Category Archives: Learning

Journal Entries on learning and education

Image Aspiration

– A Sojourn.

Dead Horse Point Sunrise

“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break….I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.”

― Edward Abbey

It seems another lifetime, eons pass. I reflect on isolated images, immediately reliving each moment.

This particular memory cast grand simmering instincts, feelings and emotions throughout endless assorted points of consciousness. Every step shines with its own light. All perceptions make an appearance, pass and glide away to mingle in infinite varieties.

An awkward efficiency hotel provides meager amenities, we are quick, capable and out the door. The cool darkness refreshes and a few fleeting minutes of driving forsake artificial light. The heavens radiate with infinite glowing stars, planets, and orbiting man-made machines across an inky velvet sky. Our itinerary and timing provides space to languish in this moment.

We have researched well and the specifics of our destination should give rise to opportunities rarely afforded. Another ¾ of an hour and our solitary parking space beckons. Unwinding from the journey we step into the ebony night world and lean back against the car as we gaze upwards in bliss and contentment, murmuring occasionally at cosmic streaks in the heavens.

Gathering ourselves together after this interlude we muster gear and begin our hike. Each headlamp casting proper luminance for the trail.

As the electric stars subtly wane we are perched at our intentions and assure that each camera is assembled, secure and properly intoned. At this we wait.

As a glimmer of sky very slowly reveals itself the slight warmth gathers the night’s condensation and begins to blanket the horizon.

Dawn slowly gathers strength at the bend in the Green River situated in the vast wilderness of the Dead Horse State Park overlook.
Dead Horse Dawn

We each begin evolving our intentions, gathering inflections with sentience distilled of life’s experiences.

I allow my thoughts to gather contemplative inferences and soon the temporal bubbles of cognition ease into a rhythmic cadence and I sense visual designs that lie before me.

Intuitively and reflexively I focus towards a developing composition as the luminance of civil twilight stirs the visual dynamics before me.

The mental bubbles guide my intentions into a highlighted frame. Examining the visual syntax, I subtly tweak several elements into more defined placements and selectively merge time slices into an integrated whole. A quick examination refines a perspective and depth adjustment. Another capture reveals the integration I intend and I begin to search for this image’s expressive moment while mentally reviewing my alternative compositional intentions of this morning. Abruptly the moment peaks and several time slices are recorded for later review and decision of which most acutely defines my expectations. Across the way, repetitive shutter clicks intone similar ruminations from Val.

I quickly redevelop into another time referenced composition that I had mentally mapped and similar processes again eke an eloquence from the landscape. This evolution continues as luminance dictates a sense of ambition. Purposely, I arrive at closely zoomed reflections of considerations. These stories were charged with nuanced yet ambiguous abstractions for the interpretations of viewers in a multitude of subjective manners.

As this fraction of the day peaks and wanes, we gather the moments of our felt life and breathe refreshment throughout our spirit. The long term memories getting settled into their repositories, visual and the remaining senses, each establishing their neuronal connections in sense of time, place and permanence.

Our wonderment of this grandeur, witnessed amidst the context of geologic time scales on which the stories are instilled, distills a sense of persuasive calm.

Early dawn reflection of towering cliffs over the bend in the Green River.
Dead Horse Reflections

Momentarily, each spiritually revived, we discuss individual intents of additional purposeful interpretations, and wander off individually in such pursuits. Much later we reconvene and consider our findings.

Eventually, we lunch and then begin again explorations in anticipation of constructing synthetic three dimensional worlds.

Back Soon,

Dusty & Val