What Does Lizard Know? 3

Lizard knows patience. 

Desire.  

Lizard knows they are not lizards.  

Lizard-becoming knows stone. 

Crackings. 

Darkness bright; stillness glimpsed.  

Cracklings.

Lizard sees you seeing.

iPhone photos (above)

Adapted from Woodward (1982) who claims “emergent lizard”

Adapted from Keyser and Poetschat (2004) who claim “spirit helper”

Not-lizard guesses a percent of reptile-extinction embodied in reciprocal recognition

You see Lizard seeing You

Not saying what cannot be said

Lizard not quaintly “emergent”

Lizard ain't no-body's “spirit helper”

Lizard-becoming as close as Dare.

iPhone photo (above) edited in DStretch, modified in MacOS Photos

Lizard sees you seeing.

Sees the attention economy.

The roll-on Columbia River.

The pulsing surge of server farms.

Dairy farms. Wind farms.

Lizard stopped counting eons.

Glacial floodings energy channeled.

Concreted dammings power corridored.

BPA budget borrowings corrupted.

Salmon lusting, waning, wallowing.…  

Lizard knows The Swallowing.

Columbia River as Lake behind The Dalles Dam

In the distance The Dalles and Mt Hood 

Lizard considers Critical Theory.

Seriously considers:

Philosophers, psychologists, and theorists of social interaction have long understood that recognition is crucial to Lizard flourishing. The idea that we can only be fully lizard if we are recognized by others is a central theme of the tradition of political thought, in which the political sphere is conceived not as an empty stage for individual pursuits but as a common realm in which we first appear to one another and find our completion as earth beings.

Google Data Center at The Dalles, courtesy Google

 Photos by Douglas Beauchamp except as noted, click to enlarge.

NOTES

— Recognition paragraph above borrowed, with three alterations, from:  “In Search of Recognition,” a review by Peter E. Gordon of Recognition: A Chapter in the History of European Ideas by Axel Honneth, in the New York Review of Books, June 23, 2022.

— Previous What Does Lizard Know? posts:

March 23 2022: 

https://rockartoregon.blogspot.com/2022/03/what-does-lizard-know.html

May 1 2022:

https://rockartoregon.blogspot.com/2022/05/what-does-lizard-know-ii.html

Lizard ran out on a rock and looked up, listening
no doubt to the sound of the spheres. 

— DH Lawrence

drop of dew

There is at least one spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable — a navel, as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown. —Sigmund Freud

In the mist of lavalands, the one spot becomes manifold.

Red arrow indicates glyph

An unplumbable dream of turtle; an unknown between the familiar and the haunting. Further, a metaphorical signal: Turtle Island.

Issa:

I know this world
is a drop of dew —
and still . . . still . . .

NOTES

— Sigmund Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)

— Issa (1763-1828), Japanese poet and haiku master

— Photos: Uplands of basin and range country, June 2022. Above: Mist; Golden Eagle ledge-nest/nest-fall; Canyon wall, glyph, pool; Pronghorn tracks.

CODA

Re-turned last week from eastern Oregon, sagelands, lavalands, dustings and dreamings. Embracing Cascade oscillation: open country to thereabouts east; valley envelopment here out west.  

Not away long enough for Eugene not to seem normal. Then, reading the news, seems “fatigue" is the operative word of the month. Virus fatigue. Ukraine fatigue. Climate-heat fatigue. And the general malaise of politics what with inflationary-inflammatory. 

Yet, ever aspiration, sensing a mystery who provides all the possibilities of these experiences. We will never know how the galaxies wheel. We are fortunate in ways we do not understand for a brief cycle to participate in something grand.  That’s a guess….