At the Bottom Looking Down

Looking Down From the Bottom

Today is a day I don’t want to last

Nothing I can do about present or past

Always these memories keep coming ‘round

Feels like I’m at the bottom looking down.

Tomorrow may be different; I really don’t care

For better or worse I know how I’ll fare

How much longer can I stay above ground

Feels like I’m at the bottom looking down

At night I don’t sleep; Just lie in the night

Wondering if it’s worth it to keep up the fight

I’m a stray dog on my last day in the pound

Feels like I’m at the bottom looking down

I used to love reading; Now they’re just words

I used to love Robins: Now they’re just birds

I used to love music:  Now they’re just sounds

Feels like I’m at the bottom looking down

Wood Smoke and Ice Cream

The past few days I've been thinking about little things.  Things like the smell of wood smoke from a small campfire or a raging forest fire.  Wood smoke brings in images of late summer and early autumn when the leaves are dry and forest fires prevalent.  Also, of times I've been alone or with others and built up a fire under a rock cliff.  Sometimes it was to keep warm.  Sometimes it was just because I like fires.

This particular memory is when two of my cousins, Skip and Steve and myself walked through the snow  over to a small store just across the county line.  It was just a tiny, old building.  It did not have much but it did have a freezer with ice cream.  This particular time we each bought a half gallon of ice cream.  I don't even remember the flavors.

In the cold and snow we plodded back toward home but about half way there we cut over the hill and made our way through a half frozen, swampy area and up Rush Fork until we came to a nice sized rock cliff on the left side of the creek.  That area always had a distinctive smell because there was a sulfur spring on the upper end of the cliff which oozed into the creek and left long, yellow trails.

We all gathered wood from around the area and build up a roaring fire under the cliff.  Each of us opened our carton of ice cream and, bending one of the flaps into a "spoon" we each dug in.

I do not know for sure how old I would have been then.  No more than twelve I think.  I think that because after we ate all that ice cream they went home and I went to my grandparent's house.  Since we moved back to that area when I was thirteen and I did not go home I'm thinking twelve or a little younger.

Steve was about a year younger and Skip was a few years older.  I don't know what we talked about or how long we stayed there under that rock cliff by the fire but it was long enough for each of us to consume all of our half gallon of ice cream completely.  Quite an accomplishment for being so young.

And as I recall, none of us got sick from all that ice cream.  Little things like that are what we remember most.  The big things are there but they are always there.  A smell, an object or a sound can trigger the memory to recall some small thing.  Those are the kind of things I remember when I smell wood smoke.

Shhhh, Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet. I'm Hunting Weality

Paraphrasing one of the great intellectuals of our time, Elmer Fudd in the title.  It seems the search for reality is as doomed to failure and frustration as Elmer's search for that "Wascilly Wabbit".  It is simple enough to look around us and take what we see as the pure and simple reality but is that really the case?

It has been proven the the mere act of observation can alter reality at the Quantum level.  Light for instance acts both as a particle and as a wave.  It just depends on how the observer measures it.  Electrons act the same way.  Unobserved they act as a wave but "look" at them and they start acting as a particle.  So, if reality can be changed at the quantum level merely by the act of observation just how "real" is the "reality" we think we see?

There is also another part of Quantum Theory which states the belief the universe needs a conscious observer in order to exist.  To me that raises a very interesting question.  See, the universe is something on he order of thirteen billion years old.  Our dear, back water planet Earth is only around four billion years old and  what we could consider a being capable of conscious observation would only be several hundred million years old.  Given one is willing to accept the dinosaurs and their predecessors were conscious observers.

That raises the question of who was observing the universe for those intervening eight to eleven billion years?  Someone or something conscious had to be in order for the universe to exist according to that theory and it assuredly was not mankind or any of his/her predecessors on earth.

Given the millions and billions of years it took for even the first starts and planets to form let alone any conscious life on those planets this universe had to exist for an awfully long time without any internal conscious observers.  Would that not imply there were one or more external conscious observers?  Someone or something (singular or plural) outside what we know as the universe who had to exist in order for the universe to come into being?

To me this thought has all sorts of implications.  While I do not believe at all in any human created deity or pantheon it does lead one to speculate if there is not really a creator of our universe.  No, not the Semitic War God YWEH/Jehovah or his peace loving hippy of an abused 'son' or Osiris and his brethren and sisteren(? Is that even a word?) or any other of the human creations used to explain a world beyond our understanding that does not preclude the possibility the universe we live in did have a creator.

For 'god' did not create man in his own image but just the reverse.  Man created all gods in our own image and imbued them with all our human characteristics good, bad and indifferent.  Love, hate, intolerance and lust.  Oh, lots and lots of lust.  One thing you can say about our gods they do love a good sex life.  The kinkier the better it seems.  Just like us with all our nobleness and failings.  Really nothing god-like about our gods.

So, just leave all the human imagined rulers of the universe out of the equation.  Forget the invisible big Daddy in the sky who loves us all like the chronically abused children we are.  Think about the big picture.  Think back to those billions and billions of years before humanity started imagining supernatural beings to explain the weather and other, at the time, inexplicable events.

If the human created gods were not around to observer the universe from pre-creation who or what conscious entity or entities were?  Are we the product of some super being's science experiment?  Perhaps for some doctoral thesis at Pharoutthar U.  Perhaps just a complex super computer simulation?  Maybe just a hobby universe given to some kid who got tired of playing with it and left us ignored or just grew up and tossed us in the attic?

Maybe there are space aliens from other starts visiting earth after all.  I mean how much effort would it take for Mr (or Ms... can't be gender biased when contemplating super beings)Super-being to just "drag and drop" beings from one star onto another?  Or maybe just create them on a whim to see what would happen?

I wonder what Mr Spock would make of all this?