Life on Earth

 

I look out the kitchen window and watch planets rise and stars fall

I’ve eaten breakfast and I washed the bowl and I’m waiting for the sun to rise over the rooftops of Brooklyn.

I’ve been up for two hours, awake in Brahma time, praying and meditating, reading and drinking the black medicine.

I am standing at the kitchen window looking at the sky and waiting for sunrise. This is how I celebrate Advent.

All of my life I’ve watched the shadows of imaginary lives on screens.

The shadows of TV movies computers phones pass through my skin and into my nerves and live there inside my body filling my mind with dreams of a life. I am irradiated with shadows. I am infected with language and symbols that reproduce the human order of things, the human pandemic.

I am up before dawn with coffee and immerse myself in contemplation, taking my brain for a walk. The brain pulls at the leash trying to chase after the shadows

Any human child is a little god who possesses infinite potential at birth

The divine child is eternally born in the ground of the godhead 

The child is placed under the care of human adults and nurtured in a social environment 

By the time the god is a teenager, conflicts may appear with the adult world and the social environment the child will inherit

The divine child who is celebrated in December became a teacher who promised to bring generational conflict and an overturning of the social order

I read in the Times that the first single celled organisms appeared when the Earth was 700 million years young. According to the Times there are more living cells on Earth than there are stars in the sky or grains of sand on Earth and scientists try to count them all, a million trillion trillion — a one followed by thirty zeroes — living cells on Earth.

They probably lived in undersea volcanic vents, the article says, and feasted on the chemical energy around them, ancestral bacteria inventing photosynthesis by learning to split sunlight to split water molecules to make oxygen and sugar. This great oxidation event was 2.4 billion years ago.

clever little critters, our bacterial ancestors

why were they doing this?

was it fun?

were they in a hurry or just taking their time?

is the history of the universe simply about stuff having fun? stuff dancing and making things happen

Did bacteria create for the same reason I work in my studio? Because I am created in the image of the creative source? or is it all matter in motion ruled by chance and so is my art?

Chaos in search of form, form pursuing chaos. It’s all child’s play. Try to explain the serious work that is child’s play.

 550 million years ago multicellular organisms appeared — were they running late?

— if they got here in time maybe we wouldn’t be in the trouble we’re in now

who were these ancestors?

are they still here?

who are they?

who are you?

you made your bed in a volcano vent under the sea and you don’t want to get up but it’s another work day in the mines, splitting molecules

pick up the nine pound hammer and get to it

you fear your job is eating you

but of course we are food

it’s a god eat god universe

where bacteria learn photosynthesis,

that was work, I gotta tell you, although for the bacteria it might have been a sweet miracle to make sugar out of water and very pleasurable

maybe they had the munchies 

sometimes I long for the simple time of being a single cell in my volcanic vent under the sea

Instead of just another greybeard shlub batttered by the daily assaults on body and ego

It’s Saint Nick! A man exclaims, laughing as we pass on the sidewalk 

The young men of Satmar Williamsburg ask me if I’m Jewish

I say no, sorry, have a good holiday

If I say yes they might give me a free menorah

A few days ago I heard shouting and singing and look out my window and see 

people in sombreros are dancing on the street in front of our building

it was the feast of our Lady of Guadalupe

the new moon was a few days ago and solstice is next week.

End of winter I will be 70.

I stand at the window and see the universe unfold

Venus is clearly visible around 4 in the morning

she rises like Our Lady, like Isis, as she always has for those who look out windows

A squadron of birds is doing maneuvers. Lone birds, with or without flight plans, and birds in pairs,, and airplanes to and from Laguardia and JFK and elsewhere, and cloud types I’m unable to name as I’m unable to name the species of birds.

I’m drinking Bustelo’s black medicine and watching the the sky and 

the sun suddenly appears like a burning coal between two apartment buildings. The sun crowns over Brooklyn looking even more like a metaphor for birth than I’d expected.

We have to do more than hope the next generation is better than ours, if our planet is to stay alive.

We have to do all we can to make the universal reconciliation possible and get out of the way 

Get out of the way, old man,

The young god shouts

Out of the way?

What child is this?