being

“Even as a young boy I had been in the habit of gazing at bizarre natural phenomena, not so much observing them as surrendering to their magic, their confused, deep language. …The surrender to Nature’s irrational, strangely confused formations produces in us a feeling of inner harmony with the force responsible for these phenomena.” Demian, Herman Hesse (translated by Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck)

One part of the world to which I feel particularly drawn is the Anza Borrego desert in southern California. While living in San Diego, I made many trips to remote locations in the desert so that I could gaze at the land, think and listen. Being is based on various experiences that I had there, including the slower sense of geological time, the quiet, the wide open spaces, the foreign plants and animals, the shifting of light and color throughout the day, and the extreme heat of summer.