Inner Space

An interesting link to a project happening off the PacNW coast Find the link here

Empty Sky

Jim Churchill-Dicks


Monday

Late for work. Barely light I drive
into the forest to meet my students
and fellow guides, armed with backpacks
ready for the Strawberry Mountains.


Tuesday

At Strawberry Lake, nestled in crowning
mountains, there isn’t a cloud in the sky,
not even a jet stream, just an empty
blue, met by jagged rocky spires.

Up high, we swim in icy water
with barely enough breath to tread above
the surface. We fish with found hooks
and discarded line, try to make fire
with bow drills and friction, and carve
loved ones’ initials into sticks.

Approaching midnight, my friend and I look
up at the stars, the night’s full harvest
of fireflies. Not even airplanes pollute the sky.


Wednesday

We reach the top of Strawberry Mountain,
scaling stone upon orange stone, devoid
of plant life, yet there are thousands
of black butterflies, fluttering up in our faces,
then rising upward--


Thursday

My friend emerges from the store, armed
with plastic sacks of groceries for a picnic
lunch. There is urgency in his face as I
come to help him. His face is ashen.


He tells me about pictures, about something
horribly wrong, planes like meteors falling
from the sky, driving the towers down, pouring
smoke, raining people, the ground collapsing
beneath them.

We look to the bus of hungry children,
expectant and oblivious, more innocent
than we’ve ever seen them
and I think back to the thousands of black
butterflies, ashen paper floating
from an otherwise empty sky.

We Are All Cyborgs

Blood Cloning

Imagine the ability to clone the human blood supply...thus creating a limitless supply of blood. And say, in the case of one of my characters whose blood genome is the only substance known to stabilize the nanobot plagues. Such a 'blood offering' could give him a sort of messiah complex. In any case, here is an article that shows a contemporary study to clone blood with embryonic stem cells.

Nanotechnology and Brain Function

An interesting recent article on a scientific breakthrough using carbon nanotubes to create synthetic neurons and pathways.

New Blog Trajectory

This blog is moving away from the 'bloggy blog blog' confessional life log, and steering more toward research that interests me; particularly for my novel in-progress.

Magic Waters

I cannot fly, on thermal paths of the osprey’s sky
nor can I hunt with quickened feathered wing-beats

but I too, have fished in magic waters,
heaved my innards over the side
of my grandfather’s boat
bobbed in the river’s maw
with sweaty pale-faced groans while
my riverboat captain, my grandfather
laughed a booming laugh,
my abandoned rod arched in his meaty
hands, as he reeled in my undeserved harvest,
a ballooning silver salmon
slapping foam against the hull.

We reaped this monumental moment
together. My grandfather clapped my back
and laughed that face-saving laugh,

“At’s alright, Jimmy! You feed ‘em, I’ll catch ‘em!”

and for that, if only for that

I believe.