Something I’m realizing while living here in Big Sur: an intimacy with the spirit of the west. Not only is this literally the continent’s end, the terminus of westward expansion where man’s devices can go no further, in a deeper sense Big Sur is thus the existential limit of manifest destiny and the exploits of human consciousness. I’m experiencing many impressions of the American West in a way that I’ve only dreamed of in hints and glimpses before. What I’ve experienced previously as ideals, in a Platonic sense, emergent qualities characteristic to various places and combinations of things, I’m now experiencing in a much more direct manner. At times, the spirit of the west is nearer to me than it ever has been. It seems to be stabilizing. Dreams and visions of western aspects. The bright youthfulness of gold California, the universal individuality. The great expansive enchantment of the sandstone desert stars. Mountains of rocky aspen glens and brooks. Moon over sea of plains. Kantian metaphysics. French phenomenology. Western natural handbooks, trees, herptiles, flowers, insects, geology. Histories and poetries. Music of John Berry, Aaron Copeland. Films of Malick, writings of Steinbeck, American epics, Dances with Wolves, A River Runs Through It, Napoleon Dynamite. The things I’ve valued as objects—that which is in them that is part of me I’ve not let be within me, I’ve maintained it’s external in its entirety, but it is not! I’m married to that which I value. The grand staircase dawn is always with me. The great east wind of Joseph’s burning night grains lifts me on condor’s wings soaring over painted desert skies. I’ve been rediscovering an American aesthetic, a genuinely western aesthetic. Where did it go? Who am I? For years I’ve been in a daze searching for, searching for… What have I seen? What have I seen? What I have seen! Who I have been being! Visionary!—western visionary! My lost soul searching has been craving a unified identity of person, place, time. I’ve resented my Californian identity thanks to the rampant industrialized consumer mentality that selfies Big Sur, shits on it, then lights it on fire and leaves it to die. Undertoned to all my bitterness and loneliness has been a real affection for the glory of California, for the voice of the west. An openness living from the heart of the Rocky Mountains, the heart of the red waste deserts, heart of the granite Sierra spine, of the greengold rolling hills, the misty sequoia ocean, great beyond imagining time and space.

These are not things that must be accessed by a duality of possessing and not-possessing.

Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.


Gorda, California
Wednesday April 6th, 2022
Lucas Dodd