Posts in Alabstraction

Pondering Pando

Alabstraction

There is a sleeping giant in the middle of Utah- a place where the world’s largest organism has lived for millennia. Pando was ancient when Christianity was new. It lay dreaming in loam-filled beds near the shores of Lake Bonneville while humanity was covering itself in animal skins and inventing names for the stars. When North America was covered in ice, Pando waited, drawing its roots in around it like a cloak, and waited for the years and decades to pass until the sun returned.

Our lives are as brief as that of a mayfly when compared to Pando, the great Old One of the American southwest. He was here before the first bipedal primate trudged across the primordial land-bridge and settled the land. God willing, he always remain.

– Allan Lacoste

Death Valley

Alabstraction

Rocks move in Death Valley, like snakes twisting across the desert floor.   You might expect them to be literally head for the hills, but in truth, they appear to head further into the inferno of sand, digging in like ticks on a dog.  Seeking community and heat, in the glowing heart of sand that lies spread out like a carpet at the feet of the Sierra Nevadas.

Are Watches Worth Wearing?

Alabstraction

There are some who will tell you that watches are a sign of modern slavery, a mark of our subservience to the Almighty Dollar and servitude to modern obsession with productivity.  The mark of an OCD mindset that we’d all be better off without.

I disagree.

I believe that watches are merely a tool that, like any tool, can be used or abused.  Or maybe they’re not even that- maybe they’re just a fashion statement.  Something fun that doesn’t have to have much more depth than that.  For instance, the watch on the left is whimsical and utilitarian at the same time, a wearable piece of art.

 

 

The one on the right is minamalist, striking, and somehow manages to be both retro and futuristic at the same time. Is it a sundial, or the nose-cone of a rocket? Or neither? Or both?

 

 

Then thare are watches like this one by Ferrari, which say “I had a quarter of a million dollars to spend on a watch that doesn’t actually show what time it is.”

 

 

  • Allan Lacoste

Ocean Dream

Alabstraction

There comes a time in the life of every man or woman when they ask themselves why their ancestors ever went to all the trouble of crawling out of the sea. The ocean has always fascinated me- the long, flat horizon, the hum of water against sand, and most of all the feeling one gets of being totally isolated from, while simultaneously instantly connected to, every other living thing on Earth.

They say the oceans were formed when an ice-giant careened recklessly out of orbit and crashed into Earth, like a galactic game of billiards with God running the table. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, I prefer to think of it as one planet embracing another, fully aware that the total of the two would be infinitely greater than the sum of their parts.

Bird Buddies

Alabstraction

Birds confound me. Somehow, by one accord, an entire flock of birds will rise as one, and without direction or hesitation, they form a giant “V” and head for whatever new location is silently calling to them. They never argue about who’s going to lead, yet somehow, one bird always ends up at the front of their aerial wedge. A bird that was dead last yesterday might be leading the flight today. The other birds don’t mind, and the new leader seems to do just as well as all those who came before.

There’s probably a lesson to be learned there, but it’s one I doubt humans will ever bother to appreciate.

– Allan Lacoste