I saw a spider on my windshield just the other day
I watched him struggle to stay on as I drove away
At first the spider slowed, it moved a whole lot less
It stopped and stayed real still, the gas my foot did press
I could not tell from its eyes what was on its mind
Faster I did go cars pressing from behind
The legs of that poor spider spread strong and holding fast
From strength it had developed far back in the past
But today is now, I’m late for work, the freeway will not wait
Spider’s front legs begin to shake and that will seal its fate
Those legs so strong when spread, crunch into a ball
The spider blows onto the street, will that happen to us all
I just want what Buddha had
A nice, hot, mom, and a rich ass dad
and something that’s missing and hurting real bad
I just want to do what Buddha did
To sit by a tree till the truth is unhid
To take a cool raft to the other shore
Then tell the cool raft I don’t need you no more
I’m tied to the wheel in so many ways
That hasn’t changed just cuz my hair grays
I have me a life in a machine culture
That preys on the world like a robot vulture
The trees are not there just for sitting around
They’re just worth too much to leave in the ground
A tree and some dirt, burn a whole lot of coal
To make a few things that might soothe our soul Continue reading I want what Buddha had
More blossoms, new fruit, the plants all seem well established and happily growing. The new developments are the flowers on the melon, a small new tomato on the plant that didn’t have any yet, and new strawberries.
I am a Physical Presence
My mind and body are Unified
My whole self is miraculous
Ever changing, yet complete
I experience with the World
Every instant of my being
Mind and Body
Living Self and Living World
Many, yet singular
Together and Aware
We are a Physical Presence
I keep watering it, the plants keep growing. The progress of the plants is wonderful to watch. As an attentive novice food grower I am delighted to see the process of the flowering parts of the plants blooming and then turning into the part of the plant that is edible for us. The same thing happens on my lemon and pomegranate trees, flower into fruit. The only plant I have that is not flower first and then turn into something a person can eat is the artichoke. One thing I am unsure of with all the things I’m growing, is when best to pick them for eating purposes.
Some more pictures of my garden. A lot of growth. I gave them a little water 5 out of 7 days. I love watching the changes in the plants. They are strong now, not like the first few days when I transplanted them. The middle box with the squashes gets the most sun, the tomato’s get the next most sun, and the box with the strawberries gets the least. All in all the box with the strawberries is the one that is more different than either of the other two boxes. We haven’t had a ridiculously hot, 100+ day in the first 2 weeks but i am a little worried about it when we do get a bunch of real hot days all strung together.
I started my first real garden a week or two ago and I am really enjoying taking care of the plants and watching them grow. My 2 1/2 year old daughter was surprised to hear that some of the plants will grow strawberries that we can eat. It is going to be delightful to share the experience of eating food grown from the ground with my daughter and my 12 year old son. I dropped my perfectionist trip about doing it pure like John Jevons does in his wonderful “how to grow more fruits and vegetables” book and started from small plants I bought. I did break up and compost the soil under the wood portion of the raised beds and enjoyed how the soil gets more fluffy and light when you break it up and add compost. I can imagine the roots of the plants having a lot more room to move and grow in soil like this. I have soil about the depth and with some of the characteristics Jevons recommends and I have broken the ice between me and the world of edible plants on which my continued living depends, It feels good.
From left to right I have zucchini, and yellow squash in the first planter box, strawberries and a melon of some kind in the second planter box, tomatoes and bush beans in the third planter box, and fourth outside the vegetable garden my lemon tree is growing the first lemons since the tree was damaged by frost a couple of years ago. I check them and give them small amounts of water if they look like they need it. On hot days they can look a little fried around the edges and I don’t see any bugs or snails messing with them yet. I have a lot to learn but I am on my way to a more intimate relationship with dirt, water, bugs, plants, and weather. I’m hoping that my kids will not grow up as estranged from the natural world we live in as I have.
I am a physical presence
Being an adopted kid
Doesn’t make me physically
illegitimate
My mind and body are
Not separate
My whole self is miraculous
and legitimate Continue reading A Prayer for Wholeness
Each day is my birthday
Each moment, my birth moment
All that is, born anew
Each moment, each day
My birthday every day
My birth moment
Each moment
Right now
Appreciating
The gift
My birth
Moment
and
Day
 Me: I was curious about where our conversation ended during our last talk. I mentioned that I was aware of a lot of talk of cyborgs, human machine hybrids, but no talk of bio-borgs hybrids of animals and plants for instance. I did a little reading via the web to refresh my recollection about what the cyborg line of story/thinking is. I remembered that some people I had heard or read talked about a technological singularity and I didn’t understand it at the time but I remember thinking the idea was way off as far as I was concerned. Well I found some information, particularly Ray Kruzewell and his conception of a singularity caused by the acceleration of technology and his conclusion that humans would end up transcending biology. That’s just the sort of crazy idea I thought it was, and just the perfect description, but in a technical guise, of the ideas in Genesis, that people are primary and nature is secondary. The most obvious criticism of this mind set is that unless the technical acceleration is fast enough to find a technology based replacement for the environment that supports human life, technical acceleration of the industrial economy will simply more rapidly being an end to the experiment of super-powering exclusively human objectives. I think Kruzwell, and the science fiction writer Victor Verne are the two most popular exponents of this view. I will read more of them and address them more specifically.
Tree: They think your kind can live without me?
Me: In essence yes. I think both people are so impressed with a linear reading of technical progress that they ignore the biological context within which the technical progress occours within. It is like Genesis realized in reverse where with Genesis God creates the earth, then man, then plants and other animals thereby leaving man dependent on God not nature. With the singularity theorists they see us arriving at the point where Genesis starts, a non nature based origin and continuance of humankind, by the math of technical progress acceleration ending up with a God of biology transcending intelligence. I really think this all has its roots in an unconscious reactionary patriarchy that must break away from dependence on mother and do so by elevating the maleness of their ability to isolate themselves from the flesh and transpose themselves into exclusive residence in the abstract mind. Some powers come out of this psychological operation but the expense must be totally ignored or dramatically devalued for them to continue. It is hard to continue this story because it leads to a self evaluation that is just to significant, relative to all the other entities and relations that a man has in reality.
Tree: So they ignore and dramatically devalue me so they can imagine they were not born by their mothers. Your kind is crazy. Continue reading Suburban Tree Dialog 6 (Singularity and Cyborg)
 Me: When we left off our last conversation we had been talking about thinking long ideas and I mentioned I had been thinking of what humans would become if we succeeded in living with power and not destroying our planet at the same time. I think I am ready to talk more about this and see where we go with it.
Tree: I don’t have any ideas about it, that is your job. I know what soil, roots, water, air, the sun, my trunk, leaves, and branches will look like and how they will be. Why are you talking about being different, you will be the same unless you are talking about a very long time in the future when your kind might look different, you might grow roots or leaves.
Me: I’m not thinking that far into the future, although being part animal and part plant would be a pretty interesting development.
Tree: So you aren’t talking about becoming like my kind?
Me: Not physically anyway
Tree: In some other ways then?
Me: I think that people would have become completely responsible for the ideas, systems, and things we create and not relate to them as if they were existing on their own independent from us. I also think we would see our bodies like they were extended into the world around us all the time and that all the things around us were also extending into us all the time in the same way. We would see ourselves as more than we are individually. Continue reading Suburban Tree Dialog 5 (Behaviorally Modern Human 2)
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