spice core

This is the title of a poem by Barbara Kingsolver, I wonder how many trips around the sun will be defined by failing to choose one over the other… I spent all yesterday in its lustrous glory— chatting, eating, swimming, boozing, sleeping (primarily). It was a forgotten “family obligation” said the work email. Technically, a lie. Technically, true— I was with family. I could really use the money I didn’t make Tuesday. These days, my waking hours are mostly borrowed time. I didn’t understand the sleep deficit I was in. It didn’t dawn on me that one good nap wouldn’t fix things. I now understand what people mean when they say they could sleep for a week. I should keep a journal of each life experience that illuminates the profundity of our idioms. Some are logged on this blog, but the revelations are happening more frequently than I can write. Although, I wonder, is “I could sleep for a week” an exaggeration? To really know, great fortune or misfortune must fall upon you. Maybe it’s a colloquialism that emerged from somatic memory of by-gone luxury, or suffering, I suppose.

I’m workin’ like a dog nowadays. The West often turns its nose up at cultures which consume them but the only reason we have the aforementioned idiom is because once upon a time they were the poor (white)man’s (work)horse. A fate worse than death for the sake of another’s sustenance. They used to keep dogs as a live power source in smoky kitchens, running on hamster-wheel like contraptions that motorized turnspits over open fires. They’d throw hot coals on the wheels to keep the dogs from slowing down. Those same dogs would later be forced to lay belly up under people’s feet to keep them warm on cold days in Church. They became house pets when the machinery was developed to take their jobs. Do you think humans will become people when A.I takes more of the jobs that were traditionally ours? This makes me think of how we joke about being jealous of pets – is this another somatic knowing? That there is a relief to anticipate at this stage of our evolution? Is there freedom to be found in descending the totem pole of economic necessity? There are a class of people who know the life of pets, to be kept for affection and aesthetic pleasure, both core needs propagated as frivolity. Well, being a pet is a job at the end of the day. Perhaps, there is always some relationship to utility because its just the nature of this planet. Earth is a Matryoshka doll. System after system after system of symbiotic or parasitic relationship. You always serve a purpose, even when you’re dead, for the planet, for metaphysical conversation…Where did we begin? Water or wine? I’m likely to choose whatever feels more decadent in the moment.

I live a somewhat privileged life so water has yet to feel like an opulent choice but I’m sure the data centers will reframe my thinking soon. I work two jobs to make my ends, the one I like most is using A.I in a way that makes wine the obvious choice. They defer to it for every little thing and part of my job is to erase myself. I do the work, my leaders take it to the thing. There’s no addition to the function of my creation, improvement of its efficiency, it just needed a stamp approval from superior intelligence. In the process, the formatting of my work becomes prettier, authorless. I remember in high school I used to rant to my friends about how transhumanism was inevitable because the beauty standard was already digital. But its true for all presentation, of our work, of our communication, this blog is one of the last places I can type without being interrupted by suggestions of how to be more concise. Google’s smart features tend to find personal voice inefficient. I wonder if countries where Abrahamic religion is culturally dominant are more likely to have this intense a relationship with artificial intelligence. I’m reminded of what I inferred from conversations in church, that to be ‘good’ was to ascend from the ‘self’, the humanity essentially, and to strive for a Christ-like reflection. Perfection. What is perfection? Is it balance? I usually find ‘perfect’ implies without flaw, which I believe is the result of imbalance. Without flaws there is no poetry, no evolution, it’s an ending. A dead one. I love the way Barbara Kingsolver concluded her poem,

Once I knew all these brick-shaped things, took them for the currency of survival.

Now I have lived long and I know better.