Monday. At 4:48 a.m. I remember a headache waking me, pushing me into the bathroom for pills, and back into bed. Later, I remember my talk radio alarm speaking up at the usual time, and my listening to it with one fourth of one ear for another hour.

Now I'm here in front of my computer, waiting for another dose of pills to kick in while Talk Tee-Vee has its chatter running. I should go get breakfast soon...

...

Since it's my day off, I'll turn various machines on and off and on at unregulated hours. The machines mark segments of time more than function. This is how our days are divided - by machines - alarm, shower, stove, phone, car, clock, computer, subway, elevator, coffee machine, toilette.

I watched the television show "60 Minutes" last night, as usual. One article was even more interesting than expected. There is a small group of people who knew the recent Tsunami was coming. Because of this, they, and a group of islanders they warned, had time to climb a mountain before the killer wave hit. They - this minority - survived.

Living on handmade boats their entire lives, their children learn to swim before walk, they have twice the quality of eyesight under water, and can hold their breaths for much longer periods of time than the rest of us - by slowing their heart rates.

These people have their own language, having remained isolated from most others for generations. There are words - CONCEPTS - entirely NONEXISTENT in their language/lives. They have NO words for our ideas of "When" or "Want" or "Hello" or "Goodbye".

When your words aren't to be found, their culture lives in a DIFFERENT way... A REALLY different way.

Do you think YOU could manage to get through ONE SINGLE DAY without those four words (and their synonyms)?

.

By the way, around the world it was noted that other groups knew the Tsunami was coming: elephants, who moved to higher ground in entire herds; porpoises, who moved to much deeper water in full schools; and cicadas, those storms of constantly buzzing, big, old, mystical bugs, went silent.

...

Do our Machines keep us detached from our World, or, are our Machines simply part of the Evolutionary Ecology of our world?

Do your machines add to your survival insight and modes of behavior during the day, or are they distractions? Are our machines the Elephants, Porpoises, and Cicadas of our normal day?

Are our Woods so often quiet we move through them every day as though they were wallpaper, and couldn't possibly change?

Perhaps our machines are the Memories, Eyes, Ears, and Voices of our Elders who may have more sensitivity to the current mood of our Woodlands.

Then again, perhaps I'm in an excessively optimistic mood?