My Deck

The deck I built back of my house in Dubuque.

(The tune for the following lyrics can be heard in this scene from Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay.)


My deck is solid, wide and strong.
Your deck won't last too long.
My deck opened on a double-wide screen.
Your deck was rated, "Better not seen."

My deck has a very strong foundation.
Your deck was shown on White-Trash Nation.
My deck was featured in Better Homes.
Your deck trembles like cheap foam.

My deck I've shown lots of love.
Your deck was crapped on by a dove.
My deck stands out like a colonel.
Your deck was rejected by Ladies Home Journal.

My deck has quality envied by Germans.
Your deck is inhabited by vermin.
My deck gets the finest wax job.
Your deck lacks even a polished knob.

My deck scores from the 3-point zone.
Your deck is a dog without a bone.
My deck hurts me, it looks so nice.
Your deck—not a girl looks twice.

My deck has no poop on its wood.
Your deck can't, even if it could.
My deck is without any flaws.
Your deck looks crapped out by Jaws.

Drifting Blues #7

Sunset at Kure Beach, NC, 2011.

She lay in the coffin, so young,  looking like an inflatable punching bag.   My eyes drifted up the rack of t-shirts she'd tie-dyed, back to her wearing one, over to photos of a happy girl.  Nearby, her parents cried, hugged friends and strangers.  They hugged me, an emissary from better times.

"She's in a better place now." If a grave is better than life. I won't mouth such words of comfort. I don't believe in a god who is going to fix you, or punish you, or reward you for kissing his ass.

At the Christian school where I teach, I've been known to tell a student, "I want to shove my foot so far up your ass you'll smell my toe jam." Words of love, really. Yes, really.

When I connect, I can say nearly anything. But I never connected to her. She was untethered, even then, drifting away into her tie-dyed sky.

* * * Day one: Mix the chemicals, run the analysis, and record the results. Repeat. Day two: Keep pushing the rock up the hill for eternity—it's punishment for something, wasn't it? The required sterile-white lab coat doesn't suit me. I like tie-dyed better. Dad will pay the bills until I find something else.

Still nothing—nothing like my college project with the research adviser I loved,analyzing pervious pavement—rain soaking in, not running off. In front of a crowd after months of work, I presented my results—me, the local expert, as my adviser looked on proudly. I was focused.

A new job and a new boss—he told a co-worker I'm lazy. I'm not. Unmotivated? Yeah. I can't find a focus—I'm just drifting. Doesn't he know the difference? Some manager!

I've got a new boyfriend, but he's no new adviser. He helps me drift, helps me inject the clouds into my tie-dyed sky.

Emergent Properties

Ice crystals on a twig by my driveway.

In The Gods Must be Crazy, a Coke bottle dropped from a plane threatens to disrupt the society of a tribe of Bushmen in the Kalahari desert.  Nothing like the Coke bottle has ever been seen.  Initially, its beauty and usefulness are interpreted as a sign the gods have blessed them.  But soon, its uniqueness and the resulting conflicts for possession of it lead the village elders to throw it over the edge of the Earth—the gods must have been crazy to give it to them.

Interpreting things we don't understand as actions of the gods is an old human behavior.  And that approach is still around—the Intelligent Design movement is an example.  (See here.)  We humans like explanations for what are essentially random events.  Perhaps this is best observed among non-professional gamblers, praying that a slot machine would fall their way as if prayer actually makes a difference.   Or someone who gambles that he doesn't need a seatbelt— ``When it's my time, God will take me.''

One of the hardest ideas for non-scientists to grasp is that just because they don't understand what's going on, it doesn't mean it can't be understood.  Let's suppose for a moment those Bushmen had never seen ice, a not-hard-to-believe assumption.  (In fact, many of my students in Kenya had never touched ice until at our school, where they said that it  burned when they touched it.)  So let's suppose we load up a group of Bushmen and take them camping by a lake where the nights are cold enough for the lake to ice over.  When they awoke in the morning and venture down to the lakeshore, how would they interpret the ice covering the lake?  Was some god punishing them by cutting off access to water?  Was some strange fish-god protecting his supporters?

Perhaps a bold Bushman ventured out onto the ice.  He recognizes that the walking has become treacherous, perhaps slipping and falling. A hazard fit for Hercules?   But worse, suppose our intrepid Bushman crashes through the ice and disappears into the lake below.  Has some god punished his insolence?  How dare he venture into a banned area!  As he disappears into the lake, never to rise again, (he can't swim, and the chances of finding the hole he passed through are small) those more timid Bushmen on the shore draw the lesson—the gods have banned ice walking.  Soon a new religious edict appears—Commandment 7: No walking on ice.

Despite the supernatural interpretation by our Bushmen, ice is an entirely natural phenomenon.  They simply haven't been in a cold and wet enough environment to encounter it.  Nothing supernatural.  A property of water they have never been exposed to emerges as the environment changes.  Such emergent properties—consciousness, playfulness, life—become a barrier for the religious to embrace science and its naturalistic explanations.


For longer writings, see http://www.daleeasley.com/blog-and-essays.php