Diamonds In The Rough

_
#024 6/8ModernEP

I don't know what the "EP" at the end of the name of the rhythm I'm writing to this morning stands for. It's a strange combination of drums. A double-pedaled bass drum beat intermingling with a firm one-beat-per-measure snare drum hit, and eight softer beats on a small hand drum that insinuates its way throughout the entire process. All done so deliberately it seems sensuous and deep jungly. Like squealing in pleasure as an ongoing, step-by-step reach for the undulating, rapturous, top-shelf reciprocity of the finest, and most memorable sort.

Looking out the window above my monitor I see the stilted green of the new leaves against a gray sky. The clouds are so thick that there are no shapes to distinguish. The sky is one impenetrable gray mass. Somewhat like the color (or absence of it) I imagine my brain to be inside my skull. Gray and green. The green isn't so bright without the Sun shining on it. It's difficult for me to see this green without brightening it up with my imagination. Like looking at a brilliant-cut emerald without a light source to distinguish the edges of it's multi-faceted surface.

It's not like I drove to Arkansas to look at the rocks found there. I've traveled to and through Arkansas for any number of reasons hundreds of times. I hardly ever stop for more than gas when I'm driving or getting put out there if I was hitch-hiking. The last time I deliberately went to Arkansas was to find a cave in the northern Ozarks up toward Missouri to meditate in. I never did.

The only diamond field in the continental United States is in Arkansas. I drove there specifically to see what that is all about. I looked for diamonds. It wasn't exactly a grand adventure. The diamond fields are now owned by the State of Arkansas, and they turned it into a State Park. They charge around three dollars a day to go out to where the old mines were located to try your luck. Diamonds are still found there. Occasionally, fairly large ones as much as a carat or two.

I didn't find any diamonds that day. I enjoyed my visit there a lot. I was by myself naturally. The State Park rangers run a sort of Exhibition Center at the Park lodge, and gave a series of lectures about diamonds at night. The whole deal is organized quite neatly, and I enjoyed getting "diamond fever" a little as I futilely searched for just the right gleam in the greenish colored dirt.

The Park rangers talked about the color of the earth there, and how it's pretty much the same color green and the same type of soil all over the world where diamonds are found. My brief visit to a real diamond field would cause me later on to Google up information about diamonds and diamond mining.

According to the information I obtained using the internet, diamonds are only found in the decayed soil where certain very deep volcanoes boiled over nearly a hundred million years ago. The man-made graphics on these websites revealed how the volcanoes were shaped sort of like carrots that start out small deep in the earth, and gradually get bigger as they upsurge through the mantle of the earth to the surface.

That's why the diamond mines are circular and get smaller and smaller the deeper they dig to look for them. According to what I read, no more of those types of earthquakes happen anymore, so however many diamonds they created is all there will be. If those types of earthquakes happen again, they will extinguish life as we know it, and it won't matter if there are more diamonds formed or not. As far as I'm concerned, it never has mattered.

I was invited as a guest speaker on neurolinguistics programming to a seminar in New York City once. It was a three-day affair in a big hotel located right in the middle of downtown Manhattan. I don't remember the exact location anymore, but right across the street from the hotel was a famous jeweler where they had a bountiful supply of diamonds for anyone who walked in their store to see.

I was surprised it was so easy to walk right in and check out their wares. One of the attendees at the seminar told me to go back over there and look around to find a sales desk. I did, and he was right, there weren't any. If you actually wanted to look at the jewels with the intent of buying them, then you had to go to another part of the building where you would be "qualified" to see if you could afford to waste their time. A visitor could look at the diamonds in the display room, but they were behind bullet-proof glass in cases that didn't even have edges in the display room.

When I was bumming around throughout North America I went to every museum I ran across that didn't charge an admission fee, and some that did, if I had the means at the time. I don't have a clue how many times I've been through the museums on the East Coast. There are some exhibits that simply don't attract my attention, but I always look at any coins or rocks exhibitions available. I don't know why. Seeing the Hope Diamond was interesting, but it didn't mean anything to me, but for some reason, taking the opportunity to take a gander at it did.

I guess one of the more interesting sights I saw during my travels were the regular tourist sights, and particularly the desert scenes. Those areas were so different from where I grew up, their very existence astounded me. The Painted Desert. The Petrified Forest, the Crater in Arizona. Monument Valley. The entire State of Nevada. it took me forever to actually stop when I was passing through the area for the umpteenth time and look over the rim at Grand Canyon.

One of my favorite places to see was Big Bend National Park in Texas. The Big Bend area doesn't impress me with any extremes. The mountains there are fairly small. They're tall enough to shoot the persistent winds that cross the great plains to get there straight up in the sky for thousands of feet, and that makes it one of the most recognized places in the world for glider airplanes.

Big Bend is just a mystery place to me. I could literally feel it's mystery while I was there, and felt it leave me once I got gone. I don't actually know how to describe the place in such a way as to recreate that transient emotional feeling it appeared to spontaneously create in me. I wasn't alone there, but with a woman I loved deeply. Unfortunately, I still do. I ought not to, but I might feel less than human if I were able to stop.

I can stop the drum machine, and just did, because it's raining outside and I love to hear it beat against my house.

Which makes me wonder why the desert area I traveled through so many times fascinates me. If I was wealthy enough to retire anywhere I wanted to, rather than retiring here simply because it's convenient, I might choose northern Arizona. Maybe Flagstaff. It's surrounded by some of the most fascinating natural scenery I've ever experienced first-hand.