Otherworldliness

The other world is shrinking as our own loses species and resilience. Instead of faeries it’s just some nihilistic crypto bros sharing torture porn on the dark web. If technology and society continue to develop along their current trajectories, I expect scientists will figure out a way to read thoughts within a generation, in which case privacy becomes obsolete, and AI will presumably be running most things by then, so at that point I expect any concept of a hidden place, or indeed a sacred place of any kind, becomes literally unthinkable.

Plus, so many people are using hallucinogens now, it shouldn’t be long until all the psychedelic visions are used up, and people will have to watch old Looney Tunes animations instead.

***

Writing without writing

I’ve been accused of having my head in the clouds. Well, today it’s true—my head is in a cloud of mosquitoes. So much so that I am forced to use the microphone to record this, rather than standing still long enough to type it out and turning into a pincushion for bloodsuckers. So far, the dictation software on the iPhone Notes app seems to be working pretty well, although I’m surprised it’s not attempting to transcribe the incessant whining of the mosquitoes.

But it’s certainly an interesting challenge to try to appreciate the beauty of the forest on a rather nice June afternoon from inside a cloud—not the cloud of unknowing mystics talk about, but perhaps a similar sort of impediment. Perceiving beauty amidst misery is kind of what I try to do in my poetry, after all. A winter wren is warbling in his usual spot in the depths of the hollow right above the stream, and just hearing that is nearly worth all the trouble. And it helps that there’s an escape route: straight up the side of either ridge. The mosquitoes peter out about two-thirds of the way up. Then it’s just hot and humid.

***

I wrote a whole lot about haiku and poetry this morning and it felt good to get it out of my system, but for now I just want to share a few more photos from today.

wood turtle on a bridge over the Little Juniata River

eight-spotted forester moth
box turtle

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