AIR CONDITIONED

From my fat chair

I can see through the bay window

that the robins and wrens are replaced

by shoals of starlings that wheel and

turn like anonymous faces at the Metro.

They lean their iridescent black into an

empty wind from up the street. Soundless.

No one seems to notice the

absence of red breasts, but then

I wonder if those clouded eyes

see anything at all.

They, we, I... find solace in all

that ultra-high definition where 

we have lived too long to turn 

back. Resistance is futile 

hooked up to cables and wire,

all our thoughts upholstered in

unnatural cloth.  

We do not know what is in

the dirt under our fingernails,

have never heard of loam, never

skinny dipped in a cold creek,

or killed the meat we eat.

On the other side of the glass that

amoebic formation of starlings has

taken its great crusade elsewhere,

probably as someone’s screen saver.

OH! Wait!

Where is my remote?

Reviews

[Lara]

What is more, "we" barely know what electricity is either, and how the convenience is knitted through our very walls. Infact, seems darned ironic. Inverted (pardon the pun).
So now, the nearest we might get to organic experience is to feel the longing for it and eulogise... Some of us, anyway. For many there is yet the finger tip convenience (like our light switches) of deferring to chat gpt or grok for the pretence. And so much more's the pity, hence.

[Vol]

Lara,
There is a real argument that the lack of true "organic" experiences is a source of much modern day maddness. I wrote a paper once on the consequences of urbanization... Back in the late sixties, and early seventies Africa saw much of the continent and all the nations move to towns. Most of my sources for that paper came from psychological studies of what that did to the psyches of those folks. What they found was a dramatic, almost geometric growth of every mental disorder they had a name for. My conclusion is that all modern city dwellers are crazy... but to the same degree so no one notices.
Meanwhile Within a ten mile radius of my home there are not a thousand people..., I sure could use a downtown, coffeeshop, open mic reading...
Gah! I'm dieing here!.
Vol

[Lara]

I, for one, believe it vol. I've lived with feet in both constructs, hokey-pokey'd and turned around, all that... and find it fruitful, never the less, to "lose the mind and come to your senses" whatever the sky line.

Life and communities pressed into long algebraic equations are sure to scramble the eggs somewhere along the line - so horribly, too, that even a dog won't want to touch it.

With all that said, there is strange comfort in the early morning sound of a garbage truck coming to collect for you and the neighbours...

[Vol]

Lara,
Where have you been all this time?
I lovewalking on the wild side when I know the closing time... There are so many things to do to remain connected. Barefolkot on the grass, swim in a lake, body surf, get high and listen to complicaterd music, having a tight group of outrageous friends for a good night out...
But then making connections is a mere shadow of entanglement... the web is infinite.
Meantime, as the Navajo say, "Walk in Beauty."
Vol

[Ms claws]

I barely remember microwaves coming into existence and now we take eulogise for that time, dwindling into obscurity via newer discoveries all the time. Will we go to Mars? I don't know but I wouldn't mind waiting in the Musk mansion to find out.
Always interesting points you make, sir.
Thanks for posting.

[Vol]

Thank you for stopping by to read and comment...

[Ms claws]

@Vol I love the way you tie it all up in a nicely trimmed bow, "OH! Wait!
Where is my remote?"

[Lorry]

Yep! And we have the cheek to call milennials snowflakes, as we blame all our faults on technology, while scrolling through hours of what's on on Netflix complaining they don't make things like the used to and harrumphing each time we have to get out of our recliner to go to that refrigerated box for a nice cool beer and (insert favoured convenience/snack food) while visiting the loo where an invisible fairy magic's our waste away to the mythical like someone else's problem land.
And don't get me started on what happens during a power cut, where we go into instant thrombosis mode at the thought of having our lives disturbed by a problem we demand a team of minions should immediately be on hand to fix and beg our forgiveness for the minute or two's drama their imperfect system caused, as we grow fatter and lazier, obviously caused by a government conspiracy to keep us docile and nothing to do with our morbidly obese asses lack of movement (other than to the fridge and toilet of course. We'll, we're not animals, are we?)
I do quite enjoy watching idiocracy from time to time and don't see it as a fictional movie, but a warning as to the direction we are headed at when we forget how everything works and go back to the way we used to fix old TV's, by banging the s**t out of it from the side while wishing we had grabbed another beer from the fridge!
Ps... sorry Vol. This genuinely started as a review but somehow veered down venting spleen boulevard and now my watch, or personal doctor as I call it is telling me I'm I'm severe risk of imploding as my blood pressure is now near critical and I should find my way to an emergency room immediately, or failing that to log into the app that replaced the hospital before it closed down!
Phew! 😃

[Vol]

Lorry,
Oh… hold on! A tiny, .5 millimeter insect just perched dead center of my screen. Bullseye! Teensy little legs, barely visible, wiped something off it’s face… oh… it’s gone… out there avoiding predators, looking for food, and hoping to get laid… just exactly like everything else that has ever been alive.

The fairy magic will have its way with it all from the Mona Lisa to that crude genitalia I drew on the wall of the loo, from a perfect 8 inch t**d to a foul puddle of Mexican diarrhea… And the ink we use to keep track of it all is juice of the spleen, raw and unpasteurized. Of course, most folks don’t even own a pen and when they do, they think they must be poets and flush their wannabe poems to give the fairies something else to do. If you don’t believe it is true, ask Ozymandius.

I have a professor friend who once told me “You know, Vol, we are last literary generation and when the lights go out for good, the kids today will starve to death trying to read the directions on a book of matches…
Vol

[Lorry]

But as Monty Python said...try telling them that and they'll be highly sceptical! 😃

[Vol]

I know, right? that tiny bug is way too small to capture alive... they'd have to see it to believe it...

[Pete]

ouch. quite the wakeup call. i often wonder if we will become so advanced that we will start going backwards. i was born too late, give me the simple life. delightful read with a pinch 'tween cheek and gum to chew on. as i've said before, how can we have artificial intelligence when we've not yet had the real thing?

[Michael Sun Bear]

Good evening Vol, I pretty much like everything you write so no surprise I like this. I guess I have been fortunate. Growing up we biked down to the local river and swam in our cutoffs, as a teenager I skinny dipped in a forest lake with aging hippies. Many, many, many a year I worked in soil, planting, nurturing. I certainly know what loam is. I am old, crippled up, and I appreciate the high def content cable brings me. I am a real movie buff, among other things. It enriches my now mostly sedentary life, but I have not lost my love, nor my awareness of nature. Like you, I watch it out my window, but I also go out and visit nature, in parks, in long drives into the mountains, renting a cabin (I had to finally give up tent camping). Are we the final generation that can claim those joys of our younger years? MSB

[Vol]

Michael,
Sigh, I have a friend, Mark Tiger Edmonds, A creative writing professor who put over a million miles on his motorcycles... what a curmudgeon he was! He said, "You know, Vol, we re the last literary generation." I can find no evidence that he was wrong... and it is a long regret of mine that I cannot give to my kids the things that made my family a clan by the simple action of breaking bread together and often around that chrome and yellow Formica table in my grandmother's kitchen. It will never be the same for this country again... I am sure there are families in other places and cultures that spend time working, playing, and being outside...
Vol

[Michael Sun Bear]

Exactly, other places, other cultures