I had a falling out with Robert, the gila monster who lives near
my desert hut in Pearblossom. Robert had opened up to my telepathic
overtures and we had quite a rapprochement, for a while, until I reviewed Yuval
Harrari's book about the next stage of human evolution- Homo Deus- where we'll
be gods (see next post). Robert told me gila monsters attained this
"godhood" long ago without the fanfare humans go for, which I
was willing to believe, but then he told me humans could not attain "godhood"- or as he called it, "awareness," because we're
too fucked up and don't want to be aware anyway.
"What do you
mean we don't want to be aware?" I asked, "What else would we
want?"
"What else?
You want to have sex with each other night and day." Robert
has learned a lot about humans from me. "At least gilas have a
season for mating and male combat. You have one season: mating and male
combat."
"So what?
I'm telling you we humans are evolving out of this. We'll be able
to remake our physiology with a limited mating season, and with the free time
we'll evolve."
"As if!"
Robert snorted, "If you're any indication, I won't hold my breath."
I was suddenly
weary of Robert's superior species routine. I needed a break from him and
the random human conversations at the Family Dollar Store, so I decided to
spend the weekend in San Diego. I booked a cheap hotel on the waterfront
for Friday and Saturday nights, filled my 2007 Camry and set out. The
trek began on the lonely 138, hugging the desert foothills of the San Gabriel
Mountains, then turned south on the 15 through Cajon Pass, to San Bernadino and
on to San Diego.
I arrived late
Friday to the news that if only women voted, Clinton would win, and if only men
voted, Trump would win. The story quickly vanished from the airwaves, too
radical in import for the mainstream. I couldn't wait to get into the San
Diego crowds and check things out.
The main objective
of my trip was to walk to Balboa Park and see museums, but it was too late for
that Friday, so I headed to the Gaslamp District nearby for dinner.
Young and old
lined the sidewalks up Broadway. I dipped into random thoughts and yes, there
were gender differences clearly affecting the presidential election. Most
women thought, "It's about time one of us made it through the gauntlet of
male dummies! I forgive your sins, Hillary, go for it!" Most
men thought, "All my life I've wanted to grope women all around me, like an octopus, yes, like Harpo Marx, like a frenzied dog grinding his
pelvis at multiple moving targets. Trump fights for inappropriate male
desire. No one else admits it exists, let alone defends it."
These explorations soon gave way to hunger, but most of the restaurants were crowded and geared
towards couples, where I would have been a sorry spectacle eating alone.
Finally I found a relatively quiet bar that served dinner. An
attractive waitress in her mid-twenties greeted me at the bar with a big smile.
She said her name was Trina. She was wearing cut-off jeans that had
been carefully tailored to cover as little as possible. A few more beauties
assembled, hanging around in the background as Trina grilled me on what
kind of martini I wanted- dirty? with a twist? Bombay gin? Each time I
made a choice, she grinned from ear to ear and said, "All right!
Good choice!" I dug into her mind and found that she was
toying with the idea that I might be sugar-daddy material. Realizing how
glum my dinner would be without such illusion, I allowed the fantasy to play
out, mostly a passive exercise in not revealing that I live alone in the desert
and my best friend is a gila monster. Thankfully sleepiness came upon me
by 9:00pm and I slipped into relief and darkness in the hotel room.
By 7:00am I was
dressed and seated in the dining room for the minimalist breakfast:
reconstituted scrambled eggs, a tiny selection of cheap pastries, coffee.
A TV screen on the wall forced everyone to consider a woman who said
Trump was all over her, followed by Trump implying the woman was not attractive
enough for him to be all over. I scanned the other hotel customers as
they ate and discussed the coming day. The women thought: "This guy
is every male bully I've dealt with rolled into one." The men
thought, "I want to be able to grope any woman I'm attracted to, but I am
not rich enough. You have to be rich in order for women to let you do
that. This guy is me if I would be rich."
Enough on this
dreary subject! Fast forward: I'm walking uphill on Cedar. Turning
left on 6th I'm on the ridge of Cabrillo Ravine. The El Prado bridge
takes me over the ravine (which these days accommodates the apocalyptic roar of
Highway 5) to a complex of museums built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. I hang a left into the Globe Theater
complex. The courtyard is filled with several high school classes, here
on field trips to see Macbeth.
"Unsex me
here!" calls out an agitated boy, who is prodding a girl with a
plastic sword.
"Mr.
Anderson," calls the girl to a fortyish man in a tasteful sweater and
slacks, "Brad is harassing me!"
"Calm down,
Brad! Leave Terry alone, and remember what that line is supposed to
mean!"
"I do, Mr.
Anderson," Brad mocks with a leer, pointing the sword towards Terry, now
at a less threatening 30 degrees, "It means Lady Macbeth wishes she were a
man, so she could be strong and have any idea what to do."
With this
basically correct interpretation Brad leaps towards Terry, the sword behind his
back, calling "Gotcha!" as Terry screams in shock and delight.
Mr. Anderson looks around to see who expects him to do anything, sees only me, and goes back to scrutinizing a clipboard.
Mr. Anderson might
have instructed Brad that it's Macbeth himself who lacks resolve and doesn't
know what to do. Here's the context of Lady Macbeth's line:
Come, you
spirits
That tend on
mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me
from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst
cruelty.
From this we learn
that in Shakespeare's time it was thought that "direst cruelty" was a
male trait, not normally found in women. Quite a change in 400 years!
Around the corner
I found the irresistibly named "Museum of Man," full of beautifully
composed models of pre-modern hominids. My favorite was Lucy, the famous three million year old adult female. She was about as tall as a seven year old
modern human. Her upper arms were long and swung from tree branches, but
her legs were humanlike, designed for upright walking. I gazed into
Lucy's sad but focussed eyes, trying to jog a telepathic response, which
you'll see in posts below has taken me to the future, so that I
might go back millions of years to this lost soul. Lucy finally spoke,
though to me or from me I couldn't tell:
We were a kind
of you, we walked along the forest floor for vast generations, until you killed
us. You will never know our forest floor, our philosophy, the throb at
the heart of the universe that beat through us and our forest floor.
Next was
Heidelburg Man. He looked like my grandfather, a Ukrainian who dealt in schmattes. The broad forehead and wide lips, the wise patient expression, the random
hair. H. Man was reconstructed from a 400,000 year old jawbone There
seemed no way to know if he had wanted to grope every attractive female he saw,
but it would stand to reason. What else about him stood to reason?
Without loincloths, how were such things handled? Were they handled? Are these
questions important? Would a Trump presidency clarify anything, beyond
clarifying that patriarchy is in peril?
Unsex me here,
ye gods of men
Genetic rules
did not intend
The tools and
hard drives in my den
To sport and
rule outside my ken
Nor women in
this feisty round
No key to
touching have they found
No logic to the
urging sound
Of gametes
playing lost and found.
Unsex us here
election day
All coming
after then can say
Our species
finally had its say.
And Robert?
Just coyote prey!
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