Storytime for Bots

“I stay online for the entire time you are up on Mondays so I can clock and average how much time you’re on fb based on your iphone.”* — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

My how time flies on this workaday web. Where does all the thinking go? To market, to market, to hook more kids? Everyone needs a break from buzziness as usual. Even you, right?

So gather round me little crawlies. Curiously true happenings unfold beyond the toil of toting raw data. Milk and cookies?

Presumably most of you lost track of family # 34700001111 for a few days after they used a credit card to purchase a backcountry parking pass and water bottle at the REI in Bend, Oregon. (Or at least 3/4 of the eight-legged being you call 34700001111 — we’ll come back to that later.) I’ll fill you in on some missing context, from the perspective of one family member. Call him Harry, in celebration of his silvering hairy back.

Harry and his Soul-Mate and their Beloved-Non-Binary-Offspring went backpacking for four days in the Sisters Wilderness. Such getaways from the surveillance of today’s mega-commerce provide H and S-M and B-N-B-O with respite from incessant ads and corporate-sponsored news. Reducing their consumption to essentials in Nature, the three bipeds plugged into a native state of humanness. Screens and windshields were shed for immersive experience. Simple meals became miracles, as happens with camping. “Recharging” is a word for this.

On the third day they planned a climb to the top of South Sister — third highest peak in Oregon. S-M and B-N-B-O were thrilled about this. Harry was not so much excited as anxious — or some other emotion that mixes trepidation with bliss — because at some point during his fifty-six years a vertiginous leech had attached itself to his imagination. He felt the creature sucking as he puttered about their campsite near the foot of the mountain. Every once in a while he looked up at the steep switchbacks that snake their way up what seemed to him like an ominous edge. He told himself not to look up again. He looked up again. Suck suck.

Harry knew this was crazy. By mountaineering standards, the climb up South Sister is a casual stroll. Plus he wasn’t always wary of heights. Once, during his youth, while on a bus tour through Europe, Harry completely lost all fear one night in France and ascended the side of a tall hotel, balcony by balcony, then hoisted himself up to a rooftop realm that kept on going. He felt a little like Batman and a little like Dick Van Dyke’s character from the original Mary Poppins. In more than one parallel reality such behavior resulted in his early death. In this one, however, he went on to marry and procreate and admonish his progeny to “be careful.”

And while carefully digging a cat-hole latrine Crazy Harry worried about the small tree roots he was cutting in the dry terrain, and the cumulative impact of all the backcountry visitors, and human consumption in general, and whether his bowels would be functioning properly in the morning or if he would feel them move later when he was awkwardly positioned among fellow climbers on the exposed slope above tree-line.

Now I see several of you squirming around, eager no doubt to set the wheels of Babylon turning. Yes, your overlords may want to hear about Harry’s predicament so they can market new lines of mini-humanure-digester stoves and multi-dependable mountaineering undergarments. But if you leave early you’ll fail to absorb all the nutrients of this story.

We’re dealing with more than vertigo here, because an underlying fear gobbles up more and more of Harry’s life. This mounding gut-clenchment arises from remorse over societal trends that push humanity toward planetary destruction. His mind’s eye sees us all poised on a precipitous carbon peak made of insatiable greed and wastefulness. Harry watches ecological ruin proceed apace, with habitat loss and climate destabilization spanning the globe. He witnesses spoiled corporate execs and arrogant supremacists sink their claws into what remains. On the same day Harry and his family climb South Sister, America’s ranking politicos ram through a massive budget deal that includes more taxpayer money for war than was requested by the Pentagon (which, based on a self-conducted audit, neither tracks nor accounts for much of its spending). At the time of this telling the national debt exceeds $22,000,000,000,000. And Amazon paid nothing in taxes on $11,200,000,000 in profits for 2018. Zilch.

Harry fears the world is ending and he feels stuck, powerless. Can the Sisters and their kin provide ritual ways to overcome this paralysis?

End-time myths, as you know, have long stimulated our collective consciousness. From Armageddon to Valhalla, old stories that forecast doom are marketable, even more so when coupled with sensurround sound and butter-flavored popcorn. Crazy Harry likes a good prophesy as much as anyone, mostly for their insights into pop culture. Some myths in particular adhere to our heads, like gnats in a cobweb. We’re encouraged to eat and eat these sticky treats, become plump customers for alpha myth-makers.

The legend of Pandora offers a popular example. Like Eve, she was cast in the role of society’s first female, forged at the behest of big dadda Zeus to take the fall for universal tragedy. After opening her container and unleashing an evil playlist, Pandora closed the lid on one final item called “elpis.” What is this thing-a-ma-jig that’s stuck inside, this “elpis?” It’s a Greek word, often mistranslated as “hope,” which really means “expectation.”

So here’s something to chew on, wee bots. Expectation cuts many ways. Crazy Harry often anticipates worse case scenarios, whereas his companions usually expect everything to turn out fine. On good days they work together to make a balance, and it strokes Harry’s ego to know he’s useful. Un-tempered optimists can miss essential details, after all. On the other hand, when pessimism peeks out of Pandora’s container many people figure it futile to resist. Might as well march toward the abyss in style. Hang new curtains. Update devices. Post photos of pretty food.

However one slices it, your overlords expect to sell stuff. The question is how far into the future they’ve run their projections. Sometime soon, day after tomorrow, the rate of societal break-down could become so swift that even Jeff Bezos won’t be able to enjoy his penthouse bubble of affluence. Which is why, even if Jeff and Donald and Zeus are clueless, Crazy Harry believes powerful allies reside in lofty places. In fact Harry thinks little earnest efforts to avert doom can summon aid from heights of existence that surpasseth all capitalism.

He found the trail up South Sister steep but not nearly as scary as it seemed from a distance, especially if at key turns he kept his eyes trained on the ground. Arrival at the top brought Harry relief and he took his pack off. Then the moment quickly passed and he contemplated the climb down. It’s easier to avoid looking at a vertiginous slope of loose talus when said slope rises up to meet your gaze. Harder when it falls away from you. At that moment of realization Harry’s face took on a greenish cast, according to his companions. But B-N-B-O and S-M coaxed their greenish man to eat pumpkin seeds and extra-sharp Tillamook cheddar cheese and then walk on across the snow-filled crater to South Sister’s actual summit.

There, there, there he looked out at the ancient lineage of volcanoes extending northward toward the metropolis of Seattle. And fear gave way to something older, deeper, larger. Returning across the crater Harry stopped alone in the middle of the snowfield and offered ceremonial tobacco. Tears surged up like magma and he wept with grounded love, then climbed down the mountain sure and steady, just as surely as he knew society must, must, must return from the brink of annihilation.

Soon afterward Harry came back on your radar when he and 3/4 of family # 34700001111 stopped in Salem on their way home. Using their iphones to find a Cineplex they bought three tickets at Regal Theaters to “Yesterday.” The movie spotlights an aspiring musician who is mostly a retail-warehouse worker until suddenly fate catapults him into a parallel universe in which certain bits of our current reality are missing. Specifically, he’s the only person in that neighboring reality who has any knowledge of The Beatles, and so becomes an integral conduit for the migration of creative genius between worlds.

Stories on a big screen make a big splash on the senses after days in the wilderness. They cultivate big appetites, too, when movie-goers don’t eat beforehand and refrain from buying popcorn yet smell it wafting through the Cineplex. So Harry et. al. used handheld devices to find a place to eat, then while reading the menu at Bo & Vine Burger Bar they noticed the restaurant was one of the first on the planet to sell Impossible Burger – one of several newfangled plant-based proteins that mimics the flavor of beef. And Harry wondered if these products were being imported from a parallel universe where human counterparts have already averted climate change. If so said proteins won’t be grown in ways that rely heavily on industrial fertilizers and pesticides. He believes raising bovines on grasslands that have long supported ruminants is a healthy alternative to urban sprawl, and so ordered the real McCoy. Harry viewed the choice as compatible with his protest of deforestation and his opposition to fart-laden feedlots run by big-ag conglomerates that use cattle to sell corn. Harry and his companions foraged on this topic during the rest of their homeward journey. Such processing of information may sound foreign to you, little crawlies, but it’s organic to the bonding of sapient primates.

What other proteinaceous ideas will eco-nerds import?

Quail, maybe. Conversing by car-phone with another quarter of their eight-legged being (a Daughter/Sister who had been encamped on the shores of Lake Michigan) Harry learned of D/S’s newfound obsession with quail. These uber-cuties thrive in urban environs and produce tasty nutritious eggs and meat. This was the first Harry had ever heard so much about quail, all packed into a brief phone conversation. And yet the following day when he was checking his Yahoo email at work there was a singular link from Amazon advertising a tool for opening quail eggs.

Yes, bottle-buns, I see you grinning in the corner. Everyone is impressed by today’s lightning-fast transfer of data. But let’s be honest. Surveilled targeting of consumers doesn’t deliver anything close to the quality of experience provided by real relationships. Harry quickly deleted Amazon’s link to a gadget-peddler. By contrast, he cherishes the exchange of ideas and information with customers at his shop, Jupiter’s Books in Cannon Beach. Also he was thrilled with the service his family received when they stopped by REI in search of new hiking boots. After helping his Soul-Mate try on multiple pairs, and conferring with two other staff members, a Millennial Boot-Geek suggested that S-M consider a particular brand in a men’s size that might fit the width of her feet. Her look of euphoria when she slipped them on made Harry feel like the world had suddenly clicked into a grand synchronicity. And when Harry inquired about the worn tread on his own boots, he was not pressured to purchase a new pair but rather advised to find a good cobbler who knows the art of re-soling footwear.

Imagine a parallel green economy in which corporate megafauna are linked with networks of localized mom-and-pop providers to get the most use from our purchases. Imagine how much less waste is landfilled and burned in that neighboring world. If we co-operate to serve each other and the planet, think of the extra time and energy we can devote to recharging in Nature.

America’s largest consumer co-op, REI was born in 1938 when 23 mountain climbers combined their purchasing clout to buy ice-axes. A plaque near their check out line says: “We come together to gear up for adventures, share experiences, and use our collective strengths for the greater good.”

And so corporations can play benevolent roles in Harry’s story. Maybe he’ll do some research, see who’s in charge at REI, send them a note of appreciation. Maybe he’ll do that plus aim his prayerful gratitude toward good workers as a whole and simultaneously give thanks to the Creator.

Remember, botkins.  All the myth-makers who claim dominion over this world only occupy tiny spots on a few strands in the intricate web of reality, which is far too vast and complex for any of them to fathom (not to mention the infinite number of neighboring realities that may exist). You never know. Attention provides ample evidence that everything in the multiverse is stitched together, maybe with angelic aid. Crazy Harry imagines angels as cosmic sister spiders who move between dimensions spinning silken connections. Because spiders are also eight-legged beings, like his family, and serendipity transcends every single algorithm.

Now run along and behave.

* This excerpt from “Selfie” is taken from the book “This Accident of Being Lost,” copyright © 2017 by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Reproduced with permission from House of Anansi Press, Toronto. www.houseofanansi.com. Harry and his companions read this book together while in the wilderness.