featured in landscapes of possibility (2013) and at in the voyager update project at space collective: http://spacecollective.org/tank/3542/Final-Thoughts-and-Appendices-on-the-Human-Suit-written-in-a-car-racing-up-Interstate-5-inbetween-nonviolent-actions-and-amongst-the-redwoods
Christmas day, nineteen sixty eight in the winter twice after the summer of love on that day a single photograph encircled the globe. humanity, no more a brain divided into east and west lobes. it was the first photo of the earth as a whole. we instantly saw ourselves as one species whole. we gave premature birth to global consciousness that day. when a human child is born, they say, their eyes stay fixed and focused not more than one foot through the space in front of their face this is precisely the distance from their eyes to the eyes of their father's mistress as they are savoring the milk from her breast and for one day our eyes were focused on Earthrise it was no big surprise to those of us who’d just arrived after birth, soon we notice children's eyes start to wander they recognize patterns and the world fills with wonder the eyes develop depth perception, sensitivity to motion and they turn from their mothers - interested in the abstract notions their absent fathers attached to the celestial motions and so we, three years after our due date, sent a message to the stars to an unknown species inquiring quietly as to who we are thus again we turned our backs and all humanity was distracted our mothers skin we peeled away and fossil fuels we extracted blind eyes to our plunder like government memos being redacted we lifted candles to the sky as if the stars were interactive we say hey kids thought these lighthouses were there to guide others through the night to say "hey! somebody there?" but only distressed vessels carelessly dare burn their rations of ancient sunlight a newborn’s pleaing and crying through the night to tell its mother that something's wrong i am crying, something's wrong in my world - my mother is dying and i hold today her last photograph from a satellite flying, and its plain to see on the print there shine a million candles lifted skyward, crying out a fiery message of distress past the hospital bed to the ether at the universe' end and this candle is trying to speak not with aliens but with future generations on behalf of an alien species, baby humans just developing the hand-eye coordination to facilitate the movement by which the woman on the bed will collectively awaken to communicate this condition in the languages learned during gestation to send a kernel of information to we who will soon be a mature and native product of speciation because soon after a child begins to understand that sunsets lead to dawns the trauma of childhood will be repressed into the collective subconscious lessons learned, without memories to linger on only hospital records and photographs of our mother lighting birthday candles
