PROOF OF GOD! ...and other tragedies.

#3 A Brief Illustrated History of My Conception

My father worked on an island. I am not sure where my parent’s lived when they first discovered my existence. I do know that my father was often in a boat and that there is a reasonable chance that on some day after learning that she was not alone, my mother stood on a south Georgia river bank and looked south, toward the place where her own mother lived, far away.

I was born in a part of the country where everything is flat and where the sky blends into the water, which is near seamless against the land. I imagine that my mother might have stood looking south, waiting for a boat with the news of her pregnancy. I wonder if she had yet that a mother surveys the horizon in ways that non-mothers do not.

(to be continued) By the way, I hereby call dibs on a human growth and reproduction education book that is couched in the form of a graphic memoir of a time when I was not yet born. Sex Ed. Graphic Novel. Call it what you like.

It is an idea purely MINE.

Any producer of such a text/monograph/zine/comic whatever – will need to contend with me., if only in the karmic sense. (Unless of course it turns out that you had the idea before me and are equally well-suited to execute it. I am unaware of your idea, but know that I am a Reproductive Health and Safety Educator and that I was conceived in south Georgia. I intend for this work to provide factual, biological information about human growth and reproduction in early development. However, this information will be imparted gently and with great care, since this is my mom we’re talking about here. (which is why the drawings will be a little tame…no mysterious chickens or anything like that…human reproduction is freaky enough) also hope to honor the landscape of my childhood in a place that, for all practical purposes, no longer exists.

I have been really a bit moved thinking of images for this little project (a project that I think I might have been training for this whole past year) – thinking about cells and science and dark interior spaces, about young mothers and whether or not they realize the everyday magnitude of what is occurring within their uteruses…uteri? What IS the plural of uterus?

The upside of the chickens’ wandering ways is that today I hollered across the street, to a group of adolescent boys – as they scurried away from the sight of the hens in my neighbor’s yard:

“Are ya’ll scared of the chickens!?”

They laughed, waved, looked confused, not sure exactly how a group of adolescent boys is supposed to act in such a scenario.

“It’s not as if they’re going to fly out at you!” I tried to convey my good-naturedness, which is tough when shouting across a street.

As they walked south on the south side of the street, I let them know – via more hollering – that we get extra eggs, if ever they know of anyone who wants them. I will happily give eggs to strangers. The thought of doing so makes me happier than the thought of eating them myself. I don’t even like eggs that much.

Fairly Intense Sky This Afternoon

Speaking of giving to strangers:

Driving to work this morning, I saw a man walking west on the south side of a different street. Towards the mission. He was using a cane, his left leg pulled straight and stiff, his right leg bearing his weight.

His mass and matter were reduced due to the empty left sleeve of his Carhartt overalls. His suit was brown, his cane was brown, his hat was brown.

I fumbled in my bag, put on my blinker sped souththenwestthennorth

Parked in a loading zone as he crossed the four lanes to the north side of the street, still walking west. He was easy to catch up and seemed only slightly surprised that I wanted to give him a present. Of course, I didn’t call the small bundle I had quickly assembled a present.

“Do you want three dollars and half a hand-rolled smoke? There’s a little copper bird, too.”

(I had cradled the cigarette within the bills and slid the assemblage into a twine loop tied to a wire bird. I would’ve rolled him a fresh cigarette, but

7:22 PM (2 hours ago)

I was worried that a huge mess of traffic would come and I would run out of the time to reach him…

He smiled at me, said the things I handed him “sure might help.”

His eyes were brown, too. Like mine.

As I was getting into my car, back across the busy street, he turned and waved to me, a slow wave. Several people had walked past him in the time it took me to get back to my car. He only waved to me.

It was the best three dollars I have spent this week. He was surprised by my kindness…as I was by his.

The old cynic in me is pouting: there is nothing to be scorned about goodness.

Though people sometimes make me nervous, I’ve never been scared of children or the homeless and wounded. I generally enjoy the company of elderly people.

I have found that these folks tend to be honest in ways that the young and successful

are not.

This appears to be a Matthew Brady photograph from the 1860’s. It is not. It is a picture I took with my phone…two days ago. Technology can make the new look old, but still hasn’t figured out how to effectively make the old look new.

I wish someone would paint this downed tree blue for me.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Blue trees are kind of like blue ribbons, aren’t they?

****************************thisisspraypaintthemomentitleavesthecan********************

THERE IS GENIUS EVERYWHERE I LOOK.

…so why do things seem so dumb sometimes?

So, I walked into the room and on my computer screen was some hand-written (white on black) message about creative control license or somethin’…huh?

I tried to find info. on this alternative to uptight copyrights, but all I found was an article in IEEE Transactions on Education

function loginRedirect() { var url_string = ‘/Xplore/login.jsp’; window.location = url_string; } function writeLink(authorTerm) { var filteredTerm = getFilteredTerms(‘”‘ + authorTerm + ‘”‘); var link = ‘‘ ; document.writeln(link); } function authorLink(authorTerm) { var filteredTerm = getFilteredTerms(‘”‘ + authorTerm + ‘”‘); var link = ‘‘ ; document.writeln(link); }

Virtual Laboratory for Creative Control Design Experiments

Uran, S. Jezernik, K.

Univ. of Maribor, Maribor

(excerpt from abstract)

The presented virtual laboratory for control design experiments is cost effective and has already been successfully used for the learning of control.

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hmmm….thank goodness!

(I have been a fan of IEEE for years: so wordy, so smart, so pointless.)(I have never understood a single sentence published by IEEE, but I like to read these papers anyway…the words make me smile though I know I misunderstand them.)

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Firefox (or some site, somewhere) downloaded this feature that streams you-tubish shenanigans as a screensaver. Usually it’s kinda dumb in the way that home movies make really cool stuff appear so-so…small children breakdancing, dogs defiantly busting out of backyard pens, wedding dance parties, etc.

Sometimes it’s really awesome, however. Rodney Mullen skateboarding joyfully along boardwalks, busting some seriously scientific moves. (I am convinced that skateboarders are just restless macrophysicists, but that’s another story.)

The words scrolling on the bottom of the screen said something about Beunes Aires and “grafitti” stop-action animation on public walls…

Here is the link: www.blublu.org the film is available (free!) as a bit torrent download. You could probably youtube

“blublu muto” and see it that way.

I am a billion times envious of this website: it is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. Really, something to aspire to. I wish I had time to clean all this content up. Organize it in some way. I can’t even deal with looking through the back files…so they just get further back.

also see:

www.zooo.org

Really, mindblowing – the brilliance of this project. I suspect that the artist(s) persuaded the city to let them do this work by assuring them that it would require some painting-over of old graffiti. Some of the paintings are GIGANTIC, monochrome white with black-lined figures.

Clever, for sure.

The upside of all this techno-exposure to brilliance is that the brilliant have to work faster, do more…

Is it possible that the clever might just save the world after all?

Really, watch this short film: it is the best possible combination of all sorts of things.