The Destruction of Nature

One day, a dance and political hip-hop dance troupe calling themselves “Culture Shock” came to my school. The troupe came dressed in grey baggy pants that made noises when they walked and shirts with their group’s logo on the front. The music started. The dancers cut through the floor with their powerful dance moves. Their pants made slashing noises as they danced. Slash. Slash. Slash. After the dance was over, the leader of the group and the only white person on stage made an announcement. “Christopher Columbus Day will no longer be observed, today is now known as Indigenous People Day.”

“Nature” is what isn’t listed. It’s what hasn’t been formed and given a name for. How do loggers justify cutting down trees to make a living? Perhaps they tell themselves, “It’s still the same area, just trimmed.” But it’s not. When forests become farms they quit being nature, nature became domesticated into farms. The land is still there, but it no longer grows passionately. Its flowers have been cut to feed a growing population.

In Class on Science Writing

Stephen Hawking has said that if humans don’t begin to use genetic engineering to modify themselves—including incorporating computer technology—computers will evolve past us and possibly cause our extinction.


Indeed, we have already seen the introduction of the cyborg into our lives. If you wear contacts. If you have a pacemaker, if you have a steel plate in your head, or a hearing aid in your ear, you have embarked upon the course cyborgery. Even more extremes are becoming common. We have a number of people walking around with artificial hearts—well, at least being wheeled around, still alive. Jerry Lewis has a tiny electric chair embedded near his spine. When he so desires, he can shock himself to alleviate pain. Or think of the tv show The Swan, where perfectly normal people undergo severe plastic surgery to alter their looks. And come out looking worse.

Arguably, we are our databases. Socrates claimed that writing was a terrible invention. It would kill memory. Now memory is the ultimate barometer of power. How much can you store. My laptop could hold the entire cultural production of Athens and still probably have room for another Britany Spears album. It also contains my vita, my schedule, all my written works (since the acquisition of one in college) my planner, all the phone numbers and addresses – snail and other wise—of my friends and relatives. This one piece of machinery probably contains more information that all of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the most meticulously inscribed human ever.

To dump this data into the living web of the internet, would that give it life? Is it alive? It’s certainly a more coherent representation of myself than any given presentation on any given day. Many times during the day, I shock myself with the stupidity that is commonplace. But my digital self is predictable, manageable and better looking thanks to Photoshop.

Big Tex[t]

Big Tex[t]

In case you really write something good, you should consider publishing it. This journal has a call for papers that accepts creative nonfiction.

for thursday

1. Take some "thing" from your hospital essay and surround it with ideas. Take that idea and run with it.

2. Either use your hospital essay or start a new entry with a twist, an incongruity, exaggeration, or understatement. 250 words

Surgery

I’m lying on a hospital bed with a tube in my arm. A month had passed since I broke my left forearm for the second time. I had only been alive for eight years and I was going in for surgery. The nurses put everyone awaiting surgery in a room together. There is a bed next to mine and I lean up just enough to tell that it’s an old woman.

“Hi, what are you here for?”
“I have something wrong with my heart.”
“Yeah my arm is broken they might stick pins in it.”
“Well it’ll all go over smoothly I’m sure.”
“So what are they going to do with your heart?”
“They are going to take out a piece.”
“Oh.”

There is a long awkward silence. The nurse takes me to the operating table. As I try not to think about the old woman, I go into a room looking up at four men. They scare me, but they’re trying hard to smile and get me to relax.

“When is this over?”
“You won’t feel a thing, when I count to ten you’ll be out.”

Four hours later.

I’m lying on a hospital bed with a tube in my arm. My mom is smiling at me but I can’t lift my head. The doctors must have pistol whipped me in my sleep. I panic. My throat is scraped up. As happy as I am to see mom, the pain is too strong.

“I’m going to go to bed mom.”
“O.K.”

The Yalobusha Review, the Literary Journal of the University of Mississippi

The Yalobusha Review, the Literary Journal of the University of
Mississippi

Perhaps you want to consider submitting your work to a broader public.

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The Evil Drawing Board

As I glance at my schedule for the day I see that I have “Drawing Board” for the first two hours. I’m sleep deprived from a weekend of drinking and sleeping in a tent in some hill with some friends and some locals. I’m dressed in my hunting-orange uniform vest and probably have on a spiked collar I forgot to take off for work; lack of sleep makes me forget things and makes my legs shake uncontrollably. This is how I came in every day that summer.

I’m about to face a line of snobby tourist kids. A companion and I are in charge of managing a contraption that creates designs on a large sheet of paper. The kid picks the color, 50 cents each, and pushes the drawing board to make a design.

First one, I didn’t put the marker in tightly and it shakes uncontrollably like my leg—maybe that’s why I didn’t notice it. “It’s supposed to look like that kid, sorry.”

Second one turns out beautiful, but I screw it up by wrinkling it like the skin of that guy from Tales from the Crypt.

Third kid comes in, and my drawing board companion says, “Let me handle this, one day those parents are gonna kick the shit out of you.” So I step back, but not far enough from the board; the kid pushes the drawing board and it hits my leg and wobbles, but nobody saw that, so it’s the kid’s fault. That’s the last day I went near the drawing board.