WRITING : 2005 : ASK THE DUST

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The hallucination began like this. A few miles west of Bakersfield, he eventually arrives at the beach. The ocean is nearly still, like an image of itself. Monstrous equipment lines the shore, abandoned, along with the ruinous skeletons of buildings never completed. Evidence of some grand ambition built upon the graveyard of the partially buried past, consuming the shore. This goes on for miles. What once was is no longer. Who had said it? He couldn't remember. The disaster had changed everything. That was easy. In another way, he's now thinking, everything stays the same. Days go by. He hasn't seen another body for weeks. Hasn't spoken. Forgets words every day, forgets how words go together. He clears his throat and imagines himself speaking. It sounds strange in the vast quiet. He walks to the water. Touches it. Connects to its immensity. He continues on, aimlessly, away from the beach, across an expanse of carrion and rotted kelp. In the distance he sees a large, white cube jutting from the earth. A gleaming mirage floating on the horizon. A dry laugh issues, involuntarily. He keeps walking for...like...ever. He can't shake the vision. It's not a mirage, he discovers, he thinks he discovers, but a cargo truck, upended, perfectly, as if by design. A giant fossil partially excavated, melting in the sun. How long has it been here? The hot steel surface is encrusted with thick patches of salt crystals. Residue, he's guessing, of the receded ocean waters, breeding rust, carving holes in the hull over time. He climbs up the underbelly of the truck and reaches the top. Opens the doors with considerable effort. Peers down into the void, head rushing. The sun a sick orange glob hanging directly overhead. Scorching. Falls inside the carcass, lands in some dust heap. Figures. Digs in the dust and uncovers a withered scrap of paper torn from a book: I walk on and on, and still the land goes stretching away to the horizons. A year, five years, ten years, and I have not seen the sea. I say unto myself, but what has happened to the sea? And I answer, the sea is back there, back in the reservoir of memory. Thinks he sleeps for a while. Thinks he wakes up, standing atop the hull. Somehow. Shields his eyes from the sun and stares across the endless landscape. There, wherever there is, he spots some sign of, well, something. He goes there and finds a large, flat rectangular plot marked by driftwood, rocks, animal skulls. Situated within the rectangle, an arrangement of curious structures. Ancient monuments to what. Here, triangles of glass partially covered in triangles of stained cloth, sitting on a wooden platform. A raft adrift on a solid sea. Triangles leaning, holding one another upright. Collapsing and not collapsing. Collapsing in slow motion. Looks at it, through it. Sun reflects off the glass planes as he circles. Monument to there and not there, he thinks. Walks over to two totems. Flat planes and undulating surfaces ravaged by minor implosions. Bulges filled with cavities. Plaster imbued with powdery colors, inside out. Coral and sky blue, the totems dissolve into the desert backdrop. Monument to controlled chaos. He examines scattered sections of a massive orb, sliced into thick slabs. Tough gray rind. Smooth, chalk white middles. White surfaces etched by embedded objects. Wood, Metal, Plastic. Secret objects. Buried secrets. Glints of color. Tries to move one of the slabs. Won't budge. Tries to access the whole, pull the pieces together, in his scrambled mind. Monument to encryption, excavation. Tries to measure the distance between the structures, between the structures and the sun. Tries to remember the word infinite, the word primordial, the word eon. The word word. Tries to remember communication. Dawns on him that the structures came from the fossilized truck. Dragged here. What the. Drifts over to a crude hut constructed from shipping crates, planes of foam, blue tarp, rocks, dirt. Sort of a cave inside a tent. Admires its...uh...crawls inside, looks around. Piles of useless matter. Digs through wreckage, absent gleaner. Finds a page torn from an atlas. New map drawn over old. Oblivion written over Los Angeles, Mojave renamed Quicksand. Finds gutted can of tuna. Mercury-rich. Finds a busted ice cube tray and coughs up a laugh. Out loud, he thinks. Finds a tattered spiral-bound notebook. Opens. Dust rains on his feet, covers his ankles. Reads. The hallucination began like this.

Exhibition poster text for Ask The Dust: Jedediah Caesar, Case Calkins, Patrick Hill at D'Amelio Terras Gallery, New York, September 6-October 1, 2005

WRITING : 2005 : ASK THE DUST