Paula Craig - The Colophon for our Era

The Colophon for our Era

is a short pencil of Mimi’s..  It is black peppered with white dots topped by a double-size white egg on top of which is a small, sprawled, wide-eyed, black with white dots hen clinging desperately to keep from sliding off her production.

 

SUMERING UP, or

TOWERING ELECTRONIC BABEL

 

They had the River, the main fact of their lives:  so mud was plentiful, underfoot, obvious.  Mud bricks were an easy step, building up – adding, improving, creating, decorating –

just ‘what people do’ to civilize themselves.

Sounds became marks in mud –

repeated, agreed upon, refined into languages, trade, organization, wealth and unifying myth—

just ‘what people do’.

It took awhile, 4 or 7000 years according to how you mark the mud (dust and water)

to step up the tower, read the stars, declare their creation Lord;

dissolve in the flow of time and malice, scattering their DNA by direction of the power beyond civilization.

Over-reaching pride again come to sandy whispers.

 

We have the math, the data of our lives:  so electrons are plentiful, our fabric, an opening to a whole new enticing world.

Devices are an easy step, ideas building up—marketing, advertising, improving, creating apps, decorating---

just ‘what people do’ to express themselves.

Sounds became moving marks in air – repeated, agreed upon, patented, captured in corporations, globally multiplied, infectious, overwhelming into languages, trade, all human organizations, vast wealth, coloring earth’s atmosphere, mythic towering over all civilizations

just ‘what people do’, if they can.

 

It took less than 100 years according to how you mark the air –somewhere above the beleaguered dust and water—

to step up the pace and space, to seize the pulse of the planet, read its genome, declare its fabrication Lord;

dissolve in the flow of time and malice, scattering its DNA by the direction of the power beyond civilization.

Over-reaching arrogance again come to sandy mud.

 

 

pcraig 6-6-13