"Mimsy Were the Borogoves"

In anticipation of the American Society of Cybernetics' conference, I read the story by which this post is titled. I have made it available to you if you wish to read it, here. The short story, written in 1943, is revealing of a future we live now, and I believe it holds insight into a possible one ahead. It was written by Catherine Lucille Moore and Henry Kuttner under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett, and was judged among the best science-fiction short stories written before 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Engrossed by the story, and coming up for air to put it in a form that I can now annotate it, I am reminded of how precious my subscription to Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine was as a child. I must have been 8 or 9, and I looked forward to the collection of stories. So many of the visions of that era have become reality, and are on their way. Reminiscent of these precious memories, I plan on submitting a workshop to the conference that will give us another way of seeing the future by combining it with my doctoral research thesis. The documentary film Tomorrow (2015) gave many alternatives that people all over Earth are attempting, but the stories are still fragmented. In the movie, one man, exasperated, states that we need new stories; we have been so good at making stories of our own demise, but we need vast collections of stories of a future filled with light. As we move forward, we must create positive visions of a future we love and a cherished world. What kinds of connections can we imagine and bring forth into being? In the spirit of Robert E. L. Masters and Jean Houston in their book Mind Games, may we recreate our reality and make a better one for the future.

Hagoromo

I dreamed that I was building a wooden house about one block from the ocean in a place kind of like the Romantic Zone of Puerto Vallarta with Noe and Hugo. As usual, there were a lot of problems with the house. When we had finally finished, I realized that only half of a tree that had been there was still there. It was a beautiful tree covered in great, ornate flowers like gladiolas or framboyanes, that were blue and white. A flock of huge crane-like a birds came upon the tree to feed. One of the cranes took a flower and wrapped part of it with her beak, separating the pieces so that it twirled around her beak, keeping only the central part. It was such a graceful movement and she took off with just that piece with two long streamers. Immediately, I asked for the cranes for an interview. They circled, and the one who had taken the flower transformed in one movement as she touched down on the ground. She intently came to me as a lovely woman, in flowing white robes and long dark hair, and we spoke. She said that the tree had been big and full when she was a little girl, but now it was hard to find this kind of tree and it was a rare treat. She was worried that the trees were disappearing. I started crying, and I woke up crying.

How tragic that we've taken their food sources and other sources of joy. When we love food so much, and it's such a big part of our cultures.As human beings with empathy and understanding, in our humanity it should be clear that the other living things around us also take their deepest joys from the same things we do; from favorite foods, from finding a mate, from having children, from bathing, from drinking, from sleeping in a safe place, from being able to move freely without fear of being attacked, just the simple joys of life that anyone would desire.

If we are truly human, great creatures able to understand such emotions as empathy and philosophy, we must find a way to create space around us for the creatures who also belong in our world. However difficult, we should stop cutting down trees in our cities and gardens to allow them to grow into their full half-moon canopies, and when planting trees, we should be certain to plant many varieties of food for local creatures, a smorgasbord for our avian and insect friends of delicacies like our restaurants of different cultural cuisines. The canary in the coalmine is finding it hard to breath.