GRANMA'S KITCHEN

The big barbeque going on has lots of sponsors. You can smell it in the air. It's gotten to where no one's really in charge. Good luck finding a seat. People tend to spill things, and the ants are doing maneuvers. There are gatherings and speeches like summer flurries, and music rides the breeze. Wasn't that Dylan singing? . . . ain't gonna study war no more . . .

Sing it and they will come, say the travelers. Now it's hard to tell where it all began. And just where, snaking through the scrub brush, were the first trails? Small beginnings, but how everything has changed. Beneath the treeless sun whole herds come to a halt, and who remembers rodeos and cattle drives, while sitting out there? Doing nothing. HeeYa! Giddyup! Go ahead and yell. But it's not quite that story where 'nary was heard a discouraging word. On the evening news, so well managed, captions show the 911 dispatcher's words:Shots fired!

Granma is hard to fool. Dusting her kitchen god on the shelf by the stove, she whispers, “Thank goodness you don't play dice.” The effect is amazing. Einstein's at the screen door, which rattles as he taps, and he's saying, “I want my picture back.” More dust, dry commotion and itchy heat from Spain. She sets her jaw, pursing wrinkled lips, “Hell no!”

Somewhere a dog barks.

It verges on philosophy and politics, saying these things. But it would be a big disappointment to kiss this earth goodbye..

Albert runs a hand through wild white hair. “Neither do I, AND I will not stoop to playing checkers.”

He always said that intuition came first, let the maths explain later. There are too many planets in this universe to count. For us, this one is the locus of consciousness, and since everything is the center of everything, consciousness pervades.

If nowhere has no other side, then infinity is a cop out. Not eating meat won't change this. There is no this side of nowhere, but here is where suffering on a planetary scale happens. Cow farts, needless slaughter, concentration camps. There is something to cease doing that, time out of mind, has been widely done. And behind this, hidden in plain view, is the division of here, there, and nowhere, taken for granted. Try this: What is gravity? It's so obvious, right? Or is it actually an acceleration in the warp of space-time? But the arrow of time flies in both directions. In the experience of some, including yours truly, precognition happens. And telepathy disregards any conception of space or time. Or if you prefer, I must be lying.

Civilization, weighed down by its own ignorance, is sinking.

This is not your grandmother's philosophy, presuming she indulged. What I find obvious is that, ere long is gone, it's everywhere. There are no divisions. If an apple falls on your head, fast forward to your cell phone. There is a certain progression, each genius building on the shoulders of previous genii. With the deluge of information there are so many trees burning that a satellite view of the Amazon rain forest looks a like a prequel to Game Over. The simplicity of a checker board would seem too obvious, but that's its value, showing how granma's corn patch is laid out in rows, all ready for cross pollination.

There are several ways of playing this, each starting at a different row, each marked with a different empty seed pack on a stick. Each seems so unlike the others. But in the earth they all grow. The short view is finally resolved in the gut, where it all becomes food again.

Taken altogether, it's one. Splayed out in threads all duly labeled, it's spaghetti tangled in knots. Granma is slapping the wall with her broom, beating time to Dylan's tune, though she's never heard it. Everyone likes her spaghetti. From the International Space Station, it looks like a cyclone. From Venus, not so much. She adds mushrooms. Something ineffable.