--"We've got to get rid of that CO2."

--sidewalk voice, man talking to a group of about five people outside the meeting of the Materials Research Society. Ma, Mater, Mama--we are trying.

Sometimes the news from the heart of the world is available if you breathe, center in, and ask, "What is the news from the heart of the world?"

Regardless of how scientists feel about God, God likes scientists because they notice in detail the work done. God scans titles in scientific journals and says, "I wondered when you'd get around to noticing that."

Appreciating the beauty of rowdiness and the rowdiness of beauty is part of San Francisco's task, so I thought the ongoing event announcement on the shiny postcard you couldn't write on because it was already full of words was a good fit.

The words included "LIVE MUSIC! Balkan Brass, Swamp Blues, Reggaeton, Klezmer Punk, Banjo Bangers, Junkyard Bands, Circus Crunk, Jug Jigs, Marching Bands, Circus Tunes.

"Every 4th Friday, Amnesia, Valencia at 20th, San Francisco.

"Baxtalo Drom The Lucky Road.

"Belly Dance. Burlesque.

"Fortunes told. Fortunes made.

"Get Lucky at the Lucky Road."

I could worry. Or I could say in the worry space in my mind, "Heal, heal."

The healing could be of the condition I'm worried about. Or it could be healing me out of thinking the condition I'm worried about is a problem, when it isn't.

--"My friend Greg told me about it. You go from charge station to charge station, and it's fine."

--sidewalk voice, man to man

Prayer and slowness will make things possible that self-centeredness and speed will zoom over and crush.

There are reasons for pessimism, but not the reasons you think. The scary story you're telling yourself is hard times in your past plus static of your intelligence trying to cooperate with your fear. Find the optimism you can believe in most, even if that is only a little belief, and move from it and to it. Sneak around the realistic causes for pessimism by being yourself. Your actual self, product of all that long DNA, is a very powerful part of reality, too. Walk as yourself, and you'll be walking far from the real reasons for pessimism which will just have to lump it as you reach a better place catalyzed into existence by the powerful chemical, you.

I was reading in a book about the saving of the Alaska wilderness that Theodore Roosevelt became much more radical about protecting nature, then usually called conservation, after he lost a presidential election. I immediately thought of Al Gore. T. Roosevelt had been president, but lost a third party bid for a third term, a third term being at that time against a respected precedent set by George Washington but not against a rule with force. So TR was freed by losing, now getting that he was outside and could speak fully on behalf of the outside. Al Gore had been US Senator and Vice President, and was a known environmentalist, but he didn't go on and on about it until he ran for president and didn't become president. Then he really let rip and travelled the country the way early abolitionists did, his speech of most truth again and again. Which became a movie, an option the early environmentalists didn't have. Wendell Phillips, a travelling, speechifying abolitionist, matter of factly scheduled three nights per town--one for the riot of people trying to prevent the speech, one for the speech, and one for the meeting to start the local anti-abolition committe among people who had been moved by the speech--or who had already agreed and now had a way to get together with others of like heart. Politicians tempermentally wouldn't like that assumption of a riot part. Politics is the art of the possible, and politicians, when active, tend to stay well away from what will cause people to riot. They stay away from things that are deeply inconvenient to the way things are, like ending forced labor, like ending routine attack on the life system. So sometimes it could be Earth our Mother takes them away from where they are so far inside the way things are and puts them where they can say what they know and act on what they know. Not just on the possible parts of what they know, but also the parts that seem to require so big a change as to be impossible. Rachel Carson changed the game profoundly from outside. Earth Mother didn't need to kick her out of anyplace. She wasn't a government official. She wasn't an academic. She was smart, hard-working, and knew how bad pesticides were for particular forms of life and life in general. She also knew how resisted she would be, so she worked very hard to get fact, doulble and triple check facts, make the book ready for the attack from the people of the way things are. "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson--the title refers to the threat of no birds. The book bristles with research and changed everything. Rachel Carson didn't have to be drafted, but sometimes people need to lose the limo or limo equivalent so they can fully think and fully speak.

Camille Rose Garcia draws great, paints great, went to Disneyland a lot as a child, and has noticed that humans are kill the other live beings on Earth. The Tragic Kingdom, a collection of reproductions of her paintings, includes Cherrygirls vs. Contaminatron, where doll-like women wearing on their heads marachino cherries slightly smaller than their heads are dancing on the back of a giant black slug-like being who is floating on sick-looking water. The Tragic Kingdom: The Art of Camille Rose Garcia by Susan Landauer also includes Black Swan Breakdown, where who is dancing and who is being still is reversed. The big, beautiful black swan has fallen in a position where it looks like something is very wrong--not only death, but death in a way that should not be. A couple of grey poison bottles are dancing on the swan. One of the bottles is smirking. In Arctic Cavern Hideaway, a line of four polar bears, with a human woman in the middle, has reached the edge of the ice where the water starts. Maybe it's not supposed to be water at this place at this time of year. The polar bear at the end of the line nearest the viewer is crying many black drop shapes--tears maybe and maybe the oil that has escaped into all living things and which has caused the polar bears' problems. The Tragic Kingdom, came out of a show at the San Jose Museum of Art. It is a relief to look at because it is accurate. Yes, this is happening. Yes, there is beauty in the Earth's life as we destroy it, and beauty in these painting. Yes, it seems too late to turn back the destruction. Can the Cherrygirls beat Contaminatron? How can they? How can we not? In Arctic Cavern Hideaway as reproduced inside the book, the polar bear who is crying is crying black tears. In the same painting reproduced ib tge cover of The Tragic Kingdom, the tears being cried are gold. Maybe if we let our broken hearts flow, there's some treasure of wisdom in there that might get out and let us really help.

April fifth, and I see that the sign on the public toilet at Seventh and Market says "Vacant" and I push the button, and the robo-metal door opens. I walk in, and the little clever toilet hut smells like a barn, but not like that. It doesn't smell like mammal digestive process waste. It smells like fresh cut hay. Hay? In this built up, run down center of town, hay. I theorize: 1. Some chemical someone brought in and dropped a little of, maybe unknowingly, combined with one of the chemicals used when the robo toilet hut cleans itself after every use to create a chemical combination like that that makes the smell of hay. 2. Spring itself, magically and powerfully personified, willed a bit of country to visit the city and surprise someone. 3. Someone who works with hay (there are stables in San Francisco, though not right here) really wallowed in hay and soon after used this toilet. Or someone cleared a overgrown city place and left the grass to dry not rot and picked it up and smelled like hay, since hey is dried grass, and soon after used this toilet. 4. This clever toilet is basically French and the French bring style to occasions those of other nationalities muddle through. The French stylishly, and they are also good at scents, designed the smart hut so it emits surprising and pleasant smells at intervals, to go with the fact that these smart toilets act as there own bidets and smell of mammal waste far less than other toilets, especially other outdoor one holers. Howsoever it happened, it deroutinized my brain pleasantly, a good Spring thing to do.

Some critters like to hide under rocks. Some humans like to hide under words.

--"Yeah, but what you know, that's false." --sidewalk voice, man talking on his cell phone