Teleology of Gods-to-be

December 7, 2024 1:52pm

I watch many youtube videos of defenders of religion and advocates for atheism. Neither side can prove the other wrong. The debate leads me to the question of the ultimate fate of the humans. If we do not kill each other off and we manage to avoid a cataclysmic disaster, what will we evolve into in 500 thousand or a million years? Is it possible that we evolve into something entirely different from our present manifestation? Especially if we begin to manage and direct the changes? Can we at some point elect to become God-like? Is that the ultimate goal of all life?

Linh Dinh

December 9, 2024 12:36am

This is from Linh Dinh a Vietnamese writer who escaped the war as a child and lived in the US for many years before traveling the world….he’s on Substack and this is representative of his best work. Look for “Postcards from the End”.

This morning, the dogs didn’t bark at me. Before the adoption of the Occidental clock, Vietnamese divided the night into five canhs. There’s this lovely passage from Nguyễn Du (1766-1820):

Khi tỉnh rượu lúc tàn canh
Giật mình mình lại thương mình xót xa
Khi sao phong gấm rủ là
Giờ sao tan tác như hoa giữa đường?

Sobering as the last canh’s extinguished,
Self shaken self again lapses into self-pity.
Why once so richly draped with brocade?
Why now tossed like a flower in the road?

That self tossed onto asphalt is an unhappy prostitute. Of course, there was no asphalt in 1812 Vietnam, but it’s constantly on my mind, man. Having tramped over it nonstop for a week, my brain has assumed the hardness and consistency of asphalt. I now know how varied that bituminous bitch is. There are stretches so rugged, even jagged, I must seek relief on the sidewalk. Worst, though, is when I must put on my pussy soft sandals. With eyes downcast, I take mincy, queer steps through this laughing universe.

5:06AM and I’m already at my second café. This one blessedly has no music, only birds chirping in joy or panic in two cages above my head. This street is named after Nguyễn Kim (1468-1545). Half a mile away is Triệu Việt Vương (524-571). I only cite these to show that just about every nation but one has a very long memory. Even with such a short past, that aberration still can’t recall anything but its last phony election… – Linh Dinh

This dude is always up before dawn, sitting in some cafe waiting for coffee and watching the world with the eye of a poet. I always wonder what gets him up at this hour, but it seems he must wring the essence from life and there’s no time to waste. I can hear the caged birds singing.

This past evening, I sang with seven older ladies at a Yule log celebration. I was “volunteered” to do the part of the eleven pipers piping in the Twelve Days of Christmas. As we sang, some young guys looked in but were too cool to enter and join. I grasped that these seven women had probably done much more to ensure the progress of civilization than the youths with their testosterone-fueled egos could ever imagine. But then maybe they were good kids who would prove me wrong on the altar of self-sacrifice. It’s dangerous to make judgement calls.

Chingachgook

December 18, 2024 6:50pm

A grey rainy winter day begins with thunder and lightning. I lay in bed listening to the show and enjoying the warm covers. By 8:30, we are at our first stop to pick up my parents and my sister. We are on our way to the funeral of my uncle. It rains the entire 1 1/2-hour trip. I’m driving and I think about those already on that other shore. My father was one of 11 and my mother, one of seven. I had 16 aunts and uncles when I was born – well, 15 – one died young. Now there are two…. an uncle on Mom’s side and an aunt on Dad’s side. My parents say there will be no one at their funerals – all their friends and family are gone. My dad at 92 thinks he is Chingachgook, the Last of the Mohicans. Mom is just tired; she’s 89.

After the service, we drive to the cemetery in the rain. This all occurs in rural Kentucky and every single car pulls over out of respect. Most of them probably know my uncle.

The women stay in the car. I walk along the parked vehicles to the tent for the graveside service. The pastor begins as the rain increases and I’m lost in the beauty of the distant knobs – shrouded in mist and mystery far beyond the cemetery and the surrounding corn stubble.

I have many kin buried here. I’ll be back.

Star of Wonder

December 22, 2024 3:36pm

Christmas time. A star – the star of Bethlehem shines through the frigid night. The light shattered prismatically through the liquid filling my eye. And I am filled, filled with a longing for some certainty; but there is only the night, the cold, and the star.

Predictions of an Unknown Future

December 31, 2024 6:38pm

I walked at dusk. The Christmas lights are still on the barn. The wind was blowing, and a spitting rain was falling as I walked the fields. The pines occasionally blocked the rain but back in the open, it fell again. The last day of 2024…. I wonder what the new year will hold. We never know.