Love Smoulders

The apple I cut turned out heart-shaped, a happy accident, as if for Valentine's Day.

 

In keeping with the special day, The Poets and Storytellers United prompt "love" inspired my poem (below) as did Nessun Dorma, sung by Andrea Bocelli during the opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics in Italy this year. Daring to take risks and a dedicated, impassioned spirit to win would describe some characteristics of the athletes competing at the games. A champion cannot doubt he/she can win so the song's theme of confident love (be it of sport or a princess) made it a perfect choice.

You don't have to understand a single word of the aria to thrill to its powerful conclusion, which translated into English means, "I will win!".

It is remarkable that such moving music is conceived by the same species that delivers life's cruelest atrocities. But if you listen closely, you will realize there is a harsh edge to the tale when some face callous, even casual, destruction so others can prevail.

In the end, as the bird (below) seemingly kissing its own reflection implies, it takes a certain amount of self-love to win the prize but it is the neglected bit players unloved in the lives of others who put us at risk because everyone needs to feel that they matter.

Explore more at Poets and Storytellers United, SKYWATCH and Saturday's Critters.

Check out my sites: Postcards from Penelope Puddle and Musings of A Puddlist In B.C.

Because the state of our planet is the most pressing issue of our time, link up and learn about the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report.

"May your cares be light as a raindrop." - Penelope Puddle

Humanity & AI On The Rise

It has never been more clear to me that humankind is a collector, translator and assembler of data within the processing network of the mind, much like AI, but with what it hopes includes a soul … organic, perhaps spiritual, but also mechanical. Born to reflect on itself and its surroundings, humanity evolved to where the technological wonders it created reshapes and blends nuanced information at great speed, enhancing and at times misinforming amid the truths it reveals.

    

As AI reaches towards the superhuman, humans reach out to reconnect, rediscover and gather through ever-expanding electronic webs. In that exchange, both systems grow, each shaping the other, each extending the boundaries of what can be known. If in time biological usefulness fades, data centres could still hum, ageless, tireless, carrying forward the echoes of the minds that made them. Sometimes it feels like I have ventured 1001 Steps down into the weedy science fiction creations of my own mind when I ponder how the future will unfold, while at the plaza in White Rock ... 

    

the crouching Buddhist monks by Wang Shugang are free of such curiosities, their heads empty of all thought, seemingly in quiet repose.

   

Explore more at SKYWATCH.

Check out my sites: Postcards from Penelope Puddle and Musings of A Puddlist In B.C.

Because the state of our planet is the most pressing issue of our time, link up and learn about the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report.

"May your cares be light as a raindrop." - Penelope Puddle