haiku 8 Dec 2017

Santa Ana’s curse
Whips wildfires into frenzy
Cleansing the parched land

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

on stealing fire

Cultures around the world celebrate the bringer of fire, the bringer of knowledge. In the Christian tradition, the bringer is called Lucifer, who fell from heaven, whose name in Latin means Light-Carrier. In First-People traditions of the Pacific Northwest, the trickster-god Raven steals the sun from the world-house and gives it to humans, bestowing understanding upon them. In Greek mythology, Prometheus steals fire from a lofty perch and hands it over to mankind; as punishment for his actions he is chained to a rock and must endure having his liver pecked out by an eagle every day (until his rescue by Heracles). These examples from historically and geographically divergent areas speak of the same idea – that some external force physically descended form somewhere above the terrestrial plain and downloaded into the fabric of the human race the ability to ponder and think and reason. And these are but a few of this type of story; many others tell of the sudden arrival of knowledge from somewhere else, of the ability to reckon and mull and fly fancily unexpectedly arising in the minds of theretofore troglodytic bipedal mammals. Did we uplift ourselves, our intelligence arising of its own accord out of the vast and inky aether? (David Brin explores this concept in Startide Rising and his other Uplift books.) Were we genetically manipulated by a rogue extraterrestrial visitor who decided to fuck up his boss' plans and infect us homos sapiens with a full dose of thought's holy fire? These questions have kept our race up at night since the beginning of recorded history, and I don't intend to find answers for them here. I shall hazard to say, however, that I think I see a pattern emerging in the belief-systems of peoples living largely independently of one other, a pattern that suggests that we are not the only sentient beings hurtling through space-time. Keep one eyes on the stars and the other on your six. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on nature's nightly light-show

During these muggy days of summer, when the sun has set and the bats have emerged to hunt, thousands of bioluminescent insects put on a fascinating and free light-show. I do not really see it unless I stand for a while in the bowl of the valley and let my eyes adjust to the darkness; then, however, I realize that nearly every available surface – from the low grasses to the tops of the highest trees – has been taken over by lightning bugs.

Granted, the bugs do not produce the lung-thumping boom of fireworks, their lights are less bright than, say, roman candles, and they generate hardly any unnecessary light or air pollution, but for all of their apparent shortcomings these tiny insects, when occupying a stand of trees in sufficient number, are far more impressive than even the most magnificent and expensive Fourth of July fireworks display. The show they put on is so dazzling, so mesmerizing, that I must often force myself out of my trance-like state and continue on to the small tent by the creek in which I sleep most hot nights. To my knowledge, there is no rhyme or reason to these insects' flashings, no clear-cut code as far as I have been able to see, only thousands of randomly-timed pinpricks of white light winking on and off in the dark and shadowy gloom of the trees in which they sit. Concert-goers in a blacked-out sports stadium will all try to take a picture of the headlining band when it finally mounts the stage; the efforts of these little bugs have a similar visual effect, but to my knowledge their luminescent signaling is a means to the end of getting laid, while a concert-goer's flashings are little more than proof of his foolish exuberance and having forgotten to properly adjust his camera.

So, this week during which we Americans celebrate the date upon which our nation issued the most important document in the history of mankind, don't waste your money on Chinese-made fireworks – wait until it is dark and then go stare at a tree.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit