Summertime

Loss.
A known absence.
If you did not know it,
it would be nothing,
which it is, of course,
a nothing of another kind,
as acutely felt as a blister,
but a tumult, too,
in the region of the heart and lungs,
an emptiness with a name: You

-Siri Hustvedt

Food and Genetics

Genetic manipulation. The mere mixture of words conjures up images of high science, and the potential erratic scientist or two.

Making monsters for profit - this is what we passively accept as reasonable. 

"The water is diseased, and the soil exhausted. It appears like a desert but for the tall buildings with windows broken open to let in the still air; smoggy, and choking with pollutants. The water is diseased, and the soil is exhausted, and the crowd is quiet, and only infants are permitted to cry. 

Then someone asks why the madmen laugh at everything."

On Empire

Dive In

The 'I' that floats along the wave of time, 

From a distance I watch him. 

With the dust and the water, 

With the fruit and the flower, 

With the All he is rushing forward. 

He is always on the surface, 

Tossed by the waves and dancing to the rhythm 

Of joy and suffering. 

The least loss makes him suffer, 

The least wound hurts him-- 

Him I see from afar. 

That 'I' is not my real self; 

I am still within myself, 

I do not float in the stream of death. 

I am free, I am desireless, 

I am peace, I am illumined-- 

Him I see from afar.

- Rabindranath Tagore