Labor Pains

I have little to add.
All I can do is pay witness
to the effort of this small life
in its pains to birth itself

and we?
having eaten all we can handle
as greedy and obese
and as bent on attending
to our own inner workings

I can't help but see
the way he folds his hands
curled around his face
quivers and shakes
with what seems like
prayer.

What if every obese person in the world right now
Each one of us carrying too much weight, excess baggage
were to suddenly hang ourselves upside down
engage in meditation
and solemnly strain
to split our skins

Can you imagine
the trust involved in this whole process?
To willingly sleep, knowing you'll be visited by a dream
that will change you forever,
No promises,
No guarantees,
No recourse to sue should anything go wrong.

Nothing to go on but an instinct.

Instinct.
Yes, I'm back on that track again.
I still find it mind-boggling that every other creature on the planet, right down to its smallest insects and even single-celled organisms, has been given instructions on how to live. They carry out their lives faithfully and following a healthy code of genetic variance to expand diversity and that species' chances.

And I feel somewhat cheated, that my species, or my culture at any rate, lost its code. Is this what being booted out of the garden is all about? That we know longer seem to be able to fit into any natural system without destroying a fragile balance-- eventually rendering it unsuitable even for ourselves.

We are able to peer into nature piece by piece, whether by electrode microscopes or Hubble telescopes. Great and small, there are distinctive patterns that infuse everything. All seems based on certain unalienable codes, that are far more comprehensive than our bill of unalienable rights. Un Alien Able. Alien. Outsider. From another planet? Another star? Even those stars seem to be dancing the same dance-- swirls and sworls seem as our own breath exhales on a frosty night. Even Aliens, I suspect, aren't immune to the same rules.



A Stab at Naming (or inventing) a Few of These Codes: (If I were a science major these might be more accurate, but it's 12:26am and I'm in the mood to brainstorm:)

1) Diversity is a result of stability. A song has a chance to play itself out with exponentially greater variations, with increasingly more time given to compose.

2) Big changes that happen fast interrupt the song; many don't make it. Due to diversity, some do. That song is remembered and passed on. As the change becomes old news, the songs left over have a chance to rework and begin the process again. (ie. Mammoths and Giant Sloths went extinct in the ice age, but other species sprang up since then)

3) The easier the conditions of survival (and if successful adaptations were made) the more songs get started. More freedom is taken. There is a tendency to get artistic, more creative, more daring in shapes and forms and absurd specializations. (ie. red i'iwi birds in Hawaii that can only sip nectar from one certain tubular flower. Or the zillions of dragonfly bodies, each one shimmering in its own unique armor.)

4) Creativity is vital to survival. Monocultures may be more efficient, but in the end, are tremendously more fragile. Without creativity, potentially species-saving innovations are impossible.

5) The essential difference between humans and animals seems to be our efforts at cultivation: of food, yes, but more significantly, we cultivate our own cultures. In the absence of memory of our instinctual codes, we write our own codes -- Or, in most cases, a cultural code is handed over to us, and we follow it.

6) Certain individuals in any culture will tend to challenge and rebel against the established "codes". Most often these individuals are young, who are still able to sense what the weaknesses are-- and haven't yet gotten "used to it." They are the most sensitive, more apt to believe that things can still be improved. Youth are more wild. They are less domesticated, and are more in tune with their instincts. Even if they can't articulate or fully understand WHY things seem wrong, a general sense of dissatisfaction, anger, and rebelliousness pervades our youth culture.

7) Oldness seems to = resignation. After a certain age, it seems people more or less wish things could have stayed the same. Adaption becomes increasingly more difficult. It takes too much energy to learn the world anew. Oldness, however, can be more a matter of perspective than of physical years on the planet. If their adaption muscles have been adequately exercised, many elders retain their mental flexibility.

8) Children, and certain artists seem to intuitively understand that reality is what we make it. They view themselves as self-appointed masters of their own universes. Children and artists spend a considerable amount of time playing, discovering, inventing and testing.

9) Play, creativity, and paying attention to our youth are essential components to keeping culture healthy and attuned to itself.

Within my parents' lifetimes, a man was sent up to the moon for the first time. And now, most people seem to think it's impossible that we can create a way to live, sustainably, right here on earth.

Do we have so little faith in our own ingenuity?

Right now, (by my observations and in generalization), we have a culture which:

Monocrops our food
Monocrops our cultures (stomping our diversity and pressing for assimilation-- sameness of thought--, I think largely through tools of religion and pop culture)
Marginalizes youth, artists, and free thinkers in general

Who do we let be the authors of our culture?
Who do you choose as your "culture authority"?
When was the last time you really played?
When did you begin to be less curious about testing the world out for yourself, and begin accepting things the way they are?
Do you think of yourself as a cultural leader, follower, or just someone doing their own thing?

...Oh, yes, two last observations:
10) the cultures that have survived the longest seem to retain the memory, passed down from generation to generation, to respect the land and take care of it. Perhaps in their millenia of evolution, they are the survivors of a near wipe-out, and what remains of the lesson learned is a hard-wired value.

and,
11) It seems likely that the only way out of this is not marketplace driven or even legislation, but the birth of a new cultural code-- to re-wire the value of land stewardship into our most essential values. If the heart is in place, will the neccessary inventiveness follow?
To make these changes stick is going to take a whole lot of creativity, and the power of our youth.