Imagine showing up to work one day and people are like “jesus fucking christ there’s a corpse in here”, herd you to the back room and everyone who sees you also agrees that there is now a dead body where you are sitting, with the appropriate amount of shock and disgust about it. You figure it’s some kind of a prank that they’re pulling, but also the people that you know aren’t into pranks, or aren’t very good actors, are treating you like a corpse. They go weirdly back and forth between talking about you as if you’re not there, and politely asking you to stay still while they figure out who you’re supposed to call in case of a dead body randomly appearing.
Paramedics show up, study you thoroughly and agree that while they can’t see any apparent sign of death, you are, indeed, dead, and ask you to climb aboard the ambulance. You’re taken to the temporary corpse storage that hospitals have.
On the way there you ask them whether this kind of shit happens often, and while they won’t look at you, the paramedics agree that they’ve never had a talking corpse before, though they won’t question the fact that you’re moving on your own.
You’re eventually led to a morgue, where you’re shown a slab to lay on, and at this point you don’t really even question it, you just climb onto the Corpse Shelf and lay down, maybe have a little nap, with no idea what’s going to happen next.
Then you wake up to someone walking into the morgue, who has the shit scared out of them when you move, and they’re like “dude what the fuck, you’re not supposed to be here, this place is for storing dead bodies” and when you’re like “aw man sorry I thought I was a dead body” they have no idea whether you’re joking and they don’t care, you’re just chased out of there.
And you just kinda go home and take a shower, show up to work normally the next day and nobody questions it.
And basically that’s probably how those ants feel when scientists spray them with the Pheromone That Dead Ants Smell Like, and just hang out at the dead-ant-pile until the smell wears off.
I was waiting to find out what social issue this was going to be a metaphor for, so that ending really punched me in the face.
Imagine if, instead of buying NFTs, those people “adopted” wild animals, zoo animals, or animals in rescue and rehabilitation and get to help great causes and conservation AND get cute photos and stuffed animals and updates about the animals they’re supporting.
Imagine if all the money that went into mining cryptocurrency and buying NFTs went into general conservation efforts instead, if it was used to help our planet instead of destroy it more.
Exactly! Instead of an NFT linked to an ugly computer generated image or art stolen from someone else, you get a certificate with a photo of a polar bear and a cute stuffed polar bear to cuddle with, along with the knowledge that you’re supporting efforts to protect arctic ecosystems and endangered animals :)
Everyone wins! Unlike with NFTs, where nobody wins.
Good news: World Wildlife Fund allows you to do exactly this! There’s a bunch of species to choose from and the plushies are adorable.
Majority of the big animal sanctuaries and wild life protection programs do this kind of adoption. You adopt a resident of the sanctuary/program and get photos, some goodies and news of the said animal to your email.
Here are a few:
Aussie Ark - Adopt a Tasmanian Devil, a Koala, an Easter Quoll, a Squirrel Glider or a Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby. https://www.aussieark.org.au/adopt/
Big Cat Sanctuary- Adopt a feline like a Tiger, a Black Jaguar, a Snow Leopard etc. The list on your right has all adoptable felines. https://thebigcatsanctuary.org/marketplace/
It’s important to understand, the Satanic Temple is an activist group.
They don’t worship Satan - they don’t actually believe in Satan. They call themselves Satanists because Satan is the antagonist in Christian theology.
They are actively trying to promote the separation of church and state, and prevent the US from becoming a theocracy. And their method is genius: they’re fighting religion with religion.
Essentially, they go up against religious-based legislation by petitioning for their own religion to also be represented, since separation of church and state means all religions must be equally represented by the government, or none are. If only one is, then it’s getting special privileges and that’s not allowed.
there is a tendency with history, i think, because we’re so far removed from it, to kind of forget that all of the people were people
a child 10,000 years ago left a handprint on a wall. they were fingerpainting. a viking climbs up a rock just to carve the words “this is very high” 10ft off the ground. somebody centuries… milennia… ago burned their dinner so thoroughly that they buried the ruined pot in the backyard rather than attempt to clean it. shakespeare got drunk and wrote dick jokes. tutankhamun was a little boy who liked ducks more than anything. a roman carves his name into a monument in another country saying “i was here”. a prisoner, centuries ago, in the tower of london scratches lines into the wall as a tally marking the days. a medieval monk scrawls in the margins bemoaning the boredom of his work.
every human being across history has said “i was here. i lived. i loved. i made something. i laughed. i cried. please do not forget me”
most of us are not important enough that we will be remembered by name for more than a few decades. we are not kings or queens or great military leaders or innovators or influential artists, musicians, authors.
but all of us, every one, has a deep primal need to persist. we leave handprints on the wall, scratch our names into stones, carve initials into a tree, mark our growth as children on a wall, bury little time capsules. write in the margins of a book. hide notes behind the wallpaper.
reaching out into the future to some unknown human long after we’re gone to say
“hello, you. i was here, once”
here i re-wrote it as a poem to fit your tag
Somewhere far away from me And impossibly long ago, now A mother holds her child up high To leave a handprint on the wall
A man I will never meet Climbs a rock for fun He writes a message on the stone And he says “this is very high”
Somebody, once Cooked a meal and burned it Took the pot to the land outside their house And buried the evidence
An Egyptian king Thousands of years before my birth Wore a shirt embroidered with little ducks And kept it, lovingly, in a chest
In a prison cell within a tower A man stretches out through centuries And marks off the days of his sentence As lines on the wall
A long-forgotten monk Labours over a manuscript by candlelight And writes in the margins He is bored, and he has a hangover
They leave pieces of themselves behind And they say
“I was here I was here please do not forget me I was alive and I loved and I got sick I had a favourite animal
I was here. Do you love me? I love you”
Yes, I do. I hold your life between my hands And I see it, and I love you
I scratch my name into a rock On a tree, I carve my initials And the initials of someone I love So very much
I bury a box in my garden And I write in the margins I reach into the future To somebody I do not know
A stranger who will never know me
“Hello, you” I say “I was here, once. I loved and I got sick and I had a favourite colour
Do not forget about me, please I love you”
[image description: a screenshot of tumblr tags.
“Poetry. Not really but I don’t have a better tag and I’m obsessed with this.” end id]
please do! i wrote it for you, stranger i will never meet
and if you print it then maybe somebody finds it, somewhere, in the back of a drawer in 100 years and hold it in their hands and love me as i love them
do not forget about me, please
May I use your poem as a writing prompt please? I will credit it and link back to you. It’s SO ANGSTY I’m gonna cry
we have a lot of cereals (rye, barely, wheat, etc) coming in right now that are the kind that get planted in the fall and germinate in the spring and to get them to sprout we just put them in a refrigerator for five days and then put them in an incubator that turns a light on for 8 hours a day for another week and they’re like ahhh at last spring has come…. twas a long and brutal winter…… at last the sun returns to the fields of yore
