But the evil plan backfired.

You see, the choice of clip art was really an exercise in unconscious revelation by the bureaucratic people that put this test together.  Like a prisoner in solitary confinement who watches ants come and go through a crack in the edifice, it gave me something to hold on to.  They are not in total control.  They are human.

Let’s start with these two, intended to illustrate slides about communication, showing a bunch of office drones interacting in a spirit of identity-less bonhomie.  Literally, they are faceless, and by extension, we, the employees taking this test, are under pressure to relinquish our identity to the cause of corporate assimilation.

The business school graduate who put this stuff together probably wasn’t consciously thinking about this in an explicit way.  But the next one… oy.  What’s the excuse here?  The pretense of the value of the individual has been dropped.  We will be paved over by data, our faces obscured by computation, the edges of our bodies indistinct and merged with the stuff of work.   To make it scarier, in the background is one of the buildings on campus, a familiar sight.  I am not feeling too good about this!  Are they trying to motivate me with fear or have they so totally abandoned themselves to the machine that this doesn’t strike them as Orwellian?

I can’t help but notice that this person has not been successfully deprived of individuality.  She (for it is clearly a woman) would be recognizable, if you knew her.  A subsequent slide seemed to strive for a more thorough immolation, transforming the unfortunate subject into a menacing, Michael-Jacksonesque android.  Look into that eye - it is slack; all hope has been drained from it.  This point was not lost on me as I contemplated this image about 90 minutes into the grueling exercise in submission, and knew that I was not even half done.

Having made their point and forced me to sit at the computer far longer than ever I could have wished, they now began to taunt me with hallucinatory visions of time, which while certainly echoing my state of mind, probably revealed the author’s also, as they were forced into the same mire into which they pushed my face.  This guy’s profile looks strangely like my own:

I’ve read that control of a subject’s grasp of time is one of the fundamental aspects of brainwashing. A proxy for everyone taking the test, the woman in this image is hanging on  for dear life:

But the authors, revealing a bit of their desire to control things,  have let a bit of their spirit show, as in the following image, where another (and far fitter) woman resentfully confronts the enormous, hovering clock:

Their composure beginning to crack, the authors made a critical mistake.  They allowed the next guy to have a full face.  It is a stalwart face, a depiction of the organization man astride the machinery of productivity, with time and money in a position of coequal primacy. As appropriate for evil overlords everywhere, the earth is centered firmly in the crosshairs - but he has an identity!  It was like a fart during a piano sonata.  They are human after all.  They have weaknesses.

That’s right, he not only is uniquely identifiable, but even capable of expressing emotion, a totally non-work-related concept.  Having overcome one barrier, the authors now let fly with this uninhibited piece, perhaps as they toiled away in the cubicles at 11:30PM, ignoring calls from their families:

Perhaps after review by management, the authors returned to their original purpose with a new will to conquer.  They tried to reassert dominance of the self with the following uninspiring images, calculated to drain the viewer of independent spirit.  The message: “This is all you can be.  This is your purpose.  Do not stray from the box.” This is reinforced with the epitome of all office achievements, the production of a signed document, about which we are implicitly encouraged to feel as a hen does about her new egg.  Note the smug satisfaction and repressed sexuality (expressed in her blaze of red hair) of the first character, and the way the authors caught themselves and made the second one faceless:

In a further attempt to alienate the viewers, the authors threw in this image, encouraging us to avoid human contact and movement at the same time, although they have really lost the ability to suppress humanity, and have again allowed the portly office people to have faces.  Note, however, the aggressive, robot overlord cameras leering sternly over their subjects.  Really - have you ever seen a camera with a slit?  Those are not simple lenses, but turrets from which beams are focused. Positioned dominantly over the monitors, they not only supervise the people, but control the information on the computers.

At this point I feel it necessary to share with you the naked truth of this test.  Having only seen the images, you might be tempted to think that I’m exaggerating about the banality of the material.  I am pleased to present to you a sample, the real thing, a tangible pebble from my journey into hell.  I might have thought it were a nightmare, but for this evidence, taken directly from the source.  Note the derision inherent in the Question’s title.  After reading it, will you feel “enriched?”  Can the authors have produced this without a note of irony?

Now we arrive at the security section, so a suitably dry photograph of locks, code books, and some kind of computer media was required.  But wait - what is that, sitting on the book?  Can it be - is that a spleef?  I think the authors were really careless at this point and unable to continue this mind-numbing task without chemical assistance.  Already stoned, they neglectfully left evidence in the frame.  Without outside help, I had to endure - like a civil war casualty biting a 50-caliber ball.  Grimly, I held on.

Now blissed out and surrendering to the indomitable human spirit, the authors produced this piece of neo-socialist realism - a nod to some Stalinesque overlord - but were unable to suppress references to identity, art, and emotion.  Color is breaking out, and it has shades!  The triumph of the human spirit at last!  These are not mindless office drones- they are free and full of inner motivation!  They are fashionable and slender!  You might want to be these people; they are on the phone, perhaps making plans for after work.  The witch is dead! Flowers are blooming in the spring! The test is over!

Is it me, or does that last one reek of Marc Chagall?  As it always will, although they tried to subvert it to their purpose, art and beauty won out in the end.  Although it wasn’t part of the presentation, I’ll include this here for purposes of comparison.  This knowledge set me free.  There is a way out.

Seriously, people!  Such a sparkling example of mediocrity has not crossed my desk in a while.  Is this the world we want to live in? Can we not do better?  Surely there are some public domain images of Chagall or other artists that could have been stuck in here.  I don’t want to live and work in a world of intellectual junk food.  I resist!

One of the coolest thing about this is that Rowan sent out my old friend, noted photographer Kyle Cassidy, to do the photography.  We had a good time and the photos look fantastic.

Above is my favorite shot of the whole trip.  Chuck is hanging on a weighted line dropped from the boat, doing his deco stop at 20 feet, illuminated by scintillating sun rays and accompanied by a sizable barracuda - standard behavior for this fish, which likes to hang out under boats and near divers who are doing their stops.  I used to think that it was the shadow of the boat, or maybe the smaller fish that usually hang out near a floating object, but I’ve been kept company by ‘cudas even when doing stops on drift dives with no boat or lines above, and even in absolute darkness, so I’m not sure what this is about.  I don’t find it threatening; perhaps they figure that I’m there, so I must have my reasons and they should hang out too. If the viz were better, you’d see the debris of the Abrams below Chuck, but the next image will show you what happened as we went through 50 feet of depth:

And it got much worse than that.  Of course, with the sun gone, it became colder too.

Visiting a shipwreck - a real one, not a reef project - is reminiscent of Orpheus’ journey to Hades.  The allegorical sequence of leaving the warmth of topside, surrounded by the happy excited camaraderie of my dive companions, then physically passing through a medium that gradually chokes off color, visual intensity, and temperature, eventually winding up in an inhospitable graveyard haunted by large menacing animals and the constant invisible dangers of diving, hits me over the head with unintentional references to the underworld.  I think that this is a universal experience for divers, even if they cannot articulate it.

Anybody who does this has spent a lot of time and money to do it and must really want to be there, and I am no different.  I am always thrilled to enter the water and fascinated by what I see there.  Returning to the surface, I am usually reluctant to leave the water; but I always have a sense of relief that I’m going back where there are people, sunshine, and laughter.

Coming up the line, we are shadowed by big sand tiger and other sharks ( many larger than me) that stay almost out of visibility, like shady characters following me down a dark city street.  To them, the visibility is not a problem at all; they know exactly where I am and what my visual limitations are.  The currents  that would sweep me away from the anchor line if I let go are no problem for the sharks; their thick bodies ripple with muscle as they casually position themselves just where they wish to be, maintaining a distance of 10-15 feet, right at the edge of the sphere of invisibility created by the darkness and the cloud of fine particles that surround us.  Accompanied by an entourage of smaller animals - each shark is its own ecosystem - they fade in and out of sight, but not awareness. What beauty - how lucky am I to witness this?

There is the intellectual aspect of understanding what has occurred at this spot - the danger, confusion, fear, desperation, bravery, and struggle of the Abram’s crew - as well as the physical evidence of not just an event, but an entire age gone by.  This ship was built not just by people who have passed on, but an entire age that is gone.  The passions, struggles and urgency which with these people lived are now represented only by these things lying on the bottom and our memories of them.  I know that a few survivors of that era are still around, but their numbers grow fewer each day, and they must feel like strangers in a strange land.  As I wandered the remains of the old steam engine, strewn about the bottom, I reflected on how much labor went into the creation of these objects, how the events that led up to their winding up on the bottom were the defining moments of some people’s lives and the end of others (in the case of the Dixie Arrow, people died, but on the Abrams, there were no casualties).  Now, in the summer of 2010, I can casually visit this site for my amusement. I hope that everybody who comes here knows what the place means, or meant, to somebody.  What will I leave for future generations to meditate upon?

Down on the wreck, you are always being watched.

Beautiful, miniature corals strain the water for their living:

Every source of food is exploited; my own body’s protein is mine only by right of strength, or at least intimidation.  The reef would be happy to make me part of it, and it wouldn’t take long.

Here is the whole bunch of images, plus a few extra “detail” shots.

<built> in Camden NJ in 1920 and 1921, <the Dixie Arrow and its sister ship, the F. W.  Abrams>  met their end in 1942 only a few miles apart in the WW II Battle of the Atlantic off the Coast of Hatteras.  The Dixie Arrow was steaming from Texas City, TX, with crude oil when she was torpedoed by  Kapitanleutnant Flachsenberg in U-71 just south of Diamond Shoals on March 26th, 1942.  Despite being engulfed in flames,  the lives of many of the Dixie Arrow’s crew were saved when  ABS Oscar Chappell sacrificed his own life manning the helm of the crippled tanker to turn the ship and steer the flames away from the survivors gathered on the ship’s bow.  All tolled, eleven died  and twenty-two survived the sinking.  <… stuff removed> Today both ships lie in about 90 feet of water less than six miles apart.  The Dixie Arrow is better preserved:  The shape of her bow and stern are easily identified–with high relief in the bow section rising twenty-five feet from the ocean floor.  Both wrecks are regularly visited by large rough-tail and southern sting-rays, sand tigers, and huge atlantic barracuda.

So this is a storied wreck and also it hosts great clouds of life.  I was trying out a new camera and the pictures are kinda crappy, but here they are.  The most notable thing were the large number of robust, muscular sand tiger sharks, many of which were larger than us. At first glance you may think that it is scary to be around such large animals; indeed, they are kind of alarming, because of their numbers, size, muscularity, and how their mounths are formed into a permanent goofy grin of protruding sharp teeth.  But they treated us with a laissez-faire attitude.  I knew that they knew I was there, but I could also tell that I didn’t look like food.  At that moment, anyway…

Another thing to consider is that their mouths are not meant for eating large prey.  They don’t have a particularly nasty reputation for attacking humans, although it does happen occasionally.  Here you can see the relative sizes of man and beast; if anything, the size of this shark has been de-emphasized, because it’s farther away than the diver (who happens to be Chuck of Columbia Scuba).

Other large predators inhabit the vicinity, such as these 3 and 4 foot-long barracudas.

Above is a shot of the tanker’s giant steam engine surrounded by a great cloud of life. The engine is beautifully exposed, and you can see the crankshaft and boilers when diving (although not in this particular image).

Divers may be interested to know that in the summer, the water here is very warm.  The Gulf Stream makes a close approach to land here, and this wreck, being about 20 miles offshore, lies within it.  I wore  a 3-mil suit; the water temperatures were almost 80, avan at depth. There is a one-hour+ boat ride involved; the water has a reputation for being rough and you never know what you will find.  It was something of a challenge this day, and some people puked, but overall the weather was gorgeous.

The town of Hatteras is well-known as a tourist attraction and I won’t go into any detail describing it, except to say that there is at least one good dive shop here (mentioned above)  that dispenses nitrox, and there are numerous restaurants, quaint inns, and beautiful beaches.

It also has mosquitoes, and plenty of them.  Since I’m outside having my blood drained by mosquitos in order to be near a hot spot to make this post, I’m just going to slap in the rest of today’s photos without comment:

During the golden hour, the synthetic brutishness of the road is transcended by the miracle of shimmering grass. The road may be hard, but the grass will always win in the end.

As you drive out of the city heading north, the desert gives way to arid plains with more plant cover.

As the sun set I was treated to thunderstorms too distant to hear. Peering through a splattered windshield on which innumerable insect lives had been extinguished, I witnessed lightning bolts crawling around the thunderheads as if insight, made visible, were seen flashing through a giant brain. The lawnmower blade of the milky way rotated overhead; the horizon was revealed in semi-second bursts of the prodigal energy our planet spends so freely.  At Raton peak near the NM/CO border, I decided that should I ever need religion, I’ll worship the sky.   Lightening demurely illuminated the clouds, choosing not to reveal its full nature.

Right now the entire region is closed to hikers, but when it’s all over I will make a point of hiking through there and documenting it.

Here is a link to my friend Steve’s blog, where he has posted images and resources as well.

A link to my friend Padraig’s images - some excellent night shots.

Here is a link to the “handlebar sandwich” blog, which has some very early images of the fire, as well as a very creepy time-lapse night sequence.

Of course, the coconino county site has the most authoritative info.

Finally, in my original fire post i mentioned three students that had to flee the fire, abandoning their car (I hope it’s still there when they get to it!).  It turns out that two of the three are summer students at Lowell, where I am working.  Small world!  I am glad they are safe.  Here is a link to some images one of them, Eric, took.

new: Here is an animation of the fire as seen from space.  Here is a cool time-lapse movie of the fire at night, taken from a location right where many people have houses.