Stagtine, 6. Earthen Exam

Section I, Chapter 3

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Often, Earth throws diamonds and gold up from her womb as an experiment, to see what our species will do.¹ Cut and color combine clearly under her ultimate heat and the malleable memory of exploded stars reach out from the mud and bounce and inquire: here I am, this is me, who are you?

Every earthen exam a chance, a moment to define, or redefine, relationship and our co-responsibility to carry her memory. A moment to see and a moment to wonder. But every time, it seems, has been a failure. O, have we failed. Have I.

Picks and chisels and greed make rings to sell and infinite colors to reflect our false and bright white, evening lights. Profit closes our ears. Production silences our minds. Business busies our hands.

Hello! Hope you are staying busy, the passerby thoughtlessly exclaims.

Hello! I hope I am not, I wish to say.

We look down, falling forward, forever in a machined meditation. Technology has long been humans speaking to computers. Zeros and ones and query strings used to gather data to compute and do and learn. Today, it has grown arms and legs and speaks to humans, in our own language. We taught them, we turned them into some- one, gave them our power, and then we gave ourselves to them. We worship mobile devices made of precious metals and we lose sight, maybe forever, of preciousness.

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