RENEWAL
And so on that day the jar of strawberry preserves clearly labeled -- nuclear stalemate . . . . .
Ah, this pen with a mind of its own. . . . Enough!
* ~ *
Under warm studio lights they seem rather comfortable -- our weather talkers. But their computer models are struggling with past history. Facts are getting herded through a converging chute that comes to climate Change.
I check the back yard to see if the weather maybe ignored the forecast.
Assurances of calm have fallen before a stiff breeze. Mostly sunny skies were a fairy tale. Hans Christian Cooper: “It's not all that uncomfortable out here, bundled in a sweater, with a hat and a warm robe, a winter scarf, just a little out of place in April.”
The prediction had been taped on location, under Friday Night Lights at the Little League. Maybe to distract us. I wonder if Paul Deanno might some dark and stormy night broadcast live from an offshore oil platform.
But let's be compassionate.
Didn't we, lots of us, buy into the field of Dreams? Forget that it never came down quite equitably, color blind, freedom for all. Never mind Alice's Restaurant. Whatever landed on the doorstep, or tent, park bench, underpass: Believe!
And if it was a billboard that got blown away, just imagine. . .
Putting one foot after another, would it be possible to tromp this earth without knowing it's right here?
Right down to the nitty gritty now, where everyone ends up, and quarks and quantum rascals squiggle.
Blooey! Dark matter!
When X-rays were discovered, you could go to the shoe store and see toe bones. Under green fluoroscopes they glowed. It was an electromagnetic show.
Dark matter, however, passes right through without a trace. Hard to believe?
Astronomers say 95% of ordinary matter isn't seen and can't be directly detected because it's not electromagnetic. Dark matter has mass, however, just like the matter we see; and it has gravitational presence. It causes “gravitational lensing.” Light passing by a star is more severely bent due to the dark matter also included in that star. Don't think this effect is from chance or optical aberrations.
And so what has this got what to do with the Change?
If dark matter is hard to believe and warming is due to gasses we can detect but can't see, then how we think is important.
The Dream we bought, surfing a couple of centuries on fossil fuels, is a way of thinking that has had effects. All that drilling, mining, scraping, fracking -- energy for the taking. Yee ha! Step by step, who would have thunk it -- lipstick, whiskey, airline tickets. Rah, rah, frenzy pie, more and more, 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.
Seeds are scattered about, some big and black. Sunflower seeds, and Susan points to one sprouting near the fence. We see renewed life, like the Change that happens in our hearts. Human consciousness also rises through the medium of this earth, undoubtedly passing through dark matter, to flower in Self realization. In few cases at first, here and there that have the good or bad fortune to become icons, and then gradually as in the evolution of color consciousness, it becomes more frequent.
A vast edifice disappears overnight. Fraught concerns trail into vague recollections, something like a gaggle of argumentative guests just leaving, perhaps with a parting word at the door. Morning comes and the place is peaceful.
It can't be purchased or practiced into being. Like musical talent, somehow it's ready. One day the written notes are forgotten.
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. A sense of adventure prevails.
Way back in the folds of geologic ages, biological organisms defecated or urinated, exuding oxygen. Earth was born anew. Then humans appeared. And now we exude more carbon dioxide than can be accounted for by our mass.
Even so, evolution proceeds. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
But at a price.
As we get to planetary Change, which is nature's demonstration of absolute and final authority, science stumbles onto dark matter and quantum uncertainties. Its magical authority is undermined, even though all along it has disclaimed finality for its state of knowledge. At this survival stage of evolution, power and authority are common concerns.
At the same time, some people freed from a preoccupation with survival find time to think and wonder. A few go further, making time to just be, wondering about that. And then there is another turn of the wheel. Not magic.
When the time comes for this “I” log to be washed downstream, why ask where it's going?
Delightful! We're already here.
