RENEWAL
And so one day, with a jar of strawberry preserves clearly labeled “nuclear stalemate” . . .
Enough! This pen with a mind of its own. I am lured to the back yard to see if weather has ignored the forecast. Assurances of calm falter before a fairly stiff breeze. Mostly sunny skies are a fairy tale turned gray and sullen. Hans Christian Anderson Cooper: “It's not all that uncomfortable out here, bundled in a sweater, with a hat, a warm robe, a winter scarf slightly out of place in April.”
Arguments are getting squeezed, reminding us of a chute that narrows towards the slaughter house. It's just a matter of when.
Unusual! Bizarre! They seem rather comfortable under warm studio lights, the weather talkers, their computer models out of sync with the Change, struggling with past history. Somehow, maybe to distract us, the forecast goes on location to the field of dreams, with the Little League and Friday Night Lights. I wonder if Paul Deanno might go live some dark and stormy night on an offshore oil platform.
OK, but let's be compassionate. Maybe call it home, but really, it's not the same.
Of course – no one can go home again! Didn't we, though, lots of us, buy the Dream? Forget that it never came down quite equitably, color blind, freedom for all. Never mind Alice's Restaurant. Whatever landed on the doorstep, tent, park bench, underpass, creek, TV said: Believe! If it was just that though, just what it was called, a Dream on a billboard that got blown away – just imagine.
Just putting one foot after another, would it be possible to tromp this earth without believing it's right here? When the universe creates a star or an earth, does it ask permission?
Earth is what? Right down to the nitty gritty now, where everyone ends up, where quarks and quantum rascals squiggle, here and now, or there and then if you blink – past and future merge, overtaking each other. Blooey!
Dark matter!
When X-rays debuted, you could go to a shoe store and see your bones. Fluoroscopes made them glow. It's all electromagnetic. Dark matter, though, passes right through without a trace. Astronomers know this. They say 95% of all that is can't be seen with electromagnetic instruments. But Dark matter has mass, just like the matter we can see, and it has gravitational presence. And gravity bends light. When light passes by a star there is more bending than can be expected for the visible mass of that star. They call this “gravitational lensing,” to distinguish it from chance or optical aberrations.
Which has got what to do with the Change?
If our minds infer Dark matter, and the Change is due to gasses we can detect but can't see, then how we think is important. The Dream we bought has had its effects, surfing for a couple of centuries on fossil fuels, all the while spouting those gasses. All that drilling, mining, scraping, fracking. Yee ha! All that energy for the taking.
Yep, step by step, who would have thunk it? And lipstick, whiskey, airline tickets. Rah, rah, frenzy pie, more and more, faster and faster, positive feedback, what a ride.
This strange day is ending. Late afternoon doves return with a spot of sun. One good thing about it, back here, I am free to write as I see fit.
The five chord brings an uplift while playing the blues. Seeds get scattered about, some big and black. Susan points to a sunflower sprouting near the fence. Change happens also in our hearts, the renewal of life. It arises, human consciousness evolves through, the medium of this earth. Undoubtedly harboring Dark matter, consciousness also illuminates in Self realization. Here and there, in at first a few cases that have the good or bad fortune to become icons, then gradually as in the evolution of color consciousness, it becomes more widespread.
It's as though a vast edifice disappeard overnight. Hard to believe. Morning comes and here is this peaceful place. Fraught concerns are vague recollections, something like a gaggle of argumentative guests just leaving, perhaps with a parting word out the door. Let them go. I heartily recommend this.
Somehow it's already prepared, like having musical talent. It can't be purchased or practiced into being. One day, finally, all the written notes are forgotten. The gift remains, unasked, unearned. No need for selling water by the river. Words and notes flow on their own.
Not fiction, or entertainment, not philosophy or profundity, not anything much. Maybe oxalis with its simple yellow bloom. A weed by most accounts. Laughter. Oxalis struts no fretted hour. Great plays and books are dragon flies that glisten on gossamer wings, disappearing. The Canons of war and nuclear mysteries are no concern of Lady Hummingbird, or Big Black Bee. Too bad for those who have forgotten.
Some misshapen sense of adventure prevails. It must be misshapen. Because known shapes no longer apply. Way back in the folds of geologic ages some biological organisms defecated or urinated, exuding oxygen, and lo! Earth was born anew. Then humans appeared. Now we exude more carbon dioxide than can be accounted for by our mass, and in the midst of this Evolution proceeds. Lo!
I cannot think of any proper preparation for this adventure. Attempts at shaping my young psyche failed, all that preparation for a hypothetical future, simply left in the sand box as I went to go for a hike. Nothing need be done. Fossil fueled carbon dioxide emitters have outdone themselves, crowding into the narrow end of the chute.
Roots of civilization: individuals are outmaneuvered and overpowered by gangs. Peace is sold for tribute. It grows by providing common benefits such as irrigation, food storage, distribution and administration. Commerce and communication follow, structuring power.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Until we get to the Change, nature's demonstration of absolute and final authority. As science stumbles into Dark matter and quantum uncertainties, an undeserved magical authority is undermined, even though all along it has disclaimed finality for its current state of knowledge. At this stage of evolution, survival, power and authority are common concerns. At the same time, freed from a preoccupation with survival, some individuals find time to think and wonder. A few go further, making time to just be, wondering about that. And evolution makes another turn of the wheel. It's not magic.
In this floating world, when the time comes for this “I” log to be washed downstream, will I ask, where are you going log?
Delightful! We're already there. And the adventure has scarcely begun.
