who said stewarship had to be geometric?

Who said Stewardship had to be Geometric?

Who said stewardship had to be geometric?
Right angles pastels patterns and flowerboxes
The wild meander of wild rivers compartmentalized by the ax and gun of man
Groves to clearings, green to brown, chaos to order
The least we could have done was ask permission
Patterns and stick figures like feet on the sand, leaving a mark that fades away with the tide
Only this time the tide has retreated leaving our many footprints like scars on the land
Oh Humans, is it really you as far as the eye can see?
Grids like graphs divide the land into dollar signs, slumps and curves.
The rules of nature became the exceptionÂ…
Small strips of untamed land, dark rivers with tears of silt

My catalogue whispers reassurances; all this was not for nothing.
Just leave your name on this 3x5 card and we will take care of it for you.

18/2/05 in a plane to Chicago

Big Sur
I stood in a grove of red wood trees surrounded by moss and moisture and almost forgot that there were suburbs next door, that down south the earth was dying under the weight of the species I owe my consciousness to.

The sun rose and silhouetted small farms, not shopping malls with similar names, or ranches that arenÂ’t ranches at all.

HWY-15 just south of Provo As I emerged from the electric grids of a suburb, headed for another just like it, I slowly slipped into an expanse of floating white fog that extended infinitely on both sides of the road. As infrastructure faded I passed through time to small farms and age sagged silos giving in to gravity. Thought the natural landscape had long since been vanquished the open space was a relief. As the sun began to break through the fog I could make out rows of apple trees whose leaves had been shed and whose branches slumbered till the spring. I imagine the days when the first people roamed these lonely hills in search of sustenance. They too have yielded under the weight of my civilization, and not inevitably it seems but unfortunately.

Orange County intersection of Bastanchury and Lakeview.
its strange that only five years ago this master planned upper-middle-classuburbanan compound was a grove of orange and avocado trees. it had probably been that way for a hundred years. before that it was a natural space with trees and animals an ecosystem. usually its the old folks who talk about what used to be, when they were young, but i'm still young and progress is moving to fast for me.

the first lines of manifesto

I think I've actually written several manifestos in my life. Ya, I take myself way to seriously, and each time they turn out a little different. I remember in one I swore before God and angels that I would never own a fancy car, or a mini-van. That I would always be a punk rocker. That's funny, cuz I never really was a punk rocker, I just though I looked like one for about three years. And because I inherited some Dead Kennedy tapes from my aunt. From then on I would spend all my allowance on spike bracelets and music I thought a punk should own. After my time in the Dominican Republic (two years as a mormon missionary) I mellowed out a bit and gave up art as a career option and started in on anthropology. I don't think I will ever give up on the idea of creating art, I just didn't want to have to make money doing it. This whole barefoot anthropology thing came to me in a Nancy Scheper-Hughs article assigned to me in a theory class. She suggested that anthropologists might consider actually caring for those with whom they work. It turns out I don't actually want to make money doing anything, so living like a peasant is quite appealing to me, without all the socio-political disadvantages of course ( I am a romantic remember). There's always exploitation in time clocks no matter who is punching them so why not live without them, pretty simple I thought. So below are some points on which life may seem less mysterious and perilous. Not even close to what I have in scores of moleskin journals, but its a start.

anyways here goes:

1. I want to write, no matter how horrible or boring or serious I get.

2. I want to photograph, my soul has never been as warm as it has been looking into the eyes of a brand new photograph which I created with the help of technology (which I grudgingly thank at times).

3. I want to live beautifully, and as E.F. Schumacher believes Small is Beautiful. So whatever that means I hope I can make it happen, though I am notoriously distracted by large tracks of land in the country and Spanish architecture.

4. Music

5. I was born Mormon, but I struggle with organized religion like a cow thrown in a lake. But if I can just live as closely to the Sermon on the Mount as possible I think I'll be ok. (Tolstoy and Vonnegut may agree).

6. I want to be able to call my community a village, for whatever romantic reasons, community appeals to me, all though I am hopelessly misanthropic, I hope its just a phase, it's been one of my longer ones I hate to admit, and I'm pretty sure I can trace its roots back to a period of Kurt Cobain worship that hit just after puberty.

to be continued...