Not much to report here other than Jutta and I were driving across New Mexico on the scenic route into Arizona. Yep, that’s about it, and this location was the only one we stopped at for photos.
Jutta Back Behind The Wheel
Fresh off the plane and on our way south. When I offered Jutta the opportunity to drive the car, she jumped at the chance. On a previous visit back in 2005, she also took the wheel with me out on a road trip, the first time in more than 20 years since she’d driven last. I thought she might be too jet-lagged to be sharp about things, but I guess the thought of driving once more in America was the jolt of energy that cleared away that fog.
To not fatigue Jutta or have her gimp hip sitting too long in the car, we stayed in Socorro, New Mexico, for the night. This was not her first time here. During the winter of 2007, we dragged her out for New Year’s Day to Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on an icy morning for her to witness the lift-off of some 30,000 snow geese at the break of dawn. She also ate here at El Camino Family Restaurant, as we always eat here, some days even multiple times a day.
After dinner, we had pie and coffee while kicking back at the diner. That’s the American way.
Boulder, Colorado
Took the day to drive up to Denver, Colorado, on a mission to pick up my mother-in-law, Jutta. Earlier in the year, she fell and broke her hip. While visiting her immediately after her surgery, we told her that if she worked hard to recover, we’d have her over as soon as she was fit. That time is now seven months later, but to make traveling easier for her and as short as possible, the closest non-stop flight was into Denver from Frankfurt, so here I am on my way.
Slow Drive
Vague stuff here because this wasn’t added until February 2023. I know I stopped in Moab, Utah, on the way to Colorado, as I have quite the blurry photo of me standing in front of Steve Kenny’s old Ford Bronco with the Colorado license plate RUHAIRY. Our boatman from the Grand Canyon Dory trip back in 2010 was now working for OARS in Moab, so I stopped in to say hi. The photo is likely not too far from Boulder, Colorado, where I spent the night.
The Emptiness of Nostalgia
This strange beast called nostalgia is a difficult enemy to avoid. Out in the middle of the country, I’m bombarded with its presence. It starts with the memories of having traveled to these places before. If anything has changed, it might be the asphalt I drove over; everything else looks the same. After hours of hauling over the arid landscape and finally finding my mind empty, I turn on the radio. Big mistake, but for whatever reason, not easily rectified. I leave it on. Hit after hit from my youth drills into old memories, giving life to sleeping giants that should remain dormant.
While I was aware of these 70’s classics as a boy and a teen, I was running away from them as a kid. Now, a man of 50, I listen in to hear what I never wanted to. They conjure images of men and women in their 60s and 70s portrayed by their roadside billboard portraits where I see the announcements of their imminent return on the casino circuit scattered across America. In those places are the nostalgic, those who are whittling away their time, spending their few remaining days in memories of an age perceived to have been perfect – and these songs are their faithful soundtrack. For me, they are bitter reminders that some people’s lives get stuck in a time.
For the foreigner and out-of-state traveler, this is a journey into novelty. They are building new memories from new experiences. They are not sheep. I only hope the soundtrack is new, too, or else this adventure might blur into a continuation of the familiar, albeit with shades of the hitherto unseen.
The place across from me is empty. It is made emptier by the fact that I’m the only person here who is alone. A couple of conversations are happening in my tongue; German, Chinese, and Navajo are all within earshot. Caroline is missing; this road trip is solo, at least the first half, anyway. Without ceremony, my dinner is wolfed, and only a gratuity and signature stand between me and my departure from the Twin Rocks Cafe here in Bluff, Utah; a place of great nostalgia, not because of the music though, this time it is the memory of my missing wife.
Oculus Rift Changes Everything
Everything you think you know is about to be turned on its head. The coming revolution is a wave of tsunami proportions that will fundamentally alter humankind’s course. This historic moment will be instigated by the Oculus Rift, though the impact will only be seen through hindsight.
Most who know me likely think I’m a bit too liberal with the hyperbole regarding my enthusiasm for how I perceive the future. That’s okay, as I don’t claim to be clairvoyant and readily admit I may be quite wrong, but I really believe I’m being too conservative – even if my timeline proves to be short. You see, I think we are on the precipice of extraordinary change on the scale of when humans discovered how to work with fire, pottery, metal, or agriculture.
For nearly 150,000 years, while reality has been all around us, our mark on it, our art, has been in front of us – and it wasn’t always portable. What I mean is that when we learned to map a location, our ancestors likely drew a diagram in the dirt; this might have led to our recognition that we could use a rock to mark a tree and then mark a wall. Art was born. Since that time, we have become more sophisticated in our ability to place art before ourselves by putting it on statuary, canvas, celluloid, glass tubes, and now on thin, flat glowing panels. What all these things share, from the cave wall to a bendable OLED screen, is that they are before us; they are in front of our faces and are an element of our reality.
We are about to embark on a new paradigm, one where art is no longer in front of us; instead, it will supplant reality, placing us in the middle of a new reality. Some may look at this merely as a means to play a video game, and that is how it will be sold. Others will think it is a perverted tool that will make pornography all the eviler, though they themselves will likely have to know that first hand. Hollywood may see it as a savior that will deliver more eyeballs to see the same movies all over again as they work to remake yet more sequels; this time, though, they’ll be immersive. The paradigm I speak of is virtual reality, also known as VR.
What the Oculus Rift, and a host of similar products I’m sure, promise to bring, is the ability to be anywhere – except where we are. I won’t argue that it will take time for a generation brought up on shooting everything that moves to shift to taking an interest in exploring the sublime. This is in part because those of us venturing forward to create such content will need a lot of time and probably some external capital to allow us to employ artists, scientists, programmers, and musicians. But I see a problem with this: curiosity leads to…well, curiosity. Why is that an issue? Curiosity is a cornerstone of greater intellectual capacity, and we are on a 50-year binge of banality and conformity that has intentionally or inadvertently commercially benefited a certain segment of the population from our dumbing down. How will those interests either cede control or evolve their own content away from being manipulative and trivial?
Without simulated rape, drug use, chainsaw death, torture, shooting, and other negative stimuli to rail against, how will the powers that be leverage media hysteria on how “Educational” or “Enlightening” VR is, corrupting whichever segment of society should be targeted for being its victim? Is it really by consumer demand that our movies, books, and video games nearly always have an evil character? Why, then, when we travel, do we spend time exploring the arts, music, exotic cuisine, and beautiful nature instead of dodging zombies or going on shooting sprees? We explore because life is interesting, amazing, and full of learning opportunities. Media-contrived art is not imitating life, it is extorting the masses.
When the individual returns to painting on the virtual cave wall, to drawing in the digital dirt and watching the flicker of electronic light bouncing off a 3D caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly in an immersive world as seen through the Oculus Rift, they are going to feel in control and even more curious. They will wonder what they’ve been missing while they’ve been living comfortably numb in a society that has been celebrating mediocrity. Virtual reality is going to peel back the facade that ignorance is bliss; it is going to have us all dreaming of where we can go next and wondering what the story is behind those Mayan ruins, folding proteins, supernovae, and the mechanics of how a flower unfurls in the morning sun.
Watch out, world; here comes curiosity.