Steps & Stones

I haven’t counted the stairs at 1001 Steps, but walking down felt like there were 500 and climbing back up felt closer to 2001. At the bottom, a beach of countless stones made each step awkward. Nearby, a train hauled U.S. coal alongside Canadian shores to barges heading for China where it will fuel power plants and be used in furnaces to produce steel, adding hugely to carbon emissions. Though China seems to embrace wind and solar, it's no easy shift. All countries face the grip of immediate needs versus the long-term health of the planet. The glacier collapse in Nepal confirms that we’re on a one-way escalator moving too fast to step off, and the Poet’s and Storytellers United prompt “numbers” to me says environmental disasters are too overwhelming to tally.

   

The train passed by and so did my focus on troubles and challenges. Later at Crescent Beach, a butterfly kite swirled and a dancer joyfully whirled to the delight of onlookers.

     

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 and watch environmental activist, 90-year-old David Suzuki, in an interview.

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Virtually Alive

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” - George Orwell

Deception mixed with emerging AI, and the above quote suggested as a prompt by Poets and Storytellers United, inspired my thoughts and poem. It is a time when late actor Val Kilmer allowed his Deepfake version to play the role he was too ill to finish. This had me pondering the degree to which synthetic people differ from the black and white film era actors who since died but still seem so alive. Nowadays, many of us appear synthetically through various processes on screens. Some fall in love with digital companions who mimic humans but feel nothing. Conversely, humans seem on the path to desensitization, emoting virtually but light on genuine joy or empathy for suffering. Even photos of my walk are paperless pixels. Indeed, the wildly imaginative Orwell might be amazed at how seamlessly the artificial has woven into the fabric of daily life where lines between the acceptably real and not, like truth and lies, blur.

Seemingly alive again as if I never left the stage

Gazing but not seeing, gasping but not breathing

The copy of my former self that delivers its lines

Pretend humans like rumours keep on spreading

Machines talk to machines as if person-to-person

A steady ongoing creep of neither living nor dead

Expressing, without tiring, every mortal sensation

Pixel emotion summoned from codes they are fed

My resurrection cast as a motion-picture miracle

My voice produced virtually, to my ears unheard

My salty tears not tasted, imitations of glee unfelt

Mirror reflections of my existence eerily preserved

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 and watch environmental activist, 90-year-old David Suzuki, in an interview.

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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

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Fireworks & Fresh Sparks

The New Year is upon us and it's time to reflect. The usual seasonal pondering and a "fireworks" prompt from Poets and Storytellers United inspired my poem below. Noisy colourful displays in the night sky are pretty but excite me less nowadays. I am more attuned to the rustle of wind, the patter of rain and the luminescent waves that splash to shore. Hope you enjoy my poem and views when the old year waned at the bottom of 1001 Steps in Ocean Park. Wishing all who pause here a happy, calming New Year.

   

HOLD ONTO THE LIGHT

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.

1001 Steps Upgraded

I've never counted them but the decades-old stairs named 1001 Steps in the Ocean Park area were recently upgraded from wooden to metal.

   

Over the years I've walked down and back up, many times puffing for breath.

At the bottom there is a narrow path alongside a railway that leads to a small graffiti laden tunnel beneath the track to the rocky beach.

The stones make walking along the shore a bit unstable and it's more fun to just sit on one of the larger rocks and soak in the seaside atmosphere and muse about life.

The original signage and steps inspired a Penelope art card that says, "You can if you think you can." Whether challenged by steps or stones, a belief in one's own capabilities helps achieve success.  

The photo of me (below) was taken several years ago at the same location. Like the stairs, I could probably use an upgrade.

Wish I could say I am as agile as I was then ... but I guess I am, if I think I am?

Explore more at SKYWATCH and 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.

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Why Does Anything Exist

It's human nature to ask why. We've done it since childhood. Humankind is propelled by curiosity, isn't it? Because we need reasons, it's inconceivable to most that creation exists for its own sake with no particular point or purpose. Scientists and mystics learn over time while we fill in the blanks with our stories. Pondering in verse the Poets and Storytellers United word prompt "why", I sought calm in a world overfull with drama.

Along the shore, I saw swimmers floating with ease.

Nearby, windows reflected the heavens.

Moody clouds whisked along the blue sky.

A cozy house nestled amid the foliage.

Plants said their final goodbyes.

Autumn glowed around every corner.

Some flowers hesitated to go.

Trees were ablaze.

Paths were littered with leaves.

Forests shrugged off the clutter.

The stairwell took me to a deeper level.

A gate closed to the coming cold.

The cat settled into a Buddha pose.

Although the truth about existence eluded me, a new song about liars by Dolly Parton gave me odd comfort ... her words perhaps more suited to last week's post.

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.

HOLD ONTO THE LIGHT