Technocracy

I used to have these fights with my old friend Steve Jobs . . . I’d say to him, Steve, these computers you’re inventing here, they’re destroying the world!  . . . it was like telling a Catholic that there’s no God.

- Doug Tompkins

            I must confess: I am writing on a computer. And I use a computer often, more often than I’m comfortable with. For writing. For composing and recording music. For connecting with friends and family across the world. For taking in music and writing and film and art. For learning, and sharing ideas, philosophies, and knowledge.

            All these pursuits seem worthy, don’t they? They seem to be valid reasons to use technology. So why do I feel I must confess to using it?

Recent Recording: Banks of the Ohio

dispatches from nowhere #4

Dearest                              

The snow shows no sign of abating. It has been four days since the start of the storm, when we were forced inside. At times we have entertained the thought of going on. Alex is the one to check the weather, but it has not changed in all this time and when he digs out the door the wind sweeps in, so we limit his excursions.

The igloo has been a boon – we would be gone already if we had had to rely on the tents. Still it is like a cell now. Only a vague blue light comes through the ice during the day, then fades to utter darkness. There is not much difference one moment to another. I find myself wishing time would hasten on, but to what? Only some relief from this cold.

~

I can write again because we have warmed ourselves around the stove. But that will be short-lived. There is only enough fuel for a few more meals. If the storm breaks before then, perhaps we can go on. Frustrating to be so close, 11 miles to the depot. But impossible in this weather.

~

The storm continues. The fuel is nearly gone. I can feel my blood slowing. All the others sit still muffled shrouded. Sometimes they move but so little. I wish to tell you something but I don’t know what. It is so strange to think how this note will be found. In our frozen cave. In my still hand. I will have departed. Dear dear heart. Please go on. I think of you in the sunlight. I can see it in my mind but I can’t feel it.

~

The wind sings and speaks. I wish I could write its meaning but words come slow. I failed you. For that I’m sorry. So many regrets in my heart. But I would have been a different man if I didn’t come here. Not me.

~

I dreamt I was walking to see you. I left the others, went on to the depot. A feeling like setting out, all the excitement and fear, something new ahead.

dispatches from nowhere #3

Found in a titanium capsule on the Antarctic ice. The interior of the capsule was inscribed with an as yet undeciphered code. The following message was embossed in gold foil, which accounts for its preservation. Based on the age of the surrounding ice, the capsule may have remained there for more than forty thousand years.

To whomever,

I do not expect you to heed my warning. But I am trying to reach you in the hope that some small alteration might be made, one thread tugged and raveled, a change.

We have books, this is something that remains to us. So we know how it was before, what has been lost. I say we know. By that I mean we grieve for something we have never seen, never smelled or touched.

We are between the narrowing walls of history. Trapped in a timely prison. You have pressed this upon us. Soon we will be crushed in the gears of this gigantic machine, along with all the rest.

While we endure, the utter chill of the vacuum has come into our world. The depth implacable is close at hand. Colder eyes than ours will it take to see beauty in this. Though it must be there. As it must be in you, though you be a fratricide.

At night the stars glint with crystalline fire in their cold firmament, there is nothing to mediate their harsh gaze, pitiless. Life the bittersweet veneer has been scraped from the rock. The ocean waves roll empty and barren, meaningless tides. The moon will make her circuit again, followed by no moth.

Do not come to this future. It is no place for you.

Next Year

dispatches from nowhere #2

Dear                      ,

 

            You’re probably surprised to receive this from me. But I’ve thought of you a lot recently. Perhaps it’s the time alone, in an unfamiliar place. Maybe it’s the sound of the waves at night.

 

            I don’t know if I should apologize or ask for an apology. Maybe it’s irrelevant. They are not the same but seem to blend together. There is a beautiful ache in the wind.

 

            Does time wear things down, blunt the edges enough, so that we can hold our memories again?

 

                                            Yours,

                                                                          

                                                        

 

 

Analogous Structures

            On the ridge, a shrewdness of apes. Against a red sky. Still, black silhouettes. Palings. Menhirs.

            You watch them. They have ceased to move. They move as much as the ridge moves, that stony moraine calved by ice and gnawed by lichen. The sun is going down behind you, the air is precipitant with dying light.

            You watch them. They do not move, but this is deceptive. What do they carry. A long blade of grass? A shaft of bamboo, a spear? A basket full of desiccated fruit, a heavy recalcitrant rock, a curled child?

            You watch them; it grows darker. The wind shifts. The cold seeps from the stones, falls around your head. Your cheeks are burnt with darkness. The scent of minerals in cold water, algae, salt-carved wood. Then something else: warm hair, dry skin, sour milk. Sweat. Preserved flowers. Motor oil. Baking bread. Coffee grounds. Your tongue when you first wake from a night of painful dreams.

            They have not moved. They are waiting for something. They do not move, but almost beneath hearing, there is a sound. A paper cup on a glass table top. A piano string plucked by the curious hand of a child. A shoe falling from a shelf. A distant rock slide. Gunfire. The bite of an ax blade. A glass cracking with heat.

            The light is gone. You stand watching in the chill night. Shadows, ice in the wind.

            In the morning you will climb the ridge, the sun will paint the stones with heatless pastels, you will be alone with the boulders, the lichen. You will cross over into another valley, brimming with mist.