"The poet is of no party." Baudelaire
It’s bright here, and windy. An expanse, a salt flat, a great basin, low shifting dunes, rocky washes, mountains at all horizons, a near sun, all surfaces radiant, glittering scales of mica and angled quartz, light in my eyes.
We index, mediate this place. What holds my attention? I measure a length. I measure distance.
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An instrument is scored for my measure. That is, it tells me what to look for. Its notches name a distance, its units an account. I have an array of these: wooden and metal rulers, a wound tape, a clicking wheel, a hanging scale, and string, and pencils. I hold a tool up to something still. To measure is to align, to measure against. The string is slack against the grass. The string does nothing. I do.
I spread the legs of the compass, draw a circle in the sand. One thing makes its mark in another.
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Accuracy is an ideal limit. You see everything from the control room: the desert’s vastness, each measure I make, the clearness of the air, my walk through it, my nearness, the dunes’ array, drought and water. I reach for your arm but you pull it back. Behind glass you’re reaching I see it. Pull me. Let me look out from here one instant.
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What is the grass to the air?
The desert is clear: sun bright, reflection of light off the light sand and rock. Clear—transparent and radiant at once. The brightness is exact or collapses what’s seen now. Not disaggregated, not void. Up, a glassy surface. Out, imperceptible array. It needs collision, no, the wind. Or the wind is it? I see through it? Only in distance is there air here. Only in what the grass gives off or doesn’t let go of.
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I know the difference between the possible and the actual, the particle-wave collapse. Perception is confined to the present.
I can’t know what glass is. Its formation is liquid not crystalline, the molecules’ positions variable. To know the window is to be wrong?
I see the desert through it. You look at me through it. I want to move through—I want to know what’s behind it, I want what’s behind it, not only what arrangements make it.
The site of the window, the collapse when I look, is my error.
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Quantification, a problem, I walk here.
This implement contains information about things that reflect light, vibrate, or are volatile. By implement I mean my body. It scales the processes of events.
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The grass yellows. A clear and indifferent sound of weather. It rains.
We run up the stairs. I start to tell you something. The desert grows dark. You go to the window, press your hands against the glass. I try to speak? I have no sound. When the hail settles I’ll go down and clear it out. Now you record the event, set your notes on the table. I try to walk over? Look, I leave no trace. When I move you don’t see. It’s the grass in your eyes, the weather. There is no sound? I take your hand. From here I can see so far. It rains. I have to tell you something. Look. You pull me to you. The desert is dark. No sound, I know. You press your hands to—there is no sound. When I move you see? Close your eyes. The desert is dark, hail makes sound. I don’t try to speak. Out the window, it rains. You press my back to the window. With your eyes? Record this event, no—no sound, the rain, I start to, in your direction, know, it’s clear out.
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I climb the stairs to the control room. You let me in. Bright white desert.
At the window. I picture you here.
You stand at a dial, can handle an instrument. You ask, what would you like to measure?
Desert, white hot, your lattice, what pattern, my direction, glass and water—I can’t answer.
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