The Geniture Mill

by Shaun Lawton

Millions of nascency factories scatter

throughout our universe

we call them stars



Their huge nests resemble

gigantic spinning hives

from whose center

seeds are spat out



These germs take root

at random distances

from the astral womb nexus



Stellar machines

deliver their planets

one cosmic jewel at a time



It took a boundless period

for all eight stones to be borne

to their respective orbits

in our radiant quadrant



At varying distances

temperatures and conditions

generate distinct aspects




The tetrad of inner planets

reflect the New Testament

in the living gospel of our star



The four gas giants remain

testament to their ancient

flaring halos

Spellbound Current

Start the river of time wide open flowing in immemorial grandeur 
Turn to the rivulets of blood compressed within mankind's veins 
Fueling its central transformers into galvanic turbines set to receive
Arterial emanations streaming in sequence from quasars to hearts

A complicated recycling undergoes a perpetual Möbius circuit 
Tracing exchanged laws of thermodynamics from nascent dissolution
Toward delivery of oblivion spun from infinitesimality to dominance
Through the spectrum of the most extreme to the imperceptible    

Challenges of the vital material connecting the nexus of the whole
To the consummate webbing of the labyrinth of entanglement 
Coursing between wavering oscillation and the staggering flux
Of the alternating polarities inherent to the voltaic firmament 

Simultaneously completing the integrated culmination and division
Of the proliferating fractional multitude of creation constituting
The establishment of a regenerative foundation of fatal breath
Siring vitality's annihilation laid down to rest above and below 

The stationary orbit of constant motion that surrounds the external
Manifestation of petrified incandescence in a transubstantiation 
Of cardinal plasma siphoned from zero into the singular totality
Sustaining the deliverance of our manifestation of ordered chaos

Clairgnosis

photo by the author Seaside OR November 2017

   The principle of inversion strung through its correlative conclusion argues both for and against the truth because what's real for one may not apply to another despite all views to the contrary. Another way of stating all things may be seen should the lens through which they must be observed necessarily be corrected or cleaned. I'm haunted by the idea. I'm persecuted by the thought, while I'm still alive, that our ordinary viewpoint of how we actually rest, in motion, upon a planet spinning about our Sun—a solitary star in our own galaxy already teeming with untold stars beyond counting—may fall short of the reality by a significant margin, denoting our chances of survival. But I won't let it stop me from dreaming. 

   That we are here, now remains all that we possess together during this turbulent time on Earth. Zoomed in and focused upon, our material universe knit together at the cellular level and stretched out into membranes which form the skin of the masks we wear on our journeys through the cold interstellar darkness remains outspread before us even as we hurl, tumbling in our waking and sleep, head over shoulders in sync racing along the same old spinning road as before.

   There's no escaping this carousel, it's the only ride in town. It will lead you directly to Heaven or Hell, you best believe it, princess or clown. This I heard whispered in the left ear. An imp, apparently, leaving discreet suggestions. Either that or a manifestation of a base desire, dealt with externally. Only, looking about, it's not there. Just the insistent whispering in the ear, when passing by a window halfway open to the wind. An acoustic pareidolia of whispering sands. The cadence of a voice trying to make itself heard.

   The merger with clairsentience appears on a scale of musical notes which either ascend or descend by orders of octaves describing this sonic passage known as the music of the spheres. A continuum referencing the form our manifestations must react upon here on this plane of physical existence we all find ourselves on. (This repetition. The first echo describing the ghost.)

   The undying syllable repeated on the lips of those who live to pass on the story. The articulate heartbeat which keeps it alive: a ululation whose strident echoes eventually decay into the general electromagnetic signature. The reason both good and evil are only words made up by humans remains that all life appears harmonized on a scale of vibrating frequencies whose slope goes further up or farther down the spectrum, rendering those ideas as being merely of a higher or lower frequency to corresponding staves, and therefore of an entirely relative nature.

   The Song of Light that is ourselves will continue its aria cascading against the alternating cacophany of the universe. The writing on the wall remains as a photoacoustic impression to dazzle and taunt us with its bioluminescense. When we reverse our expectation of our true places in the cosmos, we realize that the farthest distance from here becomes defined by the very parameters against our faces. When we begin to see ourselves as individual organisms expressed along a particular spacetime vector of this universe, each and every one of us ascribed to our own actual pin-point in time, then we may truly see each other as the only so-called "extraterrestrials" within reach worth giving a good god damn about, lost out here among the stars together.

   When preceding to explore the unfathomable with inquiries, remember to first examine the questions themselves to likely find them wanting. What may we agree upon to be the definition of alien, for instance?  That which operates on a different level and whose nature we may know nothing about? Analogous to this lies the question, how may we agree upon the all-encompassing definition of here?

   We must recall what the process of alienation itself consists of, when examining our own nature. Once again this brings us to the moment of ourselves, and of looking in. Isn't that the very question? What does it mean to look in and what does it mean to look out? Looking without seeing. Knowing without reading. Seeing without knowing. Believing what we're seeing. Seeing what we believe.

   One could just as easily point out that staring at the stars themselves describes the act of looking in and that examining cellular activity beneath our own skin through a microscope more accurately shows us the farthest ends of our universe in the very act of continuing to develop, in line with looking out from our perspective, in other words. Where we dwell upon an Outer Membrane, so to speak. Or rather, where we resonate throughout a section of the unfolding astral harmonies triggered by the age old lifelong interpenetrating cascade of spiraling galaxies.

   To consider ourselves as infinitesimal parts of such a staggering scope may truly overwhelm us, which helps explain the merciful act of failing to comprehend it all. Meanwhile the manifestation of this unfettered, radiant symphonic creature continues to unwind amid the stars its long distance harmonic cry, a doppler song that should we take caution to hear on a dark and lonely night, we might hope to have our memory of what we heeded there erased, lest its howling haunt our occasional dreams, knowing we stand upon the fore decks of this creational ship.

   By definition, anything we imagine cannot be classified as unreal, rendering the impossible to be a fleeting and prefatory condition. Only by interpersonal contact with each other may we reach the available population of the stars. All of the alien remains here together with us on this complicated planet from outer space.  One reason for this:  the unknown Other remains the only place which could render the alien moot. So-called "outer space" happens to not be how it appears to us.

   We all feel its supercharged microvibration at the sub planck level. Copies of ourselves could be shredding into the past through black holes bleeding neutrinos fired back in time, re-undergoing the exact process once again, always the first time in a complete circuit loop of concordant stasis rendered as a reflection of a perfect capture of our distinctiveness: the living, holographic universe thrums with intricacy. And then again each and every one of those individual duplicates could still easily be every one of us continuing on our spiraling construct in this endless hallway of mirrors, every carbon drone thinking they're the only ones facing existence alone. Every carbon copy clone being the only ones in existence to be known.

  

BORNE AGAIN [Notes Toward Being]

Around what new bends of the human experience could we plot a new story? 

What's the difference between an old story and a new one?

What if 5 different versions were told, of 5 different ways the same (old/new) story turned out?

What if 1 story were told--that of the 1 way all stories end up?

(This hints at the question of perspective. From what or whose perspective is the story being told? And for whom or what?)

If the fantastical story has reflected our present (or slipping away into historic) reality (as classic science fiction, for example, has functioned) would it be possible (or even desirable) to tell a story that does not? My answer is yes, because of our inherent fascination with (not to mention fear of) the unknown.

In order to write a story which effectively reveals the truly unknown it would take rendering one's imagination in a form previously unthought of. 

In order to even begin venturing beyond our established borderlines of the known, it would have to be determined what the elements of the known primarily consist of.

We're familiar with these tropes thanks to the enduring work and studies of the likes of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and the great philosophers, poets, scientists, and writers of our time. 

To begin with, time itself must be subjected to the scrutiny which reveals its nature in relation to space and their intersection with ourselves. 

The computational power of the human brain may be seen as an ultimate reflection of the cosmos itself, just as the sophisticated complexity of a single leaf may remain comparable to that of humankind's most advanced technology. 

Are dreams and death the only things which may unlock our bond to this current paradigm of ours? Imagination appears to be another possibility. It not only invites us to, but dares us to think up something new. Something which lies just around the bend. In a direction that was never foreseen.

Because that's exactly how impending reality arrives and manifests. 

Perhaps strange new stories that should never happen need to be written in order to try to see to it that they don't ever come to fruition. 

Stories help us navigate our way together into the unknown. By reiterating the familiar old stories, we help triangulate our location and position during this voyage. By invoking uncanny new tales, we help decide which way to point and steer our exploratory ship forward, and which ways to avoid. 

Story telling appears to remain a necessary key by which we may unlock and attain our destiny. Come with me and I'll take you to a place where the most wonderful science fiction thriller tales are available online to read for free, simply follow the hyperlinked image below to the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and nevermind the suspended artwork: that will eventually make a slow comeback. Read away. They're only words after all. 

The Re-Ionization of Methuselah

The recent article about Methuselah, the oldest star in our galaxy, over forty billion years old, shows how it's dated as being roughly 650 million years older than the universe itself. 

Whether this be the skewed results of the differential between an age ascribed to a collective based on averaging the sum of its stars, or if its one of those inexplicable quantum paradoxes, who knows?

But I can't help but note the similarity in age difference between Methuselah and the known universe.

The first galaxies appeared after roughly six and a half million years or so, towards the end of the re-Ionization epoch. 

Could one of those first early galaxies possibly have been our own?

Unless Methuselah were found to be a wandering star, left over from the end of the re-Ionization epoch. Perhaps only certain stars, extremely rare across the universe, manage to survive long enough to evolve past a nomadic stage in their development. There could be a case built for extragalactic stars within our own Milky Way, having rolled on over here from their former courses.

What does our oldest star tell us about ourselves that we don't already know?

Now I think it was four years ago that it was revealed new calculations show Methuselah is not older than the universe, after all.  Unless this more recent article's intent remains to censure the quantum contradictions whose original calculations prove correct yet whose ministration into mass consensus must perforce be strained through a proper medium, if you will.  And even if we won't. You get the picture. This line of reasoning isn't malevolent nor with a microgram of bitter intent. It's just the way my thinking went. Note to self. Look up more information about the star Methuselah and contrast and compare patterns with anything else that may be triggered to mind.  

The real me: Lacing Back Up

The real me: Lacing Back Up: The Singularity continues.  As of the writing of this sentence, the Kurzweilian Singularity, known as the " Technological Singula...

Trending Toward The Tesseracentric

Beauty as an ideal in the ancient philosophical thought of our forefathers reflects the necessary distinction of having to grant context to our perspective.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the Heliocentric model of our solar system implemented in modern times in fact were to reflect mankind's more egocentric perspective yet again--that of fixating, this time our Sun, into our typically limited notion of centrality, consequently committing another mistake analogous to the first time when we placed Earth at the center--and that we still haven't bothered to factor in the actual nature of our spacetime continuum (as noted by Einstein and the theory of relativity) into our 'model'?

Indeed it remains deliciously ironic.

And that is because the new Heliocentric model remains false. Just look at the two .gifs side by side depicted below, and note the more elegant Spirograph patterns signifying the old Geocentric model. (Click here to go to the original article) We'll get back to those in a bit.

Breaking concurrently and adding to the subtle complexity of this post-modern irony, the cultural meme of 'alternative facts' arrives just in time to further blur the case--which is fine by me--because it adds such a beautiful tang of resonance to the whole 'argument'.

There is no argument. It should be kept in mind these are models, after all. They both fall short of the splendor of the reality they each try to represent.

And that reality remains, to the best of my ability to indicate it, a sort of fourth-dimensional centrist focal point perspective suggested by the idea that in so-called 'space' all points remain the center--which is precisely the context of perspective we need to glimpse the implication of the bigger picture.

Must humankind wait another several generations before discovering this? That in fact--although both models depicted here fall short of the reality--the Geocentric model appears curiously closer to the truth than the rendered flat 2-dimensional Heliocentric model, which as far as I can tell should really be described more accurately as 'Solarcentric.'

What might come closer to nailing it would be a sort of "Tesseracentric" or cosmocentric model incorporating both the Solar and Geo aspects of our system, in addition to our juxtaposition amidst our galaxy, and furthermore its relation to the rest of the universe. Every particle of which remains in constant motion...in direct successive relation to one another.

  

(.gif source:  Malin Christersson 2015)

DETERMINISM IN FLUX

Before sailing out too far into a general acceptance of what we mean by artificial intelligence we first need to remind ourselves we never really did come to an agreement about what intelligence itself may actually be, so it goes without saying that if we were to venture further into exploring the realm of our consciousness, that at the very least we might agree to agree that our lack of conception as to how they're designated may indicate that these subjects--intelligence and consciousness--should not necessarily be taken for granted, and neither must they be accepted as being perfectly defined, either.


Intelligence is loosely defined as 'the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills'.   The definition of knowledge may be understood as 'facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education'. The key toward better understanding their significance, of course, lies with necessarily having to eliminate one's self--the proverbial personhood--from the equation, to see that everything continues with or without our individual selves along for the ride.  Only then may we be led to understand how the world continues to remain whole without us.

from a Dec 14, 2016 NY Times article:

In the 1980s, a robotics researcher at Carnegie Mellon pointed out that it was easy to get computers to do adult things but nearly impossible to get them to do things a 1-year-old could do, like hold a ball or identify a cat.


Humans don’t learn to understand language by memorizing dictionaries and grammar books, so why should we possibly expect our computers to do so?



“The portion of evolution in which animals developed eyes was a big development,” Dean told me one day, with customary understatement. We were sitting, as usual, in a whiteboarded meeting room, on which he had drawn a crowded, snaking timeline of Google Brain and its relation to inflection points in the recent history of neural networks. “Now computers have eyes. We can build them around the capabilities that now exist to understand photos. Robots will be drastically transformed. They’ll be able to operate in an unknown environment, on much different problems.” 


An average brain has something on the order of 100 billion neurons. Each neuron is connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, which means that the number of synapses is between 100 trillion and 1,000 trillion. For a simple artificial neural network of the sort proposed in the 1940s, the attempt to even try to replicate this was unimaginable. We’re still far from the construction of a network of that size, but Google Brain’s investment allowed for the creation of artificial neural networks comparable to the brains of mice.


Everyone with an interest in sharpening their minds should really take the time to read this excellent article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. The mere effort of assimilating the information he writes so clearly about should suffice to upgrade our own brains, even while the AI Google interface evolves at a pace which will soon outstrip our own.  This is the real nature of the oncoming technological 'Singularity,' the term coined by Ray Kurzweil which references the rapid advancement of technology in shorter increments of time. The idea being, artificial 'intelligence' will soon surpass the average human IQ--which according to our current understanding, has its limit--and in the near future, its multifaceted and various applications (which we are already beginning to experience right now) will begin impacting our lives in new and unexpected ways.

Remember, as we sail on into the developing future, to distinguish between the meaning and implications of the following terms:

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Discrimination
Artificial Perception
Artificial Aptitude
Artificial Sensibility
Artificial Recognition
Artificial Judgment
Artificial Circumspection
Artificial Consciousness
Artificial Wisdom
Simulated Intelligence
Simulated Discrimination
Simulated Perception
Simulated Aptitude
Simulated Sensibility
Simulated Recognition
Simulated Judgment
Simulated Circumspection
Simulated Consciousness
Simulated Wisdom


All of which is to remind us that we are dealing here with a sort of manufactured apperception when it comes to our rapidly developing technology in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. We must retain a sense of humility and in my opinion, a sense of non-discrimination when dealing with having to necessarily process this technological development we're all caught up in the midst of. Age old fears instilled by thousands of  years of human religious, spiritual, and political culture have shaped us into zealous beings largely controlled by our various dogmas. The additional influence of literature and the arts have also shaped our understandings of the roles we play on the natural stage of evolution, and in many instances, have exacerbated our deeply instilled fears of the unknown. This is how we get reactionary apprehensions of "SkyNet" scenarios engendered by popular movies and novels. I've jotted this all down here in my [scratchYpost] blog merely as a bookmark for my own purposes--to remind me that this ongoing adventure of existence we're all in together continues to surprise and amaze us with many unexpected and wondrous developments--and for reasons I can only hope readers of this blog will infer on their own, may require each one of us to have successfully developed an optimistic and courageous attitude in order to get through the advanced augmentations of our ripening progress here on this Earth.  In my view, it will require not only a certain suspension of disbelief, but also a savvy accumulation of a particular degree of faith that things have a way of working themselves out.

Considering advancements in our comprehension of quantum dynamics in the field of physics, the ability for each one of us as individuals to develop even the slightest amount of counter-intuition will become extremely helpful as we rush collectively toward the gradually establishing 'Singularity' currently in the process of assimilating us all into its gathering assembly.








 

Towards a New Science Fiction

Part I

Silene, the flower that was frozen since the Ice Age 

Picture: Jacinta Lluch Valero

It's going to be necessary for us to understand the pages we're on together and apart--to differentiate between the pages we're reading and the one's we've already eaten and digested readily for so long, we've already paved the calcified gutters of our literary community with our own sedimentary excrement. When our golden yearning for the stars came from youthful innocence--that was one thing--and permissible, to a point. Now that we've all grown older together, if one can't see the stars themselves represent the tangible beauty of death shining out loud in the eternal dark, like diamond points reminding us human mayflies out here on this lonely periphery just how much time has been really left for us all, then I'm sorry, but I can't join one on their beautiful quest for a colony on Mars. But I do wish all those who venture with such daring my very best. After all, our limitations should be boundless in the cosmiverse.

The isolated frontier of existence relates from our own angled lines of perception stemming from the inverted reflection cast off the back of our retinas and bouncing off the coronal apex of our event horizons, not onward and beyond our solar system into the glimpse of a premature death, but rather, refracted back inward down through our atmosphere and deeply further into the microcosmic membranes of our blossoming world here and now. The blessed balanced moment poised on eternity's cusp. 

Just like the question of whether extraterrestrials exist, we cannot begin to hope we could understand each other unless we've all been qualified together as to the usefulness of the proper application of such terms in the first place. It would serve us well to agree that comprehending the alien flies in direct contradiction to what that word implies. Anything alien to us by definition could not be even conceived as having anything familiar to our sphere of awareness, therefore rendering the quintessentially 'alien' as a philosophical concept at the least, or a sort of  'spectrographic-beyond-our-frequency' idea at the most; either way, although it may remain interesting to wonder whether it could even be possible to have a translation of the alien rendered into terms humans could begin to comprehend, just as surely, if we chose to, we could opt to not aspire to waste too much of our time and energy earnestly contemplating the possibility of, say, breathing solid rock for instance (not that such an allegedly preposterous notion couldn't necessarily hit pay-dirt) and neither would we necessarily bother to waste valuable life experience on further pursuing any notion of the alien whatsoever--if we can agree that the secondary definition of 'alien' were to be applied roughly as "life forms operating on such an inherently different system than ours as to remain altogether unrecognizable to us."

The extraterrestrial posits another matter altogether: that of scale, and our tendency to limit the scale upon which we really exist. We like to think of our own planet as the totality of our location in the cosmos, and therefore it may escape us that sentient hominid beings very much like ourselves could be common throughout all galaxies in the universe, for all we know. Such a distinct possibility could render Homo sapiens sapiens of Earth in actuality the common denominator for most advanced civilizations across the universe.  

From what I've been able to gather, my own contemporary's apparent unwillingness to accommodate for such a normalized possibility as this may be relegated to a lack of imagination, or perhaps mere apathy has seized the lot, or maybe we're all too distracted staying focused on what lies directly ahead of us to bother with such notions, I can't tell for certain. As for myself, I concurrently dream of our golden aspirations to the stars, but not without a slight degree of bitterness, as I gaze out my window toward the trees' outline against the backdrop of night.


I feel certain now that this, our home planet Earth, remains the single most important, vital element in all of our daily lives regardless of how much psionic energy may escape us in the form of frustrated ventilation through dreams. That a good portion of us take those fevered notions and enact them proudly throughout our lives to gain the notoriety of honor among men remains something that I neither dismiss nor neglect to apprehend in my own daily rituals keeping up with the pace of the modern world. Let's just say, to keep it simple, that I try not to think about it, that much. The looming human bulk, encroaching as an ever growing shadow at dawn. If anything, it helps spur me to my feet.

I can't help but see the zoomed-in microscopic world of our human microbiome, along with the mycobiome--into the seething cauldron of the ongoing eukaryotic and prokaryotic dance of evolution that has been ongoing inside us from the beginning. Our realm of neural pathways remains intrinsically connected along a complicated unfolding web work of synaptic leavenings whose sum effect, besides playing key roles in producing ourselves, and our progeny, on a chaotically resplendent world of titanic opposing forces constantly clashing to create order from the storm, seems to be the consequential inflicting of this wonderful and harrowing thing called imagination on us, which, as true to the source-code that inspired it, reflects both ways, as it were, and like the proverbial double-edged mirror image, cuts one only to have them not notice the bleeding until it's far too late to stop it. For these and similar reasons, the fashion to carry on "blind" throughout all this disturbing history has grown stronger among men, or so it seems to me. Until comes the day that blindness itself so entirely consumes the race of men, that their ordinary 'day-sight' becomes mistaken for 'true-sight'.

PEERING IN

From the Outermost Dark, as we focus our attention on the matter at hand, the compound matter focuses on our land, its gaze from a different spectrum than our own, passing unnoticed at the molecular zone, as our greater telescopic view into the dark beyond the Kuiper belt gradually illuminates and clarifies the blackness awaiting in the Scattered Disc, imagine what we may find even further beyond at the great spinning walls of calcified and spent former planets flung from the heart of the Sun, having reached the outermost interpenetrating blades of whirling stones weaving a spacious webwork in holographic precision in a buzzing cloud about our star, a cosmic blender preventing any entrance or exit from our system, if you will; and if you won't, that's all very well and blunt yet it misses the point of exercising our imagination to fabricate alternative explanations for the unknown however unlikely they may be, consider it the poetry of the mind you may find right at hand, if only your body could accept your brain's command, so if it whispers from the shadows in the darkness of your room, when the sky outside your window is starless and bible black, when we realize the aim of the search for alien life may be directed in the obverse direction than it should, you begin to understand our own bodies are the worlds being successfully explored by the host of transient microbes interacting within our living guts, so take a deep breath and hold your horses and hats because the storm's brewing up the mother-lode of a terrific dose of climactic retaliation against our bothersome infestation, that has grown intolerable because we as a nation or a people among countries on a world whose sentient populace remains bent on reproduction at a rate which cannot intercept the machine of industry upon which our breeding both relies upon and has been made possible, remain a perpetuating cycle having followed the generating rhythms still pulsing from bygone epochs in our own history and that of those who came before us here on this very same planet, and if we don't gather together our best minds and able people to seize the reins of the day for even one moment, our own transfigurations will have passed us along the way and the quiet murmuring of our collective memory will float by in silence like soft pixilated clouds containing the roiling formations of the briefest suggestion of faces in grimace and grind, I think you will find that by then we'll have been long gone without a trace having left behind just a curious and scabrous terrain with odd formations jutting in scattered groups of constantly buried decay under the same exact wind that's been blowing through our lives as if we weren't even here for the past endless succession of centuries in the first place. 

Crucial Biomes: A Virulent Update

 A while back here on this blog whilst suffering and raving from the effects of strep throat, I wrote a fevered entry considering that sicknesses such as these caused by invading viruses might better be accepted as a natural, if not altogether satisfying, upgrade process necessary to establish our maintained health as we live and grow together with the microbes and fungi in our guts which cohabit our cellular fortress of human flesh with many varieties of bacteria and yeast which feed off each other and otherwise interrelate in such a manner which keeps our wellness of being in check.

 Having read up on various books and articles on the subject, along with having pondered over the nature of the microscopic realm and its direct relation to our wave of electromagnetic radiation we are currently processing here, detecting a narrow portion of the spectrum as natural light with our eyes, I've been left to realize many separate things which indubitably turn out to be comprised of each other after all, much like that vessel we have come to determine as "human" except for having limited most of our scope to the exteriorization of the form.  A thorough research of both the microbiome and mycobiomes thriving together in our bodies should go far toward painting the picture of ourselves as actually being less human insofar as our remainder is concerned; there have been estimates from as little as fifty percent of our biomass being what we normally consider as human--the bone, flesh, nervous system, tendons, marrow, and blood--to as little as ten percent (suggesting a remaining biomass ninety percent of which is comprised of bacteria, viruses, and fungi).  This only leads us to speculate as to which figure amounts to being the more accurate?

Not that it matters in the least.  Whatever the percentage breakdown may be--for all we know, we're talking about only four species "competing" for domination of the whole gestalt (that which we term "human")--if we are comprised of both species of fungus, bacteria, and various viruses as well as our own biological, bipedal mammalian selves--we could be caught up in the very midst of an evolutionary war of random selection which could just as easily, by any slew of factors imaginable, eradicate the 'human' element entirely leaving an entity best described as one third fungal, one third bacterial, and one third viral (our human aspect having potentially been conquered).

In this regard, we must insistently glimpse ourselves in the mirror and repeatedly ask, "Who are we?" again and again and again, because all the monsters of the human nightmare could be no more removed from ourselves than a single gamete or chromosome away.  We may actually feel their silhouettes closely resembling blurred outlines behind frosted ice. As the ice slowly melts their images gradually come into better focus.  Lurking just beneath the subconscious is such an old fashioned way of putting it these days. It's becoming more readily apparent these monsters of natural selection are not merely and quite actually under the skin but only a thin barrier of evolutionary molecules away from taking over completely.

 In such a future, there would be nothing left of human memory to even house it. Unless. . . Unless you happen to be a Welterwarren--a consciousness which has grounded and solidified itself to the point it may now pass from any form to another without undergoing erosion of any sort (rendering something like anamnesis a moot notion).   It remains unknown how many human souls today are inhabited by the Welterwarren.  In different epochs of humanity's vast and sprawling dominion across Time, these individuals often became confused with the stories and legends about them their presence generated.  You see, in virtually every case, the listeners of such tales were bound to interpret them in the malevolent light they were fashioned. Associations with werewolves, vampires, ghosts and the lot may be relegated to this area.  It is better understood when viewed through the illuminated microscope of the lens which studiously peers into the realm within our bodies which encases both the microbiome and mycobiome, among our bodily interior terrain.

 These interior micro-worlds intertwined with the makeup of our own bodies remain the only thing as close to those life-forms we so explicitly seek to find in the polar opposite direction; yes--I speak of our search for extraterrestrial civilizations in the form of SETI, etc--and while not intending to disparage this noble pursuit in the least (expectations must be kept at zero) I do feel very much compelled to point out that there's an absolutely great chance indeed that these micro-realms right here on Earth and in our own bodies in fact perfectly meet the very definition of what we so blindly seek in zealous ignorance "out there" which is a phrase I use cautiosly because it serves to pin-point precisely the nature of our problem of assumption:  for all our common understanding of just exactly what outer space (not to mention time) happens to be, we must admit to ourselves both the possibility that we got it all wrong as well as the possibility that we haven't yet gotten it right.  Point in fact, if all those stars out there in our galaxy are occurring in time along with us just behind us in fact and the farther ones are even closer toward the beginning of time then we might as well admit that when we go out at night in our world to look at the stars we may just as well be looking in to the heart of where we originated, that umbilical abyss at the center of the electromagnetic spectrum just staring back at us like an unblinking Eye or otherwise equally mysterious Black Hole the Big Bang emerged from.


 The point of this update is to readjust my own dial back to the obvious microanalysis of our human condition being something we've apparently mastered over a staggering amount of generations insofar as we're concerned, yet what may amount to the blink of an eye in terms of the intimately bound yet still extra-terrestrial species our own identities are comprised of: Fungi, Bacteria, Archaea, Viruses, etc. Ironically, their very alien nature from ourselves becomes processed by our minds as somehow nonetheless being not merely terrestrial in origin and existence, but by providing their habitat with our bodies we've in addition to this insulated our own cognizance from the dire realization that potentially our own worst nightmares as cultivated throughout the history of film and literature reside in perfect duplicity within our own genome.  The monster's not in the closet it's right there inside and surrounding our own DNA and ready in the twist of an instant to morph us out of the equation and miraculously not only replace but continue the very legacy we helped to start.

photo by Shasta Lawton

WHERE THEY ALL WENT

I want you all to imagine we are outside, at night.
Now, point your index fingers at the stars.
What you're seeing is the spiraling tail of creation's
first manifested light going back to the beginning.

The beginning of what, you ask?
The beginning of our lives here.

Keep pointing those fingers at the stars.
These suns appear clustered together
inside the core of our universe.
Because our universe is expanding
into membranes.

See all those stars crowded together deep inside there?
For all life forms in this universe, a similar light display manifests.
Alien beings will point their skinny fingers at us
some long distant day in the future, and wonder.

The reason for this is because all life manifests across time.
Life eventually comes to open its eyes and peer inside
the deep core of this universe, blinking and thinking.

"With so many stars out there, where are the signs of aliens?"
We all ask this question, every extraterrestrial along with us.
The answer remains the same for us all.
The stars are merely sign posts along
the evolutionary gateways of death.

See the stars spread out across our skies and realize.
That is exactly where we're all going eventually.
To a place where our starlight will be left behind
shining back out at the new lifeforms trapped
on a planet appearing long after we're gone.

Inversion Tactics: Focusing

To implement inversion tactics (counterintuition) start at any base level.  For instance, we think of the universe as being enormous, therefore it must be the size of a singular pinpoint: an atom, perhaps.  We feel the vastness of space all about us with galaxies whirling into the deep far distances until presumably (according to the unflinching stare of the Hubble lens) we've glimpsed almost as far back as the beginning of time to what we think of as the Big Bang; therefore:  no space exists at all and this thing we're seeing remains inside us, fixed in absolute stillness, and what we're observing  is more likely forward to the ends of the multiverse which may resemble something more along the lines of a sudden embodiment.  The thing to understand is that speculation along these lines, while it may appear to amount to an exercise in futility—due to the apparent necessity of continuing to flip the inversions—the point remains that we must also remember to reverse that preconception and realize with dawning humility that no, an endless series of inversions is quite the opposite of what we should rely upon. Here is where balance may be restored—reflected along the backdrop of the human eye—an effect I'll call retinal refraction for lack of a better term. For those who feel to take this one step farther they must realize that flipping this concept will only amount to reversing the direction of the idea bouncing off being trapped within this isolated membrane, resulting in a continual clarification or something which can best be described by the word focusing.  Because we are the focal point of reality, that is to say, only through our own brains and consciousness may any such thing as "reality" (a lonely word we invented, after all) even be perceived. Once we've settled on this definition of reality—our perception of the experience of existence—may we make inroads to our condition here and now at the center. Implementing inversion tactics = focusing on what's real.

Lacuna Spawn

image courtesy of NASA

Imagine the vastness of outer space containing all the untold galaxies in the universe as one single continuum wherein each solitary constituent pinpointed by a star and further delineated by every last planet spinning in revolutions about these stellar spots as if they are each caught in the grand twisting flow of just one particular bifurcating river of time.  

Envision our group human consciousness sparked by the interaction between our planet's inner magnetosphere in revolutionary synchronicity with our own star's astrosphere and think of this flowering of ideas as electromagnetic campfires situated along the banks of the Amazon or the Mississippi winding deep through the wasteland of eternal night. 

The trick is to suddenly realize with a dawning comprehension as assured as the next forthcoming daybreak that these bonfires along the repositories of sunshine sliding along the lone river of time are phenomenological manifestations triggered and retained by the process of this estuary's exclusive transition along the proximity of its emerging course.   

Think of witnessing our great starry midnight as if having somehow peered into the black mirror of our collective soul swimming through unimaginable depths behind ahead and beyond not just our own capacity to exist but rather as that dazzling echoed incandescence serving best as the reminder we are now precisely balanced on the fulcrum of being alive.    

Make way for the headroom to recognize with supernal clarity that our common dream of achieving alien contact with extraterrestrials has more to do with reflecting upon our own mortality and remains nothing but a misplaced longing to establish meaningful contact with ourselves before at last being flung headlong from our very own starring legend.   

Notes On Exposure Therapy Before Catastrophizing Mental Filters

Affective partisan polarization engenders vindictive protectiveness. This leads to emotional reasoning becoming a contagion. Labeling this process creates magnification. Dichotomous thinking shifts the blame to the other. Overgeneralized negative reasoning paves our way toward discounting positives. All of these forces lead toward our inability to disconfirm our roles as mind-readers and fortune-tellers. Thus continues the entropic cycle of cognitive immolation we are all apparently well undergoing.

Paradox Lighthouse

A fundamental reason we have been met with silence in our search for extraterrestrial civilizations may be due to the lack of there being any such thing as space. 

All living creations (including ourselves and any so-called extraterrestrial civilizations) exist solely throughout time.   

This seems to be what Einstein has been trying to tell us with his theory of general relativity. It has been mentioned that he referenced time and space as not being separate from one another, but it was actually Hermann Minkowski who alluded to "spacetime" in an effort to fuse the two terms together. 

The minor problem with this approach is simply that it neglects to take the idea to its furthest logical conclusion.  Which is merely that nothing in our existence appears to be separate from anything else.  To home in on two specific concepts, or words, rather: "time" and "space," and to declare them as being one thing, is to deny the concurrent revelation that so too does everything in our universe appear to be part of a singularity. 

Even our ancient scriptures allude to this fact in tales about the Garden of Eden, in which Adam, the first man, was said to have begun naming things individually.  "Tree."  "Goat." "Lion." "Leaf." "River." "Sky." "Clouds." "Star." "Worm." "Feet." "Eye." "Hand." "Rain." "Blood." "Mountain." "Insect." "Wolf." "Snake." "Air." "Body." "Ground." "God." All of these things are words.  Together they form language. Language represents a signifier to describe the world upon which we have found ourselves existing.  "Time."  "Space."  

These are just words. To comprehend what they really signify, we must perforce always keep in mind that before our forefather(s) came up with them, all was one.  Creation. The universe. A singularity. And it yet remains this way today. Somehow exploding across a void.  Growing exponentially or in an otherwise unimaginable manner.  Try to describe it.  We've been doing that since the beginning. 

If everything is "one thing", as has been hinted at by suggesting time and space aren't separate, then it should become clearer as to why there exists such troubling questions in science as the Fermi Paradox.  

The reason we have met with endless "radio silence" involves simplicity itself. It's merely that we don't actually exist in space.  We exist across time.  

Think of time in the same manner in which we've generally been given to think of space.  Think that space is really time, and not space.  See, because every planet is spinning.  Each spin equals a day. Every revolution of a planet about its local star equals a year.  That is the physical manifestation of time.... Which we normally think of as "space."  

It's easier if we think of space as being that which does not exist.  Think of it more as interstellar space, along those lines.  The vacuum at absolute zero.  Nothingness.  In order for our something to exist, it is necessary for nothing to have existed before. Our something counterbalances that nothing. We're not given to understand that naturally, but it doesn't matter. 

It is the greatest mystery our species has ever confronted.  The explanation for how we came to be in the first place. Remember that "explanation" is also just a word. Let us not forget there may not be any explanation for how this universe and ourselves came to be.  Not simply because we are the ones positing the questions, although that has a lot to do with it. More to the point, it is because the mystery is worshipped.   Even the word "holy" means "whole."  

Explanations such as the one I am attempting to write are a human construct. That does not mean we are fundamentally incapable of assessing the truth.  One reason for this may be that at the heart of quantum reality lies paradox.  (Another word we invented.) Yet it serves the same purpose as any word.  It is a placeholder to point the way toward gleaning something we do not really comprehend. 

In the case of quantum paradox, it's not that difficult to make the leap and conclude that truth itself appears paradoxical to us.  Another way of saying this is that the truth is paradox. That is part of the reason I was led to come up with what I've labelled my 'Law of Inversion'.  A method by which we may understand the world around us and ourselves better by simply applying a counterintuitive approach to anything we wish to know more accurately.  That is how I came to realize that space is actually time and time is actually space (and not the other way around as popular understanding would have it).  

The guiding beacon of paradox has illuminated many dark corners of my mind. It has helped  me to see how when stargazing, we are not looking "out" so much as we're gazing "in."  

Just look at the stars in there.  You are gazing at the core of our cosmos.  In an expanding universe, our current domain becomes more like the outer skin.  Our own sky is a skin; a membrane containing the oxygen and other elements necessary for us to breathe and sustain life. 

The real reason we will never make contact with so-called extraterrestrial civilizations may really be because they, and we ourselves, exist solely across time.  We are of separate domains. There being no such thing as space. 

Perhaps the only contact we are destined to make may be with oblivion itself. Meanwhile, we are granted an entire lifetime of opportunity to make contact with one another. If you really think about it enough, you should be able to see as clearly as me that there are plenty of additional terrestrials here on Earth, with exotic customs and attributes which should more than qualify them as being the real extra terrestrials.  

If you really want to know how we could possibly make contact with the so-called "alien civilizations" not of this Earth which in fact have and will continue to exist, look no further than our own dreams when we lie down to sleep each night. 

Even science has figured out our planet has a magnetosphere, and our local star has its astrosphere.  Science with its extreme narrow-minded specialization has probed all of these areas with much success, as we all know, but it seems hard-pressed to expand the parameters of its focus to include the wider picture. That is where we may each step in to help guide science along. 

As for myself, I don't need anyone else's confirmation that during the daytime, we human beings are effectively and momentarily trapped in between the two celestial magnets of our Sun and home planet; nor do I need any verification that during the night, when we lie ourselves down to sleep and dream, we are necessarily and temporarily placed outside these two magnets. 

I don't need anyone to tell me that the majority of our ordinary lives are spent in automated rituals wherein we behave far more like robots than we'd each personally like to admit.  That's an observation anyone could make if they thought about it. 

We've been asleep while living our lives most of the time we've spent here, that's all. It's time we wake up and start really dreaming. 

Imagine what we might accomplish here on this one planet at the exact center of creation if we simply realized our permanent solitude as a species here on Earth may be the one commonality we share with all those advanced civilizations in or out there which obviously came before us and will also come to be after we're long gone.  

All that we humans have for company here in the cosmos may be each other if you really think about it. 

If you continue to think about it we should see that it's more than enough. All of our sacred writings and belief systems have been trying desperately to tell us this. 

Rest assured we are certainly not alone in this universe.  If you want to make extra terrestrial contact just close your eyes and go to sleep.  

Our minds may be the radio telescopes we need to make actual contact in our very dreams.  And that is not meant ironically.  So listen to your dreams and stargaze more often.  The songs out there are each tuned to a different vibration across the electromagnetic spectrum.   

The stars are literally singing to us their long lost lonely songs. 

If we are to make contact with any sentient beings before oblivion claims us, if you ask me, we must turn to each other in this war-torn, troubled world and simply reach out our hands to one another. 

May peace eventually reach all nations and human brethren during our lifetime.  Let us not squander our brief span of existence here.  

Instead let us turn to each other and accept ourselves for who we are:  the next in line to grace the spotlight of the center stage of creation in this solitary and evolving cosmos. 

It happens to be our turn to shine.   

FOUR QUINTAINS

by Shaun Lawton 

It has taken an excruciating amount of time for me
to determine we have been asking the wrong questions.
More than laughter frees the soul of those who dare
to cease altogether (and to ask any questions whatsoever
remains the vanguard of the child).

We do not attain wisdom from having our questions answered; no.
From having our questions answered we gain knowledge.
Neither may wisdom be gained from amassing all knowledge.
A state of wisdom blossoms in the waters of silence.
The reason we must stop asking: apparently the stars are talking.

Ambient noise produced from SETI alone blots out their message.
Communication with the alien occurs on a personal level.
When we turn our ears away from the stars and begin listening
to anybody on Earth we grant ourselves the dignity of emissaries.
For it remains we today who may only hear their echoing song.

This has been a public service announcement interrupting a frenzy.
Feel free to return to the scheduled stethoscoping of a dead heart.
Whatever you do try not to grow up and out of your child's fantasy  
on account of me. After all, I'm only confessing what I myself heard
in my back yard late at night many times while listening to the stars.  

Technical Mystification Intellect

We each dwell encapsulated within our own cellular insulations. Cilia measure vibrations within vessels circulating blood throughout our central nervous systems. Optic fibers translate data reflected behind our eyes into our brains which process these signals into relatively three dimensional images. All of this occurs on a planet revolving about a star hosting our human activity en masse by a process that involves the necessary transorbital positioning of repeatedly placing us in between our planet's and the Sun's geomagnetic cores. When we find ourselves in between these magnets (a position we have labelled "day" time) there manifests a sufficient amount of extra energy by which we may achieve our daily tasks toward survival.  While we find ourselves outside these magnets (the intermediary position known as "night" time) the majority of us find the occasion to rest and recharge our batteries.


If information overload has ever occurred in our history as a sentient species, the chances seem high it is best personified by what occurs online all over the world wide web currently on social utility networks such as facebook and twitter (to name only two modalities). Sometimes I can't help but think that never before has the very disparity of information and how it relates directly and indirectly to our lives been highlighted to such an extreme disproportion. Other times I can't help but feel this incessant incoming tide of daily information at least must serve as a fast-moving ticker-tape of windows through which we may glimpse individual frames or scales of the living skin, however zoomed-in on or otherwise magnified the surface may be, of this great ourobouros we are all in the process of weaving together on this magnificent planet looming in outer space.  

Our Magnetosphere

Consider a magnet.
Consider countless iron filings.
Consider each iron filing represents  a universe.

Now think about what we know of the quantum realm.
Realize its inherent counter-intuitiveness.
Understand we each create our own reality.

What is our own reality, if not a universe unto itself? 
What is this planet we dwell on, if not a giant magnet?
Who are we individually, if not avatars from separate universes? 

Intermingling here in concert together. A symphonic reality.
A convergence of separate universes commingled into 
what appears to us as One.

Welcome to the multiverse. 
You are reading this message.
We have made extra terrestrial contact. 

The next time you kiss someone, think about it. 
You have just crossed immemorial space and time.
You have just made Contact with one from another universe. 

Tempest Redshift

In real life we are the characters in a story, who gradually transform into microwaves, then spool out into longer radio wavelengths, only to be scanned and listened to fruitlessly by remote alien civilizations.  

The echoes of our mutual cries of exoneration, after having traveled an otherwise unfathomable distance, finally wash over us as so much static noise.

For that is what they have become in there (points to the stars). 

That is precisely where we are going.