The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
The End of Night
[A Retrospective] Cruising tangent to the atmosphere, time compresses and lengthens, up is sometimes down, and at times we fly from yesterday into tomorrow…Adapting our perception to the depths and shallows of the aerial twilight in which we dwell, we revel in the day’s transitions without concern for whether the moon is setting or rising, or whether it is the end of night or the beginning of day…That said, we live for a thousand moments, then we live for a thousand more…each moment incomprehensibly connected as we move along the way. We stop to breath, measuring our pulse, each moment energizing and invigorating us while running through us like sound across a wire as we are the fiber that connects these moments.
Faults
[A Retrospective] A fault divides us…a visual break in a seemingly harmonious landscape, touching earth and heaven at once, a series of points connected by an undefined destabilizing force in the wake of a passing jet. Churning vapor along an exposed seam. Excited droplets of water fall off into the chasm, the disturbed air dissipates, eventually leaving no trace as the energy is consumed by the calm. We all leave a wake, an undefined destabilizing force…its up to us to define the sort of energy we trail behind us and the effect that lingers after we have disappeared from sight.
Unassuming Grandeur
Mount Vernon beneath the wing, we round the corner and head up the Potomac River. Finely manicured, unassuming grandeur, defining the landscape without a thought of competition or ostentation…the sort of essence that is willed into existence at the confluence of time, place, innate good taste, and a commitment to pursue an idea. The light fades as we complete our descending turn and our thoughts of refined and dignified ideals are consigned to the lengthening shadows, leaving us with ghostly feelings of our own lacking.
Reflecting on Safe Harbors
Far below the aerial horizon, we rest in safe harbors and face ourselves, questioning our resolve to lift our heads to chase the horizon…Do we have the fortitude to bear the discomfort and uncertainty of giving ourselves over to a journey? In the calm of the harbor we see our reflections on the water and the sea begins to absorb us. In so doing, our images, voices, and spirits diffuse and intertwine, surrounding us with some intangible sense that we are part of something bigger…It is the soul of inspiration…In a few short days, an old friend of mine will depart San Diego on a “voyage of inspiration”…he will be assisting his friend, a true adventurer, Hiro Iwamoto in his quest to sail across the Pacific Ocean non-stop on his sailboat, Dream Weaver. Hiro is blind, but the immensity of his vision is awe-inspiring…He is making the voyage to send a message to the world that “anything is possible when people come together.” Please visit his blog Voyage of Inspiration 〜全盲ヨットマン、夢と希望の航海〜 and follow his journey. And while you are there, consider supporting Dream Weaver’s causes of: preventable and curable blindness; enabling those facing challenges; and citizen science.
Safe Voyage, Dream Weaver.
Firestorm
[A Retrospective] An individual spark starts a small fire…a small light, barely visible, its smoke rising into the air between us in small curling wisps. These seemingly insignificant smoke signals seem to vanish in the air above us and fade into memory…From above, we look down upon a thousand such sparks as they each kick up smoke and ash onto the breeze…What was once small and insignificant, now, appears as a firestorm covering the earth as the combined effect of each little spark alters the atmosphere that surrounds us. No act occurs in isolation, whether grand or small, good or bad, thought or deed, the effects of our actions and interactions are all of ours to share.
Radiance
Stop for a moment and listen to the morning breeze as it flows across the landscape…Sometimes it’s different, a harmony amid flat tones, a signal to pay attention, engaging and enveloping, a call from across time. Sourceless music emerges from silence as though the radiance of a sundog appearing in a dark shadowy sky. Discerning this radiance, aural or visual, is the essence of perception.
A dear old friend passed from the earth yesterday…An enlightened soul, she saw signs and connections, and paid close attention when a an unfinished song lingered on the wind yearning for completion…She was the embodiment of a sundog mysteriously radiating light in a darkening sky…she projected and shared her energy, leaving us awestruck as if bathed in the light of a brilliant sunset…her light now lingers on the horizon and her song now drifts upon the breeze.
Into the New
Traces of the turbulent past dissolve in breezes eternal, leaving only a faint memory in the serenity of the new day’s dawn. Adieu 2018.
Foretelling
[A Retrospective] An old friend lost a child, a tsunami swept a village out to sea, and an entire species teetered on the brink of extinction…meanwhile another life was saved, we caught a glimpse of interstellar space, we dreamed a few good dreams, and the sun touched a face from out of the darkness and brought it hope….All the foretelling in the world could not prepare us for the joys and sorrows that we simultaneously feel each day, but watching the sky as the soft morning light slowly creeps over the horizon, we can stop to imagine how it illuminates us all indiscriminately. We all experience that which the other experiences, each in our own way…We can be like the light, washing over each other, pushing back the shadows, sharing in one another’s sorrow and joy, and letting each other know that no one is alone.
Springdale
[A Retrospective] When one’s home is graced by surrounding splendor, it is difficult to imagine a moment without distraction…constant sensory infusions of the spirit of earth…the subtle voice of the landscape inviting us to communion. We spend our days traveling over such magnificent scenes, but often fail to hear the call, to engage with the landscape, to honor the earth as we wrap ourselves in all too common concerns of work, time, and stress with our window shades drawn and our senses dulled by electronic distractions…casting off our self imposed distractions and opening our eyes to the world around and beneath us, we open our hearts and imaginations to mingle with the wonders that await.
The Story of Quiet
[A Retrospective] In the quiet of the evening sky, something emerges that leaves me begging for more…The scene is set in a place of solitude; it may be one’s vision of heaven or it may simply be that place where the chill of a great universe scintilates and penetrates our skin, overcoming us, leaving us, not shivering but, quaking with a sense of the unfathomable greatness of which we are a part…The languid movements of light through the atmosphere, lazily and effortlessly rolling in and out, touching elements that are defined in our world, illuminating those things which we otherwise would fail to percieve…This is the story of “Quiet” and Light is the animator.
Music
Looking up toward the sky, drifting contrails on the winds aloft fill the heavens with music.
Subtlety
[A Retrospective] Everyone perceives a slightly different aesthetic in the setting sun. Perhaps it’s the amorphous nature of clouds or the rapidly shifting spectrum of visible light…Flashes of color painting the sky, illuminating the dust and vapor, subtly changing as the sun slips toward the horizon.
Ledges of Zion
[A Retrospective] Anticipation. Premonition. A sense of knowing what’s over the next hill. Marking the moments as we approach a place and perspective of which we dream, we paint images in our minds of what we expect to see. We fill the dark void of senseless imagination with color, texture, and the electric sensation of first sight. Casting our view toward the advancing canyon floor, we feel the place as much as we see it…two sensation, indivisible…and we engrain the contours of the landscape forever in our consciousness. Preserving these places is tantamount to preserving our souls.
Inversion
[A Retrospective] It’s a simple phenomenon when the air above is warmer than the air below. Ordinarily, it creates layers of weather that we hemstitch in search of smooth, ice-free air…but sometimes, it can create another world where the clouds become sea and landscapes, while mountains become dramatic cloudscapes. These secret worlds created above the earth are our sanctuary. We pass through them inspired, only to descend beneath the overcast into the world that others see, all the while holding onto the sensations of the world we left up there.
Balance Restored
[A Retrospective] A balancing act between lightness and darkness, a gravitational equilibrium on display. We express our sense of weight in terms of light. Perhaps it is easier to understand this heaviness we feel within ourselves when we can compare it to something we can see and understand. While the force of gravity has no opposite, the forces exerted upon us do have competitors…objects or ideas radiating with greater gravitas. We are drawn toward the heavens, feeling a lightness in our souls, climbing until, escaping the heavy shadows, we touch the sun. We soar into the light of day and leave our burdens below in the darkness. Our sense of balance restored with perspective.
Where or When
[A Retrospective] We are here now, in this place, to experience a singular moment…Afterwards, all of this will be sustained by our dreams where the indelibility of memory reunites vanished moments with the reality of the places where we reside. A distinct image, plucked from the ether of imagination, rekindles sensations that have long since passed. We feel that moment again, but it seems hollow and leaves us longing. That moment was solitary and our memories tease us in their elusiveness…as though we are trying to hold a cloud or catch a ray of light, the sensations slip through our fingers and fade into shadows.
Silent Spaces
[A Retrospective] I constantly hear noise, from the moment that I awaken, to the moment that I fall asleep…dawn breaks and I hear the questioning harrumphs and hawhoofs of my Labrador as she wonders when I will get the hint that she’s ready for a walk…out the door, I hear the buzz of cicadas and the distant wail of a passing train…we hit the trail and in the silence of the wood, the hushed sound of leaves swaying and intermingling with the delicate buffeting of a morning breeze, the intermittent clinking of dog tags, the the ruffle of feathers flushed out of a thicket…In the silent spaces, the humming and ringing of long silent jet engines distract me from the peace of the morning…then there’s music, always music, and the unfortunate cacophony of self modulating reporters and entertainers passing along the latest cause for alarm…In the apparent peace of the air, the roaring sound of friction is deafening as air currents blast, scrape, and buffet the skin of the aircraft…Noise Is Everywhere…Though the sounds are inescapable, projecting ourselves into the quiet cloudscape and landscape that surrounds us, we find a place far above the din and imagine a perfect silence as we float above the earth.
Elevated
[A Retrospective] It’s a rainy afternoon in Dallas and I watch the flicker of windshield wipers flash across the van’s windshield animating the solid headlights against the dark backdrop of heavily overcast skies…I won’t dwell on my thoughts of how dangerous this part of my day is in contrast to my work…In the bouncing and vibrating bleakness of this moment, my thoughts turn to the sky and I project myself forward into the day to come, imagining the appearance of this patch of earth and its weather shroud from above…bright sunlight illuminating the rhythmic contours of clouds, gently rumbling chop shaking my seat as warm disturbed air rises above the weather. Then, reaching the western mountains where the weather may no longer overcome the rising terrain, I dream of that nexus between heaven and earth…where the two meet, a song floats on the lifting breeze.
Determining the World Around Us
[A Retrospective] This season of hurricanes and super-typhoons led me to reflection…The reason is unimportant, it was our assignment and we ventured out, knowing that it wouldn’t be fun. When super-typhoon Bart was setting course for our island, the response was to evacuate the airplanes to safer harbors. Our assigned safe harbor was a little different and required us to fly through the advancing weather in order to reach it. That may make the day’s work sound a little benign…From the moment we entered that clouds, the screaming static on the radios deafened us while Saint Elmo’s Fire brilliantly and erratically streamed from every visible screw and frictious exposed edge of skin around our windscreens. Ice accumulated in great pikes of rime in the slipstream. Wings visibly flapped in response to the shocks of rapidly rising and falling turbulence. The winds built to over a hundred and forty-five knots. Storm cells saturated our radar like narrowly separated frog eggs floating in a murky pond as our radar operator deftly led us through zigging and zagging course changes to avoid the worst of it. The atmosphere was violent, but it merely conveyed the tremorous warning waves of something greater that was building in force hundreds of miles to our south. Suddenly, as if falling into a deep hole, we found ourselves in the clear…the winds abruptly dropped off to zero knots. Two things stand out in my memory…the anxious quizzical looks we exchanged in the cockpit and the solid black wall of churning cloud that we observed on all fronts. We lived in that moment of recoil and relief, knowing that we would be back to work the moment we penetrated the wall on the other side of the clearing. The effect was that a mini cyclone had formed out in front of the known typhoon…super-typhoons can be like this, so massive and energy laden that the spiraling cyclonic forces create their own eddying systems on the periphery of the storm…in their motion and energy, they prove a determining force in the atmosphere…We, too, stir up forces that seem unrelated to us as we move along the way, creating other atmospheres in our wake…the moods and messages that we transmit determine whether we spin off violent storms or soothing summer breezes…whether we foment discontent or share our peace. How we travel along our paths determines the world we create around us.
The Weight of the World
[A Retrospective] In sharing memories today, as is always the case on this day, the emotions, sounds, and sensations came flooding back as though they were fresh experiences. I remain overwhelmed as I try to express the effect of the resounding silence I felt in the days following September 11, 2001 and I am at a loss…Everything was out of the ordinary…Everything was wrong…I was stuck on the deck in one of the busiest cities on the planet and all I could sense was an eery silence that weighed so heavily on earth and ears that all sound seemed stifled and flat. As I attempt to put this in perspective, I find solace and reason in the clouds…We navigate storms and think little of them as we are protected in our pressurized aluminum and composite capsules, out of touch with the extremes of temperature and torrent…an occasional bump may remind us of the hazards surrounding us, but we quickly return to our complacency…Stripping away that protection, we imagine the tearing sensation of shearing winds, the chaos of colliding air masses, and the rapid freefall of rain. The weight of the world and all of these chaotic and downward forces fall upon us when our layers of physical and emotional protection fall away…and all we can feel is that weight upon us and the chaos around us…a topsy-turvy sensory affectation of our burdened souls…all sounds are dulled, yet our senses are heightened…we move in slow motion, we notice everything from the silence of the birds to absent roars of jets…and these moments are so burned into our memories of this shared trauma that they will never be forgotten…but in the midst of darkness there are always a few rays of light that penetrate and illuminate the storm, providing us hope that the storm is not eternal and the chaos will eventually subside…And this is where we may find solace on the storm.
The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 