seanessay.com from Free Fall Friday
Prompt- four magpies and a squirrel
The world is full a lessons, patterns, swirling forces…
Some magpies were gathered on a curb, the dead squirrel on the road. The pattern of DNA ribbons and selfish genes meant the birds did not push and shove. Each took their turn to savour cold squirrel. The laws of physics meant that a bird could pull the body, as it yanked out a strip of red flesh. The squirrel could be yanked a couple inches with each pull because it was lighter that the bird that stood with bird toes spread. The neck muscles of the bird were opposed so head and beak moved only in the desired direction: Like when my bicep moves my wrist up, without my shoulder being dragged down to my wrist, as my opposing tricep muscle does it’s work.
The bird’s toes oppose the pavement, the pavement opposes back: Newton’s first law, in a natural expression.
“Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world.” A beak is a lever, prying away at a squirrel’s innards the way the squirrel once pried at nuts. A bicycle pedal levers a wheel that, through a chain, levers a still bigger wheel. It was not a simple bike but a complicated car that did in the little grey critter, a car with contained explosions that levered through a transmission to wheels to move a heavy machine along the roadways.
Let’s share the road, cyclists and cars and critters alike. Just as birds share a meal.
In a sort of physics, organisms breed and expand their numbers until opposed by the forces of constraints of food and shelter and habitat. Not so much a balance of nature as a random brownian motion like molecules in a glass imparting a sense of pressure and heat. Or cold, if the glass is warmer.
Calories, as expressions of heat, are the basic currency of the universe. The squirrel no longer had any calories; the birds were expending theirs in an attempt to gain more calories through food than they expended through action. Feathers serve to help keep the heat in.
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Prompt- 16 chickens and a one-eyed goat
So there I was, somewhere in the middle of Du-dome. You know, from the French “du” for two, and it was the second moon dome in our parts. Think how big a dome could be, and then think bigger. I mean, one-sixth Earth gravity, and well, one of our founders was from Texas.
Me too. Ain’t it the truth, that you just never know? One minute I’m a typical Houston rocket scientist, driving a taxi-cab because the bottom has fallen out of the space program budget, then some millionaire has the nerve to think he can do better than NASA. I mean, what sort of arrogance does it take to think he can do better than NASA’s five thousand dollar crescent wrenches and five hundred thousand dollar toilets? But he gambled, it paid off, and I got a job with rockets again.
A “real American” job: No union, no benefits, and barely enough cash to hire someone else to be my taxi driver. Thank God for Obama Care, cause I had no health benefits either.
I was thinking about all this as I lay on my back supremely happy in Du-dome, looking at the sky—no, the roof—no, the roof painted blue. Such a traditional colour for a moon dome.
I remembered doing so well in my new job, and then some fool had to go and press The Button. That’s the definite article, “the” for the only button that starts with a capital letter. We used to reassure each other that people in certain capital cities of certain nations with hydrogen bombs weren’t crazy. Sure, but if the capital is ruled by just one autocrat, well, you don’t push and pull and scratch your way up to the top of the heap without being more than a little crazy. And stupid, too stupid to come and live in God’s blessed America. Preferably in Texas.
Now “the place to be” is among we privileged few up on the moon. I mean sure, Houston has beautiful sunsets from all that dust in the higher atmosphere, and sure all that static means you don’t have to endure idiotic sitcoms on TV, and sure everybody’s free now to grow drugs in any odd patch of back lot, but still… People of Earth can have their not-so-fresh air, I enjoy mine canned and recycled so that every breath tastes the same, with no stupid winds. And now that I’ve exchanged my wee moon cabin for the big dome, I don’t have to worry about someone farting. How nice to have beans with my pancakes again!
And how nice to be the envy of all my neighbours, as I lie amongst my livestock: 16 chickens and a one-eyed goat. Bet you don’t have any such animals. I just have to look before I lie down.
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Prompt- remember when
Remember when mornings were frosty for a walk to school?
And the teachers learned us about the golden fool,
Whose touch was like Midas, very rough
And why was he named after a muffler?, that was tough
You know life is too much enough when your daughter is frozen and you don’t muffle your screams.
Remember when summer was for fishing in the river?
And it was so cold you could take out a sliver
As your finger shrank after an “owie” on shore
It’s why your first aide kit should have tweezers and more
When a “helicopter parent” would be a toy from the store
You know we only had adventures because our parents forgot
how you get slivers to get fun.
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Sean Crawford
Under the dome of God’s sky
Among my good atheist friends
December
2022
Blog note: It’s just “not done” to edit a free fall piece. Hence I may go over 900 words.
