Lizard knows patience.
Desire.
Lizard knows they are not lizards.
Lizard-becoming knows stone.
Crackings.
Darkness bright; stillness glimpsed.
Cracklings.
Lizard sees you seeing.
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
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
