In 1953, my dad gave me his 1950 Buick as a present to start high school. Wasn’t long before I had a steady girl friend. She made dice for the front window. I wore white powdered shoes. I still remember this car as my favorite car which I drove though high school. Interesting how such memories are so preserved. I do know that car meant a lot to me.

My book, Psyche Speaks, is dedicated to Allen Siegel, at seventeen, outside the House of Donuts, Forty-Second and Madison Avenue, New York City, October 24, 1981…right before my eyes. I’ll never forget this.

TEST

Back in the early 90s, I was part of a large workshop on writing. The presenters were Annie Dillard, Allen Ginsberg, Natalie Goldberg, and myself. I was reminded of this because Annie Dillard died this week. During her presentations, I was transfixed by her voice and the depth of her imagery. I recall feeling that “I could listen to her forever.”

Urgent warnings about the dangers of AI rarely mention the extraordinary danger of humans using AI to bring about the ultimate in human evil and folly. AI dangers may ultimately prevail and lead to extinction, but humans already have a clear head start in this direction and have already produced irreversible factors that guarantee great dangers to humanity (e.g., climate change), all of which are being ignored in terms of common human effort. We are witnessing nothing less than humanity’s suicide.

I was on my way to se my analyst and when I opened the door to the building, I saw an old man who was hand-lettering the window. I started up a conversation with him and he talked about the dying art of hand-lettering, but that it was important for me to see him doing this as a message. He said what I needed to see was Ghiberti’s doors at the Baptistery of Saint John in Florence. It had taken him 13 years. I was so struck by this idea of really taking time to do something, that I thanked him and walked out of the building, completely forgetting my appointment. By the time I returned, the old man was gone and I made a vow to see the Baptistry in Florence. I will tell that memory next week.

Orogine tells me in an acupuncture vision that silence is not the absence of sound, but the presence of a presence.

Many years ago, I was having breakfast with Sir Laurens van der Post in Santa Monica. At one point during our long conversation, I asked him what was the most important thing he learned in the Kalahari. Without hesitation, he said: “The power of the small.” I asked him to elaborate. He then told me that if he was focused on seeing the lion, he would most likely get eaten. But if he focused on the bugs on the ground, the breeze, moving the reeds, the sounds in the air, the changing color of atmosphere, then he would know when the lion was near, though could not yet be seen. That had saved his life many times.

As I was remembering this, I wondered how we might apply this idea to the biggest things coming at us: climate change and AI. I wondered, if we focus on these big things only, do we neglect taking in the small.

So what are the small things we need to notice?

The alliance between AI developers, tech corporations, multi-billionaires and deliberate governmental failure, insures that nothing will be done about the dangers of AI, because profits are the driving force. The knowledgeable voices calling for extreme action NOW, are having no impact. The history of the world uniting against existential threat of extinction is not promising. We are facing an inevitability that is rapidly becoming a reality.

Today, I am remembering this earlier post.

Russell’s Sentences

Doing What a Dream Demands

The very idea would strike most people as silly, ludicrous, nonsensical.

I do not take demands from anyone easily.

Well, maybe from my wife, Frankie.

But from a dream?

Actually, I do so quite often.

But not easily.

Not just demands, but suggestions, hints of direction, and other such.

Several plates are laden with dream tasks.

But the dream was clear.

Write in single sentences, no gathering of sentences into paragraphs.

Reminding me of a literature professor who declared that a close reading of any text required rewriting the text as single sentences.

Something akin to not seeing the trees for the forest, in a reversal he was known for.

Don’t be surprised then to see me write something in lonesome sentences.