TEA

A metal ball clacks in the roaring space just past Eichler homes. World art spews from the muzzle of a spray can. The freeway clogs, grey towers shoot up, psychedelic juice flaming past magnolia trees on University Avenue is just looking for a place to live.  Sound walls do the samba.

Anyone looking for a new spin -- here: It's backlit. A Darwin sketch from graffiti, and the red helium balloon has escaped its Safeway cart.

Past craft brewed beers and silent elevators, bug juice squirts out of the city. Auditioning for The Matrix? Where trees are orphans on the street, abandoned after forced confessions, and tortured roots hide memories, aching for an eon of skies only lit by stars? Not much of a replication. But stolen lightning is kept for warmth and cooking. To frighten competitors, feed bigger brains, art, knowledge, music, walls to protect civilization. Overshadowing stars. The least of us, now better off and far superior as we say, to animals with claws and bigger teeth, horns, beaks, talons and diverse differences, forgetting our genome.

The magic of trees and stones is stuffed into subways, we are transported, our captive bodies sullen.

We seethe beneath wars and revolutions, diseases too numerous to mention, mental fog, suicide bombers, beserkers, depression, random mall murders, opium epidemics, the Oakland Ghost Ship fire, arson. Not to gloss it, but the horrors of history, achievements of past civilizations . . .

Preliminaries that encyst to fill museums, sarcophagic temples of ruined reactors. Glass Dream temples are possible, and concerts outside lands. I find none of this satisfactory.

Who can possibly know everything. Our body of knowledge is accelerating beyond the personal. Our Cambrian kindergarten and what no one wants to say publicly is that no one's in control. But now – scientists who walk the halls of reason and logic are beginning to suspect. No doubt water does not flow uphill, but . . .

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

The magic of trees and stones is alive.

Thermogeddon, climate change, the momentum of brute survival honored, all coming down the chute. I say it is possible to enjoy this life even as it heads for disaster.

Andsince no one really knows, my view is worth anyone else's sunrise or sunset.

Why imagine a world that's flat. Or that thought ends at the horizon. That time, defined by our solar cycle, is the end-all be-all of our existence. These are Twinkie coupons.

My neighbor is a deep well, in spite of appearances, and so is anyone else who can carry water, a deep mystery.

Our biosphere ~ the only one? Theories abound. In any case, how can it not be due to the inconceivable power of our sun, the source of every warm breath.

We need armies and navies for this? Airplanes and spaceships? In all dead seriousness, that's a wheelbarrow full of Halloween. Insects attracted to syrup and bright lights are doomed.

There is no Monopoly board or glass of whiskey that will match this rhinoceros. A clacking metal ball in the fog of war.

But no one has to listen. It's enough to know, regardless of drones and helicopters, that the butterfly effect has its origin in obscurity. No one's in charge. No one really knows.

May not last long. Think I hear it fluttering down Lombard Street.

Yeah there it goes, laughing all the way . . .

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