The Beckoning link

http://www.lucidstage.com/event/the-beckoning-a-satirical-political-comedy-musical/">

My cartoon Senestrorsum can now be seen in it's entirety here;

http://www.archive.org/details/Senestrorsum

Asymmetric Sleep




Slumber on Sutro Mountain peak
in a fierce spring Pacific storm
with vaporous wind against my cheek
in a hammock of asymmetric form
is accomplished through short naps I seek
wrapped in a blanket that gets too warm
and moist with the sweat of frightening dreams
amid crashing branches and raccoon screams


Cypress boughs and Eucalyptus bark
wrestle with the wind and gravitate to the ground
my tarp waves violently in the dark
giving no protection then comes the sound
of a heavy limb hacking down trunks its mark
tossing itself upon this idyll I found
and lands meters away in wet poison oak
I whistle with fear but I do not choke


I must truly be insane to attempt sleep
in conditions as ugly and precarious as these
would I feel more safe in a crime plagued, cheap
hotel room in Chinatown with two broken knees?
If not for the tempest I could enjoy the deep
rapid eye movement and inturbulent seas
of unconsciousness found on Mount Sutro's height
where I learn of nature's indifference tonight.


At some imprecise moment between one and four
I honestly don't recall when I fell
into slumber where I dreamt my hammock bore
no snoring lunatic with flatulent smell
but a silent corpse cold to the core
swinging to and fro in the moonlit dell
upon its brow a dried bloody gash
where a Cypress limb decided to crash


When conditions for all the easiest tasks
like travel or sleep or pitching in yeast
are as overcomplicated as when a child asks
about economics like some blind little beast
who can't recognize all the bureaucratic masks
I've lifted or creases I've uncreased
then their accomplishment once simple conditions prevail
shares facility with how a finger points to its nail.

Do all living things have some sense of time? Do Sequoias know they are thousands of years old
or do only animals with brains have some sense of time like a human or a dog? The physical
construction of a dog's brain must be what gives it a different sense of time than us. Dogs seem
to grasp the fourth dimension so much more clearly.

The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins is an exciting journey backward through time
that introduces the reader to a series of "concestors" or ancestors that we share a biological
affinity with throughout evolution. Dawkins fills each animal's tale with enlightening
references to biology like how Chimpanzees lack the Fox P 2 gene in their deoxyribonucleic
acid which humans have and might be what enables us to develop spoken language and that beavers are responsible for the largest extended phenotype known to man; lakes caused by dammed up rivers. He also discusses the asexual reproduction of Bdelloid Rotifers.
I found it interesting how Dawkins mentions both primitive sharks such as Charocles Megalodon and then Anomolocaris but he doesn't suggest that Anomolocaris might have been a shark ancestor as Stephen Jay Gould suggested in his book Wonderful Life. I could only pretend to take an interest in the smallest aquatic lifeforms like sea squirts who were our oldest concestors that Dawkins goes into a lot of detail about toward the end of the book. The Ancestor's Tale is modeled after Geofferey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales so each animal he focuses on has its own individual tale in the journey. One of my favorite chapters was the Orangutan's tale wherein he describes brachiation which is an Orangutan's customary use of its arms for ambulation rather than its legs.

Senestrorsum Excerpt

Kinetic Sketchbook