Daily Quaker

 I'm subscribed to the Daily Quaker Message from https://DailyQuaker.Com. The thought for today was, 

"Although data can transform how we live, work and think, its usage doesn’t happen in a vacuum — it relies on a model. In one sense, that model is a statistical approach. But in a deeper sense, it is a mental model: a way of looking at the world. So using one 'frame,' a rainforest is worth more when it’s cut for timber than when it’s acting as the lungs of the planet. 

How we look at the world is essential, to apply AI in useful ways…. We can do things machines cannot because of our capacity for the transcendent…. AI uses information: humans at our best, find answers in the still, small voice within."

— Kenneth Cukier, 2024

Quaker journalist

Readers of the message were invited to answer the query, "When have you had a spiritual experience that was made possible by technology?"

My answer:

Almost every day I have a spiritual experience that is made possible by technology.

I see entire ecosystems of plants and animals too small to see with the unaided eye. I see the churning of the clouds in the atmosphere of Saturn. I see a human heart beating inside a human chest.

I look at a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, and remember my mother's observation that modern people can't appreciate him the way his contemporaries could, since we have been spoiled by the microscope and the fossil.

I watch a video on the Internet and learn that chemical traces have been found in captured fog that suggest some fogbanks may develop living ecosystems -- and the same might be true for the upper atmosphere of Venus.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: These are the days of miracle and wonder.

Rare First Names

These could come in handy sometime.

Alphonse

Beaufort

Benji

Blithe

Brycen

Champ

Dan

Darek

Daxton

Delphin

Dietrich

Edison

Eitan

Emmons

Ernest

Faber

Fleetwood

Fox

Garwin

Hedley

Harrel

Hassain

Jesiah

Junior

Kaleb

Lourie

Mahir

Montgomery

Moore

Nino

Orman

Orson

Osborne

Ramses

Roscoe

Ronald

Wes

Yoshiaki

Zachery

Zander

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Well, they're your kids...."

No Kings!

 

My wife and I attended the third No Kings march in the same location where we took part in the first two, across the street from the Elgin, Illinois Public Library. It was a large and positive crowd -- I think I saw more upbeat messages, even though this time we had to protest against an actual war, illegally begun by donald, the man who observes no law.

Anyway, I wore my Commander USA shirt for the occasion, shouldering my peace symbol flag, but it soon became clear that it was too chilly for me to forgo the comfort of The Sweater. Fortunately, it got a lot of compliments, and two people asked to take my picture. I expect to post the other person's pic of me soon.

We're looking forward to No Kings 4, which perhaps will be a wake.

What We Are Born For

 

I think humans have a biological need for purpose, for goals to reach. I think it’s literally what we are born for.

What, after all, is the ideal life that people imagine when they feel buried by the noise and confusion of life? A monastery of some sort. That isn’t a place where you sit and do nothing – it’s a place where you can give your full attention to activity. A monastic life is spent, almost every hour, doing something important: making wine, repairing churches, prayer. It’s not an escape from goals; it’s paring down your day until it consists of almost nothing except pursuing goals.

People imagine escaping from duty, labor and goal-setting, of a life where all your needs are met lavishly without working, only because the goals set for them come from other people, and the tasks are boring or worse, destructive. Many people understand this, and imagine a life where they are free to choose their goals, often difficult ones like service in the Peace Corps, or ones which offer little monetary reward, like painting in watercolors.

Karl Marx envisioned the Utopian state of “True Communism” not as a place of regimentation and overbearing rules, the way it keeps turning out in practice, but as a world where a person could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as they have a mind, without ever needing to find a paying job as a hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

This is the biggest reason I’m in favor of some form of Basic Income: you can count on it that it won’t create a nation where nobody works, but a nation of people who LOVE their work.

 

 The prompt for this comes from "Before Winter Solstice" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:

This, too, is what we are born for,

this waking in darkness, unable

to see, but still able to hear the shush

of wind in bare branches, able to feel

the charge of our heartbeat, the swell

of our belly as it fills with borrowed air.

I have spent my life learning to love

these shapeless hours before the light

finds us, these shadowsome nights when

my whole being seems to stretch beyond

the bed, beyond the room, beyond the home,

beyond the valley, beyond even the globe,

as if I rhyme with the dark all around us,

the dark that holds us, the dark that surrounds

this whole swirling spiral of galaxy.

Sometimes, I feel how that infinite darkness

calls to the darkness inside me as if to say,

remember, remember where you come from,

remember what you are. And the darkness

inside me sings back.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "By hammer and hand do all things stand."

"Transgender People Are Defying God!"

 No, they are not.

Genesis 1:27 says God created people as men and women? Well, first of all, that was before the Fall. Also, it doesn't say anything about what you can do with your body.

Deuteronomy 22:5 says men shouldn't wear women's clothing? A trans woman is not a man.

I Corinthians 6:19 says your body is a temple? Well, some temples need a remodel.

My answer to these erroneous interpretations:

Galatians 3:28 says all are one in Christ.

Psalm 139 says God made each of us as unique individuals.

II Corinthians 5:17 says everyone is made anew in Christ.

Matthew 19:12 says eunuchs are welcome.

Acts 10:28 says you should call no person impure.

Also, God sanctions name changes: Abram became Abraham, Saul became Paul, Simon became Peter.

Finally, God promises new and perfect bodies for everyone in Heaven (I Corinthians 15:42-44, Philippians 3:20-21, 2 Corinthians 5:1-2, and Revelation 21:4), so everyone gets to transition after death.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: God gave us grain but not bread, wine but not grapes, clay but not bricks, in order for us to have the pleasure of joining Him in the act of creation in a modest way.

https://youtu.be/YSsFcs8S4xM?si=AtA7xojqpK2oV2-L

The Blessing of Olfactory Hallucination

 As the group gathered itself by way of a shared meditation, the person guiding it invited us to hold our own hands and picture us holding one another's hands. I closed my eyes and imagined us as a group huddled close together, breathing the same air. 

I felt the heat and closeness of such a gathering.

I smelled it.

There is a pleasant animal smell produced by a close gathering of human bodies. For obvious reasons, I have not smelled it in a very long time. In that moment, I smelled it.

I must thank the leader of the meditation for that.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Giving thanks is always in order."

It Is All One Thing

 

“It is all one thing.”

I couldn’t tell who had said it. Literally, it could have been me. The way we were all huddled together, our bodies touching, breathing one another’s air, smelling one another’s bodies, it was difficult to tell where one person ended and another began, if that term actually meant anything.

There’s a wonderful animal smell that is generated by multiple human bodies huddled close together, their scents and their exhalations mingled. It’s a beautifully comforting smell that’s not like anything else, not like the smell of being in a close space by yourself or the smell of intimacy between two people. The smell of communion.

At some point, the spell broke, and we began by an unspoken agreement to move apart. The breaking of the communion was as much a proof of its existence as anything that had happened while we were together. I looked around the group, at the friends and co-workers and the friends’ parents and children, thinking about the range in ages among us, which I knew to be from eight to eighty-two, and felt an added delight in that span of time. This was my idea of a utopian society, a community where people came together at all ages. So different from the segregation of race and age and gender that Ernest Callenbach imagined in his novel Ecotopia, where children went away to boarding schools and old people went away to group homes (and eventually to the equivalent of ice floes), while ethnic groups “voluntarily” or sometimes not-so-voluntarily isolated themselves to keep things tidy and keep his imaginary utopia blandly white and youthful and suspiciously able-bodied.

Qurum said, “Did anyone else hear someone say, ‘It is all one thing’?”

“Of course,” Daniel’s father said. “I’m not sure who said it, but it was perfectly distinct. I didn’t think there was any chance it was hallucinatory. Did it sound odd to you, dear?”

“Kind of. It seemed sort of…distant, like it might be coming from outside the group, so I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it.”

“No, it was real,” Carl said. “So, who said it?”

Then Aaron signed, [It came to me, too.]

Everyone was quiet for a bit after that.

 

 

 

https://poets.org/poem/hymn-time

The Magic Eight-Ball Says: "It is all one thing."

She Requires You To Be Beautiful

 

“Nature has certain characteristics which are consistent at all scales, from the microscopic to the cosmic. She displays a clear preference for symmetry over asymmetry, for elegance over complexity, for consistency over peculiarity. She requires you to be beautiful, since you are a part of nature.”

“And as I am a part of nature, it is clear that my own nature, greatly though you may struggle with it, is also a part of nature’s symmetry, elegance, consistency and beauty, even if you are unable to perceive it.”

“So now you are claiming to be part of nature, and acting in accordance with nature, when every action you are performing is contrary to her?”

“Yes. Everything I am doing is in accordance with my own internal nature, and is my own effort to collaborate with the laws of nature to bring my body and my life into conformity with my inner nature. Exactly so.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say, and I’ve never heard you say anything but absurdities. You’ve been at war with nature from the moment you decided to reject your true sex.”

“You’re the one who is rejecting my true sex. I’m trying to approach it, with nature’s help. You’re trying to keep me from doing so, with the force of law, but all you can manage is to make my efforts more difficult. Even if you succeed, all you will do is limit my options in seeking help. You won’t be able to change my true nature. That’s the thing you can’t seem to get through your thick skull.

“If I were living a hundred years ago, all I would be able to do is choose what clothes I wore and train my voice, and that would have to be enough. I’m fortunate to be living now, when medicine is more advanced. I’m unfortunate enough to not be living a hundred years from now when medicine will be able to allow people like me to make a perfect transition, and when, God willing, there will be fewer people like you to make life miserable for us. But here and now, I’ll do what I can.”

 

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Md481yOun50W4wpoWN8um_oRkMeEZOA2k8-tPmkApL4/edit?usp=sharing

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "To thine own self be true."

Breathing

 

At the end of the play, the executioner walks onstage and pulls off his mask. It’s Everyman again. He holds his hands to his chest and says, “I’m breathing. It’s good to breathe. If you want to keep on breathing, don’t make trouble – or if you must, make the kind of trouble they expect.”

Such is the “moral”, so to speak, of A Man For All Seasons. We have watched how Sir Thomas More was humiliated, imprisoned and finally executed, becoming a martyr to his conscience and his faith. All through it, Everyman has watched each stage of the story, pointing out how Sir Thomas is making life difficult for himself, how much easier he would have things, if only he would co-operate with the people in authority over him. In the end, of course, he cannot and will not endorse what he believes is wrong, and dies for it. His reward is a place in history, of course, as well as sainthood (it has been observed more than once that Utopia is the only science fiction novel written by a canonized saint), but in life he still suffers and he still dies, and as in the play, Everyman just wants to go on breathing.

Well, that’s not quite true. There are many other things Everyman wants. But there are very few things he wants anything like as much as he wants to go on breathing. It takes something tremendous to get Everyman to put his life, or his freedom, or even, really, his convenience, at risk. Something tremendous, and then, often as not, something tremendous but stupid, tremendous but exactly the wrong thing, or at the very least something tremendous but trite.

So Henry keeps changing the rules, and Everyman wants to go on breathing, and the hard part isn’t even facing the axe: it’s facing the years of humiliation, loss of friends and hardship that come before. Those are usually enough to turn the average Thomas into an Everyman. Only a few of us manage to be something more.

 

 

https://janicefalls.wordpress.com/2019/09/12/ancient-language-by-hannah-stephenson/

 

[One of the members of the group observed, “Breathing is the first thing they ask, ‘Is she breathing?’ and it’s the last thing they ask.” Having watched breath leave the body more than once (but once, especially), I really felt that.]

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "It takes more than breath to make life."

I Hear You

 

“I hear you”, I replied. It seemed like an inadequate response, but on the other hand, it was the truth, and the easiest of all my complicated reactions to express, one that I could send quickly instead of allowing the silence to stretch. I could send a longer reply in a moment. I thought it would be better to at least say, “I hear you” first. Painfully, I was reminded of the advice to “Get your first shot off fast, to rattle him. Aim carefully with the second.” Not at all an appropriate thought for this moment, and evidence of how badly my youthful reading had prepared me for this moment, but I would try my best.

As it happened, though, she immediately replied, “Thank you. That, more than anything, is what I need right now, to be heard. Not even to be believed, but to be heard.”

“I do believe you, conditionally at least. I wasn’t there, obviously, but I don’t have any reason to doubt you. I’m not going to play the game of ‘Are you sure you didn’t misinterpret his meaning?’ or ‘Wasn’t he really just being friendly?’. I’m really sorry that this happened to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“You’ve already done it. Seriously. Let’s talk about Frankenstein’s Arboretum.”

So, we did. After that real-life nightmare she had just described to me, we talked about an elaborate, stylized, imaginary nightmare that we had both enjoyed, and speculated on how it might be adapted into a computer game, incorporating the various scenes which had been cut for the sake of running time. She even invented a new horror that I thought was quite ingenious, and which would have fit perfectly into the film (though it probably also would have been cut for running time).

We went on from there to discuss an old idea of hers, of a DVD which would consist entirely of deleted scenes form a film which didn’t exist at all, so people could speculate on what the film itself might be like.

I knew she would need counseling for what had happened to her, but I didn’t press her on it. In a couple of weeks, I would ask her if she was in therapy, but I’d be cautious about raising the subject.

 

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tv1RJDhY3_zOE2Y48LmUhb6d1KxV2rGGMt_WAwSWFHE/edit?usp=sharing

The Magic Eight-Ball Says, "Sometimes, 'I hear you' is all you really need to say'."

Where Memories Are Kept

 I wish I had a place in my brain were memories were kept, secure and reliably stored, as in a digital recording.

Instead, I have a strange, unreliable holographic mechanism in which what is recorded degrades if it is not consulted...but is also degraded if it is consulted frequently, its details tending to become replaced by imaginary ones, its blanks filled in with fragments of unrelated memories.

Some people have trained their memories for greater rigor, and others are supposedly born with a natural ability to recall minute details with precision. All I know is that I don't have such a memory. I have a fairly typical memory, one which fades and fuzzes and only contains fragments and shards as I look backward.

If I had a convenient implant, though -- if I could replace one or two of my skull bones or vertebrae with substitutes made of cross-linked diamond so they were simultaneously data storage cores and also harder and more resilient than natural bone (I might as well go for top-of-the line unobtainium) -- I would be able to store my memories in a reliable form and not have to count on the tricky, dubious phenomenon or epiphenomenon of human memory. 

I would be something different from human in that case. Would I be better or worse? I do think I would be better. If I had possessed such a memory, I would have been able to avoid many of the confusions, doubts and torments that plagued my life, at work and in private. I could have avoided many traps and follies that resulted from distortions of memory, including some which I seem to have manufactured intentionally.

One day, people will have the option to improve their memories with this sort of technology. At first it will be used to help people with severe disabilities. Eventually, it will be available to everyone. Yes, I do wish it were available now. Oh, well.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42548/wasteful-gesture-only-not

What Songs Travel Toward Us

 

I sat on the roof with my guitar, plucking at it. I wondered what the people passing by thought of me: was I a lazy bum, idling away my evening? Was I a hard-working man unwinding after a long shift at the factory or the office? Was I a slightly overaged student, taking a break from studying some esoteric point of paramecium anatomy or Venetian law?

Probably none of them thought I looked like a hard-working man who didn’t especially like his job, sitting at the office engaged at his work. There it was, though. I had long since reconciled myself to the fact that as a singer I would never be more than a fairly decent amateur who would be tolerated at a coffee shop or a Saturday market. The only way I was going to make a living in music was as a songwriter, grinding out tunes for other people to perform, much better than I ever could.

I could write music at a pretty fast pace, fast enough to bring in enough to live on. I did better when I allowed myself time to let the music come to me, though, instead of chasing after it. If I just sat here like this, comfortable on an afternoon in late May, and plucked at my old acoustic Sitting Bull (because if I ever got into a fight, he was sturdy enough to use as “a coup stick”), there was no telling what songs might travel toward me.

Besides that, it felt better to just leave myself open for creation. It was the best feeling in the world when a song came and sat in my lap and said, “Play me”, or tapped me on the shoulder and said, “It’s time I was played.”

So here I sat, plucking and listening and waiting. I’d give it another ten minutes, and then I’d begin grinding out unrequited teen love for Chicken Clock 

 

https://onbeing.org/poetry/cross-that-line/

The Magic Eight Ball says, "Cross that line."

Unborn

 “It’s strange. For the most part, she had a very good memory, but she remembered quite vividly something which couldn’t possibly have happened: going out on the playing field of her high school with her science class with a radio to listen to the beeping of Sputnik I as it passed over Portland, Oregon. The reason it couldn’t have happened as she remembered it is that she was graduated from high school in 1955, and when the first satellite in history was launched in October of 1957, she was married and living in California. Very odd.”

“Okay, that’s an odd thing to misremember. And her memory had enough details that it couldn’t have been something different?”

“Right. She remembered her science teacher and her classmates, the playing field, and so on, and she remembered the excitement of hearing about the launch, how none of her classmates were frightened or angry that ‘they’, the Soviets, had done it first, only delight that ‘we’, humanity, had done it. And it was definitely a satellite passing overhead, it really couldn’t be anything else, the way she described setting up the radio. Puzzling.”

“It really does sound as though she went to high school in some other universe.”

“There was one other memory which really disturbed me, because we remembered it differently, except this one was so personal and private that I had no way of demonstrating it to her the way I could show her documents that proved the first satellite was launched in 1957. I remember vividly how, early in our relationship, she began bleeding vaginally, and her doctor told her she was suffering a failed pregnancy and needed to have a D&C immediately or she would eventually bleed to death. He asked me to leave the room and she emerged about half an hour later telling me that it had been a rather unpleasant procedure, and rather messy, and that she had gotten through it all right and was glad to have spared me having to watch it.

“I mentioned it years later, and she said nothing of the sort had ever happened to her, and she couldn’t possibly have been mistaken, since she would of course remember it. I made the mistake of arguing the point with her, and it put a strain on our relationship for some time.

“Unfortunately, since we never talked about it with anyone else, and the doctor himself retired and left town, there was no-one I could talk with about it, even to satisfy myself that it had really happened. A mutual friend mentioned the incident recently, but it turned out that it had been something I had said about it, so I can’t even count that. Frustrating.”

“So even in a relationship as close as the one the two of you had, you still lived in different worlds.”

“Apparently.”

https://wordsfortheyear.com/2014/03/13/the-name-of-a-fish-by-faith-shearin/

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Happy 84th birthday, Kathe."

Duckies

 It was a running gag in the household for some time, the portentous voiceover from a satire of those "mysteries of pseudoscience" TV shows: "Ducks. What are they? Where do they come from? Why are they here? What do they want?"

Today, while vainly searching for straws in the compartment between seats in the car, Gideon pulled up a tiny Ziploc bag containing miniature rubber duckies.

Immediately, I pondered the question: why did the car not have the stash of straws it ought to have, and why did it instead have an emergency supply of duckies?

Gideon made the careful observation that they were both hippie ducks, a boy and a girl hippie duck, as we bantered back and forth on the subject.

Suddenly, as we waited for the Wendy's servers to produce our drinks, I realized what they were: a pair of cake toppers which Kathe had bought and tucked away for me to find and coo over. Exactly the sort of sweet, sappy thing she would do. Or that I would do, but I'm pretty sure I didn't, so it must have been Kathe.

Thanks, Sweetie.

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Kathe lives you. That won't change."

A Letter From Kathe

 The other day, I received a call from the Reynolds Law Firm, which has handled our legal business in various matters over the years, telling me that they had a letter which they needed to either return to me or shred in order to protect my confidentiality. I was fairly certain that it wasn't anything with current relevance, but was still curious, so I went by and picked it up.

I was glad that I did. It was good to have a little reminder of Kathe's quietly fierce intellect in my hand for a moment. In the midst of our (valiant and energetic, though ultimately failed) effort to save our home from the hostile attentions of the City of Corvallis, Kathe gave a member of the city's bureaucracy a piece of her mind, and it was a pleasure to have it back.

Mr. W****:

Since we talked with you, I have continued to try to find a way to work on our decrepit outbuildings in a way that would satisfy the city. However, it doesn't seem that there is any such thing. I have continued to call and where possible interview people who might assist us with the work that (in my opinion) needs to be done. I was keeping a running account of my efforts but have decided to simply summarize them. At this time I have spoken with a small family business which will undertake to clear the debris from the yard and with a fencing contractor that I feel sure would do a good job. I have not yet found someone who would be willing to drop plans that would be acceptable to the city, but I have made some progress toward that end.

Over the past weekend, I looked at my notes and decided that since I had gotten no callbacks from any structural engineer, my next effort would be to call on them unannounced and see if anyone would talk to me. Yesterday, I spoke with Mr. David Flemings of Clair, who said he would look into the situation and see what advice he could give us. We happily accepted.

This morning, a couple of city representatives appeared on our porch and asked me to sign a paper that they mischaracterized as a vitally necessary permission for them to start hiring contractors to demolish our property on our behalf. They referred to the paper as permission to "abate or demolish" but as my husband pointed out to them, it really said "abate by demolition". They again referred to "your dangerous house" (I am so getting tired of that phrase). I signed, but I checked " Do Not (agree)" and they went away.

This is what we want:

First, agreement to our plan for remediation. We want to remove the part of the auxiliary structure that rests on decaying timbers, to retain the garage and later to put a foundation under the garage walls and to and to restore the back stairway and porch to a usable condition.

Second, permission to do some work ourselves now, or as soon as conditions permit. This would include clearance of some, if not all, of the debris in the yard. It would also include restoring the steps to the stairway (the one that is so very attractive to "small children"), rebuilding the porch, and replacing the door, if we can find one that will fit the space.

Third, to be allowed to enter the garage, both to clear debris and to work on the roof, and later, to use it to store yard equipment, tools, and materials, while the rest of the work proceeds.

Fourth, to be addressed as people with a problem (and one which arguably the city ought to have helped us with from the start), not people who are a problem. In short, we want the city's people to speak with us politely and honestly, and without bullying.

5th, if they know of contractors who would be willing to work with us, as opposed to contractors who are willing to work with the city, that they give us their names.

Kathleen and John Burt

If the city had dealt with us in a reasonable and decent fashion, that lovely old house would still be standing and I might well still be living in it. The house at the corner of 10^th and Jefferson could be a showpiece of the community instead of an empty socket in the city's jaw.

And couples would still be getting their pictures taken under the branches of the cedar tree arching over the sidewalk.

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Look and see."

I'm Here To Tell You

 

“I’m here to tell you…” his voice echoed from the amplifiers, distorted by the walls of the buildings on the plaza and the gathered bodies and by the weird electronics they used on this timeline, “that people don’t have to live this way. I have seen alternatives, other ways of living, and I know they are possible. We don’t have to live under this regime that oppresses us, we don’t have to fear one another, we don’t have to hide away and only dare to speak our minds once a month for five minutes. There is another way to live, and I have seen it!”

I doubted he had, but he still had my attention. After all, if he had actually jumped timelines or even viewed, he would be worth recruiting.

“I have walked the streets of this city and seen people walking proudly and free, speaking their minds freely on every corner, not just in this one plaza in this one hour a month. I have seen people greet one another with the handclasp of equal to equal, unafraid, not with the servile salute of lesser to better. I have seen children playing in parks, dressed in bright colors, like the flowers of Springtime, not marching like soldiers in the drab colors of school uniforms. I have seen it, and I know we can live that way, too!”

He was almost in tears. He had clearly seen something that had affected him deeply. I definitely needed to speak with him and get some details out of him.

“We can remake our society to make that kind of life possible! We can be free! W can-“ His microphone cut off with a flatulent squawk which I had always suspected was intentionally irritating, as a way of punishing people who ran out their allotted time.

The next speaker stepped up to the microphone. I was already pushing through the crowd, trying to reach the man before he slipped away.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Speak up."

 

https://improvisedlife.com/2020/10/26/how-to-redeem-lifes-spoilers-andy-goldsworthy-and-hala-alyan/

Imperfections

 

“It’s surprising just how chilling it can be to see a small area of fresh grass and trees.”

“Knowing that there were dozens of tents pitched there a week ago?”

“Yes. All those people, swept away in that police sweep that was so widely touted and so widely celebrated, everybody rejoicing in the big police sweep that was going to sweep the nasty unhoused population away, sweep, sweep, sweep.”

“Yes. It gives you a taste of what it feels like to see the results of genocide.”

“There. That’s exactly what I was thinking. This tidy, ever-so-appealing space, rendered clean and neat, with no trace left of what was there before to trouble the minds of people visiting. Someone arriving from out of town, who didn’t know the camp had been there, would have no idea that the unhoused people had even existed.”

“Even knowing that the people who lived here aren’t dead, that they were just kicked out and hustled off down the road, doesn’t make that much difference. They’ve been erased from where they were, from where they were living.”

“It’s not as though they wanted to live in squalor, shivering in filthy tents in the middle of Winter in Oregon. But they were here.”

“And now they’re gone, and there’s no trace of their existence.”

“An imperfection, down the memory hole.”

“There are plaques all over town, commemorating historic events. There should be more of them, marking even things that people don’t want to remember.”

“I remember hearing about a group in California putting up markers in honor of bordellos and speakeasies, but a group recording the former locations of encampments, yes. I like it.”

Today’s prompt, “imperfections, comes from the poem, “Palimpsest”, by Thomas R. Moore: https://tmoore419.wixsite.com/poet

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Nothing to see here."

"When The Wind And Light Are Working Off Each Other"

 

 “Oh, I love it when the wind shakes the trees this way.”

I paused to look at the row of trees as they shook in the wind. Each of them three or four storeys tall, their branches were shaking wildly, leaves flailing. If they’d been that new kind of piezoelectric windmill, they’d have been generating an immense amount of electricity.

“Oh, come on,” Beppe groaned (almost whined, really). “Enough with your ‘Children of the night, what music they make’ routine. Let’s get going.”

“Dude, you have no appreciation for nature. I’ll bet if we did hear wolves howling outside the cabin when we were up there, you’d complain about that.”

I did continue walking, though.

“There aren’t any wolves in the Coast Range, are there?”

“Not yet. Maybe soon.”

“Man, that’s nuts. Why would we allow them to come back, when there are so many of us living in Oregon now?”

As we got closer to the house, we approached a place where a row of tall hedges were being tossed by the wind, and the top of their shadows fluttered around our feet like dry surf.

I pointed down.

“Look at that. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah, okay, don’t stop, wouldya?”

“For cryin’ out sake, why be like that? The world around us is beautiful, and all you can do is grumble and kvetch.”

“I just want to get home, is all.”

“Okay, okay. Man, I’m coming.”

I sighed. If he needed to pee, he should just say so.

 

 

http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-wind-and-light-are-working-off.html

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Corvallis really is lucky to have so much beautiful weather."

In Season

 

“…in season or out of season

“Stand up and back him in all men’s sight, with that for his only reason.

“Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide

“The shame or the mocking or laughter

“But the thousandth man will stand by your side

“To the gallows-foot…and after!”

I looked up at her to try to read her expression. Would she be utterly horrified at the thought of my reciting Kipling as part of our wedding vows? Complete with misgendering her?

There were tears in her eyes.

“Is that really how you see me?”

“Am I wrong?”

She bit her lip.

“I hope not, but it’s a lot to live up to.”

I wrapped my arms around her.

“I’m not wrong. I’m not. We’ve been through too much, apart and together, to be able to afford being wrong. You are much more than one in a thousand.”

She kissed me. It felt good to be kissed by that tear-wet face.

 

 

 

 

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stepping-westward/

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "I wouldn't know, I've never kippled."

I Wonder If I Will Miss

 

“I wonder if I will miss my headaches.”

“What?”

“Stranger things have happened. There’s a familiarity to the ritual of feeling the pain begin to gather, of taking my pills, of going through my routine, hoping they will work, feeling the pain recede, or else feeling it worsen and having to do more and treat it more aggressively, interrupt what I’m doing, lie down, cover my eyes, listen to soft music, touch my body gently, sometimes having to do that all day and still the pain doesn’t go away.”

“It doesn’t sound that appealing.”

“It’s not, don’t get me wrong. That’s why I’m getting the surgery. I’m just thinking, if it actually does stop the headaches, it’s going to be a significant change in my lifestyle. I really am going to be something of a different person.”

“You know what this reminds me of? That TV show, The Millionaire. You know it?  A mysterious rich guy gives you a check for a million dollars to see how it changes your life.”

“Oh, yeah. That would be a cool show: The Pain Taker removes one source of chronic pain from your life. All of a sudden you no longer have headaches, or carpal tunnel syndrome, or chronic fatigue.”

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Go for it, baby."

 

https://thedailyrenegade.com/i-wonder-if-ill-miss-the-moss-by-jane-mead/