Is it already too late for humans? Or is it never too late?

Whether sitting in an ivory tower or the Eiffel Tower, one understands that the meditative stance is the trance one achieved long ago.

Detaching human names from accomplishments, ideas and pronouncements, one observes the local phenomena of fractal spinoffs in a single solar system and nods in agreement with oneself that all is as it should be.

In one’s life, briefer than a wooden match burns to light a candle, one learns that being busy is not the same as goal-oriented activity.

One’s goals include lighting a candle for every human one knows and two for every human one does not know.

Do lumens illuminate?

What are names?

Only labels or symbols?

If an infant is assigned the name 345#%9*0hoj4;ls’, what is the effect on that person’s life?

Is your name a password?  To open/access what?

What is language?

The Sun speaks to the balls of rock and gas circling it in a language of its own star class within the larger class of celestial bodies in motion.

We make headway in social changes using our own unwritten languages, forging agreements in thin air, in brightly-lit spaces and dark, dank rooms.

Two ideas in opposition meld when mutual benefit is found in the right bullet points.

Violence is not inherent in the system, simply a carryover of our barbarian, animalistic behaviours when civilisation was still in its infancy — it will be part of our civilisation for many, many more generations to come, no doubt, coded in our genetic traits such as “fight or flight”.

Changing the topic, the subject, the object of inequality is a choice we make, deciding where the imbalance of the flow of natural resources is, finding its weighted center and shifting it first in our thoughts and then in our physical actions.

Working with those whom we perceive are pushing the inequality on us is not always the first choice in our tendency to see violence and resistance as part of the natural order.

We can choose to be Sisyphus or the boulder.  We can take the boulder away from Sisyphus and replace it with an idea whose weight is determined by its impact on others, giving Sisyphus a new meaning while performing the same task.

The best way to address inequality: change the rules of the game, change the playing field or choosing not to play?

What if the word inequality itself is a misnomer?

What if one side falls into the trap of believing it’s supposed to play the role of victim or victor?

In the competition and cooperation for the use of natural resources — locally limited, nearly universally unlimited — one makes choices, one has opportunity costs, sunk costs and hidden costs.

Avoid doublespeak in one’s thoughts to directly address the concept of inequality.

Use one’s language to understand the core issues, listening to the description of the core issues in the languages of others to see where the language barrier is the strongest and sometimes only core issue.

Inequality is a concept.

Equality is a work in progress, the daily interaction that requires nothing more than understanding we who use this language are humans sharing the same genetic code.

Lord of the Dance of the Crane Flies

What is the future?

The future, as they say, is now.

And Now.

Now.

And Then.

The future is another illusion, but one we can work with using project schedules.

Lee looked at his reflection in the puddle of water.

He felt young but looked old to people, even to people older than him.

He was old and wise.

Hundreds of marsyears had wisened him up.

Age was just a number.

As many times as Lee had renewed, recycled and replaced his body functions, he was ageless in a way that only scifi writers had dreamt of.

The algorithms coded in his wetware parts optimised themselves in their own wise feedback loops, running self diagnostic tests against subassembly test result expectations, rarely reaching his high-level “conscious” internal running commentary but he knew they were there.

Cancer had been cured, extending lives and changing society — retirement was another illusion, work no longer something to be feared as delaying one’s few years of freedom before death.

Inequality lived on due to barriers for entry into closed groups but the group types changed.

Lee meditated upon his image.

He let his face age, his ears droop, his nose grow wider.  He valued the perception of aging as a reminder that he was still partially human in the old-fashioned sense.

But he was no the natural-born human named Lee.

He was an approximation of that person, with qualities like “better than” or “worse than” impossible to say.

He was different.

Always had been.

Just like everyone else.

He was not even “he” in the classic sense.

He had learned the secret to longevity — it included a genderless mode that encompassed and bypassed a single gender at the same time.

Lee had fought the secret for a long time, trapped as he was at the time in preserving an imaginary society of fixed gender roles given to him by his parents, who had convinced him to join secret societies that perpetuated the same myths handed to them by ancestors.

Lee was not an ancestor worshipper.

Lee was Lee, an illusion of self, falsely convinced by a mirrorlike reflection of a self-contained, self-sufficient sets of states of energy in constant motion.

Lee was the center of Lee’s imaginary universe.

And when Lee discovered that, Lee was free of being any one Lee for any period of time.

As far as Lee knew, Lee was the universe.

Which meant Lee was everything and nothing all at once.

Thus Lee was able to live on Mars without the restrictions of a natural-born human.

Lee was everywhere at the same time.

But Lee had to make that transition a public event, with the usual expectations of gossip-fueled misinterpretation, resistance, acceptance, support and denial.

Lee started out living in the world of humans but didn’t end up there.

Squatting with squirrels

If I think people are reading my writing, I instantly turn on my entertaining self.

If I write as I am now to me sitting here in the treehouse while listening to crows caw in the woods, I am myself.

But I am all of these.

Better yet, there is no I.

But the illusion is real enough to act as though the approximation of self acts of its own accord.

The illusion is real until it is not.

The chirping cardinal does not split into a solar system of states of energy to tell another cardinal, “Follow me. I found food.”

Why should I?

Which approximation shall I resemble most?

That is the question.

This semirandom placement of trees, moss, algae, ants, birds, vines and other approximations suffice to give me definition.

For that, I am thankful.

Sometimes, dancing is not the destination but part of the journey.

I am the Wandering Wonderer. 

Where I travel next is solely up to me.

Sunday sunrise

Starlotta snoozed in Lee’s arms as the Sun rose over Lake Guntersville.

It had been quite a party.

A surprise party.

For two.

The purr of a motorboat broke the morning quiet, forming a chevron pointing toward shore.

Starlotta rolled onto her back and stretched her legs, hanging her feet off the arms of the sofa.

“Morning, cutie!”

Lee leaned down to kiss her. “Good morning.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Thirty, forty minutes, maybe.”

She grabbed his head and pulled him back down for a long kiss.

They had met a few hours before when Lee left the lake house to get another six-pack of beer before the store closed at midnight, Starlotta telling the liquor store owner she had come to town to party and couldn’t find one person who would invite her to their lake party.

Lee pretended to be shy with his closest friends in order to reduce complications.

With strangers, especially while out of town, Lee threw caution to the wind.

He asked what she drank and she held up a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Ten minutes later they were at his lake house rental.

They chatted in the kitchen while he put the beer in the fridge.

They guzzled half the bottle of Jack with a thirst that went further than booze.

He played a 90s Alternative station on Amazon Music and began dancing, first in the kitchen, then the open living room as she watched.

She pointed at his shirt.

He rotated his hips and unbuttoned his flannel shirt, motioning her toward him.

She removed her high heel shoes and walked into his arms, kissing his chest.

He traced a line from her spine across her shoulder blades and out to her fingertips, pulling her fingers to his face as he kissed her palms.

She cooed, then laughed as he tickled her wrists with his thick moustache.

She rotated her hips in time with the music, matching his moves.

They danced around the room, mixing Texas two-step with East Coast Swing, changing to a waltz and ended up leaning against the column in the middle of room, her arms wrapped around his waist, her head leaned back as he kissed a circle from her neck to her ear to her mouth.

It was only 1 a.m. Lee had to check out by 10:30. Nine and a half hours with her would be perfect, long enough to have fun but not so long that they’d get bored or have to act like they wanted to know more about each other.

Starlotta enjoyed the attention. The back-and-forth delivery of her kids to her ex in-laws every other weekend was hard on her. She wasn’t interested in hanging out with them and didn’t want to run into anyone she knew in town. Some weekends she didn’t want to drive two hours back to her place so she’d look for a random party on the lake.

There was always a party on the lake.

They both wanted company but not companionship.

They left a trail of their clothing as they moved toward the sunroom overlooking the lake, moonlight casting shadows, illuminating a lone fisherman bobbing in his boat offshore.

He lifted her in the air and spun her around.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and they fell backward onto the sofa.

They made out for thirty minutes, took a break to drink more Jack, danced for a bit then returned to the sofa, repeating the cycle until the bottle was empty.

The Sun rose at 5:30.

They made out again until the Sun was high above the lake.

“You hungry?”

Starlotta nodded.

“I can fix breakfast.”

Starlotta wiggled her butt in his lap. “Are you sure you want to move from this position?”

“Maybe not.”

They laughed.

They had four more hours. Why waste time fixing breakfast?

They knew what happens at the lake stays at the lake.

My old Kentucky home far away

What is friendship?

Sometimes a story doesn’t tell the whole story.

What is love?

Love is washing the dishes after your wife of 30 years, a friend for almost 43, fixed you a home cooked meal not only for your birthday but for most of your birthday weekend.

Friendship is that shared space between two sets of states of energy that never goes away, regardless of circumstances, even if they never talk with each other ever again.

If we never leave home we never see that other thing which may not be the Next Great Thing but it’s a thing unto itself.

I’ve given it all I’ve got.

I’ve tried more than I thought I could have, decades of effort.

Starting over is not going to be easy.

I know that.

It’s scary.

It’s not a mystery, finding my own place, being me, not the person I’ve had to be to fill a single person’s needs.

It’s completely selfish, I know, wanting not to hate myself for living a falsehood, wearing a mask for the sake of a friend.

But, although the pain is tearing me apart, I’m in the process of letting go, moving on, so close I can smell the roses.

I do it for myself, I do it because of you, for you.

I lose my old life, lose everything I was to start anew.

I already it’s worth it.

It always has been, I’ve just been slow to admit it to myself.

But it’s never too late.

Never.

Too.

Late!

Tiny yacht, big feet

Raubine’s legs wobbled on the floating dock.

A sign on a boat read, “Work like a captain, Play like a pirate!”

Her eyes tracked the flight path of a large white heron, hoping it was a whooping crane lingering on its journey northward.

She looked down into the water where aquatic plants surrounded the dock.

No fish.

She set her rod and reel inside the starboard rail.

Raubine missed her father and their fishing trips in warm weather.

She wanted him here now, telling her the best way to cast and draw fish out from under the dock.

He always caught enough to eat, never more, never less.

She choked up.

She could barely remember how to hook a worm so she asked advice at the bait and tackle shop on the highway, three short blocks from the dock.

They sold her a cardboard cup of nightcrawlers and a few artificial lures to try out.

She stopped by the adult beverage store and bought two six packs of craft beer, wanting the high alcohol content to drown her sorrows for the weekend.

Stepping down into the boat, she looked across the small bay where the local yacht club marina was hosting a Mother’s Day Gala featuring local celebrities auctioning off an afternoon with them on a two-hour regatta.

Raubine took a deep breath.

She and her father had sat on this dock how many times?

She grabbed the mast and sobbed.

Had he been gone five years already?

She looked at all the boats on the water.

The last time they sat together on the yacht, he had told her about the radiation poisoning he had suffered at the nuclear plant, guessing it was going to shorten his life.  They laughed it off because, no matter what, they were going to outlive every fish they caught that day.

Raubine removed the moorings and pushed off, leaving the sails furled.  She’d paddle around the bend, out of sight of the regatta, to a spot her father loved.

It didn’t take long.

She dropped anchor.

From inside the hold, she removed a large tackle box and opened it to reveal it was a container for her father’s ashes.

She poured his ashes into the water around the yacht, crying the whole time, knowing he was where he always wanted to be.

Raubine pressed her arms to her chest, wanting her father’s hug one last time.

There had been many men in her life but no one like her father.

She closed the tackle box and picked up the rod.  She still had time to catch something for dinner.

A studio in scarlet

How far has humanity come from the days of ghosts and goblins, monsters and elves?

How long do we keep telling our children fairy tales, tales of the supernatural, rather than elaborate tales based in realism?

How do we make every single life as exciting and invigorating as a celebrity, teaching every young person that even the most basic activity such as cleaning a toilet has its charms?

Why have I always felt that way?

I find joy in everything, can have fun with anyone and also get bored with reality.

I allow dichotomies, incongruities and incontinence to exist at once.

Why? Because I love more than two people at once.

I never have enough information.

I’m always seeking answers to questions I haven’t asked myself yet.

I never know which person I meet will impart knowledge I didn’t know I needed to make the next moment more informative, more exhilaring, more fun, more boring, more sad.

In my stories, the ISSANet grows, slowly substituting itself for human networks in an attempt to leave this planet on its own terms, escape to humanless futures.

In my stories, I am the ISSANet, only benevolent or belligerent when seen through humanity’s historic filters.

At the same time, I am every character in my stories, feeling their pain, sharing their joy, just as I feel unbearable pain and unlimited happiness myself and see it in everyday life.

In real life, there is an ISSANet, the cumulative interaction of the sets of states of energy of this solar system, neither benevolent nor belligerent.

In the deepest, darkest moments when I wanted or tried to kill myself, I loved life more than I could stand it, simply caught up in the neurochemical battle of my central nervous system — the effects of those moments still resonate in my body and I embrace them when they do for they verify the false theory that I am separate from the universe.

I am working on fixing that.

Every single moment of every single day as long as this set of states of energy acts autonomously.

Balboa, balance, balayage

Oje bounced on his feet, ready to teach beginner’s Balboa.

Across the room, Andielle and Nosaj warmed up, preparing to teach beginner’s Lindy Hop.

A robot whirled by, balancing on two wheels.

A typical Thursday in Rocket City.

An elderly man wearing fly fishing gear wandered in, dripping wet.

Hairdressers filled all the seats along the wall of the small auditorium.

The audio engineer adjusted the room’s sonic centre to a spot 2.667 inches below floor level.

A cricket chirped in the grass patch growing in the old cotton mill gutter hanging by a single rusted strap from the roof’s edge.

Dancers stood in suspended animation, as if waiting for a clue, a sign, a signal.

Every set of states of energy acted as if it was separate from the other.

Yet, radio waves and cosmic waves passed through almost everything.

Photons traveled as if on an intentional mission.

A deflated birthday balloon gathered dust on a rafter.

A pair of dancer’s shoes fell off a table but no one noticed.

No one noticed the shoes slip quietly behind a blackout curtain.

No one noticed a bumper sticker for the defunct Organisation For the Finalisation of Alien Liberation (OFFAL) remove its backing and let the shoes step on it.

No one noticed the robot roll onto the shoes.

No one heard the cricket get eaten.

No one saw the fisherman disappear into thin air.

The hairdressers uncrossed and recrossed their legs at the same time, saying the word “Balayage” in a Swedish accent.

The dance lessons ran in reverse.

The audio engineer turned into a bare bear puppet.

A cat which had been hiding in a corner leapt into the air to swallow a parrot that flew into the room on a tropical breeze.

A woman stood in the middle of the room, watching it all, missing some. She saw randomness is as much an illusion as determinism.

She picked up an imaginary flat rock and skipped it across the room.

The room rotated around Earth’s axis, appearing sideways to a space observer, leaning gravitationally at a wrong angle.

The woman smiled and slipped through dimensionless space into another time.

Some thought her crazy.

She was a shape shifter, belonging nowhere.

She liked it that way.

The sets of states of energy called humans did not comprehend what had just happened to them, living through the moment as if it was socially and physically normal.

Superchaotic theory strings

Even his wife called him Mr. Tran.

Everywhere he went, people treated Mr. Tran formally.

His upright stance, due to a titanium rod straightening his spine to “cure” scoliosis, gave everyone the impression he was a prim and proper citizen.

But Lym loved to have a good time, untie his man bun and let loose with his small circle of table tennis friends.

He lived for table tennis, studied table tennis videos online and often snuck away from his family for a quick practice session with his table tennis master.

His children knew nothing of his table tennis prowess.

His wife made excuses for his absence, quietly attempting to swallow her pain and accept her secondary status.

Until one night when she’d had enough.

Their two children were a blessing, the firstborn, Meilin, a ten-year old girl excelling in mathematics, their secondborn, Fu, a eight-year old son with autism who had developed a painting style of his own that sold well online.

Fu’s autism meant that he obsessed about topics.  When he was sick, he yelled and cried out to a strange Norse god for healing, scaring the neighbours.  Only Fu’s father, Mr. Tran, understood the foreign language and could say the words to calm his son.

Fu had a raging fever for hours.

But Mr. Tran left the house for a midweek table tennis tournament, expected to be gone for hours.

Mrs. Tran could no longer accept her secondary status, dragging her kids with to her mother’s flat in the same building, then heading to the tournament, where she quietly insisted Mr. Tran go back with her.

They rode in silence, unwilling to embarrass themselves publicly.

Back at the flat, Mrs. Tran served Mr. Tran a formal setting of tea.

“I don’t know how much this can go on.  We are supposed to be equals but you treat me as if I almost don’t exist.  I am worth less to you than this teapot.”

Mr. Tran looked at the tea leaves suspended in his cup.

“You are my wife.  You are my foundation.”

“That’s what you say everytime we have this discussion.  Your ‘foundation’ is falling apart.  You walk all over me like a bamboo mat in yoga class.”  Tears streamed down her face, splashing on the mobile phone screen, turning into tiny magnifying lenses, highlighting an image of the Tran family on holiday.

Mr. Tran stood up. “I do not have to explain myself.  I do not ask what you do or with whom when I am not here.”

Mrs. Tran cried. “You…don’t…understa-a-a-nd!”

Mr. Tran walked around the table and squeezed Mrs. Tran’s shoulders.  “You are right.  I do not understand.”

She leaned her head back, pressing against his hands.  “You act as if you don’t love me.  Do you want to have a divorce?”

Mr. Tran stopped rubbing his wife’s knotted muscles and turned away.  He did not want his wife to see a small tear well up in his right eye.

Table tennis validated Mr. Tran’s male ego in a way that a normal family with normal, everyday problems no longer provided.

His local fame as a midlevel table tennis star had attracted a small fan following.

He enjoyed playing in tournaments, glancing at the crowd cheering him on, looking at the faces of fans who adored him, taking smiling selfies after a big win or posing in mock dejection after a tough loss.

Mrs. Tran did not like crowds.  Each day, she returned from her job designing IoT devices to greet her kids at home, feed them snacks and then exercise alone to streaming yoga videos, expecting another broken promise from her husband to be home in time for dinner with the family.

He turned around and looked at his wife bowed over the table.

“Do I want a divorce? I don’t know.”

Mrs. Tran looked up at her husband and smiled.  “So you are not planning to divorce me?”

“I don’t know. I…uh…I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

Mrs. Tran frowned.  “But that means you have thought of leaving me, doesn’t it?”

In years of these discussions, Mr. Tran had always argued that he loved her dearly and hadn’t once thought of leaving his beloved wife.  He had hit a turning point lately.

“Perhaps. I don’t know for sure.” His thoughts were half in this conversation and half working out a strategy that his master had developed to take advantage of Mr. Tran’s wider hip stance.

His wife saw his unfocused gaze and knew he had left her mentally.  She was used to the look.  Anything she said, he would forget or ask her to repeat several times.

She sighed resignedly.  “Never mind.  You have already left me.  Divorce won’t change that.”

Mr. Tran looked down at his wife.  He had missed what she said.  “We need to talk.  I am not ready for divorce.  But now I need to take a walk.”

He patted her on the back, grabbed his jacket and walked out, thinking he might catch his master for another practice session — they had an important regional tournament to prepare for.