Saturday, April 21, 2012

OUTLIVING CHILDREN (acknowledging that the Earth is one of this Universe's children)

OUTLIVING CHILDREN (acknowledging that Earth is one of this Universe's Children)

Very sad indeed for parents to outlive their children.; Something happens to the generations that should not. My paternal grandmother outlived most of her ten children, and for a while, it looked as if my mother might outlive her only child. Fortunately for her, i'm still here alive and ready to try to accomplish more than ever (ideally driving). If not, there are other ways to assert a meaningful presence. For me: limited fork ways.

With all the (rather frequent) tornadic events in the US in 2012, such outliving must be more common, if not more natural. Wars contribute to this dreadful phenomenon --pur DNA supports conflict, or we'd have evolved without it. I feel like adding my tears to buckets and barrels of tears --not that my additional tears would help anything, but I still crave such addition --some form of math seems involved, so far, with everything, not that human forms of math are the best or only forms, but as part of humanity, I will continue to submit to them. I must rely, as I've always done, on human senses, the only senses I have --even humanity's instruments improve what humanity can see, hear, touch, etc. I need an equation for tears, but when I add tears, I just get more tears. I do fear that there might not be enough fresh water (or food for populations of Earth, and I do not feel that humans are not more deserving of food just for being human --I doubt that, were other animals in charge, the Earth would be experiencing this decline this fast --some of my assumptions surely show here), and tears tend to be incredibly fresh when produced, so my tears --they aren't too salty to be fresh-- can add a minuscule amount. I can't cry enough for everything. And looping bifurcating systems may not offer enough to constitute salvation --even if all possible loops are formed. Million of forks, for no reason but to make art that possibly no sentient one will see. Not that humanity's seeing it makes it any more splendid (note the assumption of splendor --humanity's Hubble space telescope did not make things easier for me; increased, actually, an accessible amount of splendor.

A time may come when dependence on tears could make a life/death difference --not necessarily a splendid difference.

I definitely do not wish to outlive my son. He must go on to live a full life, one that rewards him with joy (however he eventually defines joy). what successes, generations --if the world lasts long enough. I am optimistic that the Earth will/can endure. For my son, and sons of my sons. Surely, I hope long enough for his life to matter to more people than me. But then again, I am not promoting an afterlife such as what I was taught about so long ago. My mother still insists that her Christian beliefs are the correct beliefs. But I think that what is thought to be known (what I've been taught, and what I've observed at planetariums and through telescopes [I've been ruined, it seems, by Hubble]) about the universe and the solar system cause me to doubt her beliefs. She tells me that the prayer chains she initiated while I was hospitalized affected my outcome --I cannot say with certitude that all that praying did not help, but I wonder about what happens to the body; decomposition seems quite likely to me. Houdini did not return, and I believe that he would have had return been possible. Humanity's atoms may become available for next forms of life, assuming Earth can continue to sustain life as we've known it --not because we have dominion over other lifeforms, but because

I hope we have a chance to improve the earth (assumption that improvement is needed: noted), to try to return it to some of what it was like during days before greed --that benefitted a few, not everyone-- helped to deplete the planet of finite resources. I do not think that we have suffered through all that will have to be endured before planetary decline can be halted or, better, reversed. Maybe it's too late for reversals. Maybe humanity does not deserve reversals. But I also don't want belief systems of humanity to perish --all that believing must not have been for naught. Surely. I don't want human generations to have an abrupt ending, but such an ending may be inevitable. There is interconnectedness among species. As insects and amphibians, for instance, meet demise, lifeforms dependent on those insects and amphibians may perish from those extinctions. Not to mention possibilities of asteroids and comets that may have deposited building blocks of life on Earth --comet Gods, I guess.

I'm not sure how my grandmother coped with being here after so many of her progeny (she had ten children, outlived all but three) were gone, returned to earth her husband tilled for so many years. A southern farmer. She outlived him too. I used to play with their geese, many of which were as tall as I was. He was dead already; never knew him except for what survived in my father and what was passed on to me through him. I've passed along some of what I received genetically to my son. Half. Lately, I've been impressed that everyone alive now has roots that extend to the first people on this planet. This seems to offer a truth no matter what is believed, creationism or evolution --of course, I thought that Darwin also offered a truth, seriously questioned by the Scopes Monkey Trial --in Tennessee, of course, where my father grew up and met my mother who now rejects everything I was taught in Cleveland, Ohio public schools, but not what I was taught in Sunday school. She is converting the garage into a church (it is not going to become the dolphin tank that my father promised, except in dreams and imagination that would not be mine had he not made the promise). My mother was always with me while my father stayed home, often on the second floor porch, watching, once, me by his side, a funnel cloud form above the church just a few yards away. True Vine. My son was not raised in church as I was; he was raised more to be a free thinker, encouraged to form his own ideas based on what made the most sense to him, and it is not organized religions. This exclusion from church has helped him rely more on logic --another human invention. How can humans not rely on human knowledge systems? Are we not surrounded by what humanity has made, whether for the detriment (according to someone's assessment) or improvement (according to someone's assessment) of human lives? Are we not primarily concerned with what may happen to people? Animals primarily as pets and food --for humans? I think of zoos, though I've visited many, as comparable to what happened in slavery, the captures that separated families --when animals are captured (I won't even talk about what happens to animals raised to be human food --no other purpose, the most noble purpose, according to Babe, book by Dick King-Smith, screenplay by George Miller and Chris Noonan --I do eat meat, the sanitized [relatively] forms purchased in supermarkets, relying on others to do the killing and butchering and packaging for me. I do like tastes of meat, and I do experience misgivings about being the carnivore I am, criticizing no carnivore for their carnivore ways --that I share). There is hypocrisy here --how can there not be? I am human-- I've admitted to eating meat, but I've rejected organized religions (many of which restrict the eating of meat to certain animals under certain conditions [of preparation] without outright prohibiting such consumption). I do not know all of what Buddhism teaches about the eating (or the not-eating) of meat, (go here http://mingkok.buddhistdoor.com/en/news/d/18354 for more info), but I reason that we should, even thinking of limited fork tenets, show more compassion toward other animals to whom this planet belongs just as much as to humans. I don't accept biblical teachings of humanity's dominion over other animals or over the world --planet. Exceedingly difficult for me to do that. Other animals may not have been as destructive as humans have been. I seem to take more outrage against those who are not free- thinkers than against carnivores; perhaps because I also think that meat-eating free- thinkers may have reasoned that eating meat is acceptable --I am from a family of carnivores, the human family as well as my personal family (my son was vegetarian until ninth grade and a field trip to Chicago where he ate a burger for the first time).

I don't know whether or not the sacrifice of the cow entered his mind (he is a member of Mensa --not that that membership means he is more or less likely to eat meat; he's also a member of the human family, and, as I've said, we haven't performed particularly well, given our responsibility for the planet --we are the planet's [self-appointed --made in God's image, according to many, including my mother] caretakers). A willing or forced sacrifice? What do we know or understand about cowness? How many of use have really tried to listen to what cows or other animals (including humans) might have to say? Does this understanding or lack of understanding really matter? As humanity runs out of what humanity, in any of its forms, considers food, perhaps this (and similar questions) will be answered. It doesn't really matter which questions are raised or attempted to be answered according to human ways of processing information --biblical or otherwise acquired-- ways of determining which questions to ask in search of a truth accepted by all with liberty and justice-- hmm; I've heard that before. Even had to recite that daily to get the "A" that I wanted (from the Declaration of Independence --not a declaration of free-thinking)


Take a look at "Outliving Children."

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Hello to my Toledo Friends!

Let us bifurcate together and dine on wonderful ideas; we will bifurcate above and below ground,
rather like trees, anchored with roots that cling and spread in soil
while our branches spread even between dimensions, temporarily connecting them
-–I don’t think that any connection is or can be permanent; that is one reason that we must eat again and again (ideally stopping when we feel full, even though the feeling of fullness is temporary).

We will hunger again. Everyday. Probably several times a day.

Please think, if you don’t mind, for a moment of ceiba trees, or of any tree you have liked –-forgive me, please, for assuming that there is a tree you’ve liked. If you dislike trees, this may not be a post for you, but I leave here a small interest in trees, a small interest that may become something else.

Each tine of a limited fork also functions as a root and/or a branch and may curve, circle, disappear for a while, temporarily connecting things, possibly even snagging something tasty, something possibly nourishing, something that can be ingested –-maybe without harm(ing us), but what is ingested will change during this process, and we may change, so the temporary connections is also a means of exchange: we give something and we receive something; we may not realize immediately that we are different, but we are.