its bitter, useless waters
Salton Sea, ca 1961-62
super (?) 8 > VHS > ( DVD ) > b&w neg > misaligned RGB scan
remember the day, accretions / subtractions notwithstanding.
M at left, J (digging in mud) at right.
I stopped Kaweah and glanced back at the Salton Sea, which I was now leaving for a time. It is at best a rather cheerless object, beautiful in a pale, placid way, but the beauty is like that of the mirage, the placidity that of stagnation and death. Charm and color it has, but none of sentiment; mystery, but not romance. Loneliness has its own attraction, and it is a deep one; but this is not so much loneliness as abandonment, not a solitude sacred but a solitude shunned.
ex J. Smeaton Chase (1864-1923 *), California Desert Trails (1919) : 194
epigram from p 195
—
its bitter, useless waters (1-8), all
20 January 2014
tags: J. Smeaton Chase; memory; mud; tire jetty; Salton Sea; memory