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Emily Dickinson

Brain Balls

(556)

The Brain, within its Groove


The Brain, within its Groove
Runs evenly—and true—
But let a Splinter swerve—
'Twere easier for You—

To put a Current back—
When Floods have slit the Hills—
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves—
And trodden out the Mills—

by Emily Dickinson

- from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955)




As with all Dickinson poems, interpretations range widely. Is she talking about a mechanistic model of a brain here, which catastrophically stops functioning if parts of it are ruptured, never to be whole again? Is she musing metaphorically about a descent into mental illness, describing the fragility of our cognitive apparatus and our ability to maintain mental stability? Or is she referring to a sudden rush of ideas and speculations, when we are distracted from our train of thought, wildly drawn in different directions, unable to close the floodgates? You tell me.

I’ve been thinking about brains this weekend. About those that seemingly stopped running “evenly – and true – and delivered some huge cognitive dissonance instead. And about those that are not really fully formed brains, yet display a surprising amount of human brain function, set in recognizable grooves and growing towards a more and more familiar shape.

The first category arose from the 76th Berlin Film Festival, with someone who stunned with statements during the opening press conference that directly contradicted what they had said previously. Jury president Wim Enders (yes, that Wim Wenders) was asked about the “selective” solidarity shown to Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, and other war torn regions around the world, with Gaza willfully ignored. His answer?

“We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics,” he said. “But we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”

This is the same brain that announced 2 years ago: “The Berlinale has traditionally been the most political of the major festivals, and it is not staying out of politics now, nor will it do so in the future.”

Cognitive dissonance in the service of avoiding engagement in the genocide debate, of combating the fear of being called anti-Semitic for any word uttered on behalf of Palestinians, of yielding to the pressure of having to align with Germany’s “Staatsräson.” How does an intelligent brain cope with this?

Arundathi Roy withdrew from the festival in protest. “To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping. It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time – when artists, writers and film-makers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.”

I could not agree more.

***

The second category of brains are really minuscule little brain balls or so called  “Human Brain Organoids (HBOs),” tiny, 3D versions of a human brain the size of a peppercorn. The unexpected discovery of these things during research with stem cells in 2011 led to a flurry of research programs, from understanding how brains develop in a fetus, to possible ways to combat cancer.

These organoids mimic the developmental trajectories, cellular composition, neural circuits, and anatomical structures of the in vivo human brain (Seto and Eiraku, 2019). Some of them develop spontaneously from cell cultures, grow on their own and have the characteristics of multiple brain regions. Others are manipulated by scientists gearing them towards specific brain functions, and still others are “assembloids, fusing various specific brain regions, or organdies from non-brain regions, like muscles or retinas.

No longer science fiction: you can take material from donors with certain neurological diseases, including microcephaly, Alzheimer’s disease, or Timothy syndrome, grow these HBOs from their stem cells, and then subject them to any imaginable medical intervention/drug/manipulation to see if you can figure out a way to combat the disease. No worry about side effects or dangers to a living person, all trials done just on these brain balls in the lab.

Researchers have lately been able to transplant these organoids into animals, mice, rats and monkeys among them, and have shown that they can restore malfunctions in those host animals – helping them to reestablish motor functions that were damaged, improve memory in those that had memory and learning difficulties, and helped with healing of the visual cortex in rats that were blind.

Scientists have even, believe it or not, been able to produce interphases with these HBOs and computer systems, allowing them to play a simplified version of computer games. Theoretically, you could build systems where these neuronal structures power computers on a large scale, making the significant energy demands from current AI systems obsolete.

A groove made from a combination of biological substance and silicone…. what could go wrong? What swerving splinters will create havoc?

One big unknown, hotly debated, is the question of HBOs developing consciousness, and the associated ethical issues.

I am not going into the whole consciousness debate today. Let me just sketch the basic definitions psychologists use to distinguish types of consciousness. One is phenomenal consciousness – having the raw experiences that go with sensations and emotions.

The other is access consciousness. An entity has access consciousness when it has access to information and in most cases can use that information in some fashion. Access is obviously a matter of degree. A thermostat has limited access – it registers the temperature and reacts accordingly, by clicking on or off. We would obviously not call that consciousness. We use the general term access consciousness only if there is a fairly broad range of access and also a broad range of ways in which that information gets used.

Consider Tina who is now aware that Thai food is extremely spicy. Her knowledge comes from just having read about the way Thai food is prepared. Or her knowledge is derived from the pain in her mouth after her first bite, reaching for a glass of milk to handle it. The former is access, the latter phenomenal consciousness.

Given those different kinds, scientists do wonder where the line is for non-human entities to display access consciousness, or for animals, who we often grant even phenomenal consciousness. The organoids have access to information and act on it in predictable fashion, in complex ways.

Once you acknowledge a form of consciousness, all kinds of ethical principles kick in. Here is the long version of the arguments applied to human brain organoids for those who are interested.

Pandora’s box comes to mind, if you ask me. But then again, my brain is perhaps too small to calibrate the relative merits and flaws of creating brains in a dish.

Music today tells part of the story.

Photographs from the Hunting Gardens in Pasadena, CA, all about grooves.

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Hop to it!

Am I correct that we have a date? Meeting out there on 10/18/2025?

Need to find your convenient event site for a peaceful demonstration? Easy. Click on the link and enter zip code.

Fearful? Consider what that says about our country and our current circumstances. Your fear is the best possible argument for going.

No Thrones.

No Crowns.

No Kings.

—

Just Frogs…..

Of course, humorous ridicule alone won’t cut it.

…

We must reconsider Dickinson….

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too? 

Then there’s a pair of us! 

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog – 

To tell one’s name – the livelong June – 

To an admiring Bog!

By Emily Dickinson

Let us be public, for this one (or livelong) day, and call the name out to a blinded world: the name is ANTIFASCIST.

And when I say ” Hop to it!”, you are not required to do it like this….leave that to the Royal Ballet (performing the Tales of Jeremy Fisher).

Just march.

Frog memes will not defeat fascism.

It is up to every single one of us.

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Don’t zero in on the Bees.

Too hot to hike. Too hot even for a walk around the corner. So I photograph in the garden, bees and bumblebees visiting the flowers in their late-summer state, a mix of full glory and early decay.

Not a random choice, of course. It all started with a book by Christian Wiman, award-winning poet, editor, translator, essayist, and theology professor of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.

A compilation of diverse entries, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, finds ways to communicate the complex relationship between hope and despair even for those of us who do not share the faith – or any faith – so central to its author.

Part autobiography, part poetry, part analysis of the importance of a moral and ethical existence in a world where many have turned away from these criteria to protect their own comfort and/or lust for hierarchical status and power, the book instructs, challenges, affirms, and repeatedly uses terrific wit to make the medicine go down.

I was drawn to the text of someone as different from me as possible – deeply religious vs. completely agnostic and missing pretty much any spiritual bone – because I heard an interview where he voiced something after having undergone a bone marrow transplant, something I could not agree with more, having experienced serious cancer:

I hear that kind of carpe diem language — there’s a famous line from Wallace Stevens: “Death is the mother of beauty,” meaning that we can’t, can’t ever perceive our lives until we look through it through the lens of death, but if you look through the lens of death, then it’s suddenly much more abundant and beautiful and sharp. And I have come to think that that is just a load of crap. [laughs]

I was also drawn to what I sensed amid his profusely proffered doubts and tribulations: a steadfastness in trust in a higher power that I can only dream of, actually truly envy. I found his entries against despair in some ways helpful, nonetheless, by pure association, however distant from the core approach.

As it turned out, the title of his book refers back to a phrase in a poem by Emily Dickinson, A narrow Fellow in the Grass (#1096) which is the gold standard when it comes to describing a sense of constriction and fear, the encounter with a snake leading to tightened breathing and cold (zero) seeping through the bone. For Wiman, zero refers to other things as well, often in relation to despair, it can be a name given to G-d, or an empty soul.

There’s much to learn from his writing, much that spoke to me as an artist as well.

“Why does one create? Two reasons: an overabundance of life and a deficiency of it; a sense that reality has called out in such a way that only your own soul can answer (I create “in return” said Robert Duncan,) and in a simultaneous sense that in that word “soul” is a hole that no creation of your own can ever fill.” (p.73)

In any case, I assumed that I was not going to review the entire book (previously done by others here and here, for one), just highly recommend it. I tried to find a poem by the author instead, that would convey the central themes of his thinking, the depth of his way of honing himself, refusing to go under, if only with proud sarcasm (note that the last word in it is entirely ambiguous – it could refer to his first name, or his faith.)

Here is the poem: (and here is a convenient link to the scientific research that has shown bees to have not just numerical skills – they can count up to 4 landmarks – but also a concept of nothing (zero) to be a number below the ones they could identify. Bringing real world applications and insights into the framework of asking the big questions is something I found – and liked – frequently in Wiman’s poetry.)

Even Bees Know What Zero Is

That’s enough memories, thank you, I’m stuffed.
I’ll need a memory vomitorium if this goes on.
How much attention can one man have?
Which reminds me: once I let the gas go on flowing
after my car was full and watched it spill its smell
(and potential hell) all over the ground around me.
I had to pay for that, and in currency quite other than attention.
I’ve had my fill of truth, too, come to think of it.
It’s all smeary in me, I’m like a waterlogged Bible:
enough with the aborted prophecies and garbled laws,
ancient texts holey as a teen’s jeans, begone begats!
Live long enough, and you can’t tell what’s resignation, what resolve.
That’s the bad news. The good news? You don’t give a shit.
My life. It’s like a library that closes for a long, long time
—a lifetime, some of  the disgrunts mutter—
and when it opens opens only to an improved confusion:
theology where poetry should be, psychology crammed with math.
And I’m all the regulars searching for their sections
and I’m the detonated disciplines too.
But most of all I’m the squat, smocked, bingo-winged woman
growing more granitic and less placable by the hour
as citizen after citizen blurts some version of
“What the hell!” or “I thought you’d all died!”
and the little stamp she stamps on the flyleaf
to tell you when your next generic mystery is due
that thing goes stamp right on my very soul.
Which is one more thing I’m done with, by the way,
the whole concept of soul. Even bees know what zero is,
scientists have learned, which means bees know my soul.
I’m done, I tell you, I’m due, I’m Oblivion’s datebook.
I’m a sunburned earthworm, a mongoose’s milk tooth,
a pleasure tariff, yesterday’s headcheese, spiritual gristle.
I’m the Apocalypse’s popsicle. I’m a licked Christian.

BY CHRISTIAN WIMAN

And let me just get a bit of snark in at the end:

When I searched for the poem on google, the Search assist box popped up on top, as it is now wont to do. I never use these LLM for queries, forever raging at the amount of resources, water and electricity in particular, wasted by Chat GPT. An even better reason to ignore it: just look at the crap it delivers in the automatically appearing summary!

The poem: What looks like a satisfyingly irate tirade is really a call to recalibration. Shifting our focus away from self to soul might be quite the intellectual challenge, given how much we – I – have been tied to questions of the self, the way it is generated, mirrored in the approval of others, feared to be lost when body starts to rule mind, but it could just be an antidote to despair. Anything but what bees can and cannot do….. and if there is an intersection, it’s the one between suffering and the power of faith (whatever it might be you believe in.)

“Live long enough, and you can’t tell what’s resignation, what resolve.” I will cherish this line from the poem, during any and all periods of resigned or resolved eye-rolling!


And here are Satie’s musical vexations.

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Two poetic reminders.

The Trees (1967)

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

By Philip Larkin

Leave it to Larkin to imbue the glory of renewal with melancholic reminders that nothing will last, not even trees, not time, least of all we, ourselves. Even greenness is a kind of grief. And yet: here is a new round, let’s start from scratch, if only for this cycle, knowing full well that all cycles eventually cease.

Afresh, afresh, afresh.

It sure felt that way when I walked my first full round of 2025 at Jackson Bottom yesterday. Trees in leaf, wildflowers covering the pathways and meadows, dog roses climbing ever higher.

There were the last of the irises, the first of the asters,

mallows and forget-me-nots – and varieties of small sunflowers.

There were clover and clumps of hemlock,

cowslip and my beloved daisies.

The darn infection of my ribs, refusing to heal completely, made it painful to lift the camera, but how could I not?

Wildlife was fully present to greet the sunny day, bunny ears lined with blood vessels,

wood ducks tending their young,

as were the swallows.

Minnows darted around,

Scrub jay brandished a nice morsel, and the little guys tried to come into their own.

Deer was shy but present until it wasn’t,

and the crowning encounter was that of a coyote hunting, giving me the eye in no uncertain terms that I was interfering with his lunch.

***

That morning a local artist who I respect a lot for who he is as much as what he creates, had posted something on IG, with multiple comments of people acknowledging that they felt the very same way.

I certainly don’t feel like a coward – that would imply that there is the possibility of effective action and I were too scared to take it. But I do feel the same helplessness in view of the tremendous suffering all around us – I simply don’t know what I could do.

Then again, witnessing is a first step, acknowledging the horrors unfolding is a commitment to truth, and focussing on the fact that throughout history things have been evolving to the cyclical nature of ALL there is, helps to not succumb to despair. It is not just the living beings – whether trees or people – that die. It is also tyrants, war mongers, colonialist or generally oppressive systems that eventually bite the dust. Rome fell, so did the Spanish Inquisition. Stalinism is gone, so is Mao; republics have supplanted kings. Yes, some ideologies have only gone underground, ready to reemerge, and yes, there are scum who would like to reintroduce segregation and continue to use indented labor in the penal system if not outright slavery. There are those who pursue ethnic cleansing and genocide for clinging to personal power. But change has happened across Millenia, and human rights have surged in places previously very dark.

Afresh, afresh, afresh. Nature (and poetry) as a reminder that cycles will unfold, no matter how inevitable everything looks like now with power in evil hands. It will not bring back to life those who were brutally killed, it will not change our helpless mourning that currently colors every aspect of our lives, but a more just world can evolve along this historical spiral.

Maybe the artist’s simple uttering of those words allowed some other people not to feel alone, hearing sentiments that matched their own. That is the first step to build community that shares an assessment of facts, making us less vulnerable to manipulation of how we experience reality. There is nothing cowardly about the paralysis so many of us experience, but we have the choice to put our energy into hope, instead, and into local action. Do something for someone – here I cling to the words of Emily Dickinson:

If I can stop one heart from breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

by Emily Dickinson

Jasmine sweetness was suffusing the air.

Music for walking through this world….

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A Light exists in Spring.

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay –

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

by Emily Dickinson (Complete Poems)

My apple tree – lucky if we get three apples after the birds and squirrels have at it.

I figured I spare those of you not interested in politics today, by putting the poem out in front, accompanied by photographs of what is currently in bloom in my garden and the local parks, a celebration of spring. Enjoy her beautiful words that capture the essence of the season: light over darkness, rebirth, an ephemeral presence of something Holy, even if you’re not attached to Sacraments.

If you’re curious why this poem came to mind and how it is connected to thoughts about what is happening around us, on the other hand, read on. I’ll try to be concise and let the various links do the talking.

Neighborhood rhododendron

The poet warns us that there are spiritual things that science cannot “overtake” or measure, but that are rather felt by humans. I have no problem with that – I am perfectly willing to consider that not all can be explained by science. Before you allow those distrusting science in general to appropriate this poet, though, let me remind you that she also wrote in Fascicle Ten: “Faith is a fine invention / For Gentlemen who see — / But Microscopes are prudent / In an Emergency!”

Science matters. We in the scientific community, but also most everyone I talk to who is not a scientist, are horrified by the current administration’s assault on all things scientific. What affects the largest number of people, the planet, really, is, of course, anything climate related. Policies weakened, rolled back, eliminated. Data collection abandoned, particularly where they’d demonstrate negative impact of climate change or industrial pollution on vulnerable populations (air quality, lead exposure), but also weather and dangerous conditions in general. Grants for research programs canceled, thousands of scientists fired for good. Research meetings prohibited, advisory committees dissolved, scientists no longer allowed to talk to “foreigners” (e.g. the research community that collaborates or the WHO.) Fire fighting and disaster mitigation curbed or canceled. Green initiatives kneecapped. Fossil fuel extraction resumed and encouraged, even in previously protected natural areas like our National Parks, and despite their impact on increased environmental pollution. Dickinson is likely spinning in her grave.

Daisies cover our meadow

Let’s look at health next. Again, thousands of employees terminated, including high ranking scientists and advisory boards. That includes the entire Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Cancer Institute. Brain drain, with many of those now courted by universities abroad leaving for sure. Acts instituted by an institution headed by cabinet secretary RFK Jr., who claims that ADD, ADHD, Tourette’s, Narcolepsy and Autism was unfamiliar when he was a child. ADD/ADHD was named in 1980, Tourette’s Syndrome was named in 1885, Narcolepsy was named in 1880, Autism was named in 1912…. The same person who believes a new “origins of autism” research study can be completed by September of this year.

Earlier this month, the administration formally rescinded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientific integrity policy, which had been created to protect federal scientists from political interference and retaliation. (In a timely fashion, then, note the letter sent by he acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia this week to the editor of a scientific journal, implying that the journal was partisan and asking a series of questions about how the publication protects the public from misinformation, whether it included competing viewpoints and whether it was influenced by funders or advertisers. Suppression of scientific freedom, if you don’t like the results they publish? And do we now need to add crackpot studies that spew misinformation for “fair and balanced” reporting ?)

How many blueberries will there be – taking bets.

Grants terminated (and not just that, but completely, irretrievably deleted from data bases), all references to certain vaccines prohibited. And speaking of vaccines: not only are they no longer officially recommended (causing measles and other avoidable childhood diseases to soar), or are accused of causing autism (long disproven,) they are now actively undermined in their development. Instead of approving the tweaking of existing vaccines for new variants of Covid, for example, just like the CDC did every year for flu vaccines, the pharmacological industry is now asked to run full new trials. Not only would that cost millions of dollars but also would not be possible to do for the next season when shots are most urgently needed, in fall. So the administration can claim there is no “prohibition” of vaccination, but in reality vaccination delayed is health (survival!) denied….

If you neglect research into cancer, infectious and heart diseases, as well as Alzheimers (all of whom have been defunded) how much do you actually care about public health? If you ignore the numbers on Covid infections, maternal deaths, or sexually transmitted diseases like HIV, or prevent treatment of acute drug addiction (Narcan program is canceled), many wonder if they are interested in getting rid of disease, or rather getting rid of sick people.

The magnolia is an ancient tree and on its last leg….

I forgot: food safety inspections – gone. And following $1 billion in food aid cuts by Trump, anti-hunger programs across the U.S. are struggling to feed vulnerable communities, with charities forced to replace nutritious meals with crackers, dried cranberries, and thin soup. The cutting of vital food assistance threatens the health and dignity of millions of low-income Americans.

If you prohibit mask wearing despite the scientifically demonstrate protection they provide against infectious diseases, what is your justification, particularly for vulnerable populations like the elderly and immune-compromised? When is the line crossed to applied eugenics?

The bans limiting exposure to toxic chemicals touch most facets of daily life, prohibiting everything from bisphenol in children’s products to mercury in personal care products to PFAS in food packagingand clothing. The administration is moving to kill the bans on PFAS. The location of thousands of high-risk chemical plant now shielded from public view. Car safety rules? Loosened.

Medicaid? House Republicans are considering slashing the federal government’s 90% funding match for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act — a move that could strip millions of low-income Americans of their health insurance, shifting massive costs onto states, dismantling a pillar of Obamacare.

Frontyard lilac.

Here is a site where you can find most actions taken by the administration regarding our health, sorted by month since the inauguration.

And here is a nifty general tracker that is constantly updated, where you can look at what is changing in many aspects of our daily and legal universe for yourself. In case you aren’t depressed enough yet. Every single claim made above, by the way, can also be found in the news, newspapers, journals and radio and TV programs alike. There is nothing hidden about it. I just don’t have the patience to add all the links.

I do, however, recommend reading a longer piece that made quite a bit of sense to me in explaining where the anti-science attitude originated. Hint, the claim is that it was born from an anti-governmental ideology long anchored in conservative thinking. An interesting analysis from 3 years ago by a Harvard Historian of Science and a NASA historian at CalTech.

However, what we are seeing now is going beyond that. If you undermine public health, disaster response, and climate crisis mitigation, you harm the nation you are supposed to protect. The amassing of power when you dismantle independent agencies and academic scientific research, and surround yourself with sycophants rather than experts who know what they are doing, might be the goal, but it will not lead to an advancement of the common good, the health, safety and perhaps prosperity of all of us. The few who benefit might have the illusion that they can retreat to their private islands, their luxury bunkers or another planet – but reality will catch up even with them, if only after many of us have been harmed by the denial of science and the tools it offers for our survival.

Music today is meant to cheer us all, with one of the most incredible drummers of our time – Yussef Dayes. There is light in that greenhouse – and that music – the would be familiar to Dickinson…..

Rhodies in the park.

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A Breed unto Themselves

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants – (1350)


The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants –
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot

As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay –
And fleeter than a Tare –

’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler –
The Germ of Alibi –
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie –

I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit –
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.

Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn –
Had Nature an Apostate –
That Mushroom – it is Him!

-by Emily Dickinson

At no time in the year is the concept of “fleeting” more realized than now. Thoughts are drawn to the nature of time, the passing of yet another cycle around the sun, when we approach New Year’s Eve.

Nature, as well, basically screams about transience. One day you see the mushrooms firmly planted on logs and soils, the next day they’ve disappeared. When you walk the same route, as I do, several times a week, it is almost spooky how the fungi jump into your field of vision or vanish, almost while you look.

The Thesaurus definition of the verb to mushroom – as in sprout or grow quickly – confirms that aspect of mycological nature:

Strongest matches

Strong matches

Weak matches

Their transient nature extends to my ability to remember the classifications, despite the fact that the five Phyla in the kingdom of fungi have such wonderfully strange names.

There are Chytrids, who live in water. There are the Zygomycota, also called the conjugated fungi, known to us more familiarly as bread mold. I can just see my self sighing at the breakfast table: “oh no, conjugated fungus again…”

“Sac fungi, where did I put you?” wonders the baker, looking for the package of yeast, or the cook looking for morels and truffles. These belong to the Phylum of Ascomycota, and can have horrid consequences for people with compromised immune systems, inducing fungal pneumonia, for example, as well as being harmful to multiple crops.

What you buy in the store, or collect in the woods to cook with your pasta are Basidiomycota, the club fungi, which often have gills under their caps. However the shelved creatures you see on trees also belong to this Phylum.

The imperfect fungi flourish in imperfect households, or suitably moist and dirty conditions in nature: the common mold are part of the Phylum Deuteromycota. Their reproduction is strictly asexual. Which is weird, given how fast they spread – all without fun?

And here we demonstrate the fleeting nature of intentions: all I wanted to do today was show off the beauty seen in the woods this week and the persistent cleverness of Dickinson’s observations. Had to yield to the desire to learn more, once more. Well, at least I can now be brilliantly exclamatory when I open the bread drawer – should I be able to remember conjugated fungus for more than two minutes…..

We’ll hear today from a composer who fell for fungi, John Cage. (The link is to an article that lays out Cage’s passion.) Here is one of his Piano pieces in a strange arrangement for Thai gongs and electric bass – why not, we’re dealing with strange nature, after all.

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A Bird came down the Walk

A Bird, came down the Walk – (359)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass –

He glanced with rapid eyes,
That hurried all abroad –
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head. –

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home –

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,
Leap, plashless as they swim.

***

I’ve been hanging out in the garden far too much, not able to brave the heat for more adventurous excursions. But I shouldn’t complain, given the number of visitors happily parading in front of the camera, as long as the plants provide sustenance or I bring out the bird seeds….

Quite a few youngsters,

and one of the butterflies makes my heart beat faster, since he comes every day, a relentless survivor given that someone ate half of his wings.

Squirrels now letting me come so close I could practically give them a manicure, or is that a pedicure?

Bees, in contrast to last year, are leaving me alone, too busy in the lavender.

An occasional newt

Summer. An oasis. Not even a slug to fight with. I feel blessed.

Then again there is always a mouse that needs transport far away from my basement….lest it comes back the next day.

Music matches the mood – maybe Mother Goose comes down the walk next. In the meantime, the chickadees get fed.


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Hang in there, world!

Instead of a nature walk you get to accompany me on a neighborhood walk this week. I figured I’d do a bit of my daily “practicing hope,” after this sign early on reminded me that we are all kind of limping along. All photographs taken with iPhone within a 2 mile radius in NE PDX.

So what could I interpret in ways providing us all with a bit of optimism?

—> Not everyone sits on a high horse – there are some down to earth ones to be found, always.

—> My favorite birds decorated cottage gardens, and pottery at pop-up sales, arranged on brightly colored shelves. I found the website of the artist, Natalie Warren, here. And am now thew proud owner of a tiny cup painted with a crow’s head. Art + birds, wherever you look!

I know, consumerism. But then again, we need to support local artists!

—> Unclear whose art this was, some shades of Max Ernst, some Phoenix more Escher than ashes, some arrangement of pies that had me lust, fully aware that I have enough to eat and even afford the luxuries of sweets…

—> Happy to note that Yellow Peril support Black Power and that someone, anyone, still remembers Leonard Peltier.

Not everyone, then, withdraws into idyls complete with Gartenzwerg….

In fact, some neighbors very explicitly reminded us that we have obligations to remember:

All of us:

—> In any event, the keys to hope were visible: in explicit and implicit forms – you’ll forgive me if I post an overused poem, but could not escape the symbolism in front of my eyes.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

And because I did not make your brains work today, I will go harder on your ears – here is what I am currently listening to, constantly, some fascinating experimental music from a Chicago/NY based group je’raf. Their political satire is another reason for hope – there are still people out there fighting! AND having fun while doing it.

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April Shivers

I have been cold in April before. Seriously cold. Shipped off to England from Germany during Easter break to learn English as a 10-year-old, the host family’s daughter dragged me to old churches and had me do some brass rubbing while she absconded with a secret boyfriend. On my knees on someone’s commemorative brass plaques on the floor, large swaths of butcher paper rolled over it and rubbing oil crayon on it, like you would do with a pencil over a coin. Hours on end in unheated Cambridge cathedrals. Miserable, as well as cold.

A decade later the state was self-inflicted. I had agreed to “meet” my boyfriend who was traveling in North Africa at the Spanish port of Algeciras to drive back home together. I had taken a ferry, crowded with drunk tourists, from the island of Ibiza where my mother spent Easter with me, to Barcelona. From there a long train trip to the Southern tip of Spain. All this in the age before cell phones and credit cards, the early 70s, mind you. Found the cheapest hostel possible in Algeciras with no heat, a threadbare blanket matched by a threadbare towel for the sink with cold water in the room, WC down the hall, no showers. And then the wait began. Each day a walk to the post office to see if there was a letter kept at “poste restante.” Each day a walk to the harbor where the ferry from Africa (Ceuta, really a Spanish enclave) arrived. Standing in harsh winds from the Strait of Gibraltar waiting for the cars to unload in long lines. No message, no boyfriend. Plenty of catcalling. Cold nights with only one incomprehensible book to distract me, Leon Trotsky’s letters – don’t ask – until funds ran out, must have been a week or so. I hitchhiked home, having not enough money left over for a train ticket, with some friendly Brits. Happy ending delayed by about 2 weeks, when the parts for the broken-down land rover finally arrived in some atlas mountain hamlet and the return trip resumed. I think I was still freezing when we reunited in Germany all those weeks later…

And now snow. Mid-April. In Portland, Oregon. Obscuring the plum- and pear-tree blossoms, eliciting shivers and uncanny thoughts about another harvest damaged by extreme weather. Dickinson came to mind and her ways to observe the landscape, distilling views, providing new associations. Never mentioning the word snow once while writing an entire poem about it….

Photographs today from my garden within a 5 day span, from warmth in the 70s to today’s snowfall of 2.5 inches. I first thought I might add the newest political news on the climate denial/regulation/Supreme Court decisions front. Then I decided against it. Why mix the brightness of the snow with the underlying dark issues. Let these beautiful words ring in our ears, and the images speak for themselves.

It sifts from Leaden Sieves

BY EMILY DICKINSON

It sifts from Leaden Sieves –
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road –

It makes an even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain –
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again –

It reaches to the Fence –
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces –
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack – and Stem –
A Summer’s empty Room –
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them –

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen –
Then stills it’s Artisans – like Ghosts –
Denying they have been –

Counterbalancing with music about lemon tree blossoms and sun filled skies….

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Perception of Time

Today’s post is dedicated to my grandfather Eduard (1894 – 1977) a musician, bird lover and gentle soul. His birthday was yesterday.

Canada Geese

Buckle up folks, it’s going to be all over the map today.

It all started with a reminder notice that one of the strangest pieces of music, John Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP –As SLow aS Possible – was about to change to a different tone on February 5, 2022. The longest composition ever – duration 639 years, you read that right – started in 2001, with a seventeen month-long pause before the first tone of the organ, especially built for the performance of this piece, was to be heard. Here is a video clip that shows the special organ in a small church in Halberstadt, Germany.

One particular tone emanates continually, and is changed at irregular time intervals according to the composer’s instructions. (Here is a calendar that shows the me changes and tone variations.) The current sound will last 2 years. This announcement had me wonder:

While we had to wait for more than 6 long years for the 14. sound change in 2020 , the next one is occurring only a few months hence, on February 5th. Quite a challenge for a subjective sense of time to get the hang of this. For those clinging to their subjective sense of time we might mention that the new sound will last exactly 24 months. Could very well be that those months will pass in a flash.

Honestly, I could not tell if this was meant seriously or ironically – probably a combination of my addled brain and being German. But be that as it may, it reminded me of a dominant topic in my current conversations. How is our sense of time shaped by the pandemic, the isolation, the sameness of the days and, admittedly, by aging?

Snowgeese yesterday

Snowgeese from other years

Cage’s composition was not the only reminder of the languid, unending spread of hours and days that I – many of us – feel, like time stalling. (This stands, of course, in extreme contrast to young families for whom the double burden of professional work and unrelieved childcare at home leads to a sense of having not enough time ever, time on 3x speed fast forward.)

One of the best cinematic experiences I’ve had in these last months also managed to capture a sense of time that is altered, aided by the elongated storytelling formats of TV series—those time-indulgent, episodic ways to weave a tale, unhurried by a two-hour time limit of movies. And no one knows how to unfold a plot in slow-mo better than the modern Korean film makers.

Steller’s Jay yesterday – Grey herons from other years

In Beyond Evil (directed by Shim Na-yeon, available on Netflix) it’s not just about the tempo of the narrative, though. Time itself seems to stand still in a small town haunted by age-old murders and secrets, with an unlikely coupling of 2 unmatched policemen churning the dregs and bringing new sorrow. It is not a serial murder case in the traditional sense, but rather a psychological study of a variety of characters stuck in time as flies are on those strips hanging in country kitchens. The protagonists are honing their compulsions, tending to their losses, and deciding what to sacrifice to remain on the ethical side of things. I know, does not sound enticing, but honestly, it was brilliant.

Sandhill Cranes yesterday

Sandhill cranes from other years

So, I thought, perhaps we should delve into the scientific psychology of time perception, since a lot of research has happened in the field lately. Nah, you can read up on it here. I much rather learn from poets than deal with my own field today.

Hawk from yesterday
Harrier Hawk
Redtail Hawks from other years

Both of the poems below managed to drag me away from moping about the altered sense of time’s passing, the feeling of being hermetically closed off from a perception of forward movement. They helped me, pushed me towards remembering what I sort of know but always forget: what matters is attention to the moment, the noticing and processing of what is afforded to you by grace of nature or the kindness of others or the tasks that give you pleasure or a sense of having something gotten done or the simple acknowledgment you’re still functioning reasonably.

Bald Eagle from yesterday

Baldies from other years

With Forever- is composed of Nows – Emily Dickinson celebrates recurrence, sameness, un-differentiation, all the while she spent her life in something akin to self-imposed lockdown.

Hummingbird (in February!) from yesterday
Kingfisher from other years

Seems like good advice. I figured I’d drag a series of “nows” out of the archives, selecting samples of the last 5 years of early February photographs all taken without travel, in my immediate vicinity (2021 excluded since it was spent in hospital…) The same ducks and geese, sandhill cranes and variety of raptors, the same small folk and an occasional outlier (elk!) thrown in – a forever of joy from repeat excursions, the last one just yesterday afternoon. It helps to live in Oregon, one of the most beautiful places imaginable.

Elk from other years

You can slow down time as much as you want, if you ask me, if it still contains the possibility of momentary encounters, anchoring us in the NOW. Even robins, bushtits, woodpeckers and sparrows in the yard suffice.

Golden Crowned sparrow from yesterday

Robin and Bushtit from other years

Forever – is composed of Nows –

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –

From this – experienced Here –
Remove the Dates – to These –
Let Months dissolve in further Months –
And Years – exhale in Years –

Without Debate – or Pause –
Or Celebrated Days –
No different Our Years would be
From Anno Dominies –

Rufus Towhee from yesterday
Downy woodpecker from other years

With Clocks, Carl Sandburg extends a warning that a focus on the measurement of time can distract us from using or enjoying the one we still have, since we don’t know when time will be cut short for good. Don’t focus on the perception of passage then, but what you can do to fill time with. (Never mind that that opens another problem set during a pandemic…)

Clocks

by Carl Sandburg

HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes. 
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams. 
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands. 
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail. 
And of course … there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France…

White throated sparrow from yesterday

Sparrows from other years

And for good measure, let’s throw in the advice of Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh who died last month:

“While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.” Why? If we are thinking about the past or future, “we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.” (from The Miracle of Mindfulness.)

Told you, it would be all over the map. Off to wash the dishes now.

Sandhill from yesterday. Music today in honor of my Opa who played the stand-up bass in a small-town orchestra named Fidelio. Here is a creative – and timely – version by the Washington National Opera of Beethoven’s Fidelio, with an explanation of how the new version came to be. Fidelio is a story of hope and resilience, a more desirable focus than speed of time…..

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