501-600
501-510
I read a story once about an experiment that showed the same pleasure centers light up in elephants’ brains when they look at humans as ours do when we look at kittens and puppies. No idea if that’s true. Did they build an elephant-sized MRI? In any case I like the metaphor. It shows an understanding of self and other and a spot for “other” that’s not related to survival. It hints at an evolutionary predisposition for kindness, which we can only hope for. But the real thing I take away is that I would be a wonderful elephant pet.
511 - 520
All we can ever do is try to do our best. The world's on fire and all we can do it is try our best. We live in a utopia and the only thing we can do is try our best. There’s an empowerment and powerlessness in that truth. We can only ever do our best. No more, no less. And that makes us all the same. Everyone, everywhere is only ever doing their best. Some have more capacity, more resources, minions to do the doing. But grade it on a scale and we’re all doing exactly the same thing.
521-530
He thinks of all the little things. The warm breeze. The fresh green of spring. The rose bush in front of his grandmother’s house. His dog resting her head on his lap. The mossy bend in the creek. The northern lights on a a still lake. His bride’s hand gripping his. The garden he made for her to rest. He thought of all the little things he was so terrified he would forget. He told himself to remember everything now gone. Remember so they’ll exist again. Remember now for the last time. Let these little things be his last thoughts.
531-540
Predisposed and poised to spot anomalies in the enclosure. Comforted by accounting of steps from wall to wall. All things ennumerated, held within sight and reach and smell and being. On alert for interloping input. Dreading diseased inevitable whalefall of outside, unknown. Sandbagging corners against the creep of more than me. Hedging the edges against existential expansion. Framing out Fibonacci walls within walls. Shoring up the bulwarks and defenses to fence out the unsavory foreign particles. Accreting a lithipedian shell until merging with encroaching walls. A solid mass of preservation. Layers. Nested rigidity. Min-maxxed at the single point of me.
541-550
“Können Sie dass noch ein bißchen erklären?”
Ich sitze, einfallslos, unblintzend. “Ja… vielleicht nicht.”
Er verschiebt sich subtil am Sofa, “Nah, und wieso?”
Ich versuch die Wörter im Kopf zu bauen. Die Stiftung, das ewige Geschichte meines Kindheit. Haustieren Graben. Alle Dinge, erschrecklich und größer als ich. Tiefer noch, das Nebel ein unbestreitbares Gefühl der Zugehörigkeit. Der Raum zwischen Wurzeln eines großen, sterbenden Baum. Zeitlich begrenztes Myzel, das durch Realitäten und Existenzen blinkt und blinkt. Und an der Spitze, wie ein ungeankertes Schiff, schüttert mein Selbstgefühl in die gemeinsame Realität von Kaffee und öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln.
“Ich habe keine Wörter dafür.”
551-560
“We’re anomalies, aberrations, against natural order. Everyone who has been and will ever be!” He takes a breath, the bell of his megaphone droops a few degrees. Then tears back into his sermon, castigating any and no-one passing by the quad.
“Humanity is an experiment and a failure!” One stoned kid lingers a second. “You, child! You think you’re special?” The student deadpans, “No.” But the preacher doesn’t hesitate. “A wise fool then. Go live your life knowing how much of a failure you are, how we are all doomed!” The sleepy-eyed philosophy major mutters a “k” and shuffles off.
561-570
I have a theory that humanity is Earth's organ of curiosity. We are the system the planet - and its life - uses to sense itself and what is outside its immediacy. We individually gather knowledge and experience. We probe psychologically, physically, metaphysically, incessantly exploring outward and inward. We compulsively hunt for and assign reasons for everything around us. We are how Earth interfaces with the universe. We operate like billions of tendrils spiraling out of the planet, each short-lived and random, but as a whole, we are an information-gathering juggernaut. The planet knows more about itself because of us.
571-580
Bring to me your sense of being. How you fit along the edges. What shapes you form against the forces around you. Bring me your reinforced and brittle walls. Know where you strain to expand. Feel the parts of you aching to contract, clinging to structures outside yourself. Bring to me your ill-formed self squeezed and stretched by society and culture, forced into Fibonacci spirals and honeycombs. Let me help you unhinge your cellular walls and allow your own gravity be your sole will. Bring to me your self structure and I will show you how to be a sphere.
581-590
Heavy, heavy, wet and leaden.
Let it fly when you are ready.
Catalogue of bones and feathers.
Risk it all for something better.
Calculate the torque and tension.
Hose it down and blame invention.
Call to order house god council.
Bringing tribute, knick-nacks, tissues,
calming herbs and brittle stars.
Lemon peels, old chocolate bars.
Catch them in a baited trap,
ship it to your distant self.
Set the hook to reel you in.
Weigh, denote and set it free.
Let the functions roll their dice,
determine worthy, naughty, nice.
Allow the tools to use themselves
and set the lossless free.
591-600
“I'm gonna stop you there,” he said, more to himself than me. “You don’t understand what’s going on. We’re talking big boy topics.” His nostrils flared and smelled testosterone blowing out in great billowy clouds. “War and power. Politics and legacy. You wanna talk about your tiny world and I’m trying to build the god-damned pyramids. I'm giving you one more chance. Think beyond your insignificance. What do you want to discuss with me?” He looked like he was trying hard to look like someone who looked hard. I smiled and said what was on my mind, “The color yellow.”