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a plea

in response to the proposal to begin drilling for minerals on the sacred sea floor of American Samoa.  a comment I posted to the Federal Register. 09 July 2025 ___ The ocean does not exist for us; it exists alongside us, and to some degree, in spite of us. But it cannot overcome ceaseless drilling, mining, pollution. Violence, destruction, and denigration. Do not extract. Do not create sediment columns. Do not send shovels and pick-axes and machines into the heart of the depths, hoping to top off our bottomless, insatiable need for more.  What we cannot sustain without defiling our home, and our creature-neighbors' home, we cannot sustain. We do not know what happens when we begin skirting existing protections and drilling into the seabed. That is what I've heard. But we do know. Be still and be quiet for a moment. Look inwards. And outwards. Feel wind mix with breath, salt water run from eyes. You already know the plankton and the politician are both just cells. Parts of a wh...
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The Great Dying

Today I asked AI when humans will become extinct. There's a 6% chance that it happens by 2100. But also a 10% chance. It will happen in 250 million years. It will happen in 20 years. It will be climate change-related. It will be nuclear explosion-related. It will be like a mass extinction event called The Great Dying -- when volcanoes swallowed up the Earth. I'm sure the end will come. For us. For all. Perhaps turning on our forests is the beginning. Perhaps not. Perhaps turning on our oceans is the beginning. Perhaps not. Perhaps turning on ourselves is the beginning. But probably not. The end is hard to see and the end's beginning feels like the first uncertain stride on a department store elevator. And so I asked an immortal, omniscient screen to tell me how I die. Tomorrow, if we're here, I'll ask AI who God is.
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blood vessels

I have 60,000 miles of blood vessels. I think, to make them count, to really honor that mind-numbingly monstrous amount -- I mean, imagine tens of thousands of anything  working and winding through the unfathomable magic of limbs and appendages and brainblob -- well, I've got to do what I was meant to do. I think it's tough to figure out What You're Meant to Do, but it must be the cosmos slipping you a note when picking up a guitar in your office chair melts away the Teams-call-AI-summary-induced crick in your neck. On the edge of town -- my town and yours -- a family -- and their 300,000 blood vessels -- wait for a knock on their door. What are they meant to do? And how could anyone be meant to do the knocking?
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flicker

Image
we are stars  looking for ourselves  in a thousand blinking pixels 
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beginnings and endings

"And I'll know my song well before I start singin'" - Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" Charleston has been locked into a kind of paralysis -- tonight, sitting on the brink of a rare snowstorm. Devoid of wheels and feet, the roads and sidewalks are just what they actually are -- grey plaster. The bravest finches -- foraging and flittering just yesterday -- are now nowhere to be found. This little corner of the world is quiet, bracing.  I've been quiet, too.  Maybe no more. Mary Oliver would leave pencils in the trees along the trails she'd walk, so that she'd never be without one. Little invitations, reminders. On this, the first day, we see more clearly than before, perhaps, that there are no first days.  A hidden pencil writes:  Of The Empire   We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that t...
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