HOV equals... (drum roll)

Sorry, I won't tell. That would be cheating. :p

Actually, if you haven't found out by now, HOV lane means High-Occupancy Vehicle lane -- a fancy-shmancy way of saying carpool lane basically. I'm glad to hear you had a good trip to Texas, Annex, and a road trip at that -- no better way to see as much as possible of a state this size. I'll check out your site next; I'm sure there will be plenty of great pics.

You got me thinking of places I might like to go one of these days.

A road trip might do me good too. Don't get me wrong -- I'm at home at home -- but it would be nice for me to get away from the HOV lanes for awhile. Vegas wasn't much of a getaway from the big city. Afterall, we never left the city. Hell, we never the casinoes! There is some shame to be had in missing out on experiencing the Nevada terrain. Hang your head, ruby! ;)

I always thought I might like to go out west to Arizona or New Mexico and just bum around the desert for a few days, clear my head. There is an austere beauty out there that I dig. It's like a vast emptiness, but in a very good way. The expanses seem to make for almost a spiritual connection between the sky and the land.

I would love to go out there and check out some monumental land art that I'm keen on. A renowned light artist, James Turrell, has been constructing a naked-eye observatory there for years now out of an extinct cinder volcano, Roden Crater. The link might only pique your interest. No more info has come out of that splash screen for years literally. It's like the Wonka chocolate factory of the southwest. I feel like little Charlie Bucket: "But Grandpa, someone must be helping Mr. Turrell work the crater." Grandpa: "Thousands must be helping him."

Turrell really invokes the power of light. You can view some of his images on the web. They seem to tap into a primitive power and collective unconcious that connects us all to our very begins. He contributed a "skyspace" to a Quaker meeting house in the Houston area as well. I've actually had a chance to experience this one, a very meditative space though the website shows nothing of the actual installation.

There is also Walter De Maria's Lighting Field. It's an enormous grid-like array of lighting rods erected in southwest New Mexico. Viewing them in actions seems to be as much an act of God and nature as good timing on the visitor's part. I think you have to schedule in advance and have the schedule coincide with a thunderstorm to be so lucky as to experience the full effect. However, their website does contain the rather cryptic qualifier, "It is important to note that as a work of art, The Lightning Field does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning but responds to many more subtle conditions of its environment." Hmm, maybe they know something we don't, or maybe they've resorted to mechanical means to get the buzz going, so to speak. Still, I'd love to view it one day.

And then there is the Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson, the only caveat being that it's in Utah of all places. I might have to be accompanied by two wives to actually view it! Oh, I kid. The name pretty much says it all. It's a large man-made jetty that spirals in on itself to a foregone conclusion.

I guess I've always liked that idea of art the can be experienced across the fourth dimension, Time. Artistically speaking, it is the best way, I think, to incorporate Change, one of the overarcing constants of the human experience. This type of art must respond to and co-exist with it's environment. It cannot be sheltered from it nor is it impervious to the ravages of time. Also, land art has a monumentality to its scale that can make the individual shed the world-weariness and stolidity of adulthood and re-acquaint ourselves with a childlike sense of smallness and wonder. It's something we lose if we don't view things that transcend our human scale.

But I feel I've gone off on a tangent. The Nazca lines in Peru are another example of this type of art. And though we might probably be less apt to actually call him a land artist, Richard Serra's massive steel sculptures are another of those that I feel allow the viewer to participate in the childlike act of discovery and exploration.

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As a sidenote: In the last week I've been in a wreck, worked 32 hours worth of overtime, and caught a nasty stomach bug and/or ate something untoward that has given my tummy untold grief for the past two days. So, there :p

You might say I've had a bit of a "stomachache". Someone I once knew would have said that. Except that he didn't pronounce it as in "stomach-ache" as it should be. When he read it for presumably the first time, it came out "Sto-ma-cha-chi". As in... !!!??? :)