A quick tali of the donations thus far shows that we have to date received $3404.33 USD and $1200 in solar panels. With my personal, out-of-pocket expenses (airfare, lodging, food), the total U.S. dollar value of contributed funds will be over $7500.

Thank you everyone for your contributions and support! Please note that while I leave in less than two weeks, any funds contributed prior to my departure or during my time in Kenya will be made available to the active projects at the Pistis academy and orphanage through SPAN and Terra Soft.

Thank you!
kai

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my life has been directing short films. A 16mm Legomation in grade school, a few Hi-8 oddballs and a claymation in high school, and in the past years just shy of a decade, short films collaboratively produced with my brother Jae. With each film we fall shy of our expectations and full potential on one or more levels, but each has produced a challenge unlike the prior, granting us experience and most importantly, time together in which we just flow. We are always complimented by our actors and crew as being organized, professional, and enjoyable to work with.

Last week we shot the first three minutes of a new short called “Sweet Memory”, produced for a local horror challenge put on by one of the teams that has participated in all three of the Almost Famous Film Festival 48 hour challenges.

Outside of the preparation for the shoot (securing the location, renting lights and additional mic equipment, writing the script, locating the actors), Jae and I were on set for ten hours. Ten hours for just three minutes, to reproduce a scene that unfolds without script or guidance countless thousands of times every day — a man visits a local bar to unload this burden, the bar tender greeting him by name and pouring his favorite drink.

Take one was flawless, but we need four more camera angles in order to cross cuts. The dialog must be perfect with each iterative recording. The glasses emptied or refilled. The wine poured back into the bottle. The soiled towel replaced. The actors returned to their starting places, the scripts rewound in the reels of their heads. And then the camera angle changes and the effort to maintain continuity redoubled as the lighting, sound, eye lines, and every shot detail must match. Is a reflection of the off-camera light showing in glass pane? Is the hi-light on the lead actor’s forehead the same as it was in the previous shot? Was the wine bottle label facing in or out?

Between shots, the scene comes to life as naturally as any real bar. Some of the extras know each other from previous projects, their catch-up banter a reminder of how small the Valley acting scene remains. A relief to my brother and I as we can focus entirely on our work and not worry about keeping them occupied nor content. The food platter prop is slowly reduced by a few pieces of cheese, crackers, and grapes between each shot. Everyone laughs, wondering if they will be missed on the big screen.

Tomorrow night we shoot the second half, roughly six to ten minutes of final footage. Another night time sequence, the conclusion to the film takes place in a multi-million dollar home in the East Valley, just south of the Superstitions. We will have the assistance of a good friend and technical expert in lighting and sound. Even with just two actors and three or four crew, the work ahead remains a daunting task.

Last night, after writing the post “Spirit of the Wind” I drove to Tempe to see “Once”, the Irish musical. A movie well done. Simple, elegant story telling. An art all but lost in American film. I then drove to Arizona on the Rocks at 90th and Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd to climb. When I left the gym an hour later at six in the evening I looked to the North and was thrilled to witness the entrance of the powerful companion to the wind, the feared and cherished desert rain.

Its face was two, maybe three thousand feet tall, cloaked by an omnious hood reaching out and over a mile of its intended path. The leading edge was a translucent mixture of white, blue, falling to gray. The solid mass that fell from the back of the hood to the desert floor was an impenetrable black, momentarily illuminated by strokes of lightning within. The mountains north of Cave Creek and Carefree were completely masked and invisible.

I jumped on the freeway and then off again at Pima just a few exits later. One mile from Carefree highway, the water touched my windshield as counted drops. By the time I turned East on Carefree, the rain drove sideways and the road was overtaken at all but the most subtle crossings, native topsoil mixed with gravel moved as liquid, white and yellow painted boundaries all but obscured.

The rain did not just fall, It came down with bold intent. The aroma of wet creosote entered my car through the vents. There is no smell that touches me like that of the desert in rain. The outside temperature dropped from 103 to 85 in less than ten minutes, and then into the seventies.

At the “Y”, I went to the left and north toward Seven Springs. The temperature continued to drop. Seventy five. Seventy one. Sixty eight. Sixty five. The sun was setting. And the spirit of the wind had handed its torch to the spirit of the rain.

While I continued along the mixed paved and gravel road to Seven Springs, the wall of water moved south. But it never made it past Camelback Mountain nor the McDowells nor even much beyond Pinnacle Peak, from what I could discern the next morning through my exploration by vehicle and by foot. My brother confirmed that not a drop fell in the heart of Phoenix less than thirty miles south of where I Carefree was overwhelmed, the concrete and blacktop and pool decks once again the victor in the battle for supremacy in this drying, dying place.

At the Seven Springs camp ground I moved to the passenger side of my car, dropping the seat back and the windows open to allow a few drops to fall on my arms and face. I fell to sleep quickly and slept well, the sound of the rain upon the metal roof of my mobile shelter slowing to a mist well after midnight.

This morning I awoke as the sun rose to the green that only a recently wetted desert can paint. Not forest green nor apple green, but a florescent green that appears to glow from inside of the creosote, prickly pear, sage, and grasses.

I entered the gravel road on the far side of the park and headed north and east for a little over twenty miles, reminded of how much incredible beauty exists just outside the reach of the Phoenix wasteland. High desert plateaus and deep, heavily wooded canyons bounded by distant, purple peaks that rise and fall. Four Peaks to the immediate south. Weaver’s Needle beyond that.

With the choice of east to I-17 or west to the Verde river, I returned to Seven Springs, Cave Creek, and then Bartlett Reservoir to swim before driving into the only remaining portion of the desert north of the McDowells not converted to a “desert lifestyle” by Troon or Del Webb.

I recalled Pinnacle Peak as it was when I was in college, where I often slept for a few hours atop spires of decomposing granite between long, intense days in the studio of my Industrial Design program at ASU. I recall one night clearly where I lay on my stomach and peered over the edge of one such rock to observe a half dozen coyotes feasting on the night’s kill. Their barking was intoxicating, the excitement of the feast echoing across the then, mostly unaltered desert floor.

I reached the saddle of the McDowells by foot just as the sun broke through the final remnants of the previous night’s storm and the temperature rose from the low nineties to the low hundreds. Back down the rolling double track to Jomax and Dynamite roads, across the reservation, to the 202, and Tempe where I now sip an iced tea, wishing I was again being tested by the spirit of the rain.

When I lived in Phoenix my final two years of high school and subsequent five years of college, I recall once or twice a storm of such incredible proportions that it invoked a sense of superstition, anthropomorphism giving voice to the wall of red sand that came in from the West.

photos by Dan Heim

This one thousand foot high curtain covered the Valley with intent, an ominous creature who year after year attempted to remove the pollution of this man-made anomaly. First the blasting sand to scour the buildings, cars, streets and manicured lawns. And then a torrential downpour to wash away the exfoliated skin of human creation, flooding streets, gullies, canals, and what remained of the natural washes and otherwise dry basins.

The evening news made victims of the people rescued by helicopter from the roof tops of their cars, having attempted to drive across a flooded roadway; and heroes of those who conducted the rescues. No one gave credit to this desert of ten thousand years whose implicit right it is to replenish herself not in subtlety, but in bold, dynamic flood.

It is a natural part of the ecosystem, an anticipated and joyous event that all but the modern city dwellers celebrate. Instead, they attempt to control it, ignoring that replacement of the original, fragmented and porous skin with concrete focuses and amplifies the run-off into unnatural channels ill equipped to deal with the volume. Two college degrees rendered useless in a single night as both civil engineers and weatherman Valley wide lowered their heads in shame, realizing they knew very little and could control even less.

In the subsequent years, however, the average, ambient night time temperature has increased by nearly ten degrees and the perpetual column of rising, hot air literally obliterates the moisture bearing clouds.

Two nights ago the desert unexpectedly came to life. I could smell the dust rising and an excited electrical charge. In the distance, beyond South Mountain, a few lightning strikes confirmed my body’s response to a childhood recollection. The spirit of the wind had returned.

In a matter of minutes, the visibility dropped to less than one hundred feet. I could not discern the color of the house across the street and traffic at the end of the block was visible only by the halo of head lamps emitted from cautious cars. My brother was nearly lost coming home from just one mile away, the corner street signs invisible.

I ran out to close the windows of my car and enjoyed the rocking motion for a few minutes as the wind erupted in seemingly random gusts. Back inside my parent’s home, the single pane, steel framed windows were no match for the fine particles which coated floor, furniture, and lungs.

Queen Creek, to the south of the Superstition Mountains was hammered with rain, the temperature dropping from 108F to seventy-something in just twenty minutes. Beyond South Mountain, just fifteen miles from downtown, it rained for an hour. But in downtown Phoenix the rain never came, void of the smell of moisture which usually accompanies this monsoon wind. The column of amplified heat was an impenetrable barrier that even ten thousand years of wisdom could not defeat.

Every year it gets hotter. Every summer, the average night time low and the number of nights which remain above 90F increase. Every year the rain moves further away from the heart of this place, depriving the residents of the very reason they moved here, a place of stark contrast and harsh, surprising beauty.

Only the ghosts of generations prior recall the cooler nights in the desert and smile for they know that some day, by subtlety or by bold flood, this place will be reclaimed and the rains restored.

I am pleased to have receieved monetary donations from Terra Soft, a Hack-a-thon attendee, the law offices of HKE (our attorney), and my family for a total of $1500. In addition, my high school physics professor, with whom I have remained in touch all these years, today donated 8 solar panels worth more than $1200. My father and I will this weekend build shipping crates in order to bring them to Kenya as checked luggage.

We are off to a good start, but could use another ~$1500 in order to tackle the projects proposed. More donations are needed with just 3 weeks until my departure.

Thank you!
kai