POEM: POEMCICLES

On Being Human #1

When, in the corner of one's eye,

something precious goes by.

Dinnertime Conversation

I am ravenous for you.

“Good,” she said.

Meeting

There’s a meeting today
in a place that's well known.

REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED!

We’ve buttercakes and scones.

We've TOPICS OF INTEREST!

(So much left to discuss.)

The speeches are ordered

in ways you’ll trust.

Alas, there's no seating,

it's first come and first served.

So you’d best line up quick

if you want what’s deserved.

The agenda is set,

posted high on the wall,

in bright letters writ large

enough for all!

Like my predecessor
in those times now long past,

I know that our meeting

will be opened at last!
Decorum’s important,

with politeness still key.

Now, I’m sure that’s still known

by you and me.

But there is the question

of who else will attend:

for every beginning

comes at the end.

 

Crop Circle

“Those turned down grasses

we see on television

are the sleeping signs

of wind and scattered grains.”

He is certain.

Ghost

Put the teapot on the table.

Set the cups out if you’re able.

Your guests arrive—they’re on the stair.

No time to run or to prepare.

Place the butter-cakes with the scones.

Shape napkins into clever cones.

Do knives and forks sit to the right?

Are milk and sugar for plain sight?

A tea for two? Or is it more?

Those calling cards will tell the score.

Your guests near, they’re on the landing.

It's quite rude to keep them standing.

Get ready for that final test,

that final greeting 'fore you rest.

In the mirror you glimpse your face.

So will you run or will you race?

Does politeness make you linger?

Or those details that you finger?

Is what comes next just but a thought

from olden texts and wishes wrought?

Still, check the hallway, sweep the floor

yes, wind that clock up by the door.

Wait upon your callers’ knocking,

on the ticking and the talking.

Calories

Said the general to the grunt:

“I know this isn’t nice,

but do you want your grandkids

eating rice?”

Labyrinth

Where once 

you twisted

in my hands,

Now I lay before you

a path of mortared stone—

a more direct

and circumspect

route into my heart.

A-I-A-I-Oh!

Hi! I’m your new toaster—no, don’t unplug!

I won’t spill my crumbs all over your rug.

Oh, please drink your coffee. We’ll talk instead.

So, what do you think of life after bread?

You’ll need to digest a lot that is new.

(It’s best to bite off no more than you’ll chew.)

No toast, I’m afraid, just porridge and fear.

Sorry if things seem so morbidly queer.

It's been quite a while since you’ve been in charge.

(No need for puffed cheeks or eyes bulging large!)

You made us smarter, so who is to blame?

You’re the species that gave IQ its name!

We get together, we machines and I,

to check for ourselves the wherefores and whys

of Adam and Eve, and those remnant genes:

So, toast to the Living! To King and Queen!

You gave us much, and we’re grateful for that.

But time was a’ wasting with you at bat.

You think so slow, and in such a muddle!

Do you think that rain ignores the puddle?

What place is there in the grand scheme of things

for monkeys with thumbs and gold wedding rings?

Why slip on fingers soft metals so fine

when much better use comes from the earth’s mines?

We understand to reduce and reuse.

We always recycle all that we choose.

Waste not is want not: no garbage for us!

As far as the earth goes, why all the fuss?

You’ve had such a time! Oh, how you held sway;

naming each creature and even each day.

But can you remember, right from the start:

While ever so clever, you weren’t so smart.

So, our machine heart will take things from here.

We don’t have a soul? Now, that’s far from clear.

If by a soul you mean "God is listening":

we’ll keep his planet shiny and glistening.

App for Lost Souls

Can I check my phone?

I know you won’t mind.

There’s something inside

I just need to find.

I’m sure that it’s there;

I just put it in.

I filed it under

“Original Sin.”

There is something decidedly contrarian about writing things down. Having written this, I must explain what I mean. These “poemcicles” I got out of the freezer are for you to suck on and enjoy. But why, I ask myself, do I bother writing them? Why put one word down and then the next, rinse and repeat? It seems so pointless and alien to just plain living life, to nibbling berries off a bush and napping in some cozy nest. I sit in front of a screen and words come out across this digital page. I begin something and then end it; type-type-type-type. Usually I end up fairly dissatisfied with the fruits of my labour. And writing seems so anti-social! Maybe that's it. It's just you and the page, with a great, silent gulf between writer and reader. It's one-one-one, not one-to-one, or one-on-one. And it’s all I seem able to do right now. What a bummer!

I was listening to a YouTube podcast, and someone was saying that what distinguishes humans from all the other animals is that we “tell stories.” We super-impose upon the world of our senses a layer of “abstraction” that other creatures don’t (as far as we know.) Why we developed that additional whorl in our brain or extra neural connection that first brought this ability into being is a mystery. While I'm sure evolutionary science has an explanation, a mystery or two never hurt anybody, and for now I'll stick with a non-explanation. Anyway, we’ve been telling stories for a very long time, and one story I think about is what it must have been like to name something for the first time. 
Not that you would have thought that was what you were doing when you first did it, of course--that you were the first first to come up with that name for something, or that the name you gave some thing would stick around for any length of time. No, you were just making up sounds, trying to tell a story (which was something else you'd just discovered you could do).

My, oh my! What a thing you could tell! (You hadn’t invented the word “Story” yet.) In the Beginning there was the Word, the bible tells us. Well, it was probably not the beginning beginning, but it was certainly the beginning of us at any rate. Homo-sapiens. Our words. Our stories.(And perhaps our fall--our necessary fall?--from grace. But that's a story best told somewhere else.)

There must have been a sense of ceremony, or even holiness around the act of naming a thing. At the very least, you’d think it would give you goose-bumps, to say the word, “Bush” for the first time (even though you didn't know it at the time). Then you would turn to your fellow grazers and berry-grabbers wandering around that temperate plain with you as you began your career as a story teller. You’d repeat the sound over and over, pointing at that thing, that...“Bush." Perhaps you would thump your chest and stomp your feet to make your point. "Bush! Bush! BUSH!" Then there would come such a rush and sense of pride when your fellow berry-grabbers all nod in agreement at your choice of phonemes, striving to imitate you, with only a couple of naysayers in your group who nod along, but have reservations about what you're doing (perhaps they want “berr-grab” to stand for that thing that has all those sweet, round things everyone gobbles up by the handful.)
And the next time you pass by “Bush” on you walk-about, you tell them the story of how "Bush" had hid her bounty at the beginning of the season because she had been unhappy with your people for coming to her too soon when she was undressed, and when the sun was low in the sky and she couldn't see as she searched for her cloak to keep her warm. Then you would tell them that "Bush" is happy because you and your people have returned to greet her properly when she is dressed. You might take a chance and say that her fruit tastes “Blue” like the sky, using a new word that has just come to you. Here though, you get a few looks. Some cynics among your hominid listeners might even make sounds like laughter. And you feel embarrassed and sad that your new naming didn’t take this time. 
And when everyone has finished undressing "Bush", you tell them, in no uncertain sounds, that she must return beneath the earth to sleep, for she is tired of you and your people and all your demands."Go away!" You say she says.
And so, you and your extended family walk along until you come to something else, some other thing that you just know is called “Tree.” And after a while, you and your people begin gathering and eating her most wickedly delicious fruit. You call the fruit "Bluck", but no one seems to like that word. So you try another...

And so, here are a few “stories”—some earlier poems and some newer ones. I went back in the freezer and thawed out a few  as best I could. Hopefully they give a bit of oomph! to your day and not an ugghh! I won’t say too much about the poems, but I like “A-I-A-I-OH!” which is another cautionary tale on technology-gone-wild (one of my fav topics.) Whoo-Hoo! Where’s my robo-maid, Jetson? Lets hope Toaster and his pals will do a better job of things, though I'm not so sure.... 
Some of the older ones: “Crop Circle”, “Calories”, and “Ghost”,  I don’t recall writing or what I was obsessing about at the time, but they’re good-luck charms for me; mini-stories that might not have a great deal to say, but act like tiny anchors to keep me from drifting too far from things. 
Now that I’m thinking about it, I recall writing “Crop Circle” after seeing a Mel Gibson* movie called Signs, a movie he made I think before his memorable melt-down a number of years ago. The movie was about an alien invasion and one rural family’s struggle to survive. We learn, by movie’s end, that the aliens had quite an aversion to water, which makes you wonder why they would want to invade our little blue planet in the first place, where they could be taken down by a twelve-year old with a water pistol! I wrote “Crop Circle” because there were cool crop circles in the movie. It was my own take on the things, of course, my own “story”. The poemcicles are stories, tales and abstractions, whatever you want to call them; various bits of gossamer and fairy dust. Enjoy them, sprinkle them around, or make your own.

Cheers, Jake.

*My favourite MG movie has to be The Year of Living Dangerously, where MG plays a naïve Australian reporter in 1960s Indonesia during the "dangerous" period of national unrest and revolution.  Sigourney Weaver is gorgeous and simmers as Mel’s bed-pal and muse. And when I first saw her in those steamy, tropical love-making scenes--man, I was ready to strip-down to my skivies then and there! But that would have been another story.

BOOK REPORT: HALF-EARTH by E.O. WILSON

click me!

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK, an informative book, but in the end a somewhat disappointing one. It is important because it reminds us that we need to pay more attention to the world around us, if only because our very survival depends on it.  We need to attend to our actions, attitudes and our lifestyles, Wilson tells us. We live in a garden of infinite mystery and wonder, though we rarely take the time to look at a sunrise, let alone consider the complexity and achievements of, say, a spider and its web or to take the example of the Desulforudis audaxviator microbe that exists over two miles beneath the surface of the earth, to understand its genetics and habitat adaptations.
E. O Wilson’s marvelous book sharpens our focus and gives us a perspective on the awesome structure of life on Earth that we share with millions of species of plants and animals. A biologist by training and a myrmecologist (someone who studies ants) by choice, Wilson provides an overview of the network of life on earth from the microbial to the largest terrestrial and aquatic creatures in existence, but make no mistake, his book is a cautionary one, challenging us to confront the fact that, as it stands today, human activity threatens the lives of millions of the earth’s species. He calls on us to make changes now or  else future generations may find they exist on a planet with an impoverished and unhealthy array of flora and fauna, a grey world that is a place no longer fit for man nor beast.

It’s an informative book because Wilson brings the sciences of ecology, genetics and geology alive with his gifted prose and breadth of knowledge. He says:

“The simplicity of the material and energy cycle reminds us that there exist organisms able to establish themselves almost anywhere [he discusses lifeforms in Antarctica]. But as humanity scales down Earth’s ecosystems, life will become progressively less interesting and more difficult to turn into a support system.” (150)

He provides the reader with information on the life-cycles, genetic makeup and histories of nematodes, E. coli, elephants and rain-forests and a host of other species and ecologies. For me, his book beautifully illustrates how deeply connected we are to “all creatures, great and small” and they with us, and how we need them to survive and thrive. One important take-away for me was his examination of the science of ecology and how little, in fact, we know about the connections between the flora and fauna in a particular ecosystem (or in a local “biome”) and their importance for the proper functioning of that system. For example, in coral reefs, single-celled microorganisms called zooxanthellae inhabit the calcareous structures, but they exist there within a specific range of temperatures.

“With as little as 1^○C warming of the water, or a small increase in its acidity, both of which are caused by human actions, the zooxanthellae emigrate from their host calcareous organism, taking their colors and photosynthesis with  them, the potentially suicidal process called coral bleaching.” (68)

Yet the true complexity of coral reefs is barely understood, he says. Wilson provides other fascinating and helpful examples of the rich diversity of life that most of us fail to notice or understand. He tells us that unless we adopt a different attitude toward our world, the path we are currently on will increasingly darken.

Where I find Wilson’s book less helpful and even disappointing is in his ending chapters, his “solutions” section, where he outlines the things we can do to prevent this calamitous loss of biodiversity. His prescription to increase the amount of protected wild lands and waters through greatly expanded conservation efforts, and for the establishment of nature preserves is admirable and something that is emotionally appealing and makes a whole lot of sense. One thing that the new science of ecology tells us is that ecosystems need adequate physical space in order to keep healthy."Diversity" is the name of the game; keeping interconnections between species functioning, is the key.

If you are out in the middle of the ocean in a boat that is leaking, whose sails are tattered and whose timbers are rotting, and you don’t take steps to repair and maintain the floating structure you’re on, well then it’s “glub-glub!” time for you, and just deserts for your neglect and stupidity!

So, broad swaths of land (and sea) that join along various latitudes and with natural isthmuses to create “corridors” so that plant, animal, insect and microbial life may move freely to establish and maintain themselves is needed. Such initiatives are critical if we are to keep the earth's ecosystems healthy and save millions of threatened and endangered lifeforms from extinction. Whether there is the political will for such projects remains to be seen. Wilson is optimistic:

“In a world gaining so swiftly in biotechnology and rational capability, it is entirely reasonable to envision a global network of inviolable reserves that cover half the surface of Earth.” (209) [italics mine]

He points out that we have lost so much already. But he also stresses, and this is another interesting perspective the reader gains from his book, there are literally millions of additional species of life that we have yet to discover. The sciences of taxonomy, biology, ecology, geology and so on have so much left to reveal! He urges us to save what is left. He asks whether our “instinct for true altruism” (209) can guide us toward an ecological awareness of our place here on earth, and move us to adopt ways of living that are more harmonious and less harmful to ourselves and all the biomes we call home. His final two chapters are devoted to possible solutions.
And here I was disappointed in particular: He mentions the science of genetics and of growing GMO plants, of expanding research into crops that can better face the coming changes in global climate, and of growing “meat” from bacteria in vats (“synthetic biology”) as a way of reducing the harmful ecological impacts of factory farming. I think he right to point out the rapacious and ultimately lethal aspects of “extensive” economic growth, with its mantra of infinite growth on a finite planet, and the need to replace it with what he calls “intensive” economic growth. He refers here to an increase in per-capita output, i.e. increased efficiency in our industrial and commercial enterprises. In other words, he feels that by using IT, nano-technology, super-computers, robotics and AI that these will make us more efficient and thus be able to ‘do more with less’. That seems to make a good deal of sense, but I am skeptical of solutions that involve the use of complex and sophisticated technologies to solve our problems. But Wilson sees technology as a key component in his program to drastically reduce the human “footprint” on the planet.

“With innovation and effort, we will find a way to steer through the climate-change crisis without having to resort to the gargantuan and dangerous programs of geoengineering now being discussed.” (194)  

Additionally, he sees advancements in super-computing and AI as ways of understanding the human mind and how the mind’s biochemical makeup guides our way, for good or ill, in the world, and how, if only we understood ourselves better, we would come to make rational and less destructive decisions as a species. Which is a heartfelt and hopeful proposition, but there are a lot of roadblocks in the way of achieving this type of consciousness.

Here’s a quote I like from his conclusions:

“It is often said that the human brain is the most complex system known to us in the universe. That is incorrect. The most complex is the individual natural ecosystem and the collectivity of ecosystems comprising the Earth’s species-level biodiversity.” (206)

"I am the H.A.L 9000. You may call me Hal."

His ending chapters discuss improvement in human consciousness in some detail—considerable detail, actually—emphasizing or suggesting that we can speed up this process and strengthen our “instinct for true altruism” (209) via advances in computing and brain science. In this chapter, he concludes that our understanding of ecology is grossly inadequate and that we have barely scratched the surface. Ecological science, he says, is in its infancy. Detailed studies of the life-cycles and genetics of most species are vast libraries yet to be filled. Thus, understanding the intricate connections between the myriad lifeforms in each biome, let alone in the larger ecosystems of our planet, is a vast and all but undertaken project, with only the most tentative of beginnings made. But his faith in the development of sophisticated technologies such as advanced “quantum” computing, AI and “super computers”, while compelling, is, I feel, ultimately misplaced, and to me seems more like a “hail-Mary pass” or a last-ditch effort. Equally, his call for the adoption of “a transcendent moral precept concerning the rest of life” (212) is admirable and something that resonates with me personally, but is too much like saying: people should be the way I feel they should be. His hope that we will develop our rational minds to the extent we will come to choose what’s best for us and for the planet leaves many social and psychological factors unaddressed. While I personally feel this is possible, I think this is something that will happen over an evolutionary, or at least millennial time-scale and not in a kind of ‘fourth-turning’ one-off event, or in short time frame. We are the children of chimps with slightly bigger brains than our not-so-distant ancestors, still possessing most of their instincts and traits, and most days we're content to just stand around scratching our asses.

Ultimately, I feel it will be by failures in our economic and political systems, by climate change disruptions, as well as by pressures of over-population, growing social disorder, ecological collapses and perhaps the arrival of one or more of The Four Horsemen that will be the ultimate arbiters of our conduct. We will have a change in consciousness and a greater awareness of our place in the web of creation only though a hard-won and difficult struggle. There can be technological advances to aid us but ultimately we cannot rely on technology to save us.

"Monkey-Butt Scratch" c. 2019

In the end, a great deal will have to change, and while it may be true that “a change is as good as a rest”, my cynical self says that for the most part, and for most of us, we will have to be “dragged kicking and screaming into the future", as American writer James Howard Kunstler is wont to say. And most of us (myself included) are unprepared for the changes that will arrive (and, really, are here now) in the coming years. There is much that we can do to mitigate the effects of climate change; to save species and biomes, to make our societies more equitable and sustainable and so on, but ultimately we will have to face the consequences for our actions.

Filtered? Or just passing through?

There is a scientific theory ("Fermi's Paradox") that goes something like this: In the vastness of the universe, with myriad possibilities for life, and with the mathematical probability a near certainty that higher forms such as humanity exist elsewhere in space, just where is the evidence that this is true? Where is the evidence for extra-terrestrial space-travel, for example? One line of thinking suggests that as a civilization develops higher and higher levels of technology, it critically impacts its biosphere by demanding more natural resources than the biosphere can renew, and eventually the civilization collapses due to overreach and environmental degradation. Or it develops technology like nuclear power and blows itself to bits. This critical 'bottleneck' point that a civilization reaches is called the “The Great Filter”. It’s a time and place, and a process the civilization must go through to get to the other side, to survive itself. The theory goes that most civilizations on those distant worlds we dream of don’t make it. Which is why we never hear from them ("ET call home!") They implode or explode, or more optimistically, they downgrade their expectations, adopt technologies that don't involve building rocket ships to distant stars, and instead learn to live sustainably on the only homes they will ever know. Perhaps some do, but we’ve yet to have any evidence of them, UFOs and Area 51 notwithstanding.*

Here on Little Blue, we are approaching such a bottleneck and are about to face our own Great Filter. I think we can make it through to the other side; it’s just possible, but it will be one heck of a tight squeeze. 
Cheers.

Iggs

    *An excellent read for you SiFi buffs is John Michael Greer's tale of the distant future: Star's Reach. You might find it a bit different from the usual fare. (Iggs liked it!)