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Ambition.

November 26, 2012 by Exangel

by Marie Davis & Margaret Hultz

Perhaps my faith in you is misplaced, but heed my words, it is time Green became a braggart.

Green, the story of Green, my history stretches all the way back to the primordial soup. That’s round about 3.8 billion years ago if you want to get picky about birthdates. Ah yes, great green bacteria—my first creation. Bacteria are such gorgeous, diverse organisms, and I probably should have stopped there. But one of my few personal flaws has been ambition; looking at you I can see that now.

Humans egotistically believe my work has been about a continued “advancement” a polishing up of cells, more division—more complex.  That somehow the whole evolution thing was about a slow series of improvements. Of course not. Humans, my simpleton friend, are merely derivative.  And honestly, if ambition is my flaw, self aggrandizement is yours.

Contrary to your belief systems, it was genuinely original, creative thinking that sparked unicellular life. Yes! Single cells—now there is some solid, ingenious work. Don’t believe me? Look at what I’ve done with Green, glorious slime mold. Slime starts out as one-celled individuals, yet if things get tough groups of them unite and become a slug. Slugs slowly make their way into the sun, settle down and become plants—it is true my incredulous pal—Green plants. Atop the plants stalks form bulbs where I construct millions of tiny spores that are eventually released to the wind and the whole process begins again. Single cells—slugs—plants—need I say anymore about Green’s brilliance?

Power for me is intoxicating and early on I recognized my own personal potential in photosynthesis. Honestly, I couldn’t flex it enough and my addiction to refashioning light, carbon dioxide and water gradually oxygenated every nook and cranny of the atmosphere and oceans. Oh, how a part of me danced every time I conquered a new milieu. I alone stand responsible for making possible the aerobic respiration and the eventual evolution of large, complex, what you oxymoronically call “intelligent organisms.” Yet, all this hard work that I’ve loved now appears to be the construct of my own downfall. There you have it. I have confessed my misguided romance with ambition.

At this moment, can you possibly set aside your egomaniacal self long enough to see that life comes from Green and lives because of Green? Without me all the walking, slithering, swimming, crawling creatures would flat-out die. Let me tell you, if Green up and decided to move away to some farfetched place like the moon, I can tell you lickety-split  humans would be on my doorstep begging me to come home—on your knees—begging.

So do me a favor and stop all this tiresome bickering about whether God exists, or whether God is Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, white, black, brown, or red. God—my dear multi-cellular dolt—is Green. Furthermore, if you keep up all your ungrateful, highfalutin, polluting shenanigans, Green will leave with no immediate plans to return. Oh sure, someday I will come back to another Earth’s primordial soup, but next time around I’m seriously going to rethink this whole ambition thing.

 

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2012: Words

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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