RipRap

Never Lonely

Sitting out for a coffee at the edge of the canal, the sun flutters over my yellow shirt as the sumac jitterbugs in the breeze. It's more like late spring than mid-summer. The day is clear and bright, the temperature is a cool 73 degrees.

My coffee is a frozen blend of espresso, ice, milk, and a coconut syrup called Jamaican-Me-Cool.  I am pretty much alone as far as humans are concerned. A woman with two kids sits out down the way at the ice cream shop. The kids are tossing ice-cream-cone bits into the canal to feed the carp and the ducks.

    Long thin whisps
    creep over the chair edge
    Daddy-Longlegs

Later at home, I sit out back with a book and a beer. The whole world leaves me alone as the breeze swooshes the tree-tops. Blue sky, puff-pocked by clouds and deep green of the towering Black Walnut trees. I am lost in the ecstasy and the  secrecy  of the long back yards that surround me.  A pair of  squirrels spiral down a cherry tree and race across the open grass to the giant walnut and scamper up. As the breeze shifts direction a bit, I  sense friendly touch in the nostrils. Gentle and loving as an old friend the scent of the lilacs wraps around me.

From all accounts I am alone. But never lonely.

Tree Gig

We are all subject to providence. Where we fall, where we land, which way the wind blows us, or the tide. A boy meets a girl in a coffee house in the summer of eighty and life is bliss. They miss? It all goes to hell, a shed load.

A stick
In a Scottish crag
It seems an eon
An acorn is a living twig
A sprig of green in landscape gray
This day, botched gig
For a seed at bay
But in a field soaked
Karmic whorl delivers oak

Birch

Lonely today
summer heat in haze
barely a breeze
the Japanese beetles nibble
at the leaves of the twin trunked birch
leaning over me by the pond
beetle buzz
flick of the dragonflies behind my head
over the water
there is a dried carcass of a bullfrog
on the roof of the gazebo
left by some heron
called away mid-meal

Scale

When I began my studies in vision (computer vision and animal vision) I learned of techniques in searching images that were based on developing a resolution pyramid. Each layer down in the pyramid contains more detail and has four times the pixels. This was an introduction to scale.

I then began looking at the universe as an exorcise in looking at things at the right scale. When one looks at very small scales, micro biology level or at the subatomic level, the universe becomes unbelievable. And when looking at the grand scale, the very macro level of the starts and star systems, again things become unbelievable. Stunning.

However on the level of the world to which we have become accustomed, things look ho-hum.

This notion in scale applies to time as well as to space. Do plants act? Maybe not on our time scale. Look at them over a period of years rather than milliseconds and they do infact move and act.

What have we missed due to our habit of scale?

Intellegence in Nature: The Second trip

Reading Jeremy Narby's "Intellegence In Nature" he questions (as do others) if plants can have intelligence. He sites cases like the ground ivy that extends across areas and when the optimal locations are found, puts down roots. This as an example of behavior of an individual that acts to optimize for a problem.

This brings up the question, "What is intelligence?"

Intellegence in Nature

In the mid eighties I worked at the University Of Rochester as  a research programmer in computer vision. One day a scientist from the medical school asked if I wanted to come over and look at working for him on the side in helping with some experiments. I went over and he took me to the lab where he had a monkey strapped into a chair. The skullcap had been partially removed. Sensors were placed into the brain and the monkey was awake and shown visual stimuli. Would I help with the experiment. I had a small child and really needed the money at the time but I did not need it that much.

I am currently reading Jeremy Narby's "Intellegence in Nature" and he is mentioning Descartes's disbelief that animals felt pain and his dissecting on them while alive. It makes me shudder and reminds me of the day in the lab.

Now, do plants feel pain?

Molecular Recognition

A connection between Molecular biology and Buddhism:

In Buddhism, especially in Dzog Chen, or Atiyoga, recognition is everything. To see ones own true nature and to recognize it, is the key to enlightenment. I have based so much on this notion of recognition. From my path to enlightenment, to handling relationships. One can not find the way through, the path, without recognizing what one perceives. It seems to be the very core of microbiology as well. At a molecular level.

"The principle of molecular recognition.  A typical cell contains a number of molecules exposed to the environment and in communication with it. These molecules act as the "eyes, ears and nose" of a cell. They contain, as part of each molecule, specific portions called RECEPTORS or BINDING SITES. Other molecules in the environment contain specific components called LIGANDS. Ligands are sections or regions of a molecule that have the characteristic of binding or attaching (docking) specifically to unique receptors on the cells. Following this attachment a message is passed to the interior of each cell involved as to the situation it has found. This information, in turn, triggers the COMMAND CENTER of each cell to carry out a series of preprogrammed responses based on the data it has received. We will discuss some of these responses throughout the course." ...more...

slow burn

When her father died
I spent some time with her,
the funeral and the wake.

She gave me his heavy
incense burner,
that holds the stick
that smolders today.

digging

Looking back into my family tree I find my microbial past. Eukaryotes evolved from Prokaryotes that formed symbiotic relationships. This is a journey in long chains. They join and break apart and interact as coopetition blazers. From here it is another dance down spirals of recombinant DNA to this human platform. What will leap off from here? I fear we are a dead end and that the bacteria will be here long after us. Long after cockroaches too.

4th rain

drizzle on the fourth of July
open window
cascade of drips through leaves
waft of incense
steak sizzle
of passing car tires
ripping rain water from asphalt
p-funk on the laptop
one nation under groove