water and glass
{virtually all of us have faced this. and that's how it sustains its momentum and mass. the split between the 'natural' man and the 'prosthetic' man. and of course the android side claims that there's only one. that the two sides are only that, two sides of the same creature. but it occurs to me it's really about honor, about honoring something in the past. or not honoring something. or honoring a different thing. the archetypal conflict is the superior physical, and the inferior, the large predator, the puny man. the tables turned with the addition of artifacts. a moment which we are all descended from. that moment of victory, that's where we started to become this, that we are now, and are going into becoming more finally, more irrevocably. but it occurs to me that there's those two guys, the one with the natural strength and power, the one with the crafty mind and tools. and it's about honoring one or the other. and that's all it's about. and there may be a way to honor both but it's not visible anymore, now it's all and only the puny guy with the deadly weapons, with the genetically altered dogs, with the aerosol bacteria, with the neutron bomb. the other guy, the physically superior, is a toy, an athlete/entertainer, little more than an amusement, while the real men go on about the business of survival, or more accurately the survival of their genes. the illusion that's broadcast is that there is no other way, that there never was. but I wonder. look at the missions of California. there was a moment when the indigenous people still lived in their traditional ways, and another moment when that became impossible. and in between there was that balance between the natives living behind the mission walls, and the natives in the hills. and then more precisely, more minutely, there was that moment when it became impossible to survive outside the reach of the conquerors, and the people faced going in to the mission, and living, and their children becoming what they would become under the priests and 'civilization', or dying in the 'wild'. (it's simplified yes, and there were northern tribes that were never forced to choose, exactly, and others not overcome until 'Americans' took over, but it holds true just the same) and it's about honoring one of those, though of course nobody on the android side wants to put it that way, because it's too obvious what's up with it. this is now a world where the term 'cowardice' has no definitional meaning. and finding a way through the trap of being born inside the mission is more than anyone has the time and free space to accomplish. but it's so clear if you really look. virtually all the 'progress' is about catching up. about correcting the flaws, healing illness, strengthening the weak. none of it seems to be, at least in the mass venues, about building up the superior, strengthening even more the strong. I'm not sure it can be. think not? how about the educational system being a fair representative of the values of the culture it serves? people will say 'we love our children' and they do. in a way. not enough to make teaching them more important than gasoline. ever listened to people's responses to 'gifted' programs? one of the biggest problems people have with the 'natural' world, with 'natural' living, is it's eugenic. heartlessly, coldly eugenic. and what we are as human beings now, what we've been moving toward is not, as most people think, a non-eugenic culture, but a culture in charge of its own eugenic program, which so far, except in bizarre and ultimately not successful ways, has been carried out without ever being acknowledged. think not? people who can't survive die. people who can't survive in a world of car exhaust and nightmare stimulation die, etc etc. somewhere in there people who could do well in other environments are being removed from the gene pool. while the center of what it is to be human shifts slowly toward the primal weaklings and their offspring, until those words are no longer descriptive, because what they describe is all there is. we exist in the midst of a great confused cloud of other living beings, and in the moments we live we share this thing called 'humanity', but later what that is won't be this, just as ten thousand years ago what it was to be a human being was differnt than now. and that's what's at stake in these arguments. that's the greater evil, the bigger war, the more pressing battle. not so much for this, now, though of course that must be won too, but just as the surrender to the missions was a surrender of more than the few thousand ragged children that were left of the millions of native 'californians' , it was a surrender of what they would become, and their children too, just so the opening future, the limitless reach of the thing we are, the thing that reaches through us, that reached through all the life before us and became this, is here now and is becoming something more, in the same way the shape of a man's life is in the hands of the child he must first be, but more than that, much more is at stake, and we are all speaking the language of the mission now, all of us descended from that terrible compromise, the love that found no clear way through, and surrendered rather than die.
from that we go on. what I'm suggesting is that we stop lying to ourselves about what this is, and prevent those more compromised from lying about it to our children.}
Walker
Hey now don't those days go by
hair gettin' almost white as mom's
the fate of the world in your hands
the dog gnawing at your brainstem
and winter comin' in
I mean summer
summer comin' in
soyuz
we were boys
many of us had dogs we loved that loved us
all the way in return there was
a dog going round and round the world
in a little can
in the news on television
in the classroom the big clocks ticked
while the teachers talked
IBM and ICBM seemed so linked
it was confusing at first
Laika I'm sorry
I rubbed your nose in your own shit
and spanked you for going crazy
left alone in the house
did you whine the way a dog will
complaining to its absent god
I'm sorry
please
ahh
my life is small again
so the sky can find us
money scams and emails and porn come-ons
internet quizzes stacking up like geese on a pond
in Minnesota
cold compared to here
but warm compared to then
last winter
next spring
the days and nights become one thing in memory
a long trail of steps taken
and paths not
you there
me here
or vice versa
no difference from any other time
all the difference in the world
I hear you sometimes at night
in an odd moment now and then
your voice so unlike your face
or vice versa
I went to the palmist and she said
I should take better care of my hands
the gypsy in the storefront in Boston in 1968
screamed in anger when I wouldn't go in
to hear my fortune
afraid I guess some instinct pulling and
pushing
I was like a cork in that same pond
left over from some kid's fishing attempt
splashing a little while his dad drinks cheap beer
the radio from the open door of the truck
those sandwiches she makes and sends you off in the clear dawn
reeds dry brown at the edge of the water no swans
no perfect thick bridge of ancient Japanese rightness
mostly the sky and the way up high clouds
warmer than it was for sure
I made it home from Boston
with a spotlight drilled into my back
the sound of the helicopter blades coming back down through the decades
coming down into the moment
faceless cops spilling out ready and alert
dobermans trembling
because they're good boys good boys
and they don't know any better
don't have to
don't need to
what difference does it make how anyone is? or how
they say they are?
what difference is any of it?
the task we found before us as the sleep was washed away
the warm wet cloth in her hand
at the corner of your eye
love and duty
love and freedom
a simple thing just walk behind
get back in the truck
fall in and out of sleep to the news and jingles
love and the sound of the bacon in the pan
love so all around it goes unnoticed
though we know things we can't say
and later will remember that knowing
way out at the edge of the day
like the woods on the far shore
distant
but just as present and just as real
as the stars behind the blue
heaven above
me
I'm afraid I've grown quite dark-hearted of late
bitterly angry at what I see still coming
useless and unnecessary suffering like clouds of dust after months of no rain
a wind as big as mountains
dark red and pitiless
bigger than any shelter
