What lives beyond measure.
Our forms in flight evaded all process of proof, and when they came to measure us, we laughed ourselves into vapor, evading capture. We were solid only when we wanted to be. Yes, we danced freely among clouds, but were neither formless or endless, those ideals that only vanity presumes, and we had none when we were running, streams of selves flowing; would you put a river in a jar?
Toasting the iceworm.
With snow falling
too much
in some regions
and in others not enough,
a question of what’s next
to
melt
from permafrost
hangs
like a verdict
not yet delivered,
also, certain doubts––related maybe,
about what’s left
to be exposed
about the trajectory
of history
if that’s what
we’re still calling it,
so now seems like as good a time as any
to pay
homage
to the iceworm,
crawling through
glacial snows
and over ice,
eating the red of
sun cups, and melting
when traces of winter
depart. These are not
to be confused
with the army project
of the Cold War, its launch
sites under Greenland ice,
not to be confused with the
great worms
of legend heard
playing
beneath the northern
lights, near
the entry point
***
Inspired by news of the Cordova Iceworm Festival, which begins today.
The U.S. army project referenced above was nicknamed Project Iceworm.
The collaborative process of creative evolution.
I need a new form for this thing I am making. I haven’t found it yet, so here I am watching birds.
The songs of sparrows, apparently, vary broadly in the structure of their final notes, and some will introduce subtle variations with each performance. The songs evolve.
But researchers are quick to point out: it’s not like these bird-composers are free to evolve their songs willy-nilly, in any direction at any time. There are certain constraints, and the evolution of song works within these.
Consider how fledgling birds learn what song is, through imitation. Drift happens primarily during the initial stages of dialect formation, and during the colonization of an island. As songs evolve, so do birds’ preferences when it comes to how they perceive and learn.
I probably don’t need a new form. There is an array of viable traditions. There are possibilities for learning through imitation. But the early birds, before the songs are known and integrated, can’t help themselves. They throw their notes around in every direction. This is how they learn they have voices, and how they might use them. But a voice is not a song. Song is voice in motion, in choreographed patterns, learned in community. We are never as alone as we think we are in what we are making.
So maybe I don’t need a new form, just more practice in call and response.
What we stash to save beyond selves.
This morning, I read that chickadees make it through the winter by eating through a stash of eighty-thousand seeds they hide during warmer months, and if I put my keys anywhere but on the ledge by the door I will be at a loss and probably late.
There are different categories of memory, say cognitive ecologists, and this one is spatial. What is mine, then? It’s not spatial, nor is it numbers. I rarely have the right fact at the right time. Impressions, I have plenty. I remember the images, sounds, and sudden sensations that stopped me. The lilting laughs and mannerisms of departed loves, near-strangers included, the dimples in a former toddler’s chubby hand. I return to these only to be stopped again and again. From a lens of individual survival, this penchant toward becoming increasingly porous with each piercing recollection seems the opposite of useful.
It’s no effort at all to harvest cache upon cache of opportunities to grieve, to return to what is lost, and I’m hardly alone in this. Perhaps this is the best adaptation of our species, this enforced stoppage, this innate entanglement.
We make music after death to sustain the living, our elegies like bridges reaching for the land of the dead, so that we are never fully in ourselves, but always reaching, from and to how many points? None of which seems essential for any one of us, and all of which complicate and tighten the weave of this larger forever netting, holding us, somewhere beyond the spatial Here to hear something else.
Because of this, any one of us can say to another, Remember This, and by this sacrament maintain some subtle evasion beyond death’s inevitable hand. It will get us each when the last winter comes, but not before we go around stashing parts of ourselves away in the living, remember.
To sing, chirp, breathe.
What do you call a spring without birdsong? Carson wondered and the answer was dying. Without this symphony, sentience itself is suspect. Sing, shriek. Chirp. The people who knew before genocide called what moved here holy wind. All breath, all spirit, all soul.
It is something, isn’t it, to live when a common descriptor of our common malaise involves the need to get away and breathe. Where is away, then? When everyone’s chest is aching, there is a silent agreement: don’t mention it. Is it true that a wolf can smell a body’s feelings, or is it only fear that scents?
If we were the gods of the people who once listened, we could turn ourselves into wolves and know. Take the flight of raptors, stretching our sights. Assume the bodies of dolphins and realize our depths. We could hear an octopus cry, taste its tears, dance with urchins, and let the lamprey finish our sentences.
Then we might know breath again, the word meaning life. Meaning, duration of a moment; a short time; a movement of free air. Air, meaning the invisible everywhere, ether of arias, current of hymns.
A Goldilocks remix.
This is tiring. I could use a break.
Here’s a spot.
Are there people?
I don’t see any.
Look at the colors.
It’s been a long trip.
C’mon, it’s just us!
Feel this.
Oh, oh! I love it here!
Let’s stay awhile.
Inspired by this article about polar bears settling in abandoned buildings on Russia’s Kolyuchin Island where photographer Dmitry Kokh was delighted to discover them playing house.
Studies in the anatomy of inheritances.
If you want to eat, it helps to be able to crack what nuts you can find. If you are finding nuts and trying to crack them, it’s best when you have the right tool.
Some capuchin monkeys can crack nuts easily because their forebears left them the right tools.
A medium-sized Long Island hermit crab looking to upgrade their home has the best chance of finding a larger castoff shell that has been vacated, but a very large crab is going to have a harder time finding an upgrade, as there are fewer oversized shells in the average vacancy chain. In related news, hyena daughters born to high-ranking mothers are getting early access to fresh meat.
Scientists studying these phenomena are asking questions. They are hopeful that a better understanding of the mechanisms of inequality may be useful when it comes to fostering change. Humans, after all, are vastly more cooperative than other species, one scientist observes, and cooperation is an asset that can work in any number of directions, depending on intent.
Inspired by:
This New York Times article on intergenerational wealth in the animal kingdom, and this one on property transfer in hermit crab societies.
Chance encounters.
Mama bear leads cubs over waters
without trouble, and mallards gather
to preen. A bobcat trio keeps watch on
a log. A hollow cat creeps over desert
sands, and the three-headed deer
looks back.
Inspired by
Nature photographers who share.
For every living.
What knows, perceives, wills, animates––a body, while not of body. Moving a mind, but not quite a mind or of one. Plato considered a soul of the universe, and others saw it in the celestial bodies. Some confuse it with perceptible motion. Where is it before–– and after, this form and these forms? Before understanding, and after? Indivisible, and yet able to multiply, into greater unity, ever greater being, explaining nothing, with no guarantees.
No show, just a portrait of strength.
Persistence like a river until it’s bled dry, and no temper. Here is no coercion, no brash announcements, no bold statements. Most of what she is saying, facing what others call this beast, is so subtle it sounds like nothing.
Everything is the opposite of nothing. Something is also the opposite of nothing. A robe but no armor, her hands in the mane, so near the jaw. He leans into her and she holds.
Someone wants to know who is calling the shots, but there are no calls happening here. No shots. Here is a wild creature renowned for ferocity, a feared killer, at rest. She is with him. They are breathing, still.
