ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A coast is a site where sea meets shore, and both are transformed by the encounter. The creation of this book occurred over many thousands of miles of coastline in the Baltic, New York, and California. There were many seas and many shores, and I am grateful for the many ineffable transmutations along the way.

I am profoundly indebted to the timespace of Yaddo, especially Elaina Richardson, Candace Wait, Sean Marshall, Michael Hazard, and all the errant troublemakers with whom I lived and worked. Without Yaddo, this book would not exist. A deep bow to my transmogrifying Creative Capital family, including Ruby Lerner, Sean Elwood, Merle Augustin, Lisa Dent, and Ethan Nosowsky. To my tender, lionhearted agent, Kent Wolf, at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin, and to the ferocious shepherds of my work at Coffee House Press: Anitra Budd, Chris Fischbach, Molly Fuller, Caroline Casey, Amelia Foster, and the wondrous Allan Kornblum. May his memory be a blessing.

I would like to thank my family for their intrepid laboratory partnership on this enigmatic experiment: Julia Wikswo, John Wikswo, Stacy Flood, Eric Grush, William Gross, Susan Martin, Leonora Wikswo, Spydre and Rü, Mukanday-if-by-Sea, Avishai-the-Sublime, and the wee daemon Onophría Ixtlan.

The book itself wishes to acknowledge the n-dimensional involvement of Niklas Derouche, Katrina Trask (May 30, 1853–January 8, 1922), Jacobus Barhydt (February 9, 1753–December 22, 1841), Matthew Contos, Nicky Giesler, Lieutenant Kent Edward Koontz, U.S. Navy (October 28, 1968–March 6, 1998), and Dr. Robin Kilson (May 31, 1953–April 29, 2009), who instructed me to leave Texas, write a book, and always keep a case of champagne in the trunk of the car.

I am grateful for the constellation of bright stars on the navigational team who, in nine different countries, collaborated with, assisted, advised, and contributed to the projects in fieldwork, studio work, performances, and to the fabrication of this book. An infinitely extending gratitude to Eimitus , Paetrick Schmidt, Veronika Krausas, Zachary Levine, Nora Maynard, and Kristofor Giordano. Deep appreciation to Joost Baars, Grayling Bauer, Astrid Beigel, Amber Berman, Alessandra Castellanos, G. K. Callahan, Maxine Chernoff, Mike Chou, Sarah Clark, Andrea Clearfield, Matthew Contos, Megan Cump, Sarah Dohrmann, Craig Foltz, Lynn Freed, Bailey Grey, Eric Grush, Heather Harstad, Dorothea Herreiner, Patrick Horner, James Ilgenfritz, Jaime de la Jara, Mitch Kamin, Arthur Kell, Dan Kern, Anne Le Berge, Daniel Levenstein, Rafael Liebich, Velinda Mackey, Pamela Madsen, Risa Mickenberg, Terrell Moore, Tomáš Panyrek, Alexx Shilling, Guru Singh Khalsa, Ranbir Singh Sidhu, Susan Silas, Stacey Steers, Samantha Stiers, Mackerrow Talcott, Alys Venable, Shelton Walsmith, Helen Wan, John Wikswo, Erin Wilcox, Mike Wiley, and to the many denizens of Cabaret Q in San Francisco, Comrade Truebridge’s and Flashpoint in New York City, and Catalysis Projects and Fieldshift Further in Los Angeles. Lastly but not leastly, a tip of the helmet to Bob Riggins, who painstakingly fabricated all of the airplanes for this book from deep in the heart of Texas.

Thank you to the many institutions that provided mooring, anchorage, and rat-wrangling during this voyage: Yaddo, Creative Capital, Colleen Keegan of the Theo Westenberger Estate, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Bin Ramke at Denver Quarterly, Rob Spillman at Tin House, the Puffin Foundation, the Center for Cultural Innovation, Byrdcliffe Colony, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Ebenböckhaus and Thomas Linsmeier, the Millay Colony, Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale, Montalvo Arts Center, Schloss Pluschow, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Beyond Baroque, Zachary Levine of the Yeshiva University Museum, and Joanne Jacobson and Joy Ladin of Yeshiva University.

And to the sites themselves, a very special gratitude to Karma Triyana Dharmachakra; Floyd Bennett Field, Hangar B, and the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project (HARP); Vittorio Palmieri at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Large Hadron Collider; and Keivan G. Stassun, the Apache Point Observatory, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. And my love to the Baltic, the Curonian Spit, the Rossitten Bird Observatory, the Cormorants Colony of , and the Nerija National Park of Lithuania.