, I've rediscovered my "Inner Viking." I have no need to "rape, pillage and plunder"; instead, my father's mother's Norwegian genes need to row, paddle and sail. And, having found my "sea legs," it's difficult to think of the awkward act/word: "disembarkation." On the last night at sea I went, as usual, to the fifth deck and stuck my head around the corner, into the wind, like a black lab looking around the cab of a pick-up truck racing down the blue highway. Even now, months later, I can smell the ocean, feel the power of the wind, hear the music of the wake, which will now always be a melody inside my gait.

Astronauts talk about "re-entry," and the way they are a bit younger after their sojourn in space. But even in a "place" (that is the thing made of space), time shifts when we're walking on water. Just as Thorough gets himself pleasantly lost at midnight on Walden Pond, we who have sailed "float" in place/time. The Japanese, those meditative island-dwellers, talk about the Floating World. I have had no cellphone for over four months, and never wear a watch; I rely upon "other people's time," and/or setting my interior clock. It's hard feel "stable" when great white squid and whales swim below your longitude and latitude—those ways of mapping where we think we are. One of the books used in the Nomadology class I taught was Peter Turchi's Maps of the Imagination. Like Mark Monmonier's How Maps Lie, it shows how loose and relative our notions of exacting space really are, and how imaginary.

But there may be a saving grace in our obsession with never fully knowing where we are: if we have never truly been found, or know where we are, can we ever really be lost? Is "re-entry" re-dundant? Don't we always enter anew? Isn't the "enter" button on this computer I'm typing upon marked "re-turn?" As Aretha Franklin knows, re-peating "re re re re re re re re" in "Re(-)spect," "re" words are the biggest section of any dictionary. Knowledge folds over upon itself, and re-petition is the way we petition anew the meaning of words whose nuance and definitions (both denotation and connotation) are constantly changing in the flux of words and sounds around us.

One of the pleasures on the ship was my old friend Mr. Ping-Pong. As we slipped along the tipping deck behind our end of the table, the repetition of the ball—ping, pong, ping, pong—was a song I longed for. In the same way, I eagerly awaited the crash of pool balls on the break in each country. Our ability to notice "new" things is the luxury of being able to do so many necessary tasks without thinking or learning. But a shipboard education challenges what landlubbers take for granted: even learning to walk down a narrow corridor on high seas makes us all toddlers again. In deep swells, is "sea level" the average depth of the trough between waves? Bucky Fuller is often quoted saying that earthlings must only talk about "out" from planet earth (we can only go "out" into space), but those of us who live at the surface of the earth know how important our myopic up and down world can be...

Upon returning to Florida, I went home to Oregon and floated the 91 miles with some of you down our whitewater wake from the Grande Ronde to the Snake River. The calm eddies and thrilling whitewater were a microcosm of the ship, and it was like letting the earth become one of those glass paperweights the size of baseball become a winter scene after shaking up the snow. Today I sit in Newburyport, Massachusetts, looking across the reflections around boats in calm water to the tidal current further out in the mighty Merrimac River, as the ocean charges inland. It makes me want to follow the tide back out, like Roz Savage, as she attempts to add the Pacific to the oceans she has rowed across (rozsavage.com).

Exploring outer space takes a lot of time and money. Half the living astronauts want NASA to head for Mars, rather than a return to the moon. Perhaps this vast adventure has something to do with compensating for all the little things that don't work, like the red thread that won't open a Bandaid? Transcendentalism was the mis-translated journey inward that the writers of the American Renaissance, like Emerson and Thorough, embarked upon. My mentor, literary critic Sherman Paul, talked about "descendentalism," our mental/emotional journey down and back, to (in poet Charles Olson's words) "get behind the Greek" to see where we went wrong with our linear and destructive technology. Eric Havelock, in his Preface to Plato, argues that language is the most dangerous "tool," which might even mean that our utopias are tainted or undermined by the way we express them. Jacques Derrida took apart the French Empire by deconstructing the language that saluted it.

But beyond any quibbling by philosophers and linguists, any travel outward usually feeds the inner journey to the center of our cosmos, where any of us (even the least pretentious or thoughtful) must stand. And the center of any square implies the circle where we chase our tails, like the worm Ouroboros, or the mathematical dream of the squared circle. We spin, like vinyl records, wooden tops or electrons, in the only orbits we can find. But travel fills us with a need to know if we are more than forms and worms:

Why and how do our lives matter?
How will we spend what's left of our time on earth?
Who will we honor, oppose or glide around?
Where will we live, and how and why?

Once again, our evolving aesthetic sends out rhizomes toward our evolving ethic, connecting what is beautiful and/or true with what might be and how we might enact a "better" world...

I'll leave y'all here, in the middle of separate and sometimes congruent cosmos, loaning you my daily pre/post-pagan (that cusp or intersection or nexus where meaning is on the verge of tumbling from the literal and historical into the symbolic and mythological) prayer that asks for as much compassion, honesty and kindness as possible, moving away from any regret or resentment.

Bon Voyage, ALWAYS!

Panama Canal—Picking the Landlocked Oceans

Long-overdue greetings, my jungle jaguars! Have you got your Panama Hat? You'll need it to ward off the intense sun for our transit through the mighty Panama Canal. More than the Suez Canal, the rise and fall of this water is an expensive convenience. "Canal" is misleading, for this is really an inland river with wee lakes along the way, to house ships resting or waiting. The "Pan" in "Panama" is the key: this system of locks is the endpoint of long effort, which cost many lives across an array of cultures. I won't chart the slow-mo history of fighting malaria and actually scratching the dirt out of the way, as a number of films cover this pretty well. You might want to start by watching Nova's take: A Man, A Plan, A Canal, available on DVD.

This "Pan-American" effort (which was also a political ploy and liability for American politicians) begins with a little help from our tugboat friends:





A pilot boat delivers a guide who uses the ship's P.A. system to explain the passage:





The Pacific is behind us, as we enter:



Before long, the locks loom up:





The tugs bump us in, and follow:



Once we're in and the gates are closed, water begins to rise, getting ready to raise the boat up enough to float "downhill":







There's not a lot of room on our side:







The metal cars on rails attach cables to pull us through and keep us straight:







Small cranes sometimes off-load supplies:



The lock moving ships in the other direction is nearby and, currently, empty:







But in the second set of locks, a ship approaches us going in the other direction:









Near the locks, we're often in close proximity to other ships, which underlines the values of those tiny angels, the tugs:









There are long passages through tropical jungle and islands:









Along the way we pass bridges:



And we go under them, including this amazing suspension bridge:





We happen to be passing through on the very day that crucial elections are occurring in Panama, which hold the future of the Canal in their hands. Incredibly expensive plans to widen the Canal hang in the balance. You can see the beginnings of this construction scraped into the hillsides:







When it's time to enter the Gulf of Mexico, tugs are nearby to help:



And then we're under our own power, heading out into open sea:



Once we're in the Caribbean, it's time for the Ambassador's Ball. Alas, I only have my odd, free mango tie to wear with my suit made in Vietnam, but I'm happy to celebrate the return of Skye Fitzgerald, back from his death-defying trip to get film footage in the DRC:



As we move toward Florida, the oddness of ending this voyage begins to arrive...

Guatemala—Lava Flow and Riding Shotgun for Camino Seguro

Ho-LAH, Mu-cha-cha-chas/chos!

Welcome to Guatemala (pronounced 危地馬拉 in China, in case you're wondering, and I know you were)! I'd been waiting for that demanding, olympian sport, pool. So when we docked in the grotty parking space called Puerto Quetzal, Skye and I had to negotiate a taxi to the nearby village of San Jose. Some things had changed in the three years since I'd been in the country. One was, in the title of the John Sayles movie, Men With Guns. Before only the banks had armed guards. But now, even in this skinny ciudad, not just the ATMs, but almost every store has armed guards carrying butt-less shotguns. For obvious reasons, I'm not showing you the pics of these hired guns, but their presence was unnerving.

Within five minutes of finding our broke-ass pool parlor—which was perfect, especially after I fetched some Gallo chicken beer from a tienda freezer across the street—the armed tourist police in their yellow safety vests were stationed outside the door, quietly looking out for us. Here's a fuzzy shot of a fuzzy place, as Skye and I played the two owners in, appropriately, 8-ball:



A quick couple of steps around town:





Beneath the jumpiness of a poor, armed nation is the igneous push of Guatemala's active volcanoes. Most tourists head directly to the relative shango-ri-la of Antigua, where you can see two volcanoes easily: Fuego (Fire) and Agua (Water). Let's take a drive.

Don't pay too much attention to the mock-yuppie burbs:



This oxymoronic sign in small stores always cracks me up:



Before my Quest for Fire, there is always one for mi old amigos, perros vagros:



In the distance, you can see Fuego, spouting steam:



Let me move you closer:



We're going to hike up another active volcano:



Across the valley you can make out Fuego and another volcanco:





If you're feeling tired, you can buy a ride from an equally tired horse:





The trail quickly gets steep:



There's the familiar family corn plot in Mayan style:



Can you see the thermal plant that generates electricity (it has a green roof)?:



Out in the valley you can see the lava deposited from the last big flow in the 1990's:



Here's the set of peaks where the lava is still flowing:







To get closer we first need to go down this scree-field. The best way to do this, with a pack on your back, is to take great leaps, one foot forward, while sitting back—the way you would snow ski deep, new powder:



Good job! I'm waiting for you, ready to lead you on the trail to molten lava:



We'll be walking over light, sharp volcanic rock: don't slip, or you'll get cut!:





Can you see the red-orange line of lava flowing down the mountain in the distance?:



Let's get closer. When your shoes begin to melt, you're close enough!:









Now let's venture into the danger zones of Guatemala City. We're moving into a world of poverty, gangs and the corporations that exploit them, including:





Parts of the city are marked by ancient aqueducts:



I continue to photograph my fetishes: doors and lazy doggies:



We're headed for a very special destination: the largest, and most toxic, dump in Central America, where children break glass to put on the tops of the high walls that protect the ritziest, gated communities:



To view the scale of the dump, we need to approach through and older cemetery:





Okay, let's get out of the bus and walk to the cliff face. The vultures huddled in the trees—so toxic from garbage that eating one could cause death—are a sign we're very close:



We're now standing on a cliff, looking down hundreds of feet to the growing nightmare that is the dump. Can you see how this 17-km stretch is being filled in toward ground level on the left, but is still deep below?:







Can you make out the ant-sized people working inside the dump? Some live rough in the dump, some squeezed into the houses in the distance:





Bull-dozers layer the trash, as people scramble to gather things to sell on the cheap to recyclers:



Here are items gathered to sell to recyclers:



However, enormous methane fires and explosions still occur; an especially bad one arrived in 2005. Here's one back door to the dump:



The trash spills over nearby walls:





Families who live nearby and work in the dump often hoard items for recycling on top of their roof, waiting for prices to go higher:











Smack dab in the middle of this nightmare is an amazing and workable program, Camino Seguro (Safe Passage). Visit their website:

http://www.safepassage.org/

This rescue op began with a single teacher from Maine, who happened to visit the dump, and felt it was unacceptable that children would grow up there, inhabiting this hopeless and toxic world. She sold her personal goods and moved there to begin to move children out of the dump, helping their families. When she was killed in a tragic accident commuting, others took over. There is now a facility in the midst of this wasteland that has become an oasis. Take a look:





Volunteers from all over America and the world volunteer time and energy. For example, the architecture program at the University of Washington has already started the landscaping:







Inside, there's a school, playground, health facility and cafeteria:































Here's Brooks, a volunteer from Michigan, in the cafeteria:



I'll be trying to raise money for this program by selling my fancy-smancy coloring books on the net. If you're interested, you can email them for info to start a friends group for their program wherever you live.

"I'm like a ghost
some people can't see.
Other just drive by and stare.
A shadow that drifts on the side of the rode.
It's like I'm just not even there."

"Wander This World," Jonny Lang

Humans and animals have often fouled their own nest, but slowly waste has found its way out of the home and office and out of sight. How many of ye fellow Oregonians, par exemplo, have visited the massive dump outside Arlington, that will, like the Hanford Nuclear ranch, eventually leach into the Columbia. Imagine a situation desperate enough, like Guatemala City, Phnom Penh or so many other cities, where people, with children, actually seek the dump as place of work and default "home." Even though we have children in the U.S. living in trailers and motels their parents have turned into portable meth labs, there is a level of despair centered in these dumps around the world that seems increasingly unacceptable to me. What to do? Start with Safe Passage, but also visit your own dump and see what's up. I remember being a paper boy who earned one wee dollar every Wed. afternoon delivering a "shopper" guide to the poorest part of my small, Iowa town. Phil Butler had a cardboard and tin shack in the dump with his wife, and he liked to sit atop the piles of salvage in his rocking chair and hurl insults my way. We cast out people along with all our thangs....