Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:41 PM
sent by Erich Bollmann


Friends,
on the ranch something came up about the land being "new" or changing... how the road was destroyed, had to be rebuilt with new engineering and drainage, the ground is powder-dust-sand-shifting. To consider one land being older or newer than any other land, is it the force of physical geography or our own mental geographies? The reality of what we construct or really how fluid that is... comfort and security is maybe a continual goal and trying to achieve that through any means... shaping the land, (shaping the ranch)... (western villa turns into bohemian compound?). When the WEST comes up I think of the myth of the promise of "going west" and how much my ideas (and stereotypes and preconceptions and dreams, etc.) about California and the west coast are shaped by these histories and mythologies (utopia) that are also in some ways deeply tied to how (it seems) California and Los Angeles have evolved and how they exist... And maybe how the WEST is a shifting costume or notion (rawhide = star trek) that can be adapted to whatever Present we happen to be in...
-also responding to the LAT article and Chiara's response today: i like this quote from the article "They brought instead a feeling of pathos and despair, for they came to plan the beginning of what may be the end of the great range cattle era in this county." which was from a 1934 article about the changing (disappearing?>) West. So, will an article in 2084 be about the "disappearing west" way of life and quote this article from today?...
-Erich