Okay, says EL our first night in the Eastern Sierras, if this is the surface of the lake then what is beyond -? The four of us are lying side-by-side across the wooden picnic table, legs folded down onto the bench and lower backs strained, staring up into the stars. We’ve only just pulled up at camp after J’s car craps out right at the base of the mountains, staunchly refusing to start after we’ve both been pushing 90 mph in the late july heat. “Racing across the desert like screaming banshees,” says JB over the talkies. He’s transmitting VC’s extensive knowledge of cindercones and basalt, pointing to volcanic rock lining the highway. We pass through the dry devastation of the Owens River Lakebed south of Lone Pine, distinctly aware that our lives back in the city rely on this extraction and theft of water, of life, of possibility, of place; a sobering contrast against the stunning textures and colors of the White Mountains.
Within the hour, though: “She had a heat flash!” J and EL laugh. The car starts up, we push on up the mountain chattering over the talkies—“Channel 19 forever!” We set up camp over shared chili oil, crushed cucumber, wood ear mushroom, and tofu skin cold snacks. “This year, I had an epiphany. I need to be more delusional! People are out here believing they can do that. I need to believe I can do that!” “Omg yes yes, me too, this year, the same thought!” “...Maybe it’s an air sign thing.” JB and J’s birthdays are one after the other, not even a day apart, two of my closest friends of 15 and 4 years collapsing across time to finally share space. Hot pot sizzling on the camp stove, we pick out lotus root, bok choy, shiitakes, and vermicelli from the shared vessel, gesticulating wildly with our chopsticks as we declare our renewed embrace of delusion, our recommitment to feral intuition and the disavowal of linear time.
After dinner, tongues still spiced with mala, we lie across the table to stargaze. EL and I tilt our heads back at an absurd angle, pointing our gaze to the southern edge of mountains ringing the valley, inverting our perspective toward the pines silhouetted along the ridgeline. That’s how we realize we are in the lake. It’s only the first of many times that JB and J laugh at our antics—“water signs.” Hm, I say back to them, I don’t know what would be beyond, but we’re in the lake, we’re trout, and the stars are little flies sitting on the water, we’re surfacing to grab and eat them! I’m recalling a recent trip to waterfalls tucked in the San Gabriels, up the two, where I’d taken MT camping the month prior. We’re trout scum at the bottom of the lakebed, JB laughs. We’re frogs! says EL. We’re anglerfish! I yell. At that exact moment, the four of us see a star shoot across the sky together for the first time, all gasping in unison. That streak was super fast- it had red and gold in it -!
That first night alone, we watch dozens of meteors cross the sky, striking in their difference and multiplicity. We could never have imagined such a shower of shooting stars. The enormously discernible variety in their movements, patterns, shapes, forms, and colors catches us off guard. That one was like a flash— Okay that one was a golden egg drop— That one was a silver dash— That’s the comet that ended the dinosaurs -! Literally a fireball— Yeah, with a huge, fluffy white tail— Woa, that one almost had like, two tails, and two colors, red and green -!? Oo, that one was the same, like the two-tailed one, it even moved at two different paces? The speed changed— A whisper— A wisp— That one was like a junebug— Oo, that one was falling— Damn that one went so far, all the way across—
J and I miss one that has JB and EL shouting; we’re preoccupied tracing out the form of Ursa Minor when it shoots past, “fuck Ursa Minor!” Several times JB, J and I gasp in unison and EL breaks in, “What! I had my eyes closed again!” drifting in and out after hot soup and so many marshmallows, squares of mint chocolate, and almond digestives from the Armenian grocery. EL and I stay out later every night to watch the stars in all their textural variety. The last night we don’t sleep at all, watching meteors cross the sky until dawn, pink and gold washing across the craggy granite face of the mountains, the steady white noise of the two waterfalling creeks pouring into the valley from the west and from the south the only thing holding steady in all this spectacularly shifting light and color, until a periwinkle sky undercut with deep indigo, a dusky orange glow, and bright gold, the uncommon visibility of the stars fading behind mountain faces with dawn thrown across them.
In the early hours of the morning, pitch dark sky still laced with stars, I riff on our portrayals of meteor movement. That one, the golden egg drop, that’s when you stay in the intersection to hold off cars, critical mass in Ktown and the light has changed, but you’ve gotta block traffic to keep the group together. The silver dash, that’s when you’re the very last one through the intersection, squeaking through the yellow light! And that red gold streak, from the first night, that’s the group night ride through the storm drains under Culver, bike tires skidding through that thin layer of water, the river running so low in the concrete channel, shooting back behind us! Okay, okay, so that one that just went through those two stars? That’s like when I’m coming up Franklin Ave to Shakespeare Bridge, and I’m stalling to see that there are no cars at the stop sign, before plummeting down and blasting uphill, EL says, coupling our interpretations of meteor movements with bike maneuvers, describing our rides through the city back home and matching up distinctive colors, textures, bursts, streaks, wisps, cadences, and patterns.
Only after we’ve gone back down the mountain, we learn that july 28 and 29 had been noteworthy dates for several projected meteor showers: the alpha capricornids, southern delta aquariids, perseids, and july pegasids. JB and I had booked the site on the heels of a new moon, the waxing crescent hanging so low in the sky that it remained hidden behind the mountainous ridge every night, leaving stark visibility. Wildly lucky timing. In the mad rush of re-situating ourselves to linear time, to our day-to-day lives, JB messages the group thread in awe: “the inversion from day time swimming in the lake to night time being the lake looking out upon the galaxy.” The phrase sets us off drawing the skies, mapping the constellations, drawing the lake, where we swam and sunbathed naked full days in the frigid alpine water, snowmelt from the towering peaks silhouetted against the sun.
The following week, EL and I meet up on the river by bike and share our sketches. They gesture with both arms to describe reconciling a “seam” between a worms-eye drawing oriented up toward the skies: the lake surface framed out by the mountainous ridge ringing the valley, and a planimetric drawing of the lake from above: the shores where we traversed creeks, ate lunch, made drawings, and befriended frogs. The two places as twinning reflections connect through the downward slope of the mountains, EL describes. In drawing out the placeness of each, I notice how the vantage of my small body warps, distorts, defines, re-maps what I’m seeing. The worms-eye drawing is elongated from east to west, the way my eyes rove across it seeking stars. The planimetric drawing is compressed in the longitudinal direction, mimicking my perspective diving in from the shore. Neither conforms to physical reality.
Cependant, I aim toward precision when mapping the path of travel and textural specificity of the many dozens of shooting stars that we see every night. My lines are explicit when drawing out a multi-layered cartography of the paths that EL, JB, J and I swim across the lake each day, naked and free in that freezing water. These movements are small and mundane, precious and fleeting, irreplicable magic that I document with detailed attention, situated within looser representations of physical place, the shoreline of the lake and the valley around the skies fungible forms. When I haven’t got my glasses on, looking out across the lake in the afternoon sun, the shimmering reflections become outsized crystalline bright spots rippling across the surface, subtly shifting details rendered huge by my altered vision.
That first night after dinner and before stargazing, I’m hit briefly by the altitude and lie down in the tent, watching flickering shadows from the fire illuminate the mesh panels. I listen to JB, J and EL talk about the absolute fuckery that is the healthcare system in this country, offering anecdotes from various vantages, making specific cases for what needs to change, describing state systems with specificity. The rage is in my body, but I notice it quiet in proximity to people who are angry alongside me, whose conviction and critique emboldens mine. The closeness of their voices while I’m horizontal there in the tent distinctly reminds me of the years JB and I lived in the co-op in Berkeley, more than ten years ago, of the days we would lie down or sleep on the sofas and surfaces in “common space”—the front porch and living rooms of our shared home. Thinking of it now, this semi-public sleeping strikes me as a practice of deep trust or youthful absurdity, this endeavoring to stay engaged ambiently, or with punctuated, occasional attention, even while drifting in and out of consciousness. Among close friends, it still brings me enormous comfort. I hear J say, “you guys, the fire is going out, actually, the fire is perfect right now” in practically a single breath. EL is cracking up, but I understand her point implicitly, already pushing myself upright: If you want to toast a perfect marshmallow—the time is now! It’s not gonna keep being this perfect, so get your asses over here! The absurdity of this duality in her forceful declaration, the extremity of opposing statements coupled together, stays with us on those dirt- and alpine-lakewater-heightened days, the yin and yang so legible to us here, grounded in the earth, rooted in place.
Two nights before we drive out to the Sierras, KY pulls tarot from their deck of Shinto kami for JB and I, and JT, their close friend in town visiting who happens to also be JB’s close friend from high school. JB and JT regale us with chaotic stories of their late teens and early twenties while KY interprets Izanami-no-Mikoto for me, a kami whose themes of “destructive and creative energy” center on a “critical juncture,” providing a forceful reminder that “the subconscious is the source of all creativity. Izanami-no-Mikoto generates everything, she is creation [umi] she is the ocean [umi] she gives birth [umi] to new life.” Regarding interpretation of the stars, making meaning of astrology, reading into the heavenly stems and earthly branches of our bazi charts, B and I like to say: Yes, everything is made up. And also, planetary bodies are literally in motion around us. This favored two-part phrase reminds me of something VC is always saying: Nothing is real— None of this is real. VC is pointing to the utter absurdity of our built cities. The paved-over waterways, proliferation of freeways, this alienation from the earth and from each other, is actually immaterial. It can change.
While JB’s kami suggests contemplation and reflection, good fodder for laconic time spent gazing into the surface of an alpine lake, KY laughs aloud reading my card; Izanami-no-Mikoto warns not to rely only on my immediate surroundings but “also society as a whole and the entire world. Follow the news being reported by the media.” Almost apologetic, KY says “I guess you’re bringing some of the city with you,” all of us imagining hikes through craggy granite mountains, alpine lakes, sleeping in small spaces guarded by the quaking aspen and mountain varietal of lupins and mugwort, foxtail and whitebark pines, sierra columbines, sulphurflower buckwheat, mojave prickly poppies, tiny spotted lilies and bog orchids, delicate purple alliums and their twisting geometric stems, primula jeffreyi or sierra shooting stars, as a brief and illusory window of respite from the relentless destructive forces in this city, from the aftermath of the fires, from the burnout in resistance to the raids.
Two days after we get back to the city, I’m at M’s place for hours talking, cooking, speculating, psychoanalyzing. M has written a new song spanning between the fight for life in occupied Tovaangar, Los Angeles, and across Gaza and occupied Palestine. As she’s strumming the guitar and carefully recalling the lyrics of each verse, I realize with a jolt that I’ve drawn this song already. Weeks ago in the garden, strategizing with neighbors in defense of vendors and jornaleros, I drew this same call for freedom from every river to every sea, traced out the geographies of Tovaangar and Palestine. Izanami-no-Mikoto tells me to surface the richness of the hidden world. I think of the starry skies in stark visibility, of densifying our dreams with mountain spring mugwort, seeking ways to stitch across, to weave connection between my commitments to this concretized, paved-over, calcified, covered-up city and the sweet and generative surety of the land, the generosity of mountain lake water and abundant medicinal plants, legitimate awe in the absence of the moon. At once, the fire is going out, the fire is burning perfectly.
Loved reading this!! I'll never forget those special moments being with yall in those special mountains. Your tiny star creature drawings of us on the table made me squeal outloud. I always love how you connect the dots. Life is such a wildly absurd place.
❤️❤️🔥