Digital Immortality

If I were asked what I want to accomplish as a writer, I would say it’s to contribute to a literature of hope.~Barry Lopez

My reasons, plural, I have no single raison d’etre, are not as altruistic as Messr Barry Lopez. Where he sows words to reap hope I have only despair and write to insulate myself from hopelessness. I have little hope for the progression of mankind especially when they elect evil into power…idiots like tRump and his Repricklican cocksuckers or the equally revolting Dickocrats.

Rat’s Eyes

A filthy rat looked at me as if it wanted to seduce me. ~Carlos Fuentes

I see more rats in Chicago than I did while living in India. There, they were mostly, if not all, crushed pancake flat by vehicles taking on a two dimensional, almost photo like existence were it not for the flies that ebbed and flowed with the tide of traffic. I see them in Chicago in the predawn hours while walking to the bus stop. They are mostly shadows scurrying across sidewalks or taking cover beneath the cars.

More Human or More Animal?

He held the fresh hope that she, though, would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and the proximity to infinite things. ~Paul Bowles

As a member of a gregarious species, I find myself concerned my penchant for increasing solitude is walking away…sprinting away…from humanity. Does that mean I am becoming less human or was I born less human and am only now embracing my difference? I could flip that and ask if I’m becoming more animal but that’s silly because humans are members of the animal kingdom with a DNA compatible to chimpanzees at 96% to 99% depending upon the comparison technique. Then, I am evolving into a different type of animal?

Being Human Requires Wild Ness

We are no longer frightened of nature; what frightens us is the idea we have triumphed over nature. ~John Jeremiah Sullivan

Other than the magnificent state of Alyeska, a state both a physical place and a mental construct, I have no fear of walking into what is left of those spaces laughingly defined as American “Wilderness” and exiting out the other side still alive. Quite frankly, if some bigger badass who can rip out my throat before I can scream is not feating on a carcass around the next been or up a tree or behind deadfall, Wilderness is not wild.

When I am an Old Alligator

Far off in the red mangroves
An alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass
And lies there, studying his poems ~Mary Oliver

When I am an old alligator,
Will I have the strength to haul
My rancid soul out of the brackish swamp,
Murky waters swollen with prey and decay,
Warm amnion soothing arthritic joints
Courage to reflectively chew on the poem
Scrawled across humanity by my life?

No Bleeding Heart

I write to you and my tears are the ink. ~Jaume Cabré

I was riding my bicycle on LSD, that’s the Lake Shore Drive trail, not the mind-expanding chemical though I do wonder at the mind-enhancing experience of riding LSD on LSD. Although, my mind does seem to elevate to higher planes during long rides on the path. Anyway, I was riding and came upon an arrogant little prick, probably late teens or early twenties, strutting from the walking lanes into the middle of the bike lanes with his chest puffed and a shit-eating grin on his face. He was showing off with misplaced bravado in a fool’s attempt to impress a couple of equally young females whose honeypots he hungered to breach.

A Creative Environment

Everything in the desert originates from the same
Point somewhere on the periphery
~R. Russell McGuire

For the past month, I’ve seated myself outside my office in the pre-sunrise hours and meditated in the silence before humanity flowed into the city from the outlying neighborhoods and suburbs carried in by glass and steel caterpillars. Lately, that time was accompanied by slow-burning incense sticks infusing the air with a sense of mystical mystery similar to the aura permeating inside ancient temples.