Sincerely,
Ned Grimley-Groves
New Time Change
Individual Octopodes don’t live long (between six months and two years) but as a species we have extensive, meshed, intergenerational memories. Humans live longer but each generation forgets what was previously learned.
[insert some simple way—ordinary data, culture-talk—of saying the multiple meanings here]
[use music? in algorithm? to soothe the news?]
You had your time you took your time after time you had your cake by the ocean and ate it too but now the tide has turned the times tables too when it’s time to change you’ve got to rearrange #timesup and for old times’ sake we will remember you in our time. That time is now. How soon is now. The moon is how we know.
Letter from an Elder
Dear Humans,
Hi, hi. It’s Ned, again. Seems to be just me, these days. Haven’t heard from Francesca, or anyone else. What did we use to say, “dance like no one is watching”? So here’s a little soft-shoe—the truth can’t hurt us now. How sad that we once thought it could; told early enough it might have saved us.
Or maybe we have been saved, too soon to tell. Obviously I miss the technology and the speed, traveling and inventions, the way teenagers were finding simple cures for quickly mutating viral diseases. I miss that direction, sure. I miss movies and weddings, office-pals, my grandma, my kids, buying what I wanted. I even miss saving up to buy what I wanted. I miss anticipation, goals. Interminable dance recitals that no one watched because they were recording them on devices.
We were quite literally gunning for our own extinction, it now seems obvious. If not by pandemic, or self-inflicted extreme climate events, or border/nation hysteria, gleefully murderous cops and presidents and dictators, the infinite variations of pollution and cruelty and deliberate ignorance—we threw children in prison, we let them be sold—and who was “we”? we wonder, now that we are no longer us.
But nothing dehumanized us like the guns. The endless guns in anybody’s hands were always someone else’s fault. Every trigger finger pointed at someone else, in a war against someone else. We hated anyone we thought wasn’t like us, but of course we were all like us. We hated ourselves. We chose evil, elected it, protected it, let it maim the animals, steal the land, drop the bombs, poison the water, terrorize the children, fund the greedy, and squander every last chance.
We let guns kill our children on a daily basis. Who are we to say the Octopodes did anything worse? They’re an ink species. They overwrote us. They dissembled our guns by dissolving our systems in the middle of our own shoot-out. What we thought was gun smoke was ink cloud. The writing was never on the wall, it was in the water. Our names, like Keats’s, writ there.
Of course they’ll never understand us. Have we ever understood us? We were the humans, a bafflement of evolution: most species evolve to live; we devolved to evil. Most infinitesimal specks get squashed by a much bigger foot, and maybe we’re not the only dot of a species to die of its own self-hatred, but we are rare. We were rare. The lovely planet may be salvaged with our extinction—I won’t live to know, but it would be some last light.
I cling to this because to hope for this earth to go on after we’re gone is the only kind of love left—the last good human piece of us. That some of our ether, soul, spirit, wishes, vibrations might linger here. That some form of hope can stay, with or without us.
And if not, maybe the Octopodes will care to find some form to remember us by. In case that is the case, I am collecting fragments—scraps I find here and there in script or print, among the debris, mostly anonymous ephemera and some poetry, which surprises me. I didn’t think we wrote poetry much anymore.
I remain available, for now, at my new address.
Ned Grimley-Groves
(formerly of New Hampshire)
Salinization Pod #11298 N.E.
Nest
Cal’s not doing so well, and I can’t think straight.
It’s almost his birthday, and I’m not home to be
with him. I’m in a cabin up in the New Hampshire
woods, in order to write. I’m writing this.
Craig was up with him most of last night, he said.
Cal was coughing and gagging, probably allergies,
and this happens every spring. But today Cal’s nurse
says he was wheezing and had a rough day at school,
his temperature a little up and now the babysitter
is taking Cal, Simone tagging along, to the doctor,
and Craig is leaving work early to meet them there,
to make sure Cal is okay. Albuterol, Benadryl, Motrin
don’t seem to be helping. Maybe he needs a stronger
allergy medicine, something prescription? Craig
will tell me as soon as the doctor tells him.
Right before Craig told me all this, I was reading
the end of a novel about a rich man who lost
everything and was going to his home country
to see if he could reclaim anything there, his birthright
and family property seized and stolen in the forties.
He arrived in Beijing and is wandering around, light-
headed from not eating and from fear. I didn’t
finish the book because I heard a buzzing. A wasp
I was sure was on the outside of the screened-in
porch was in. I thought we could co-exist peacefully
for a few minutes but then I thought about coming
back at night, or forgetting about it in the morning
and I didn’t want to be afraid. I decided that since
I knew where it was, could see it on the screen,
and that I had a good shot right now, I should get it.
It’s a wasp, I thought. It’s not a good bug like a bee
or a spider. It’s a bad bug, and will sting me if it can.
I thought I got a good weapon, a stiff cardboard box.
I didn’t want to use anything heavier, what if I broke
the screen? I steadied myself and pushed the flat
flat against the wasp, which pushed back more than
I thought it would, and it dropped and I dropped
the box. I couldn’t see it. Did I get it? I fled inside
and closed the door. Maybe it’s injured, maybe
just hiding. Heart pounding, I’m peering through
the window trying to see. I can’t see anything, just
the box I dropped. I don’t know how I’m going
to get out of here now. I think if that wasp is still
alive it will surely be out to get me. It’s strange that
just a moment ago I was so calm, so immersed.
Not a minute after I found myself trapped, my phone
buzzed. It doesn’t get much reception but the text
from Craig came through and that’s when I learned
that Cal wasn’t doing so well, and all the info I said
above, which is all the info I have at this point.
I know Cal will be okay. But how do I know it?
Do I know it simply because it has to be true?
Or because Craig says he’s not that worried?
Or does Craig say he’s not that worried because
he doesn’t want to worry me? Why am I up here
writing in the woods when my family needs me
if all I’m doing is failing to kill innocent wasps
and writing this, this poem I’ll never really finish.
This poem I stole from my fear, my endless fear.
I don’t want to find the wasp dea
d. I want it to live,
to find its way outside this poem, away from me
and the fear I know will find me again. I’ll go
home to my son, three days before he turns ten.
Blueberries for Cal
Watching little Henry, six, scoop up blueberries
and shovel them into his mouth, possessed.
I’m so glad I brought blueberries—wish my kids
could/would eat them. Cal can’t; Simone won’t.
Henry’s sisters Lucy & Jane took turns feeding each
other goldfish crackers and sips of juice.
Arms around each other’s neck and back. Tiny things.
I wish my daughter had a sister like that
and my son a nervous system that let him walk
and munch berries. Sometimes I can’t bear
all the things Cal doesn’t get to do. I want to curse
everything I can’t give him.
Admire/compare/despair—that’s not the most real
feeling I’m feeling, is it? I feel joy in Henry’s joy.
Blueberries for the child who wants them.
There’s all this energetic sweetness, enough to go around,
to give and taste and trust. More than enough.
For Cal, too. I want to remember this.
My children seem to subsist on music and frosting.
Where there’s frosting, there’s cake.
Where there’s music, someone chose to make a song
over all other things on this earth.
PERMANENT COLLECTION: ARCHIVE OF PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS
Are Women People?
A report commissioned by the COP’s Department of Human Studies. In the interest of anthropological authenticity, cephalopod researchers utilized only methods and modes used by humans themselves, in their various legal, academic, and socio-cultural institutions. To the best of our ability, we worked within their language and wielded their tools in order to better understand their mysteries, and how to serve mankind’s legacy. —the authors
1. FRAMING THOUGHTS:
We don’t believe the question in the report’s title to be self-evident.
Governing documents use this term, self-evident, so it seems legit, foundational, but it’s a pleonasmic tautology, a proud cheese full of holes, a question answered untruly by itself, palindrome-like: Is it real? Real it is!
To begin to understand how to answer the question we must define the two terms: women and people. People is a broader term than women. Women are a subset of people. Women are a kind of people.
People are not a kind of women.
At this moment someone will always say: men are also a subset of people! It goes the other way, too! People who need to interject that point are usually men. When you hypothetically posit the word women as a term that includes men (logical, as the word men is already there within the word women) in practice the terms lose all meaning.
Men found it insulting and risky not to be named as the sole primary term—it seemed wrong, their personhood status implied but not fully legally inscribed. And it was deemed too clunky to have to say men and women every single time a reference was made to people, so women became the secondary term, an addendum to the word men.
To recap: People includes both men and women. Man claims to include women, but doesn’t. Woman doesn’t include men, or women as a group. Man is plural, encompassing humanity (which, clearly, serves man). Woman is singular, individual. To each her own.
2. QUERIES: HOW DO WE DEFINE PEOPLE?
Does a person have to be a human being?
Are animals people?
Are corporations people?
Are ideas people?
Are objects made by humans people?
Are fictional characters people?
What about past people?
Are dead people still people?
Are people who exist in memory only, names inscribed on stones or buildings, people?
Are people who only exist in wills and legal terms people?
Are the wishes and requests of dead people people?
Are ghosts, once they’ve been proven to exist, people?
What about future people?
Are children people?
Are babies people?
Are unborn babies people?
Are fetuses people?
Are embryos people?
Are zygotes people?
Are sperm people?
Are ova people?
Are people’s plans to have children people?
Are the ova of people’s children people?
Are the ova of people’s unborn babies people?
Are the ova of fetuses people?
Are the ova of embryos people?
Are the undifferentiated cells that may become ova or sperm people?
Are the undifferentiated cells that may become people who may become parents to people who may become parents to people who may become parents to people who may become parents people?
If there’s a possibility that essential parts (undifferentiated cells, for example) of people are in themselves also people, then are other essential parts also people?
Is a human brain people?
Is a human heart people?
Is human waste people?
Is human emotion people?
Is human ingenuity people?
Is human survival instinct people?
Is the basic luck to be born at all people?
Is DNA people?
Is a torso people?
Is a neck people?
If it’s possible that essential parts are people, might non-essential parts be people?
Is a foot people?
Are seeing or unseeing eyes people?
Is human sexual arousal people?
Is a human sense of humor people?
Is language people?
Is talent people?
Are mental disorders people?
Are diseases people?
Is a photograph that captures the essence of a person and allows that person to live on in human memory people? (i.e., a child pointing to a photo, saying, “That’s Grandma!”)
What about people for whom essential or non-essential parts are absent? Are they people? Are parts of them people, but not other parts? Is it possible to be part people/part non-people?
Are humans with artificial body parts people?
Are humans who hurt other humans without remorse people?
Are humans who cannot take care of themselves people?
Are humans who are chemically dependent people?
Are humans who are terminally ill people?
Are humans who lack melanin people?
Are humans who lack compassion people?
Are humans who have impaired function (physical, mental, emotional) people?
Are humans who do not use language people?
Are humans who could survive in the wild with no human interaction people?
Are loners people?
Are people who can’t learn people?
Are people who don’t want to learn people?
————
Are people who hold positions of power in governance, law enforcement, or other hierarchies that control the lives and freedom of people people?
Are members of Congress people? (Is the State people?)
Are police people? (Is the embodiment of law enforcement, to which people must submit, people?)
Are scientists people? (Is someone first a
nd foremost beholden to the data people?)
Are engineers/programmers who only work with machines, never humans, people? (Are machines people?)
Are dancers people? (Are humans who primarily use their bodies for art people?)
Are artists people? (Is someone for whom aesthetic questions are primary people?)
3. SPECIAL STATUS: CHILDREN
Children are, at the very least, future people, but anything could happen.
They could be female, and a good half of them do end up as such, so children are just as likely to become future women (not people) as they are to become people.
They could belong to a religion, and depending on which one, this might make them god’s people, not people-in-themselves. For example: the Christian god in particular does not share, so Christians are not people, they are god’s.
In the case of Buddhists, their god shares them and they share their god, but as they share themselves with everyone and all, belonging to none—not even themselves—they cannot be claimed as, or to be, people.
There are many such cases to be considered.
4. SPECIAL STATUS: PEOPLE OF COLOR
Depending on geography or parental heritage, having brown or dark skin, skin which does not usually change even over a long life, these factors…
these factors, in and of themselves, have no bearing on whether or not they are people…
but certain circumstances present obstacles
to their inclusion
Mere origin or heritage or skin color is not in and of itself considered a factor
and in the case of mixed-heritage, or dual-country-of-origin, there are complexities
to consider the fixities of legal terms, to honor existing definitions where they do exist
Let it be stated that People of Color, taking into account all the variables and contingencies, are certainly people (unless they are women or future people—a separate category with variables and contingencies as argued above and below).
The Octopus Museum Page 4
