If it was growing in a T Tower would he notice? Try to build a wall? Do I care?

It's my redwood tree. And other stuff sent by email, Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor. But a redwood tree? C'mon! Whatever happened to lemon cokes at the 5 Spot, or the high school marching band? Highway 17 when it led past trolls, cider stands, over summit to Santa Cruz and the boardwalk and the bumper car ride, and not the white knuckle ride it is now where people can't wait to run each other off the road.

In complete good faith, however, that somehow, somewhere, when you least expect it, the world is not a concrete box. There are more languages than any one person can speak, the words being worth a good laugh, and that in fact Charlie Chaplin was a worker hero.

~ 0 ~

January's spring this year won't fool me or lizard. Let weeds have their way for a few days. It's part of a much larger yard with no fences. A great calm.

That said, I beg no forgiveness for mentioning the obvious.

As world climate changes and politicians pout, our mess is accumulating faster than plastic can be recycled or marshlands renewed. Arctic ice disappearing, seas rising, weapons of obliteration, endless war feeding on human fodder, migrations, terror bursting at the seams, the only living planet we know sliced and diced, trampled by more and more people, limits to possible food and water, intelligent machines perceived as saviors, a perpetuation of only-me-ness, bureaucracies of frogs. Is there a theme to thread all of this?

Is it pleasant, our fuchsia keeping blooms as the calender flips to February? Mr. Hummingbird helicopters down by my head at the door, stopping at neither the fuchsia nor the feeder. In spite of our differences, our needs go beyond nectar and servitude. But we need energy. He doesn't seem to ponder much. It's all action and a flashing red neck. There is not much of a breeze and he doesn't, I am sure, think about nuclear power.

The thought of it comes down like a concrete brick, what goes beyond such needs isn't found in nectar or uranium. To sail this ship in calm waters, without so much as a nod to nuclear energy, is the wave of tomorrow morning. Out of dark energy comes a fusion force studiously unexamined by squirrel, dove, and the pouters. Shambles of a clinging vine have scattered leaves at the tunnel, where laughter reigned long ago.

Out by the entrance, robots and slaves work on, not glancing away from their millstones. Servitude versus freedom, scarcely noticing the fall of an albatross.

It was echoes heard from within, skipping over the receding depths. Laughter from Saturday Night Beehive, pulling no hunches.

And at the entrance an enormous gas fired kitchen range was flaring. A proper amount of heat, more easily gauged than with electric ranges, readily fries blue donkey beads, their volcanic bubbles solidified in time just the way air gets trapped in bread dough or scrambled eggs.

To speak of tea cups and cup cakes might seem easier. Squirrel and the doves do prefer a small red dish of seeds on the patio table. A flat surface is more comfortable than the skinny rim of their feeder.

That said, just where in timeless space the tunnel appeared, place and time and tunnel all wrapping round each other, is where the laughter tumbled out from an endless barrel. And the mess -- what theme?

Who in all soberness would’ve believed cow farts? Or a hoax. Smoke and mirrors. The mess is shot through with profit for profit's sake.

~0~

Tabitha buries her head in the 'yellow thing,' so named for lack of sufficient words to describe the crocheted comforter my step-mother made. Fire and warmth are important, this January in particular, as ice storms grip the country, leaving fewer and fewer people with electricity and doubts about whether climate change is real.

There is a Kindle Fire report from Finland where, in disregard for the work ethic, an experiment is underway to provide a couple of thousand people with a small guaranteed income. Doing this is cheaper than the present welfare bureaucracy. There is keen interest. No matter whether they work or not, it's theirs to keep and spend as they please. No forms. No questions asked. Will they take low paying jobs, go to school, become entrepreneurs? Or loaf? And these justifications belie an unspoken angst, a very uncomfortable acknowledgment.

The burning question that lurks beneath: Robots and artificial intelligence. Work is no longer a commandment chiseled in stone. Anyone half awake can see this happening. And more frightening, the substrate: No work, no slaves. Omi'god! How will owners work the art of the deal? Sundry garbage men and women, an entertainment of Presidents and Governors, all bound to lose credibility.

So along with Taj Mahal, believe I dust my broom. Anyone can. Back when the tablet came alive, there was an undercurrent of roller skates. But only one thought at a time gets through this pen.

Remember roller skates? Not a skate board. But rather, a roller rink with a wooden floor that rumbles softly. So smooth. And just how it felt to proceed in a circle to nowhere, ever so freely? Maybe with a friend.

And now right here, late in the lowering cold with cat and comforter. It's so quiet. My clip board is a wooden floor over which this pen skates on paper. And by now everyone is almost asleep. Isn't that wonderful?

What were we talking about? Does it matter as much as a cat in a comforter? Or a redwood tree?

Oh, and bless you.