Climb up here and tell me: Change...Is change REALLY good?

Climate change is real and from what scientists are NOW saying, it's accelerating faster than originally projected.  The surest proof has to be the rapid melting of the Northern Polar Ice Shelf.  Other signs can be detected in changing global temp changes, most of them warmer...MUCH warmer.   Lakes, streams and rivers are shrinking and/or disappearing all together.  BIG problems ahead for the planet.

In my little corner of the world, the Metolius is slowing down; the cubic feet/second outflow at the springs just 1/2 mile from our cabin is noticeably slower.  Bad for the fish, bad for us.  For the fish the slower, more shallow water warms fast, stressing them....  cooking their eggs and they'll be fewer to hatch.

That's in store for us on Planet Earth?  It doesn't look good.  Nay sayers delayed our reacting to curb emissions that might have slowed the process, but we may have been doomed anyway.  How can a planet that's existed for millions of years crater in such a short period of habitation by mankind?  I think that mankind is the guilty party and will pay the price.  Who will inherit the earth?  I won't be here to witness that. 

Wrong thinking....Write thinking

I think most of us...too many of us... can only see our own lives as authentic.  Because the 'camera' follows us, ours is the only life we can see as real and really happening.  We don't pause long enough to consider all that happens in other peoples lives while we aren't watching them... when they aren't in the "ME Show".

We forget that our mothers, fathers, siblings, cousins, waiters, tellers, used car sellers all have a camera following them.  When we aren't present to witness it they are having thoughts and experiences every bit as real as our own.  When we see a person older, or younger, than ourselves can we instantly be aware of all the experiences that brought them to this moment and will carry them on?  Okay it's maybe mot possible to hold ALL of their experiences in our head but what are we able to do for ourselves? For OUR experiences?  We can't hold all that in our head either, but the fact that they are our experiences allows us to get ourselves in ways we don't often get others.

Though we can't get all someones experiences in our brains and have them make us 'see' them as we know ourselves, I believe it's possible to change how we regard others if we pause and just acknowledge that the person we are talking to, seeing a video of, remembering... they have a host of things that shaped and are still shaping them.  

Oh, I know, dear reader, that you KNOW all this;  but you probably don't really.  Not unless you can stop and think about it, being present 'in the moment'.  

Its a worthy meditation. 

I've got Skin in the Game (and Hair)

My skin grows drier and thiner each passing week and year.  Scaly like an alligator now, but hey, I don't mind.  And if I did, what difference would that make?

Besides, it'd be a perfect complement to my thinning, almost nonexistent, hair.  One can stand in front of me and see the back of my scalp without squinting,   though I try not to look.

But it is what it is.  I'm older than my parents were allowed to be so I'll not complain.  Wait, did this sound like a complaint?  Well, it's not.  Giving words to something gives us power over the thing.  At least, that's what I'M going with.

And besides, it's all ending so much better that the final season of GoT, yes?

Summer time 2019

It's summer starting now, pretty much everywhere in the USA.  No where is it MORE summer than on the Metolius River right this minute.  It was 80 or so, blue sky... Why even the NY Times choose to recognize BEND, OR and Camp Sherman as great places to spend some time...  They said 36 hours...  I say at least 36 YEARS.

The River flows, we hope, forever.  It bursts out of the ground 1/4 mile up stream from where I sit and write this, right now.  Lots of water, ankle and knee deep for a mile before it begins to 'develop character', deepening and broadening.

There fish like this river because the water is cold, varying only a few degrees along it's journey to Lake Billy Chinook and eventually merging in to the Dechutes, then eventually the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean.  

Lotta pines around, it's dry...High desert.  Lotta wild life and a few tourists mixing with locals.  It's a thing to experience, to be sure.  But tread lightly, please.  This entire region survives at the whim of lightening sparked, camper sparked and cigarette sparked forest fires.  And the DO come, every year...each more ferocious than the last.

The one thing that all of us can count on is that nothing can be counted on to last for every.  So enjoy every minute and acknowledge what you are insignifigant in the scope of the cosmos, but very significant in someone's heart.  That's good enough, right?  It'll have to be.

You Showed Me Love

Now I can see you
And you showed me, showed me love of the deepest kind
And I will never find a love like you
You showed me love of the deepest kind
No, no, no
Nobody, there's nobody like you

Now I see you
Now I see, hmm
You showed me love and I thank you
And I need you and I miss you

You showed me love
You showed me love
Of the deepest kind, and I will never find a love
A love like you

You showed me, you showed me love
You showed me love
You showed me love
You showed me, yeah
You showed me love
You showed me love
You showed me love of the deepest kind

I will never find a love
You showed me love
You showed me love

I will never find a love like you
Love
You showed me love
You showed me, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Of the deepest kind, the best kind of love

I'm so sorry; now I see you
Oh, God
And it's too late, it's too late
Oh, God

Hello? Can you hear me? Are you awake?

Been thinking a lot about what constitutes consciousness...what does it mean to be a living thing?  How are some living things different from other living things and on what scale does that matter?  These are private thoughts, that I'm going to write down, so I don't forget them.  Maybe it's best you don't look.

In West-World an AI creation is asked: 'Are you real?' and she answers: 'Well, if you can't tell, does it really matter?'  Good answer, right?  Our ability to receive real from not real may well play a role in the correct answer to the question of what is reality, what is consciousness.

I'll accept that there may be levels of consciousness, if we want to get all scientific about it.  An unconscious human being is still at some level conscious, as it may well be self aware in a dream-like state, an 'un-dead' state.  So, is self awareness a prerequisite?  I'm not sure.  Maybe it is.

Well, then can a plant be self aware as it turns to the warmth and light of the sun?  Perhaps...perhaps at some level, right?  I mean is the ability to grow a form of consciousness?  What about fungi and their ability to convey information to OTHER plants and trees? I think maybe that would fit in MY description of consciousness.

I guess that's really all I'm talking about...MY description of what constitutes a form of consciousness that  I can accept.  I'm the guy who truly wishes truth to be binary..off/on, 1/0, True/False.

I'm gonna have to think about this more and get back to you (me).

Testy

The cosmos is a big place.  Time is even smaller.   Why do we fuss over things of no consequence?  Even the most amazing invention ain’t shit. Why do we excuse things that set a new tone we are gonna have to live with for like forever