TEXT SOON.
Category Archives: Haze County
Beach, The 02
More photos from Winner/Fairyland on The Beach. Some obvious comparisons can be drawn to Bigfoot’s recent toy happening called Chesterton.
This appears to be the central structure of the toy community.
Details of the center. Compare it to this photo coming from Chesterton the past summer, for example. Several resonant elements.
These photos of Winner/Fairyland come from 2 separate, recent visits to The Beach. On the second trip, I also explored a small wilderness region on the eastern part of the large mountain, on the other side of the town from Darkside and Ozland. I do not have a name for it yet. The headwaters of the stream passing by Winner/Fairland are found there. This same stream passes the rock pictured here in the previous blog post.
Example of one of the many rocks found in this eastern wilderness.
Filed under Beach
Beach, The 01
I haven’t been to Darkside up on The Beach (mtn.) in about 2 years, and apparently I haven’t even blogged about it in around 6. Great place! It’s just west of Ozland, which is definitely off-limits for trespassing now, unlike in the far past. Use to be I could go up there and wander down the yellow brick road and not worry about it too much. No longer. People get arrested. Oz is not the laid back place of the 90s and 00s. And it cost a whole lot more to get in now during the days it’s open — once was free! But back to Darkside and happier news.
My Darkside pictures actually didn’t turn out too great this day. Bright sunlight was one culprit. The other was the dense foliage remaining for this late in the year. Been very warm in the Blue Mountain area for certain. Looks like the leaves will be peaking about 1 week later than usual. So today I had no great shots of the famed Temple of the Moon, nor Observation Rock or other prominent Darkside stones. I may return in late October or November.
So below we have what I call Cathedral Rock, I believe, with a much smaller one called Tombstone Rock perched on top. Obvious descriptive term.
This more open and barren slice of land at the front of Cathedral Rock may be the site of a toy happening sometime soon. Perhaps even late October? A possibility. I don’t plan to employ Bigfoot for the same, at any rate, not until next spring/summer/fall. More on Bigfoot thoughts soon — subject of another post.
Amazing views looking over the south lip of Darkside.
Hobbit Rock.
Silhouettes of smaller rocks in the western part of the Darkside bowl.
The top of Pentagon Rock, which, true to its applied name, has 5 sides. I’ve blogged about it and Hobbit Rock in the past.
The top of the Temple of the Moon, the largest standalone rock of the complex.
Temple of the Moon.
The same day I explored an official trail of The Beach, and took a picture of another rock laying against a pool between two waterfalls, large and small. This has always been one of my favorite spots on the mountain.
And the fantasy berg I called Winner in several posts from about 2 years ago (LINK LINK LINK) still exists. It seems to have adopted the name Fairyland in the meantime. I like Winner better.
Filed under Beach
Bigfoot Turbulence!
Some *final* shots of the supposed “permanent” version of Chesterton before I had to move my toys out. I’ve been invaded!
But before I get to all that, some pics from the Blue Mountain Urban Landscape I’ve been more attracted to lately. And good thing!
This might be the heart of Leola. LINK
Back to Bigfoot: Yes, that’s the construction barrels I call The Tigers on Third Road of Bigfoot. But the long piece of bleacher beside them coming from the Plateau of Raw Art is *not* my projected newest aspect of Chesterton. Instead someone else has drug it down here, and also made a kind of rough path all along The Bramble, cutting straight through the edge of Chesterton and down through all four roads. The demons! I suspect either skateboarders taking a break from their regular hobby, or else other kids who visit The Plateau on occasion for perhaps drinking or smoking or even sex purposes.
As I’m writing this text, I found out about this invasion from the outside around 3 weeks ago now. Upon visiting a couple days back, I was very happy to witness no further development coming from this — no more harsh intrusions into the general Bigfoot area. The swamp remains a destination for me. But I had to take the toys up at Chesterton for safe keeping. I’m amazed whoever masterminded this invasion didn’t disturb any of ’em, apparently. Or perhaps they didn’t see them in cutting through the eastern edge of Chesterton? I can’t imagine how, but perhaps it’s possible. Maybe the appearance of toys at this remote spot was too much for their tiny little intruding brains to handle. Or maybe they thought it was aliens who placed them there and got the heck outta Dodge. This could be a possibility if drugs were involved, but probably not as well. At any rate, I didn’t plan to do anything with this space for the rest of the summer and fall, so perhaps by next year all will be grown up again and sealed, like it was before. But in truth I’ll never feel totally safe at Chesterton like I did. And that’s an honest shame.
Swamp chairs and table remain intact!
Filed under BIGFOOT, Blue Mountain
Bigfoot/Chesterton Early Early August
Plateau of Raw Art shots, once more…
… before moving to Chesterton. This day (yesterday as I’m writing this, or Sunday), I pretty firmly mapped out the segments of Second Road starting at The Bramble and moving south. Indicated by successive pine trees running down the forest road’s east side, there are indeed 14 of ’em, as I estimated earlier. Chesterton occupies the first 5, counting north to south like this. Here’s a rudimentary graphic of the results. What I call “blocked” segments that are clogged with fallen trees and branches are marked with a diagonal. I may have been missing one or two of these types in the non-Chesterton areas. Just as The Bramble effectively deters any visitors coming in from the north, so these blocked regions act as barriers for those attempting to move along the road starting from the south. Chesterton is very protected.
So with this mapping in place, we can understand the below shot comes from segment 1 of 14, or the top Chesterton segment. I’m tempting to even call these segments *sims*, but let’s hold off on that for a bit longer…
This is also from Segment 1: the wilted purple leaves appears like two beached fishes turned opposite ways, like the symbol for the astrological sign Pisces. They are found in the midst of that little “forest” taking up a fair chuck of Segment One.
Segment Two gives us what I’m calling Chesterton North. I really like the way the two monkeys both face the golden church bell between them — more inversed twinning, in fact.
That mysterious hole mentioned before LINK, appearing directly under Wireway 61 as it passed through Segment 3. This segment acts as a more empty connector between Chesterton North and Chesterton South. I’ll have to create a more detailed map soon.
This is a picture of an object from Segment 6, which *may* be the site of a camping spot in the future. My camping spot. Located immediately south of the “Chesterton Five”, it’s one of the most open segments, if not the most open, and I certainly have room to pitch some kind of tent there. But I’m going to keep poking around Bigfoot for possible alternatives in this direction.
Segment 9 and a landmark brick piece.
The south end of Second Road, or the beginning (south) of Segment 14. 2 rocks, one mossy and one bare, mark the position.
Filed under BIGFOOT, Blue Mountain
Bigfoot/Chesterton Late Late July
Although the Chesterton art event has reached its climax, Bigfoot visits continue, and will likely do so until the leaves fall off sometime around mid October. After that my hiking focus will shift to a broader woods palette, as they open up with the functional eradication of poison ivy, snakes, insects, and other warm weather deterrents.
I visited both Bigfoot and Whitehead Crossing today, new and old foci. I was amazed how *quiet* Whitehead Crossing seems now after I’ve gotten use to the city noise surrounding Bigfoot. I like the latter better now, amazingly. Whitehead Xing is just not going to be a place for, especially, a summer art happening like I just accomplished at Bigfoot. Perhaps spring, perhaps fall, but not summer. And even if that, the event will take place within a narrower range. For one, I have no real junk to work with at The Crossing except for some old bottles. However I’m not opposed to making a more pure toy happening, say, at Big Island in Green Stream, something perhaps akin to the Sharieland toy event of 2013. LINK
But to today’s photos. Actually I decided to slip in the first photo below coming from about a week or two back now to start this post with another odditiy. When I went to Chesterton that day — and it was the day I brought in the Avon buildings sans chords for the first time — I found this melding of yellow and green leaves, effectively stuck together like with glue. Green on top, yellow on the bottom. This seemed to be reference to the concept of Greenup/yellow down that I’ve written about at various places on this blog, and most recently in this Second Life related post.
Compare the above photo with the one inserted at the end of that late June post:
Actually, I think I’ll come back to that whole scene, which involves a weird melding of First or Real Life and Second Life influences. It could be that *real* (green) trumps *virtual* or non-real (yellow) through the Chesterton art event as a whole. The true happening kicked into gear right after I created that June post. Second Life related posts have basically been set aside since then.
Another, more recent possible oddity is pictured below. A number of mysterious holes, with pine needles seemingly twirled around in a circle, have formed in Chesterton since my last visit several days back now. The photo below shows what seems to be the largest example of such, occurring almost directly below Wireway 61 between Chesterton North and South. Was some kind of creature *digging* into the needles? Maybe it’s my friend Mr. Weasel from the swamp, who may very well live somewhere in The Bramble just beyond and below Chesterton. Or maybe it is a raccoon. I don’t think deer can get through the tight branches of the pine forest here, so that seems to eliminate the possibility of hoof prints.
Many aspects of Chesterton, let alone Bigfoot as a whole, have yet to be illuminated for this blog, including this cluster of briar plants on Chesterton’s east side. I imagined Chesterton residents making them part of a park or walking trail…
… that would also include Second Hoop mentioned in this earlier post, which is now seemingly the *only* complete hoop within Chesterton, since First Hoop was broken near the start of its art happening. Second Hoop perhaps then became known simply as The Hoop, at least to biased Chesterton South avatars.
Second Hoop (foreground) with The Briars (background).
Also on Chesterton’s east side is found this rusty chair skeleton with Wireway 49 passing through it. A detached briar stem now crosses the wireway here as well.
Many toy avatars remain in both Chesterton North and South after the event’s climax and the removal of the train track. I had planned to put some inside Chesterton’s old pressure cooker today, or perhaps take them back to the house with me, but they seemed pretty happy overall where they were. Not sure how long this situation will last.
Monkeys on church and hill.
North of Chesterton North.
Filed under BIGFOOT, Blue Mountain
Creativity Review
SEE SUNKLANDS HEADERS:
About:
The Sunklands site plugs along! I am very fortunate to have such a creative center. I plan to retain it into the foreseeable future. No problems here.
Blog:
This will always go hand in hand with the Sunklands web site now. I’ve been blogg’n for 8 1/2 years. I love it. One of the problems for someone looking in is the multitude of subject matter. There’s woodsy reality, there’s viritual living, there’s fiction… lots of stuff. But add it all together and you get artsy me.
Collages:
Bread and butter stuff, again. I’ll keep collaging till the day I die most likely. The idea of series will keep evolving. I’ll most likely always accompany collage creation with attempts at interpretation. The last coupling of collage and analysis is through the Boos series from last fall, which I consider perhaps my most unified and fulfilling effort in this direction to date. A new series has yet to form beyond it, but I’ve been busy with other art.
The base series of my modern or mature collages remains the 20 part Greenup set from 2004. Seems like a really long time ago now. Before that I more sporatically worked with the old time method (to me) of cutting images out of magazines and pasting them together. But I probably won’t work in that way again. Digital collage is more my style. I’m not worried about the selling aspect, and create them only for the purpose of pushing the boundaries of the genre itself in a certain direction. They are “educational” in my eyes, although I’m not against selling *specific* examples in the future (just not whole series, perhaps).
Synchs:
The progression of synchs started in 1997 with the first steps toward the idea of a Rainbow Complex beyond just the “mere” Dark Side of the Rainbow, a gateway synch for certain. To me, it was the birth of rainbowology, which I haven’t really written about all that much yet. Oh, there’s been some pretend interviews with the likes of Booker T. and Pierre Schaeffer (actually alts), but I’ve chosen to keep certain key elements hidden until I figure out what to do with the concept as a whole.
But that’s just the start. Synchs continue to this day, though creation has slowed recently to about once a year. I may even be at a longer pause currently. I’ll have to talk to Hucka D. about this soon.
baker b. separated from alt Pierre Schaeffer in 2004 with the creation of the former’s Greenup series. At roughly the same time came the latter’s Billfork, Head Trip, and 4orrin1. 4orrin1 especially blew the lid off what I formerly thought an audiovisual synch could be. It remains blown.
Hybrids:
Latest in this category is the blandly named (on purpose) “Collagesity Winter 2015-2016” fiction — it’s actually what you could call a graphic novel set in Second Life (and its “moon” and also the *moon* of *that* moon). A next project could involve interpreting this fairly large work, like I do with my collage series. It falls in line with other fiction I’ve developed in spots down through time, the first successful one being perhaps “The High Octave Story” from way back in 1986 or so (rewritten in the early 90s, if I recall). Then along the same lines we have “Jordan’s Rule” from c2001, and then also the larger “Paradox II: The Chancelling” that came along late 2005/early 2006. I need to finish that off… technically it could probably be called a hybrid work as well.
Looking at other hybrids on this page, “Map Synching Feeling” is an interesting experiment with map oddities; “6 Weeks of Shining” combines collage work, map research, and elements of audiovisual synching, tied together through Stanley Kubrick’s film “The Shining”; “Baker Bloch in England” represents a fusion of collage, fiction and virtual reality a bit in the style of “Collagesity Winter 2015-2016” (except set in “reality”/ i.e., England); 2009’s “Where are We on That?” is a good introduction to my original set of virtual characters, most of whom are still around (Baker Bloch, Baker Blinker, Hucka Doobie, etc.). Hybrids will keep being produced.
Virtual:
I continue to hold onto Collagesity, and certainly work on keeping it up paid off more recently with its use in “Collagesity Winter 2015-2016” mentioned before. But has it fulfilled its usefulness? One thing it’s certainly not is a proper archives for the collages (and synchs). The Sunklands site, established last summer, instead has become this… but I would like to keep a virtual town going along with the site, if possible. Second Life’s Collagesity remains a comparatively inexpensive satisfaction, I suppose, in this direction, but my guess is that in the future a virtual town will not cost as much, relatively speaking, and can be rolled into web site payments.
Reality:
Another recent success story with the unfolding of the many Bigfoot dimensions. Polarity between Bigfoot Proper and Chesterton is involved, the two identified artsy centerpieces of the complex. Each has now been the site of a fulfilled marble race and connected toy/junk happening. Whitehead Crossing represents the other important woodsy center still, and lies on protected ground (Frank Park) in contrast to Bigfoot, which could go away with the snap of a finger. But toy/junk happenings may not ever really come to Whitehead Crossing, unlike what I thought before — up until maybe even this past winter. Bigfoot has taken over in this direction. Bigfoot may be temporary, but my attachment to Blue Mountain in general also is temporary now, as we plan to move to Middletown in 6-8 years. We have land there, we can set up a modular home with little maintenance for our old age, and Middletown is such a neat city with many creative plugins. I can’t imagine leaving Blue Mtn. for anywhere else in the U.S. of A., although *England* remains a possible final destination. But that’s a long story.
Back to toy/junk happenings. These will certainly continue beyond Blue Mtn. and into our Middletown existence. I’m just refining the process now; winging it as they say. And Bigfoot itself may continue into the future. I have the option to camp there even when living in Middletown, since we’ll be retired. And Whitehead Crossing, too, probably has long term value, if in a more abstract way and connected to local Frank and Herman Parks as a whole. But I don’t think I want to camp in Frank and Herman Parks. Too many aliens.
Bigfoot Video
The legend of Ol’ Plugg’n Yellow is born (video by wife; thanks!):
Filed under BIGFOOT, Blue Mountain
Bigfoot Gleanings 01
The Bigfoot/Chesterton art event is pausing for now with the very successful marble race test this past Sunday. A new marble legend has been seeded: Ol’ Plugg’n Yellow, who was the most consistent finisher of the 10 or so marbles I tried out that day. Not too fast, not too slow. Just right; another “goldilochs” situation, like with Greenilochs in last fall’s Bigfoot marble race. LINK But perhaps a truer goldilochs this time, since the colors match up now. Yellow/gold.
Interesting: as I was looking up the word “plugger” online just now, my flash player plugin froze my computer up for a moment. 😮
What do I take away from the event so far? Well, there’s the very interesting separation of Chesterton North, where the focus of the marble race was on, and Chesterton South, which turned into an observer of the event, in effect. To me, this means that the latter has more potential for growth beyond the present situation. Lisa Simpson, aka Lisa the Vegetarian, may get her own office space in the town. There was a very late push to unite the two bergs a bit with a curved piece of wood procured from the press box of the old high school football field up at the Plateau of Raw Art — but it was only a token gesture, most likely. Maybe there isn’t any deeper connection to develop between North and South. It’s another wait and see situation.
Linking curved piece of wood “pointing” to Chesterton South’s central pressure cooker “building” in background, then:
“Hucka D., I was wondering if I could pose a couple of Chesterton related question to you?”
Hucka D.:
Okay. I’ll give it a try.
bb:
Carrcassonnee has stated that I need to take my focus away from Chesterton for a while.
Hucka D.:
That is true[ enough]. Chesterton has its own spirit. You know him — the cheetah?
bb:
Sure. Should I talk to him? He’s never given much information out about the town.
Hucka D.:
Groovy. I’ll get him.
Chester (appearing from behind a white curtain):
Groovy. Cool-i-o, daddy. State your questions man.
bb:
Chester, what is in the future for Chesterton? Is this really the true manifestation of Edwardboro and Project POPE? Like the original Bigfoot Proper event was Pope Project, a preparatory event, like John The Baptist paved the way for Jesus of Nazareth.
Chester:
Died for your sins. Neat-o.
bb:
Is this what Lisa the Vegetarian wants to negotiate — with you maybe?
Chester (indicating):
Over there Lisa? Lisa the Cool and Groovy and Chilled?
BBloch:
Ummmm…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, BIGFOOT, Blue Mountain, Heterocera, Rubi^, Toy Avatars
Sunklands 
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