Blue Ridge, you're the best seat in the house.
(There was a time before we were born... if someone asks, this is where I'll be.)
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
I am a Scientist
searching for a voice that resonates.
I would like to make myself clear.
speak clearly,
simply,
without bullshit.
it’s difficult when
what I have to say doesn’t make sense.
it is an indictment of sense,
of precision, perfection,
of often quoted rationality,
of straight lines ignorant of scatter.
Rock and roll anti-hero once sung,
“I am a scientist, I seek to understand...”
…and I do.
I seek to understand what prevents understanding.
Am I a shitty scientist?
Am I a saboteur?
I am a wanna-be gadfly
and, most of all, a humble human being.
yes I admit,
I am most interested in what eludes description.
in life,
in surprise,
in Mistakes (why not just love them?).
Evolution may be Intelligent after all.
dark late night,
on the verge of a great discovery,
eyes in a microscope,
and mooned by a cyanobacteria!
the little (lovely) bare-assed bastard.
I smile and go to bed.
coyote is the metaphor that sticks (owww!).
thank you Donna Haraway.
provocation may be the only way (oh that blue-green bum!).
thank you David Hume.
what is my role?
perhaps it’s to simply
spread the word.
reality is time-dependent.
space-dependent.
knowledge at time = t
is sometimes shit
at time = t + 1 two southern states away.
so, stress the local,
cut out the middle man!
Rock and roll anti-hero once sung,
“You don’t need a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows.”
Suddenly,
it all became incredibly clear.
conversation,
adaptation,
science =
another lost art.
we are all scientists.
I would like to make myself clear.
speak clearly,
simply,
without bullshit.
it’s difficult when
what I have to say doesn’t make sense.
it is an indictment of sense,
of precision, perfection,
of often quoted rationality,
of straight lines ignorant of scatter.
Rock and roll anti-hero once sung,
“I am a scientist, I seek to understand...”
…and I do.
I seek to understand what prevents understanding.
Am I a shitty scientist?
Am I a saboteur?
I am a wanna-be gadfly
and, most of all, a humble human being.
yes I admit,
I am most interested in what eludes description.
in life,
in surprise,
in Mistakes (why not just love them?).
Evolution may be Intelligent after all.
dark late night,
on the verge of a great discovery,
eyes in a microscope,
and mooned by a cyanobacteria!
the little (lovely) bare-assed bastard.
I smile and go to bed.
coyote is the metaphor that sticks (owww!).
thank you Donna Haraway.
provocation may be the only way (oh that blue-green bum!).
thank you David Hume.
what is my role?
perhaps it’s to simply
spread the word.
reality is time-dependent.
space-dependent.
knowledge at time = t
is sometimes shit
at time = t + 1 two southern states away.
so, stress the local,
cut out the middle man!
Rock and roll anti-hero once sung,
“You don’t need a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows.”
Suddenly,
it all became incredibly clear.
conversation,
adaptation,
science =
another lost art.
we are all scientists.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
More Sound & Vision
post regarding the rising Mississippi River and seeing nature as coyote forthcoming...
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The End Is Always Near (???)
Recently, I was introduced to a now dear friend of mine, Corrine. She is a poet/punk/human who started a writing group in which I am now a member. Unbeknownst to all of us, some forms of religion view this upcoming May 21st (as in ten freaking days from now) as the day when the Earth as we know it will be a giant ball of fire/floods/what-the-fuck. After we stopped laughing and picked ourselves off the floor, we decided to make an assignment for this week: to write about our own imminent deaths, or just death in general. Below is what I came up with tonight... It's work in progress (I think).
The clickity-clack of railroad tracks
and the whistles that finally close my eyes
are flying me through pitch-black memories
like a missile in disguise.
I must have been so tired.
I must have been losing my mind
to have laughed that way
so manically,
having denounced everything
and just riding the tide.
Underneath,
these hypnotized politicians
and failed magicians,
born in wine and muddy water,
envisioning selfish decadence
and faltering in the fear of their father’s nightmares.
But like an albatross across the ocean,
I am an alien in their perfect world,
and hovering above in the clouds
like a storm.
Side note: Charlotte, your writing is so playful and chewy! It's like orange juice: the more pulp the better.
Mystery Egg
For Mother’s Day
a desperation of our species:
does childlessness
imply
motherlessness?
without children, what will propel us
toward motherishness?
Cura—the original mother
(toward a vocation of care
in the sense of devotion)
you have seen me
my silhouette cutout
screams MOTHER against the stars.
o black against the sky
(another ode to the void)
pointilles of light shine the outskirts
twinkle holy and point to the area of
nothing there.
the absence tells
of an archetype divided:
in one hand Mommy holds
the miracle of new life,
an egg bigger than a speck of dust
(but not by much)
unfolding itself into a five and a half foot tall woman,
holding her own symbols en sphere
but o inescapable, this new spark
a frown on her face, a tear in her eye,
now looks toward the other hand and
Mommy? has morphed into Kali
terrifying, multihanded, and in each
a multiverse burning in flame,
dissolving in poison, a tiny mushroom-headed –POOF-
coming from, well,
nowhere now.
this daughter, not daring a glance at
what she holds in her own hands,
is now undeniably linked to
death.
created into the world,
our bodies now take on the job of composition and decomposition,
a fancy dance
on grass, on pavement, in trees,
on broken glass with leather shoes,
on fire.
in birth, death.
and in death, rebirth.
Mother is our link between worlds,
the person we know
who gets us in the door to this
bizarre party
so far beyond our fantasy
we spend our time in amazement and shock
at the wonders that surround us.
as children of the planet Earth,
we wander about, dazed and
mouths agape at
the tremendous creative
and destructive prowess
exhibited by our collective Mama
Gaia.
Our human understanding
can only go so far,
our metaphors locked up in our bodies
and in their relative positions to
everything else
determine our abilities to comprehend
just where it is we are.
An appropriately human, and motherly, metaphor is this:
we are protein-bits of her genetic code.
Our mother Gaia is still only an egg herself.
Fire-tailed meteors
(looking, eek, oh-so-spermy)\
on a collision course now billions of years past
exploded previously unknown elements onto
Earth-egg and she
continues to gestate,
each new combinatorial compound
provides x^∞ possibilities of
strange new life on the surface.
In some traditions and in some dreams
time exists as a dragon of fire
eating its own tail.
it struggles against itself to consume itself
at a rate faster than the
burning need in its gullet.
Is this what our universe is
incubating in Earth-as-egg?
I feel tender, motherly toward her, and
wonder what she will become
beyond my limited human scope.
What will burst forth from her?
What will she be when she grows up?
What kind of new ideas and new creatures
are seeping ever-outward,
like mystical smoke?
Mother-daughter-egg-mystery.
Creator, Destroyer, birthplace and
composter of us all, all ideas.
The future is vast beyond belief
we cannot fathom it.
We are bound by our idea of time.
5-8-11 xoc
a desperation of our species:
does childlessness
imply
motherlessness?
without children, what will propel us
toward motherishness?
Cura—the original mother
(toward a vocation of care
in the sense of devotion)
you have seen me
my silhouette cutout
screams MOTHER against the stars.
o black against the sky
(another ode to the void)
pointilles of light shine the outskirts
twinkle holy and point to the area of
nothing there.
the absence tells
of an archetype divided:
in one hand Mommy holds
the miracle of new life,
an egg bigger than a speck of dust
(but not by much)
unfolding itself into a five and a half foot tall woman,
holding her own symbols en sphere
but o inescapable, this new spark
a frown on her face, a tear in her eye,
now looks toward the other hand and
Mommy? has morphed into Kali
terrifying, multihanded, and in each
a multiverse burning in flame,
dissolving in poison, a tiny mushroom-headed –POOF-
coming from, well,
nowhere now.
this daughter, not daring a glance at
what she holds in her own hands,
is now undeniably linked to
death.
created into the world,
our bodies now take on the job of composition and decomposition,
a fancy dance
on grass, on pavement, in trees,
on broken glass with leather shoes,
on fire.
in birth, death.
and in death, rebirth.
Mother is our link between worlds,
the person we know
who gets us in the door to this
bizarre party
so far beyond our fantasy
we spend our time in amazement and shock
at the wonders that surround us.
as children of the planet Earth,
we wander about, dazed and
mouths agape at
the tremendous creative
and destructive prowess
exhibited by our collective Mama
Gaia.
Our human understanding
can only go so far,
our metaphors locked up in our bodies
and in their relative positions to
everything else
determine our abilities to comprehend
just where it is we are.
An appropriately human, and motherly, metaphor is this:
we are protein-bits of her genetic code.
Our mother Gaia is still only an egg herself.
Fire-tailed meteors
(looking, eek, oh-so-spermy)\
on a collision course now billions of years past
exploded previously unknown elements onto
Earth-egg and she
continues to gestate,
each new combinatorial compound
provides x^∞ possibilities of
strange new life on the surface.
In some traditions and in some dreams
time exists as a dragon of fire
eating its own tail.
it struggles against itself to consume itself
at a rate faster than the
burning need in its gullet.
Is this what our universe is
incubating in Earth-as-egg?
I feel tender, motherly toward her, and
wonder what she will become
beyond my limited human scope.
What will burst forth from her?
What will she be when she grows up?
What kind of new ideas and new creatures
are seeping ever-outward,
like mystical smoke?
Mother-daughter-egg-mystery.
Creator, Destroyer, birthplace and
composter of us all, all ideas.
The future is vast beyond belief
we cannot fathom it.
We are bound by our idea of time.
5-8-11 xoc
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
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