I had a falling out with Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster. We had been sharing thoughts amenably until I unwisely mentioned Yuval Harrari's book on the next stage of human evolution, Homo Deus, recommended by my friend D.L. (see "Lasken's Log" at https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/) which predicts that in the near future, in our command of ourselves and our environment, we'll be godlike. Robert told me gila monsters attained this
"godhood," or "awareness" as he calls it, long ago without the fanfare humans require, which I
was willing to accept, but then he asserted that humans could not attain godhood 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. "At least gilas have a
season for mating and male combat. You have one season: mating and male
combat."
"So what?
As I've told you, we humans are evolving out of this. Soon we'll be able
to modify 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 familiar human conversations at the Family Dollar Store, so I decided to
spend that night in San Diego. I booked a cheap hotel on the waterfront, 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. It was about 5:15pm when I checked in.
The main objective
of my trip was to walk to Balboa Park and see museums, but it was too late for that, so I headed to the Gaslamp District nearby for dinner.
Young and old
lined the sidewalks up Broadway. I dipped into random mentalities and found thoughts that reminded me of a poll conducted during the Clinton/Trump presidential race that indicated that if only women voted, Clinton would win, and if only men voted, Trump would win. This time if only women voted, no one would win, and if only men voted, same thing.
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 selected, 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 of my not revealing that I live alone in the desert
and my best friend is a gila monster. Thankfully sleepiness came upon me
by 9:00 PM and I slipped into relief and darkness in the hotel room.
By 8:00 AM I was
dressed and seated in the dining room for the minimalist breakfast (included):
reconstituted scrambled eggs, a tiny selection of cheap pastries, coffee.
A TV screen on the wall forced everyone to hear President Biden excoriate Trump for stealing classified documents, then excoriate Russia for waging war on Ukraine. I checked the minds of my fellow breakfasters, mostly mid-level management on business trips, men and women, some alone, some with others. The news had a vague pull on their attention- but only out of anxiety that someone might expect them to be informed; almost the entirety of their focus was on the infuriating eggs and the equally infuriating nature of the coming day.
Twenty minutes later I was walking uphill on Cedar, sweating already in the unseasonably hot morning. Turning
left on 6th I walked along the ridge of Cabrillo Ravine. The El Prado bridge
took me over the ravine (which these days accommodates the apocalyptic roar of
Highway 5) to a complex of museums and a rough reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theater, built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. I hung a left into the Globe Theater
courtyard, which was filled with several high school classes
on field trips to see Macbeth.
"Unsex me
here!" yelled an agitated boy as he prodded a girl with a
plastic sword.
"Mr.
Anderson," called the girl to a fortyish man in tasteful slacks and
short-sleeved shirt, "Brad is harassing me!"
"Calm down,
Brad! Leave Terry alone, and remember what that line is supposed to
mean!"
"I do, Mr.
Anderson," Brad said mockingly with a leer, pointing the sword towards Terry, now
at an ambiguous 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 leapt towards Terry, the sword behind his
back, calling "Gotcha!" as Terry screamed in shock and delight.
Mr. Anderson looked around to see who expected him to do anything, saw only me, and went back to scrutinizing a clipboard.
Mr. Anderson might
have further instructed Brad that it's Macbeth who lacks resolve and doesn't
know what to do. Here's the context for 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!
Nearby
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 for swinging from tree branches, but
her legs were humanlike, designed for upright walking. I gazed into
Lucy's sad brown glass eyes, sending my thoughts I wasn't sure where to ask for her statement. Finally Lucy responded, 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.
I was sorry I asked.
Next was
Heidelburg Man (named for a jawbone found near Heidelburg, Germany). He reminded me of my grandfather, who had an all-purpose store in North Dakota - the broad forehead and wide lips, the wise patient expression, the random
hair. H. Man was the first hominid to live in cold climates and hunt big game. The jawbone from Germany was 400,000 years old. There
seemed no way to know from the extrapolated head and face if H. Man was as over-sexed as Homo Sapiens (Latin, "Man the wise"), but since we're thought to be direct descendants of H. Man, it would stand to reason. What else about H. Man stood to reason? Without loincloths, how were such things handled? Were they handled? Are these
questions important? Would a Trump survival and/or resurgence clarify anything other than that patriarchy is in peril?
When I got home to Pearblossom around 4pm it was 115 degrees, and my little berg got one of its rare mentions on L.A.'s local news. To unwind and celebrate my refreshing vacation, I wrote a poem:
Unsex me here
By H the H
Do it now,
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
a key to
being 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!
