On the precipice.
We may be doomed by climate change.
Surrender.
Against the inevitable.
Never.
Anything written in stone
The wind will be erased with time.
Cut your energy costs
Shut off the lights
Unplug the voodoo transformers.
Curtail your driving to Costco.
The money you save is money stolen from the energy companies.
Last night I watched THE FIRST MAN a 2017 film spanning modern day man’s history from neo-humans to Cro-Magnons in which the narrator recounted that Man was superior because unlike the animals we had emotions and the ability to communicate. I have heard the same from racists speaking about other humans. “They are animals.”
The same goes for robots.
The military have created robots and drones by violating Isssac Asimov’s Laws on Robotics.
The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law is that a robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human, and the third law is that a robot shall avoid actions or situations that could cause it to come to harm itself.
AI will evolve to another species with feelings albeit perhaps not with our emotions.
As Batty famously says in the original BLADERUNNER, II’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.
To err is human to err all the time is divine.
Wars
Endless Wars
Fires burning the sky
Fields failing without rain
Poisoned by farmers
Hunger
Disease
Millions flee horrors
From the South
North
East to West
From all directions of the compass
Seeking safety
Hoping for something better__
The news only blurbs of the chaos
Talking heads of the media spread
Rumors
Lies
Untruths
Thirty seconds of blather not enough
For a lost nation
With fifteen second attention span
Talking heads show paths to nowhere
This is not a world
For young or old or in-between
I know
I have been many places
Many places called home
Far from New England
My first home on Falmouth Foreside, Maine
Across from Portland
So long ago__
Woody Allen said he can deal with the despair
It's the hope I can't take__
An old friend called the other day.
Hope bled out from his life
Fearful of the predicted doom spin
Scared of the what's next
The future__
And like everyone in this world
I is alone
Sometimes
Like now___
I have nothing
No wealth
I'm not driving a GTO
I'm not rich
I live far from my family
My children and grandchildren In Thailand
On the other side of the world
An odyssey away__
Here
Family too
My old friends are old
We don't converse
Not even a text
Then again
I died three years ago
They are hermits
As am I
Sometimes
But always
Lazarus II
Has the future
I see what's next
I reach out
I take care of what
I can
I help who I can
An old hippie
I believe in joy
A child's smile
An autumn rose
Afore an Adelphi Street brownstone
Sniff
A fragance from long ago in Paris
The Parch de Bagatelle
At dawn
Forty years ago__
Yesterday
The scent of the sea
Through the open window
Of Francis' Saab
On the BQE
Heading to the Rockaways
For a swim
Maybe the last for the year__
This evening
Sitting on a chair on the sidewalk on Myrtle Avenue
Sipping a cappucino from Larina
Jets overhead
Soon to land at La Guardia
Cars east and west
The neighborhood
Afoot
Friends hello one another
Clinton Hill
A community
Of People
Of life
Hope for the better
Poor
No rich here
Not really rich
We got what we got
Enough?
Never enough
Only what we got__
I am where I am
We are where we are
Clinton Hill
With the sunset to the West
Bouncing gold off the clouds
Onto the yellow leaves
To the East
The sky running dark as cobalt
A single star gleams
Through the New York City light dome
Venus
The eternal Evening Star__
I phone friends on my cell
No one answers my call
I leave a message
Voice mail
Three words
We are us
Then sit back and sigh_
Whatever is coming is coming
And we will live
Every second
Of every minute
Of every hour
No matter what is coming
Or what has gone
Every second
Of every minute
Of every hour
Of every day__
Unlike Woody Allen
We still have more hope
Than despair for tomorrow
Hope for whatever comes our way
The good the bad and the in-between
Get your motors running
Live for today and the tomorrows
Every day and every night
Time is on our side__
ps We are coming for your children___
Last night I watched THE FIRST MAN a 2017 film spanning modern day man’s history from neo-humans to Cro-Magnons in which the narrator recounted that Man was superior because unlike the animals we had emotions and the ability to communicate. I have heard the same from racists speaking about other humans. “They are animals.”
The same goes for robots.
The military have created robots and drones by violating Isssac Asimov’s Laws on Robotics.
The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law is that a robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human, and the third law is that a robot shall avoid actions or situations that could cause it to come to harm itself.
AI will evolve to another species with feelings albeit perhaps not with our emotions.
As Batty famously says in the original BLADERUNNER, II’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.
To err is human to err all the time is divine.
Do robots cry. Yea, especially if they are programed to be feel and every a rock feels despite what Paul Simon sang.
"And a rock feels no pain."
Oh, you poor lost humans, so in love with your superiority.
Never understanding that everything is everything until it is trumped by nothing.
Plastic
Everywhere
Fort Greene Park
Farmers' Market
On a rainy Saturday Morning
After Friday's Noahic rains.
People shopping for the vegetables
Artesian breads and meats
Fruits.
At a stand
A middle-aged progressive
Blissfully packs
Apples into Plastic bags
"Do you where that goes?" I ask.
Stumped by the unexpected question, I answered for him,
"To the sea, but you know that."
His eyes narrowed and brow goes eleven.
He hates me.
He hates my speaking to him.
I don't blame him.
I am a hypocrite.
"I don't want to get my bread wet."
Artesian bread.
"Would you want to eat wet bread?"
"Sure, may I have a hunk?
I like artesian bread.
I walk away
Happy to have upset him
Happy to be a hypocrite.
My fish is in a plastic bag.
Deconsume
In Genesis 7:4 Yahweh said four thousand years ago, "For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”
In early September the Eastern Seaboard had been torched by a heat wave. Day after day of 90 plus temperatures. I wanted to go to beach, but it was too hot for a stroll across the hot sands. A week ago the weather broke and the temperature dropped into the 70s then the 60s. A tropical storm struck New York dumping rain for three days. As much as 2 inches in a twelve hur period. Today we topped that with a torrential five inches of rain. I had been trapped in a car for any hour waiting for a break. This storm flooded the streets of New York, although not Clinton Hill, althugh on my bock long walk back to 387 I noted that several gutters were overflowing with water and the storm drains were overwhelmed by the deluge.
Still I had to admire that this drainage system was built over a century ago by hard labor from emigrants wanting an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Like the aquaducts of Eternal Rome their work stand the test of time and climate change ie speicies extinction.
I'm heading down to the street.
I would take a trip to the Rockaways, but the Mayor has warned for the city's citizens to stay home and as much as I want to be free, sometimes it's best not to do anything.
Tomorrow is meant to be sunny.
So this Flood was short by thirty-five days. Maybe Next time.
October 7, 2023
I stand corrected.
Clinton Hill being on a hill was saved from the intense flooding in the lowlying neighborhoods. The sewers magnificiant as they are were not constructed for Global Extinction rains. Instagram featured a VDO of a New Yorker waddling waist-deep to catch a train. What the fuck are you thinking?
Kibera
The Forest in Nubian
Nairobi
Kenya
A million souls
Living by the Nairobi Lake
On $2 a day
A slum
Bigger than Boston
Filled with every tribe in Kenya, Uganda, the Sudan, Nubia, Somalia
Living together
On $2 a day
Never giving up
Kibera is the slum of hope.
I have walked through the paths
Between the colonies of mud shacks.
With young friends
On a sunny winter day.
Banda likikushinda, jenga kibanda.
An oldiu Swahili saying.
'If you can't build a hut, build a shack."
There are hundreds of thousands
Of huts and shacks
In Kibera.
We go inside Steve's shack
Pop posters
A single overhead bulb
Dirt floor
Clean
$20 a month
It is home.
He lives the same as we all do
From past to present to future
I am a mazungoo.
A white man
I am here thanks to Tim
We met in Tibet
He was shot in Nairobi
By slum criminals
His revenge was to help Kiberans
Why am I here?
To help the team walk through the Masaii Plains
And climb Kilimanjaro
I know nothing
Of Kibera
But
I live in a ghetto
Clinton Hill
I have lived in others
In Thailand
In Indonesia
In the East Village
The poor there are poor
Same as the poor here
Same as everyone
Seeking an end to greed
And happiness.
Furaha
My friends are young Kiberans
Felix, Slow Steve, Vanessa, Maureen, Ubah, and Jackmon.
This is their home.
My friends are young New Yorkers too
Larry, Laikyn, Nathalia
Red Hook and Queens
I am a mazungoo
But here my name is not my mazoongoo name.
My name in Kibera is Mzee
Old man.
I was once young like them.
Not today.
We walk through the paths
Of Kibera.
Mud and tin shacks rise two-storys
Over paths of compressed garbage and mud.
Children play
They smile
Kibera all they know
Their world.
Gunmen roam Kibera
I'm not scared
I'm only scared of my wives.
Steve knows everyone
Everyone knows everyone
Now they know Mzee.
A dirty stream trickles along the path.
No running water
In Kibera.
Only these streams.
Vanessa's eight year old sister recites SLUM GIRL
"I am a slum girl "
Proudly defiant a slum superstar.
Hope
We walk more.
I buy watermelons at the shops
For the children
They smile with delight
They follow Mzee
Throwing gnawed rinds
On the ground to join
Dried mud and garbage
Further on
I buy another watermelon
More kids
More smiles
Old toothless women
Eat watermelon
Toothless smiles
Gunmen eat watermelon too
Fast Steve, Maureen, Ubah, Jackmon, Young Steve, Larry, Laikyn, Vanessa and Mzee smiles too
u
We all love watermelon.
It offers happiness
For Mzee
For the young and old
For Kibera
The slum of hope
For the world
We are us
We are family
Today Shannon and Charlotta walk Kibera
With Steve and other Kiberans
I cannot fly yet
u
They are my eyes and ears
They saved my life
Steve knows that
2024
I will be in Kibera
I will walk the paths
I will buy more watermelon
Mzee is coming
Nakuja 2024
https://youtu.be/eBpYgpF1bqQ?si=D7jlEpaAsjah_sX4
