R.E.M., Country Feedback
It was another hot August day in Merced Canyon. Armen had taken a day off his job at the wastewater treatment plant, and took a walk up Foresta Road. He leaned against the bridge railing under the falls and knocked out a cigarette. He lit up, took a couple drags, and continued at a casual pace up the road.
Upon reaching Foresta, he continued eastward to the summit that overlooks Arch Rock and El Portal. Armen liked to call it the Sergeant because of its dull green color and masculinity. He found something up there that he didn’t expect.
Sam stood alone on the summit, feeling the updraft and the sharpening gradient of the electric field, his long, sandy blonde hair whipped by the the solar wind and charged by the voltage of the air. His deep Iranian eyes dilated in wrapt anticipation. The wind whipped through his baggy pant legs, striving to lift him as the Simorgh took up young Zal, that blonde son of King Sam of Iran. So this Zal stood, waiting—it seemed—to be taken up by the fire.
The solar fire rode hot and high on that August day, giving life to the sea of air below. “Heating,” we say, but truer to say “vivifying,” as the energy of the fire flowed into atmosphere from above. “Hot air rises,” we say, citing the law that requires bodies of low density to rise, but they only rise because their increased energy counteracts gravitation.
As the air awoke in that solar firelight, a gentle breeze could be felt here and there, for air was sliding in to fill the places where native air had taken flight, the Range itself acting as a great air magnet, pulling air in from surrounding lands, and pushing air away, upward, as it brought the air to life. The currents seemed cool upon the ground, though they were currents of fire.
The gentle breezes quietly slipped up the mountainsides, and upon reaching the ridgetops, took flight. And so more and more of the air was sucked inward and upward by the fire, upward into the frigid heights, where gravitation permits little air to remain, and even less of the heavier gasses such as water vapor. So it often happens that the water falls out like condensation from an exhaust pipe, even as the lighter gasses soar heavenward. But the water does not always fall to earth. The heat, or rather energy of this awakening may be too much to permit what water there is in it to ever return to the earth; not, in any case, anywhere near the updraft. What is more essential is that the updraft forms a kind of crucible wherein ions are separated from ions by the convection, quite against their inclination. Opposite charges are torn apart by the great cell until their mutual attraction overcomes the great power of convection, and the energy of their attraction is at last released in a fiery explosion.