A Limited Forker Girl's Tines

FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry, Issue 20, Spring 2008

fascinating poams

Still Here!

Still Here!

I'm still here, mystifying doctors, baffling them and other concerned parties, especially those with some say as to whether I can (or even should) try to keep my teaching job (I'll post some info about what happens) --for now: I celebrate that I'M still here! --and wondering (a bit) what I must do to merit this elongation of my time on earth --how do I earn what I've been given (by whom? and WHY? --I Wasn't Supposed to be here, almost died at the end of the summer of 2011, YET I'M HERE! (and glad about it --perhaps this is the time that I should renew spiritual beliefs, but then I read about M-theory and black holes (especially the black hole at the center of the Miky Way, and I confess to wondering about other supermassive engines, and I'm left with enough uncertainty to make me think a return to the earth via burial is just that: a return not... (I don't mind becoming [a small] part of the dirt and/or soil; maybe some part of me will be lucky enough to nourish --at least for an hour or two-- something else [not human] that thrives long enough to dream of claiming this planet) ...not to be followed by an awakening and a calling at some point from that location (even if disintergration has been completed --it seems unlikely to me that humanity is the culmination of evolution; after us, some other terrestrial life form will likely dominate. If this is the process of existence, we--humanity--have joined a process in progress; we didn't initiate what is ongoing, seemingly unstoppable --despite some contrary evidence, such as clues of global warming (that seem to prevail this winter) economic collapse (that is spanning the world), and other devastations, --say a wayward asteroid or comet, something coming to earth to hurt or use in some way some of this planet's population. Now was this earth made for us? I doubt it. So why is it here? Why is there a fossil record? I have more questions than answers.

 

Friendship is not to be damaged! Friendship must be preserved --so important to me; tines love friends!

From the SAY blog: The Real Reason No One Sees Online Ads

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leonardo Da Vinci

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via everything.typepad.com

Why Bifurcate? a risk (worth taking)

In this way, a possibility of connecting temporarily with anything, risking A CHANCE OF CHANGING!  A risk that should be taken unless those involved in an interaction (connection) do not want to change!

A BIG risk is that anyone involved in an interaction might change; one enters an interaction expecting exchange, and exchanging information might change you --I like this risk, because I assume that something I meet might have an answer --really complicates traditional views of teaching, but forkergirl is willing --WANTS-- to change and exchange information!

 

(connecting image  --please read the blog where this image came from; please risk making that temporary connection)

Keepbifurcating, and you will probably change some more --a process that continues like hunger --so we should never finish eating,. growing, changing according to what we eat, ideally also changing what (in some cases) has allowed itself to nourish something else.  

I don't yet know how to eat without consuming; if you do please exchange that information with me. Thanks.

 

I still believe that I can learn from students, that paths of learning are not yet fully formed, and can continue on many scales, in many locations, for many periods of what humans like to call "time".  Limited fork(s) have transformed me in ways I needed to be transformed.  I'm still transforming, processes that will (I suspect) never be completed.

That said, I can get back to "intentionality" and implied "control" that writers have or should have over interpretation of "their" words.  Because writers (and I find " originality" problematic also) do not accompany reading of "their" words everywhere, intentionality fails; how work is read, understood, and tines from those readings that can (and do) spread throughout existing universes, possibly creating other universes based on ideas inspired by those uncontrolled words; so I resist judgment based solely on intentionality --too likely to fail (in good and useful ways).  Which is to say that your (any) reading of Baby Flo is not wrong, though readings may differ from an intentionality I held at a time of writing.  My memories of encountering Baby Flo are not memories soneone else had --and they do not have to be!  No one is  required to reconstruct her as I do in memory --what someone finds there is justified by a finding; it was presented in a way where anyone could find what that searcher found!  What a searcher found was possible to find --or a searcher would not have found it!  The writing did not --does not-- exclude what a searcher found/finds!  

Maybe I could have try to incorporate more limiting factors that perhaps would  compromise  findings, but instead I'm glad that any searchers can find anything at all --better than finding nothing.  I also like the tines that come from these unplanned findings; tines I may have not intended, but "real" tines just the same --intentional or unintentional: TINES! that may have constructed universes where landscaping is needed --you can tell from just this how grading became so problematic for me, just in trying to decide what was/is right and what was/is wrong --depends on many circumstances converging in a moment of decision.  And

there is an "unintentional" beauty that often results in how things degrade.  I love the beauty of many unsurvivable aspects of this universe, even of this planet, even of "my" bah... (who will be 21 on  8 July, bifurcatinbg in how own way, splitting tines whever he goes, however he gets there...

 

  

OUTLIVING CHILDREN (acknowledging that Earth is one of this Universe's children)

OUTLIVING CHILDREN (acknowledging that Earth is one of this Universe's Children)

Very sad indeed for parents to outlive their children.; Something happens to the generations that should not. My paternal grandmother outlived most of her ten children, and for a while, it looked as if my mother might outlive her only child. Fortunately for her, i'm still here alive and ready to try to accomplish more than ever (ideally driving). If not, there are other ways to assert a meaningful presence. For me: limited fork ways.

With all the (rather frequent) tornadic events in the US in 2012, such outliving must be more common, if not more natural. Wars contribute to this dreadful phenomenon --pur DNA supports conflict, or we'd have evolved without it. I feel like adding my tears to buckets and barrels of tears --not that my additional tears would help anything, but I still crave such addition --some form of math seems involved, so far, with everything, not that human forms of math are the best or only forms, but as part of humanity, I will continue to submit to them. I must rely, as I've always done, on human senses, the only senses I have --even humanity's instruments improve what humanity can see, hear, touch, etc. I need an equation for tears, but when I add tears, I just get more tears. I do fear that there might not be enough fresh water (or food for populations of Earth, and I do not feel that humans are not more deserving of food just for being human --I doubt that, were other animals in charge, the Earth would be experiencing this decline this fast --some of my assumptions surely show here), and tears tend to be incredibly fresh when produced, so my tears --they aren't too salty to be fresh-- can add a minuscule amount. I can't cry enough for everything. And looping bifurcating systems may not offer enough to constitute salvation --even if all possible loops are formed. Million of forks, for no reason but to make art that possibly no sentient one will see. Not that humanity's seeing it makes it any more splendid (note the assumption of splendor --humanity's Hubble space telescope did not make things easier for me; increased, actually, an accessible amount of splendor.

A time may come when dependence on tears could make a life/death difference --not a splendid difference.

I definitely do not wish to outlive my son. He must go on to live a full life, one that rewards him with joy (however he eventually defines joy). what successes, generations --if the world lasts long enough. I am optimistic that the Earth will/can endure. For my son, and sons of my sons. Surely, I hope long enough for his life to matter to more people than me. But then again, I am not promoting an afterlife such as what I was taught about so long ago. My mother still insists that her Christian beliefs are the correct beliefs. But I think that what is thought to be known (what I've been taught, and what I've observed at planetariums and through telescopes [I've been ruined, it seems, by Hubble]) about the universe and the solar system cause me to doubt her beliefs. She tells me that the prayer chains she initiated while I was hospitalized affected my outcome --I cannot say with certitude that all that praying did not help, but I wonder about what happens to the body; decomposition seems quite likely to me. Houdini did not return, and I believe that he would have had return been possible. Humanity's atoms may become available for next forms of life, assuming Earth can continue to sustain life as we've known it --not because we have dominion over other lifeforms, but because I hope we have a chance to improve the earth, to try to return it to some of what it was like during days before greed --that benefitted a few, not everyone-- helped to deplete the planet of finite resources. I do not think that we have suffered through all that will have to be endured before planetary decline can be halted or, better, reversed. Maybe it's too late for reversals. Maybe humanity does not deserve reversals. But I also don't want belief systems of humanity to perish --all that believing must not have been for naught. Surely. I don't want human generations to have an abrupt ending, but such an ending may be inevitable. There is interconnectedness among species. As insects and amphibians, for instance, meet demise, lifeforms dependent on those insects and amphibians may perish from those extinctions. Not to mention possibilities of asteroids and comets that may have deposited building blocks of life on Earth --comet Gods, I guess.

I'm not sure how my grandmother coped with being here after so many of her progeny (she had ten children, outlived all but three) were gone, returned to earth her husband tilled for so many years. A southern farmer. She outlived him too. I used to play with their geese, many of which were as tall as I was. He was dead already; never knew him except for what survived in my father and what was passed on to me through him. I've passed along some of what I received genetically to my son. Half. Lately, I've been impressed that everyone alive now has roots that extend to the first people on this planet. This seems to offer a truth no matter what is believed, creationism or evolution --of course, I thought that Darwin also offered a truth, seriously questioned by the Scopes Monkey Trial --in Tennessee, of course, where my father grew up and met my mother who now rejects everything I was taught in Cleveland, Ohio public schools, but not what I was taught in Sunday school. She is converting the garage into a church (it is not going to become the dolphin tank that my father promised, except in dreams and imagination that would not be mine had he not made the promise). My mother was always with me while my father stayed home, often on the second floor porch, watching, once, me by his side, a funnel cloud form above the church just a few yards away. True Vine. My son was not raised in church as I was; he was raised more to be a free thinker, encouraged to form his own ideas based on what made the most sense to him, and it is not organized religions. This exclusion from church has helped him rely more on logic --another human invention. How can humans not rely on human knowledge systems? Are we not surrounded by what humanity has made, whether for the detriment (according to someone's assessment) or improvement (according to someone's assessment) of human lives? Are we not primarily concerned with what may happen to people? Animals primarily as pets and food --for humans? I think of zoos, though I've visited many, as comparable to what happened in slavery, the captures that separated families --when animals are captured (I won't even talk about what happens to animals raised to be human food --no other purpose, the most noble purpose, according to Babe, book by Dick King-Smith, screenplay by George Miller and Chris Noonan --I do eat meat, the sanitized [relatively] forms purchased in supermarkets, relying on others to do the killing and butchering and packaging for me. I do like tastes of meat, and I do experience misgivings about being the carnivore I am, criticizing no carnivore for their carnivore ways --that I share). There is hypocrisy here --how can there not be? I am human-- I've admitted to eating meat, but I've rejected organized religions (many of which restrict the eating of meat to certain animals under certain conditions [of preparation] without outright prohibiting such consumption). I do not know all of what Buddhism teaches about the eating (or the not-eating) of meat, (go here http://mingkok.buddhistdoor.com/en/news/d/18354 for more info), but I reason that we should, even thinking of limited fork tenets, show more compassion toward other animals to whom this planet belongs just as much as to humans. I don't accept biblical teachings of humanity's dominion over other animals or over the world --planet. Exceedingly difficult for me to do that. Other animals may not have been as destructive as humans have been. I seem to take more outrage against those who are not free- thinkers than against carnivores; perhaps because I also think that meat-eating free- thinkers may have reasoned that eating meat is acceptable --I am from a family of carnivores, the human family as well as my personal family (my son was vegetarian until ninth grade and a field trip to Chicago where he ate a burger for the first time).

I don't know whether or not the sacrifice of the cow entered his mind (he is a member of Mensa --not that that membership means he is more or less likely to eat meat; he's also a member of the human family, and, as I've said, we haven't performed particularly well, given our responsibility for the planet --we are the planet's [self-appointed --made in God's image, according to many, including my mother] caretakers). A willing or forced sacrifice? What do we know or understand about cowness? How many of use have really tried to listen to what cows or other animals (including humans) might have to say? Does this understanding or lack of understanding really matter? As humanity runs out of what humanity, in any of its forms, considers food, perhaps this (and similar questions) will be answered. It doesn't really matter which questions are raised or attempted to be answered according to human ways of processing information --biblical or otherwise acquired-- ways of determining which questions to ask in search of a truth accepted by all with liberty and justice-- hmm; I've heard that before. Even had to recite that daily to get the "A" that I wanted (from the Declaration of Independence --not a declaration of free-thinking). 

Toledo Friends!

Hello to my Toledo Friends!  Let us bifurcate together
and dine on wonderful ideas; we will bifurcate above and below ground, rather like trees, anchored with roots that cling and spread in soil while our branches spread even between dimensions, temporarily connecting them -–I don’t think that any connection is or can be permanent; that is one reason that we must eat again and again (ideally stopping when we feel full, even though the feeling of fullness is temporary).  

         We will hunger again.  Everyday.  Probably several times a day.

Please think, if you don’t mind, for a moment of ceiba trees, or of any tree you have liked –-forgive me, please, for assuming that there is a tree you’ve liked.  If you dislike trees, this may not be a post for you, but I leave here a small interest in trees, a small interest that may become something else. 

Each tine of a limited fork also functions as a root and/or a branch and may curve, circle, disappear for a while, temporarily connecting things, possibly even snagging something tasty, something possibly nourishing, something that can be ingested –-maybe without harm(ing us), but what is ingested will change during this process, and we may change, so the temporary connections is also a means of exchange: we give something and we receive something;  we may not realize immediately that we are different, but we are.

 

Whitney's gone, but I'm still here
(hoping to take advantage of this gift)

(--maybe the world needed or wanted Whitney more --
but she is gone, and I remain to do what I can --but I can't sing as she did, certainly not at the peak of her career in the 80's and early 90's, but perhaps I'll do what I can --what more or else? I expect to fall short, human that I am without choice or argument).

Whitney's gone

(but I'm not, not that our lives should be conflated;
I would/will disappear without fanfare or even notice beyond my family & employer, maybe a few friends from neighborhoods where I've lived; a handful of doctors who may still wonder a bit exactly who I am/was).

What should I do with this extra time that is mine
--not that I really believe that I have extra time;
I don't think my time on earth has lengthened; I don't think that suddenly I have skills previously lacking, but I can see (a little) more of my son --I hope at least another 20 years though the world may be gone, and I may have entered another dimension presently (though not necessarily forever) inaccessible from here. Perhaps climate changes will make the planet inhospitable to life as humanity has known it and has come to expect it (with some religious-based differences).

Will there be enough food and and clean, fresh water?
Something that has led to me has been here since life on Earth began, so I may have descendants who will struggle to survive (along with all other lifeforms), but the easy ride (fortunately, humanity did not have to share this world with dinosaurs, but recent work suggests --pretty much confirms for me-- that birds are descendants of dinosaurs and that some of these past lizards may have been feathered --the male t-Rex may have been quite a bit more familial --caring, involved with rearing young
t-rexes, etc. He may have stayed with the nest, protecting it, decorating it, etc). He may have been one of the early gardeners.

I don't know what kind of gardener Whitney was (or in more time would have become).

I am not (never have been) noted for my gardening.

(image from Amazon) --I do have a piece in Colors of Nature, p. 743: Tarsenna's Defiance Garden in which I Love to Spit.

I did receive a small plot to care for long ago as part of the Moses Cleaveland school gardening program). My mother has performed more admirably with plants; she deserves an award from me (my father is no longer here to award her personally, but she believes she'll be reunited with him --and with all others who have departed
--including Whitney, Tarsenna, and the dinosaurs).

Hungry

I'm very hungry, so I should get something to eat -- but what?
Some snails? escargot in French.

How about some grits? Or some frog legs? 

Maybe it's just info that I crave, some definitive info --don't know where to get that. however.


I'm a litte worried too --not about limited on my time; everyone and everything that exists so far has those, but I do wonder how long any go this will last before a new cycle of existence begins, perhaps to dominate. Will there ever be (in my time here) contact with nearby universes, a way to eat from other gardens acquiring tastes for what grows there easily and in sufficient quantity to help this planet's problems with sufficient foodstuff and clean water for all! 

                                             The End Times

                                                                      (maybe --I hope not, however)

perhaps now is the time to allow this blogs to become the cookbook, in part, that it can be. Maybe some food experiments could be right. Maybe real (no offense intended) top-of-the-foodchain chefs will offer some suggestions (then again, I assume much, as I must --to be a good citizen of whatever I'm a good citizen of). 

It will soon be time here for dinner, and I am not prepared --How nice it would be to eat and be done with that, for all of my remaining time alive, but hunger will return like a stray animal I took in, hoping it would return, but a bit sad that it did come back, and I lack the capacity to condemn the animal (that was once invited) to a certain death (though being part of life already condemns what is a part of what we think we know).

i don't really know what is means to be here, but I'm here anyway --and I've worked hard to remain connected to this world without my having to address at all why I was not taken permanently (yet), joining my father and the billions who have already left, many in pre-biblecal times so without any planned restoration of life, no everlasting anything --we may not even be right about time which is not universal --whose time should be held as model? 

                                                 No answers, no answers 

                                                                   here (or on any of my plates)....

Please come over: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Dinner Game, Dinner for Schmucks, Dinner Rush, My Dinner with Andre, Dinner at Eight, 

                                                  Happy Birthday to everyone. 

__________________

Still Here!

I'm still here, mystifying doctors, baffling them and other concerned parties, especially those with some say as to whether I can (or even should) try to keep my teaching job (I'll post some info about what happens) --for now: I celebrate that I'M still here! --and wondering (a bit) what I must do to merit this elongation of my time on earth --how do I earn what I've been given (by whom? and WHY? --I Wasn't Supposed to be here, almost died at the end of the summer of 2011, YET I'M HERE! (and glad about it --perhaps this is the time that I should renew spiritual beliefs, but then I read about M-theory and black holes (especially the black hole at the center of the Miky Way, and I confess to wondering about other supermassive engines, and I'm left with enough uncertainty to make me think a return to the earth via burial is just that: a return not... (I don't mind becoming [a small] part of the dirt and/or soil; maybe some part of me will be lucky enough to nourish --at least for an hour or two-- something else [not human] that thrives long enough to dream of claiming this planet) ...not to be followed by an awakening and a calling at some point from that location (even if disintergration has been completed --it seems unlikely to me that humanity is the culmination of evolution; after us, some other terrestrial life form will likely dominate. If this is the process of existence, we--humanity--have joined a process in progress; we didn't initiate what is ongoing, seemingly unstoppable --despite some contrary evidence, such as clues of global warming (that seem to prevail this winter) economic collapse (that is spanning the world), and other devastations, --say a wayward asteroid or comet, something coming to earth to hurt or use in some way some of this planet's population. Now was this earth made for us? I doubt it. So why is it here? Why is there a fossil record? I have more questions than answers.