Bumbles went out for a walk in the river valley near his home. At sunset he climbed a hill. Something new found him.1 Being an artist photographer he related as the blue disc pulsed in his coat pocket. Of course he didn’t notice.
He dreamt that night. In the morning after recording his dream, feeling very disturbed by his dream experience he wrote a poem:
Dark Star Turns
Walking in nature
River valley eroded
Slopes of golden earth
Washing away
A woman walks past
In her hands
4 pointed black star
Turning
“I’m in pain” she says
Later
Another woman
More known to me
Standing behind a low wall
Separate
Turning the dark star
“I’m dying” she says
Forehead deeply frowning
“Can I help” I say
“Apocalyptic” says she
Cradling her head
So sensitive to touch
She’s dying in my arms
Later in the evening, riding a stationary bike Bumbles feels his mouth speak out:
Abscesses Everywhere
My mouth wants to explode with anger over willfulness
Power and control through will
The mantra of our day
In service to narcissistic egos
See me
Admire me
Follow me
I Will you to
I WILL use your desires against you
You may not know it is my WILL
Behind the smiling pictures I post
The successful life of shallow
My teeth fall out
My gums bleed
Over the Dark Star of Will
Turning and turning you around
Turning and turning our souls
Into Gordian knots of death
A dark angel’s got you
On a starry cross
Unless you let go Of WILL
HOW??
Bleed, BLEED into the abyss
Of You
Deep in your chasm
A bubbling voice
Of love
Guarded by
Silver crowned
Cockroach queen
What’s not to love?
Says she
Bumbles felt it was best to have the reader look up palimpsest and read John Woodcock’s article, then look at the second picture again.
(1) Woodcock, John. Palimpsest: Phenomemology of a Possible Space-Time, Academia.edu., February 20, 2023
Bumbles sighed as he put the book down for the final time. A curious read he thought. How could one differentiate between fact and fiction when the details of the lives of the protagonists were unknown to him? Perhaps that wasn’t the point though. Absent-mindedly he caressed the small blue disk in his pocket. Later, after a meal and a walk in the local park, he went to bed early. He ususally didn’t do this but something was pushing him to it this night. Mike was already asleep on “his” side of the bed (the end). Bumbles sleep was restless as he seemed to be wrestling with some sort of difficulty. The blue disc vibrated at a low level under his pillow pulsing heart like. In the morning Bumbles awoke feeling aweful. Nevethless he recorded his dreams as he ate breakfast. As the day progressed he felt the threads connecting the book and his dreams precipitate into an image. After supper, where Mike refused to eat even raw steak, Bumbles went for a walk in the woods beside the local river, at dusk. He always liked this time. Shadows revealing much more than just frights. What he was doing was holding the image from earlier in the day. Suddenly, after a glance into a thicket, the new connection presented itself to him. Garth rushed home to write his inspiration down. This is what he wrote:
Is There a Difference Between … ?
A mouse licking litmus paper and a nuclear bomb?
“Normal” life and death?
Nightmares and the nightmare of “normal” life?
A whale swimming in the sea and a seal swimming with plastic loops around its neck?
Electric cars and a dead child miner?
More money and the Etruscan shrew?
Spring tails and asphalt pavement
Ragnarok and Thanatos?
Mushroom mycelia and rusting bones?
A new story and a story newly told?
Egoic nuance and personal vendetta?
Denial and dialing a wrong number?
Truth, Beauty and Love and Money, Power and Choice?
Money as God and God as money?
Ecoterrorism and reading a newspaper?
Phages and a tazer?
Fertilizer and hunger going Boom?
COVID 19 and KN95 masks hanging upward?
Ghosts and stories of putrefaction?
Mystery and ARV?
Altruism in plants and farming trees?
Body torture and 2,4-dihydroxy-7-methoxy-2-1,4-benzoxazin-3(4H)-one?
Petrichor and petroleum?
The eye of the needle and sitting on an old log?
An asylum full of scientists and scientists full of asylum?
Breathing towards Mystery and AI?
Creating something new and destroying creation?
Sing a song of thirds to finish*
* Based on the book “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamin Labatut
Bumbles put down his pen and looked for the blue disc. It was missing AGAIN!!
The gathering dusk lends its shadows to the darkening world around the sleeping boy. Peering into the shadows one might see for a fleeting moment a dark hand lovingly caress his forehead. Seth’s dream is the beginning. What? Shh, knowing won’t help him, not this time.
A red breasted Robyn meets the sunrise with a joyful song at the very tip of an ancient oak outside the boy’s window. Afterward wind quietly speaks to the Robyn who becomes still, waiting, in this place as she and as her ancestors have done over many years. Almost time whispers the wind.
Easter 2023, Mexico, the Earth we once knew is no more. Butterflies sheltering on the pine trees are slowly falling off the branches like fall leaves, dying. One here, a few there, the night becomes colder. Resurrection is unlikely.
Dawn. A shaft of sunlight sends a thousand beautiful rainbows shimmering off of the ice in the trees. On the ground butterfly wings flutter in a swirling wind. We hope they are alive. Wind will breathe life into their faded wings won’t it?
The ancient pine standing for hundreds of years in the place of its ancestors feels the death of its children during the night. Summoning the only warmth it has left, the tree gives its own life to the last Monarche butterfly on Earth. Branches rustle “ Live”. In shafts of colour movement breaks perfect frozen beauty.
Seth awakened as he always did with a feeling that he needed to remember something really important. Getting dressed he forgot, as usual. He hopped, skipped and jumped down the stairs to breakfast. Well sort of breakfast. Nothing was normal anymore including breakfast, not since droughts, fires and storms became the new “normal”. Dandelion greens again! Mom!!
Seth’s family was weird as far as he was concerned. Both his parents were eggheads, you know scientists, and had little sense of what feelings were. The intellectual discussions at suppertime were interesting, exciting sometimes, but he always felt something was missing. His heart ached when he thought about this. Breakfast done he wandered over to look at the big old oak outside the living room window. The huge trunk and the green leaves often called to him, spoke to him. He decided to go outside and sit in the branches of the tree. Just as he got to the front door a dog came ambling over and sat beside him. He looked down and said Patches what are you doing? Patches looked up at him and drooled on his shoe. As always thought Seth smiling to himself. Opening the front door he and Patches went out on to the front porch.
Sitting up in the branches of the wise old oak tree Seth watched the world live around him. If he had been able to describe what he felt in these quiet moments he would have said-curiosity. He liked to watch people walk by and not see him watching how they walked, what expressions were on their faces, what they said. Seth felt the rough bark of the tree against his body. An image of the roughened hands of his grandfather holding him as baby floated through his mind. He leaned into the memory against the old tree. What happened to you grandfather? One day he was laughing at dinner with us and the next he was gone, disappeared really thought Seth. Where? No one ever spoke about it. Why, he thought?
The wind picked up, the branches swayed in a rhythm that slowly lulled Seth into sleep. He found himself in a place that looked familiar. Old ruins, brown stone, a tunnel, something frightening in the dark, what the?, he woke up with a start.
The butterfly stirred, warmth slowly filling its body and wings. In its cold slumber on the tree a dream had come. Waiting until the sun warmed its body and wings the butterfly flew away from the dying tree. The sun helped guide and warm the butterfly in the beginning of the journey. Her name was Pepen. There would be no mating above the trees this year, she flew on. A final leafy tear fell from the dying tree, “Good-bye dear one”.
Seth’s mother looked out the kitchen window at her son sleeping in the oak tree. She often saw him there taking everything in. Seeing that he was safe a memory surfaced in her body. Her son’s birth, Seth didn’t cry, he was awake looking around. A look of… yes she thought- curiosity. From the very beginning of his life Seth had a special connection to nature. Letting flies land on his chubby baby tummy, crawling around in mud outside in the garden. Animals seemed to come to him out of curiosity or they would stay near. What was this behaviour? Maybe she could do a research project on it at some point. She wandered off thinking about research grants. Then she remembered the change. Now all research was vetted by the Ministry of Profit
In Texas the spring weather was off again. Well screwed up in the meteorological vernacular of the time, very hot and dry. The severe drought of many years continued. Milkweed, what remained after spraying, grew sparsely and was very small. Pepen flew into this inferno and was not afraid. She came from a long line of very tough large winged Monarchs. She flew higher where it was cooler keeping an antenna alert for birds. On she flew over the huge dust bowl until at dusk she floated down to the cooling earth and on to a milkweed plant by a spring. Here water still flowed. Her ancestors remembered this place and they live in her. Pepen unrolled her black proboscis and ate her fill. The milkweed felt her need.
Seth climbed down from the tree and went for a walk. He was on Easter holidays and so even though it was Monday he was free to wander. Well free wasn’t exactly the best word to describe it he thought. Constant observation by cameras and bad ass miniature drones was a better way to think of the experience. And if this wasn’t enough the high level drones saw All. Being 14 he wasn’t bothered too much except when he tried to be alone. The hummingbird drone sitting on a branch in the oak earlier came to mind. He could have tried to kill it but if he missed then he might go to solitary for a week or more. Well that angry Robin took care of it anyway
