1. While walking home the other day, I looked down and happened to notice the outline of a dragonfly that had been pressed into the concrete. It wasn't a drawing, but an actual impression. Because the cement was the smooth, uniform sort - not the kind that is filled with gravel- the detail of this tiny fossil was incredible, right down to the veins laced through the wings. It must have flown into the concrete while it was still very wet, minutes after the workers were done.
I speculate a lot about the consciousness of beings who aren't human. It's not so much that I think every creature on the planet has fully formed thoughts and feelings, but for those beings with enough brain/nervous system formation to move legs or flap wings, I'm curious what is swirling around in there. Anything? A mish-mash of light and color? Hunger? A series of unnamed impulses and then blackness?
What's that like?
One of my abundant cockamamie theories, is that the higher the level of an entity's consciousness, the faster its experience of time. For instance, remember when we were children and an hour seemed interminable and a month away was a lifetime? Adults would say things like, "I can't believe how fast the time goes!" and I thought they were nuts. Of course, as I've grown older, my experience and my consciousness has increased, and I can understand what they meant. Days pass with a increasing speed, one dove-tailing into the next, until, lo and behold a year has passed. What just happened?
I wonder how long a second felt to that dragonfly.
2. Three of my favorite words:
Donkey
Perplex
Lard
Use them in a sentence today!
3. We gave those Yellow Submarine action figures to my nephew R. and I'll be durned if J. hasn't commandeered the lot. Much of his play consists of George saying "Hello" to Ringo, Ringo saying "Yello Submeen" to George (This goes back and forth for a while and then one or both of them is cast, with great force, to the floor.) and then the two of them go looking for Paul, who is usually in the TV room. John has vanished, I think he's broken.
All we need is GI Joe carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye and we have a decent Beatles docu-drama.
4. "cloth of emotions built together with the days of our little refusals"
These were the search words that lead a visitor from Greece to my blog.
Isn't it funny how Beauty shows up dressed in the tackiest clothes ever, but it doesn't matter?
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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3 comments:
"John has vanished, I think he's broken" will be the koan of my day.
I'm pretty fascinated with emergence and the wisdom of crowds. I keep reading studies about ant colonies -- they do these crazy complex things, divide into groups of forages, builders, and warriors every day depending on what needs to be done, and they don't think at all. The division of labor is done by the pattern and length of time it takes for ants to come back to the colony.
It fills me with wonder and sadness all at the same time. Mostly wonder though.
ON the time conversation...
I have a theory that goes as such. When we are children, a day is an enormous percentage of our lives we have lived thus far. As we age, the increments of time we use become increasingly smaller (percentage-wise) as compared to the amount of time we've lived, thus perception of those same increments as compared to those same increment when we were smaller seems shorter by comparison.
Same thing with energy, as a child our battery is small and easily refilled, but the more we use and reuse our battery, the harder it is to refill and the longer it takes.
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