September Whimsy

 

As September prepared to exit 2020 it decided 

a flamboyant departure suited the mood of the 

occasion, calling up the services it contracted

for with wind, rain and sun for one last hurrah!

September was far from exhausting its store of 

tricks, oblivious that October would follow with 

the very same cast at its command.True, September 

began the process of autumn, bringing in shorter 

days and cooler nights, frequent rain yet ample sun 

in a Goldilocks performance of 'just right' that 

heralded the forest's nudge to its demographic of 

deciduous trees to pack up their vital life-juices 

for cellar storage and deck themselves out in a 

kaleidoscope of colours, while sparing what's left 

of most gardeners' summertime pride and joy. 

But now the business of moving on, releasing the

stewardship of nature's provinces on that inevitable

journey to winter takes precedence and so, the 

very last day of that singular month distinguished 

itself with rain squalls, ferocious winds, benevolent 

sun displays, the forest bedecked in fine costumery 

of glowing pride. And if trail hikers hadn't the 

good sense to prepare for the unexpected with rain 

gear, well tch! They still were able to glory in the 

rain-and-dusk-effect of a lacquered landscape. 

 

 

It's Autumn

 

The timeless process in slow motion

inevitable, irresistible, ongoing

seasonal measures by which

nature organizes life and death

the renewal of all her resources

and in the forest forever in dusk

light diminishes day by day

urging all growing things to consult

their primordial memories to refresh

their rituals of survival. On the

forest floor vegetation blanches

and shrivels, the understory recedes

while conifers shed needles and

deciduous trees flaunt a flamboyant

wardrobe the envy of all whose

memories stretch back to childhood

and the acrid fragrance of autumn.

Cold begins to seep into the atmosphere

sufficient persuasion for geese and

hummingbirds to migrate humming

through the dark velvet of the night sky.

Furred creatures forage feverishly

and caterpillars find their perfect place

to cocoon the frigid months away.

 

 

Divine Source of All That Is

 

She is incomparably omnipotent, is Madam

Capricious, both landlady and housekeeper 

with whom a signed, sealed and delivered

covenant graciously allows us permit to dwell 

provisionally within her capacious holdings.

She in whom we trust has her admirers vying 

to emulate her brilliance for she is also truly 

unparalleled the fulcrum about which revolves 

all that is known and  unknown. An artist whom

all others with the ambition to follow succeed 

only in rendering pale imitations for she is also 

the supreme creatrix of all that is and will ever be. 

In her moods she is unpredictable, given to the 

unexpected in turn giving rise to fear sharing 

space with adoration. Take, for example the latest 

of her aberrations foisted upon unready humanity

a blight so fearsome all that is familiar in the 

social order she has ordained is disrupted. And 

even while the scourge of a stealth virus stalks 

the Earth she daintily dips her brush in vibrant hues 

of brilliant colour painting the landscape offering

pleasure to the creatures convinced they have

been abandoned to contend with her power

enabling a dread pathogen to drift amongst us

as an act of devilish mischief, an admonishing

lesson to surrender the conceit that humanity's

interference with her divine creations elevates

the common to the divine. For she will not 

tolerate arrogance deserving of retribution.

Lady of the Night

 

She is the ultimate lady of the night

curvaceous, mysterious, beautiful beyond

belief, her alluring presence beguiling

and provocative. Her presence is beyond

doubt heavenly, her admirers legion and 

her reign whereby she casts the light of her

beauty on all whose gaze upon her splendour

is both without peer and an everlasting legend.

Her intermittent disappearance from public

view has been known to cause panic. Her

power is such that the seas respond to the

gravity pull of her fascinating presence.

Believe it, she is an anomalous presence

whose absence would alter the entire world

as we know it. She is also without shame

flaunting her natural beauty night after night

careless of clothing herself modestly to

shield her ethereal loveliness from view

other than the occasional diaphanous silvery

threads of vapour, tantalizing and arcane.

Last night she wore red, shimmering and

glinting against the dark blue velvet of the

night sky. And we knew we were observing

that rarity of the night sky, a Blood Moon.

Guilty, As Charged

 

Why yes, now that you mention it 

the world has gone mad for we live

not in exciting times but in an excitable

era where mass hysteria is the order 

in which we cope, to function as best

we can in an atmosphere burdened with

fear and distrust, where incensed groups

clasp victimhood with great affection

close to their outraged affectation, in the

process conferring victimhood on all and

sundry for if they were once slaves then

penance should be equally shared among

all who descended from the slavers. Ancient

Greece quivers with indignation for even

their greatest of philosophers, among them

slaves, held sacred an implicit belief that 

some are born to nobility and others to be 

enslaved. No matter that modernity shudders 

at the very thought of bent and burdened backs

in service to others' whims of necessity. All

must bear the burden of man's inhumanity

to itself. And so society abases itself while

hoping to placate the rage of those whom

history and current political cowardice

has entitled to mob-roam dark streets and

burn and pillage, beat and threaten, the

accusers savagely intimidating their own

victims knowing polite dissent gains nothing 

wreaking havoc to find satisfaction and 

vindication in their claims, evidenced by

the wincing submission of society's suddenly 

less-privileged, beaten insensible, quiescent.

Life Cycles

 

Overhead, the call of the wild as geese

begin their annual migration from north to

south in a sky glowering discontentedly

under the weight of dark, bruised clouds

preparing to release a chill rain on this early

fall day. The restless wind releases errant

dried foliage from their branched perches.

Somewhere, far off in the forest crows angrily

scold an indifferent owl. In closer proximity

to the pair shrugging their jackets closer

laggardly robins race ahead on the woodland

trail before finally taking to wing to disappear

into the forest interior. Maples have already

turned an intense crimson anxious to get their

shedding over with, followed closely by

the forest's yellowing poplars. The last of

the wildflowers glow pink and gold in the

dusk of the forest interior. There is stillness

and the quality of peace envelopes the green

mass of the forest canopy not quite prepared to

surrender to the inevitable. This year's bumper

crop of pine- and spruce-cones, nuts, berries 

and acorns have sent small furred creatures 

into a frenzy of collection spurred by an 

ancient memory deep in their subconscious

ensuring the survival of adaptive advantage. 

Withal, it is nature that sets the immutable 

rules of existence, relying on her creatures to

respond as ancestral memories spur to action.

Conflict Resolution vs Resolute Conflict

 

Out of ancient Ur of the Chaldees came a 

patriarch venerated through the timeless ages

for in Canaan Abraham and Sarah settled to

raise a dynasty in a region torn asunder in its

struggle for scarce resources where territorial

imperatives raged and population groups were

raided, razed, slaughtered and bereft. A condition

of existence marginally improved over the ages

to the present time. What has not much changed

is the propensity of families to quarrel among

themselves for siblings to jealously wish ill on

one another and Abraham's offspring to the

present day carry on this irredentist tradition.

Unequally endowed by capricious nature two

brothers' genetic code defined by their mothers'

bloodline as much as their mutual father's, but

both equally detesting the other; one unwilling

recourse to violence, the other immersed in an

unappeasable thirst for blood. Time, however

sees opportunities to diminish antipathy and

distance leading descendants of remorseless

rage to reconsider the family feud as a timely

disposable, relinquished to the greater goal of

unity in the face of adversity. Treaties of peace

and goodwill, diplomacy over warfare arouses

pride in accomplishment despite junior members'

furious disposition to get on with the bloodletting

aided and reinspired by the deadly enemy without.

A Nation Divided

 

Now is the time to be parsimonious

with your critiques, we're living in

hard times with high anxiety and a

whole lot of depression, even if you're

not feeling it particularly yourself for

after all, there's no big personal cost to

humility and concern for others, so go

ahead and look the other way when the

fellow next door wears a mask when he's

mowing his lawn and unloading groceries

from his car trunk. He's a schlub but

you always knew it and had the good

grace to keep it to yourself. If you're

looking to vent some spleen you still

can as a citizen of a country where free

speech is lionized. Look instead to 

calling out the hyper-hypocrisy of a

white, privileged man born to money

and a famous name who champions the

less privileged, women's rights and

alt-gender equality along with people

of colour even though as you readily

recall the occasions when he casually

manhandled women claiming his

memory told him the experience was

other than assault, then couldn't recall

how many times he wore Black-face.

A man who incidentally cannot quite

distinguish between ethical choices and

injudicious decision making, who thinks

nothing amiss of using your money to

pay for his votes. Equality does not extend

to the rights of the provinces, some more

equal than others. Go ahead pal, cry it 

FOUL! loud and clear: COVID scapegoat

to beggar the country for the man whose

goal is to be king like any self-serving

champion of the people's bought choice.

 

 

A New World Descends, No Need to Ascend

 

Predictors of the future, those sage souls steeped

in astrobiology tell us of a brave new world they 

envision when humankind must abandon the ship

that has borne us through the ages in the firmament 

of the heavens, that in an ever-expanding universe 

and the potential of interstellar travel rests the future

potential for colonization of a planet humanity has

not yet spoiled whereas mother Earth has been 

thoroughly disabled groaning under the weight of 

her degraded status, calling up tempestuously 

destructive unnatural calamities in a failed effort 

to regain her balance on the stormy seas of a climate 

reversing the natural order as we know it. We imagine

ourselves in the future space-suited, existent in aplomb 

within an adjusted lifestyle under a oxygenated

self-sustaining dome on a planet far from our ancient

emergence. Suddenly, in one fell swoop we have 

been given an entirely new world right here on our

ailing planet, nature returning the compliment of

forging another entirely new way of life to sustain 

an existence of toxin avoidance while among us there 

is no lack of those resembling extraterrestrial life

suited in prevention of contracting deadly viruses so

emblematic a struggle to cope in an existential coup.

 

 

 

Cue The Olde Philosopher

Actually our man is not old much less olde

but he does regard himself as a philisopher

knowledgeable, cosmopolitan, pacific. 

He has a loyal companion who regards him

with liquid eyes of adoration so that's one

thing in his favour, though their lines of

communication are somewhat complex, she

canine, he human. To ask whether there are

other traits in his favour one would have to

enquire directly to his wife of whom he will

occasionally discourse and reading between

the lines of his wry accounts, one has reason

to doubt. Begin a conversation and prepare

to have the topic yanked out from under your

tongue. Wait for him to launch a topic and

then grit your teeth and launch a rictus smile.

Time is not in your favour, friend, take it from

we who have suffered over the years anxious

not to appear bored or fed up with the man's

endless expositions for which he brooks no

interruption, polite or otherwise. And when

tactfully you search for a conclusion whereby

escape is possible and launch an 'anyway...' as

preparation in taking leave, it is clear that many

have attempted that ruse and failed for he takes

that word and mockingly quotes: anyway

anyhow, nonetheless, even so, in any case .....

 

 

Damn Right I Will!

 

It is an entirely reasonable supposition

that as thinking, intelligent creatures

we have it in us to learn by our mistakes

at the very least exercise due caution

when undue incidents result from bad

habit. In my case, haste. 'Make haste' was

an expression so commonly used in

Victorian literature for after all at times

much can depend on it for situational

outcomes. With me, everything is a situation

whose outcome rests on my capacity to

perform tasks swiftly; it is my very nature

my DNA. There's another old adage

act in haste, repent at leisure, and that is

precisely what I'm doing, with (sigh)

yet another black eye to prove just that.

I've lived my life in a hurry, simply too

much to do and see and look after and

the outcome is being accident-prone. Surely

an improvident condition, yet all mine.

Falls, head-splits, unintentional acrobatics

without end and consequentially colourful.

Expletives to salve the anger that I've done

it again, pain to flood my senses reminding

me that I've done it again, then swiftly the

swelling and eventually those bloody awful

hematomas crawling over my cranium

and a spreading dark shadow encircles my

eyes. Out in public, stares. Knowing stares.

An abused woman. My husband the gentlest

man on Earth suffers the nasty ignomy of 

a reputational bruise. Does he mind? No.

Why do people make such assumptions? Aha

next time I see a woman with inexplicable

bruising will I judge? Damn right I will!

 

 

The Short Story

 

Not very enlightened
nor expressively creative,
but most certainly qualified
as a short-short story.

About life in general
and an evaporated passion
in particular degree
well beyond rescue.

They met, they tarried.
Sharing the veneer of
common interests
but not, alas values
and cultural background.

He as disinterested in hers
as she in his. Still, they married
and celebrated a scant few
years of mutual neglect
and growing revulsion.

Though neither would
offer the other release from
tension and aggravated
bitterness in expectations
drowned in grievance.

Theirs was a story
abbreviated by his final
solution. Her ultimate demand
answered by his final decision.
He did not attend her funeral.

Inflicting upon him
recrimination and blame
that only a faithless woman
is capable of wounding a man by;
her final act to seal his future.

 

 

 

Old King Tut

 

No, he wasn't old, at all, since he was a boy king, thought to have been 19 in 1324, B.C. when he died, having reigned for nine years. That was 3350 years ago, if one can fathom that time-frame, and in that sense it makes him old. But although chronologically he was not old when alive, physically his condition was that of an old man, having to get about with the use of a cane, and suffering severe degenerative conditions, along with a club foot.

He cannot have been too sprightly in the prime of his life, poor Tutankhamen. When his royal tomb was exhumed by Howard Carter in 1922, it was a sensation, because of the condition of the site, the splendour of the items found with him, and the exceedingly beautiful gold-worked death mask that topped his sarcophagus. The find was a sensational one awing the world, mesmerized by the legend of the boy king.

And the mystery of a curse said to have afflicted many in attendance at the excavation made everything surrounding the legend and the reality of King Tutankhamen a thrillingly fascinating discovery. Now, a team of scientists from Egypt, Italy and Germany making use of the most advanced DNA techniques has reached the conclusion that the king's physical disorders weakened his immune system making the health-vulnerable man susceptible to malarial-caused death.

His genetic endowments were grimly inappropriate for a long and healthy life. He is thought, through the tests, to have been the son of Akhenaten, the pharaoh whose paeons to the sun-god made him known to have been the first monotheist, and whose legacy of sacred buildings dedicated to Aten, the disc of the sun, were destroyed by those who followed him. The boy king's parents and grand-parents too have been identified.

Akhenaten was known to suffer from severe genetic problems caused by a disease that damages the body's connective tissues whose symptoms include a short torso, long head, neck, arms, hands and feet; pronounced collarbones, pot belly, heavy thighs and poor muscle tone. The six daughters he had with his wife Nefertiti all exhibited the same physical characteristics as their father. Unusually tall, likely to have weakened aortas easily ruptured leading to death.

Akhenaten never had artists copying his image for posterity alter his physique, and he was proud of the outstanding beauty of his wife Nefertiti. Nefertiti is thought also to have been a very close relative of her husband, further reasons why genetic problems surfaced in their offspring. Brother-sister marriages were common enough in early societies, particularly among royalty. Cleopatra was said to have married her brother.

Consanguinity in marriage does not produce healthy specimens; genetic vigour is irremediably impaired. Even much later, among European royalty throughout the later centuries up until the 18th Century, intermarriage in families was common. Charles Darwin, the great expositor of natural selection might have been thought to know better, but he married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood.

King Tutankhamun's need of assistance in perambulation was verified by the discovery of over 130 walking sticks found in his tomb. The genetic tests recently completed, headed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, concluded that his and perhaps four other mummies from his family were infected by a parasite causing an often-deadly form of malaria.

 

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars

The amazing speed of light an impossibly
distant galaxy has sent toward the posterity
we represent is astonishingly difficult to
balance by frail human minds. Brilliant
cerebrums whose understanding of
technical, scientific, mathematical models
of nature's dabbling in physics and gases
and organic potentials leave us gasping in
disbelief. But then, what do we mortals know?

Travelling through the organized chaos of
space and atmospheres we conclude from
spectroscopy and quantum mechanics - and
radio telescopes continually scanning the
immensity of the Universe still unfolding its
unknowable presence, we deduce that life
forms other than the familiar may indeed
exist. Beware, cautions the world's foremost
astrophysicist: some things are best left
as they appear; untouched mysteries.

Organisms may colonize other planets on
other galaxies in the vastness of the dark
surrounding us punctuated by brilliant pinpricks
of heavenly light. On solid or gaseous surfaces
holding life's molecular-organic promise, that
divine spark may have given life. Somewhere.
As close as a sister planet, as far as one of more
ancient derivation, the light of which, travelling
at 300,000 kps has taken 13-billion light-years
to be received on Earth, and recognized.

There can be no certitude, only a preternatural
twinge of possibility inferred by stellar-fixated
minds of genius whose knowledge has been
predicated upon those of rare insight of our race
from primeval times to the present. We exist,
why not, how not, other forms of intelligent
awareness. Of course, 13-billion years represents
an exhaustively-engaged time even when no one
is counting. And to traverse that distance in time
and icy, blank space represents a wearying affair.

So if we were to forward a message of greeting
trusting that at some primordial event amino
acids precipitated life, what guarantee it yet
remains? It is not without the bounds of
possibility that some capable life form has itself
messaged us out of a sense of non-human curiosity
and receiving no response, as we do not deign to
notice stray and puzzling appearances of strangely
fey creatures, but make haste to destroy what we
find fearfully offensive, we may never really know.