The foghorns bending to their work
Sheri S. Tepper, in her novel Grass, defines humans as very small beings. While this is undoubtedly a good call, it is not exactly a full description. Douglas Adams’s Ford Prefect had to upgrade his first description of planet earth from ‘harmless’ to ‘mostly harmless.’ So, maybe Tepper, likewise, should upgrade her vision of humanity to ‘very strange small beings.’
One would think people face enough problems in the real world to keep them fully engaged for their whole, natural lives. Instead, they watch movies and want to be like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, beating the bad guys and finding true love in Hollywood’s Fantasyville – or they read action thrillers and Harlequin books, seeking deliverance between the covers of mighty tomes or waif-like booklets.
Maybe living in the real world is just too scary, too complex – or simply too much work and ultimately unrewarding for such very small (and very strange) beings. However, whatever the reasoning or pathology behind this is, escapism has become big business. The happening place is now the virtual world.
You can lose yourself in gaming, dressing up like dragon or unicorn, magician or prince, ice queen or temple whore – and spend the rest of your digital-bound life chasing rainbows.
You can go even further and rearrange your actual and mostly bewildering life as you see fit, wrap the world around you like a security blanket and never leave the safe surroundings of Secondlife.
Or you can opt for that old-time, groin-grind religion, the world of virtual sex. Why settle for the ever-disappointing flesh, when digital Eve or cyber Adam can fulfill your wildest dreams?
Or maybe you could – at times – ignore the rude embrace of flesh and stone, the Siren songs of phantom space and just sit down and read some poem by Jane Hirshfield:
For a wedding on Mont Tamalpais
July,
and the rich apples
once again falling.
You put them to your lips,
as you were meant to,
enter a sweetness
the earth wants to give.
Everything loves this way,
in gold honey,
in gold mountain grass,
that carries lightly the shadow of hawks,
the shadow of clouds passing by.
And the dry grasses,
the live oaks and bays,
taste the apples’ deep sweetness
because you taste it, as you were meant to,
tasting the life that is yours,
While below, the foghorns bend to their work,
bringing home what is coming home,
blessing what goes.
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