Sunday, August 06, 2006



To Wish Upon a Harvest Mars

or

Alice's Late Summer Night's "Looking Glass" Dream for the Red Planet





>>>>>>Read all about it!<<<<<<<<<

>>>>>>Hot on the Internet Wires<<<<<<

>>>>>>Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter!<<<<<<

>>>>> The Red Planet is about to be spectacular<<<<< >>>> will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest75-power ….check the fine print above …..

>>>>>>>Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye<<<<<

>>>>>>NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN<<<<

>>>>nor will the people of the next 50-to-1,000 Life Times!<<<<<

>>>>>>Share this with your children and grandchildren<<<<<

~INTERMISSION ~

Hey scientists, sea captains,(retired), deckhands and star trackers of all stripe, I wanna get in on this astronomical condiment too- this sweet confection of a wonderment- as we truckers on the north/south axis of the Midwest will likely get some choice opportunities for clear Mars sightings out on the prairie somewhere along the "aorta" of Interstate ~35~ between Dallas and the Twin cities sometime this summer...
Seems, according to some reported enthusiasms, that Mars is gonna beam as broad faced as the full harvest Moon come late August. That's quite a spectacular claim. Are we talking the full or the new moon here? Well, this assertion standing alone, stated w/ sincere erudition from the mad "retired" astronomy prof now well strolled about the grounds of some state institution would be one thing, but this anticipated beholding has bounded all over the internet this summer and talk is abuzz about a harvest Mars to rival the Moon in size and intensity.

All true believers need not read the next paragraph.

Maybe egg's gonna be all over my shirt come the waning days of this late summer night’s dream of a beaming Mars, but such filamentous confection from out of the ether do these internet looms sometimes weave! I'll add this caviar though... oops, caveat: if Mars meets our eyes like a big pizza pie come the dog days, I'll eat the egg and my shirt and the caviar to boot. And gladly too, as the little boy refusing adulthood in me wants for such phantasmajoric wishlings. This bodes very well for collective imagination's power though, and, in the era of Harry Potter and Lord of the Ring, it's a lovely thing to wish upon. More likely though this tells a wonderful tale of how a simple sentence juxtaposition error in a much forwarded e-mail from an "expert" has transposed into a quasi “Looking Glass” fantasy in real time.

As for the breadbasket and the prairie though, already in late July there are square miles upon square miles of crops thriving under our day star's searing intensity. Seems our sun is now even getting more blistering as all these trapped photons are glomming on longer to the green house funk before they reflect back out into space. Spanning the broad sweep of the Mississippi/Missouri water shed thriving in "waves of amber grain" out here all this leafy biomass keeps pushing toward the arc of the earthly covenant... [ the atmosphere].... sorry, no one was gonna get that one!

Turning the glass just so one can imagine the secret life of plants talking amongst themselves;imagining and dreaming for a better way for the supposed “Paragon of Animals” to conduct themselves as the "thinking" stewards of the Green Planet. Wondering what they might gossip about should the red planet beam her full passion red through one of Alice's “looking glass” refractions.

Yeah, plenty of private "dreaming fields" with rustling plants as background murmuring in these prairie night winds to stop and ponder under a Alice’s night sky out here. Corn and other leafy verdancies... (not a word.)... at least I don't think it's a word... do you??? ... anyway, verdant roughages of all kinds. Yes, and considering the moon’s new twin blushed in red , the Jabberwock will be frumiously bandersnatched skittering twilly in the prairie hollows above 2 shadows of equal intensity.

She/ he and her/his comrades, anticipating all this illicit night light joy, now w/ a new red cast, are already building for the excitement of August’s waning days under a big red Martian face. And all these crops too- billions of biomass tonnage weighty, spread out all across the wide belt of heartland just waiting for a "Harvest Mars" before the combine's Vorpal blades begin to whirr.

Wait a minute, did you say harvest mars?....
.... “What it is mon.... dis harvest mars????
“Hey rasta carrot top mon you be shakin dem dreads clean wit de sea lettuce and look’n in de night sky come august en you be see’n what it is mon…. dis harvest mars wit de big face"

Seeking respite from the sun's searing late summer rays, surely all these plants, especially the star leaning photo-tactic ones like the sunflowers, will be sun singed to confusion as to which bright faced heavenly countenance they should turn their sunny faces to for some cool refreshing night light. Should they face the new “big red” or the old “gold standard.” Should they pine to mars, the new passion lady/ femme fatale in red, or to the old familiar standby in gold, this ageless illumined sphere upon which so much lunacy has for so long been spent on flourishes as varied as Romeo'd yearnings, minstrel's song and...poet's sonnet and soliloquy.

“Good god there both the same size”, the soy sprout says to the sorghum spray, "one in gold, one in red”! "Just imagine", the North Dakotan alfalfa sprig whispers to the safflower stalk in late august, “one of’em gold, one of’em red with the aurora borealis dancing reggae in the background. “Which one for you”? Wow, the red planet w/ all her veiled passions, full hipped in the equatorials, will seem an alluring and novel provocateur w/ole Captain Hook singing "Oh my Mysterious Lady" to her in a tremulous baritone having broken the long top billing the Moon has held these past 5,000 years or so since Mars’ last passing so close.

On considering the mixed wisdoms of the thinking species,the wise old cabbage and the fluttering lettuce ruminate: “this 5,000 yrs just about spans 1/2 the time since the "thinking” species decided to come out of the foraging steppes and forests and start building fences and grand monuments like the pyramids and world trade towers’ n such, and started squatting as agriculturalists and started planting us leafy ones en-masse.. And soon thereafter began naming, mapping and numbering in brightness hierarchies these stars and other heavenly bodies and planets and moons’n such while wondering on them much less by the way, save for an occasional Shakespeare and a minstrel or 2. And when all the great orders of being began to fall into place, they started forming camps as to who had it right on just what the original intentions of the creator of the universe were".

"Well It was shortly after this “coming out” into the waves of amber grain that things started to get real organized too leafy one. So organized that legions of ancient mariners waged great sea battles all because of a single face. Guided by these starry constellations at night, and planning these ghastly beachheads by day, they ventured headlong into a history that their progeny would somehow glorify in legend, poetry and song. "Just imagine Laratese Lettuce Head, a single pretty face all lit up in the ancient moonlight launching a thousand war ships! That’s organization for ya my man. What's that you said, maybe they should’ve stayed in the woods. And now this great order has led to all these civilized schisms colliding all because each camp is so certain about the primordial intentions of the creator of the universe, including the creator of new red provocateur’s imminent cameo. Is it Allah’s moon Laratese? Is it the godhead of the trinity’s Mars? As for me, those mariners were the “ancients” and their progeny still are the “ancients” under these same constellations in the night sky, with still so much more darkness than light. So there!”

“Ah let’s leave it alone Laratese Lettuce Head. Let’s just look at the twin beauties, listen to John Lennon’s “Imagine” and leave all that alone for now, ok”?

But, just one more thing, for better or worse all these supposed "efficiencies" the thinking species have come to has led to this Laratese: Wondering on the stars and planets and we leafy greens much less and worrying more about when a closer Wal*Mart might come to the neighborhood….. but I digress from these orbed twins, illumined in red and gold” “Well, as I was just saying, let’s just leave all that alone, and get back to these twin skittering shadows dancing in the mars/ moon light".
.
“Ah,well,” the Jabberwock whispers to the alfalfa sprig, “there's still enough old fossilized biomass cisterned in the ground, and stuck in rocks to hyper burn awhile longer, gassing up the arc of the earthly covenant, with all these green house emissions a churnin and a burnin just enough green house funk to create the magnified illusion amongst the “thinking” species of an equal sized apparition - a celestial ghost of the red planet”. “How many arc seconds, or was it minutes across the night sky you say paints the apparent size of the red planet Palonius? Oh shit… ooops, sorry, just a few fleeting arc seconds you said.. The moon’s got the minutes my man and by a factor of some 60 times still appears larger, though in absolute terms it is not … Alas it still gets top billing after all.”
Ah, well, one can still dream for the next passing in 60,000 yrs. Dream through all the churnin, burnin haze….
Epilogue
God, we can wish for Mars to rival the breadth of the Moon's harvest face, and for plants talking to warn us about the churnin and a burnin funk. And we can imagine what nightly countenance the sunflower might turn her face toward, or to what brutal realities we turn our own faces away from when reflecting upon our crimes against the arc of the earthly covenant and to the belly of this Green Planet too. Or we can skip to ma lou, as we’ve done so long now, through the prairie grasses at night with the Jabberwock under 2 different shadows of the Tumtum tree, while humming Lennon’s tune, and wait and see what the dog days will bring…

….See ya out on the prairie…

2 Comments:

Blogger dave warren said...

too long.. too diverse and rambling.... too confusing w/all its smiling similes and illumined allusions.... why write winsome whim w/ no tangible byproduct that helps when putting together my Wal* Mart "to buy" list???..

hey, get a clear thought, write something real.. ok??

10:59 PM  
Blogger Irisheyes said...

hey cuz', how have ya been? it's been along time in hearing fro you...wondering if your were still writing and where you are these days.

cuz' Sharron aka ihvirisheyestoo

2:32 PM  

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