WAZE and SIRI in conflict

flummoxed by our AIs

“Turn left on Asheville Highway,” so I do,

then immediately I hear

“turn left” on a small street,

then “turn left” again on another small street,

then “turn left on Asheville Highway,”

then “return to the route,” 

I repeat this absurd reality a few times, 

thinking there must be method in what seems madness,

I had used WAZE to get to Greeneville, TN,

then I asked SIRI to get me to Spruce Pine, NC,

since I hadn’t gotten to the center of Greeneville,

WAZE was determined to get me there,

and I could not figure how to turn it off,

its screen insistent on my setting up a carpool,

SIRI was determined to instruct me

how to get to Spruce Pine,

each GPS tool using the same smart phone voice

with no cognitive dissonance, except in me,

just an imperative insistence I should follow its instructions,

I felt like a rat, trapped in a maze,

completely flummoxed by contradictory imperatives,

most of us are happy to be 

beyond physical maps and dead reckoning,

giving up navigating decisions to an A.I.

who knows just where I am,

and where everything else is,

just not able to let me control the vector of its directions,

our red reality and our blue reality leave us purple.

by Henry H. Walker

March 14, ‘20

keeping learning going

what empowers learning?

as schools transition, for a time,

from being in a classroom together,

to being physically distant from each other,

each of us in a separate house,

accompanied by a sterile computer, 

what are we losing?

much of who we are as humans is of the herd—

the other who supports us, who challenges us,

who is a necessary, imperfect mirror

to let us know we have worth,

that a direction we are going

should be supported or varied,

I think of the shock a newborn feels,

as oneness with the ocean of the womb

is lost in the birth canal

and the shock of colder air out in the world,

school can be that shock, too,

as we discover who we are, and who we aren’t,

essaying a sense of self within the classroom,

risking an idea, a writing, a movement, an assertion,

finding a “voice,” unique to us,

that can survive, and thrive,

or in a worst case, be silenced,

it is the aggregation of individuals into a group

that can somehow allow the individuals to find themselves,

appreciate themselves, like themselves, love themselves, 

when it all works,

I feel best about my classes continuing for a time,

with us separated for safety,

when the class has had time together

for them to know each other, the curriculum, and themselves,

when I have had time to tend the flock,

to care for each of them,

to do my best to fashion a web of knowing and support,

for weeks I can imagine each of them

well rising to the challenge

of interacting with the novel, the idea,

the reality beyond them,

creating the story, the essay, the project,

asserting self, and letting me support that assertion,

as the product wends its way to me,

and my reactions back to them,

such a distance between teacher and student 

works better with the connection already established,

I will have to work harder with a class

with whom I have had but a few weeks to connect.

by Henry H. Walker

March 13, ‘20

like being expelled from Eden

the loss of parent

to lose a parent

is to be wrenched away from sureness,

like losing the sense of where we are

in space, in the material,

how we got here starts to drop away from our knowing,

except in rapidly-receding memory,

the guide we expected to be with us for each new step

suddenly gone: we have to remember how we got here,

and we have to find our way forward on our own,

maybe with the imagined advice of the lost parent,

still, somehow, it feels like

I am the monkey now in charge of the zoo,

I teach middle school, as child morphs into adolescent,

the parent in charge morphs to the parent denied more and more often,

I feel for the parent who has to let go

and who can never let go, really,

for the bond of parent to child

defines much of who we are, at our best, as parents,

tonight, I feel that same bond,

but from the child’s perspective,

as death severs the closeness of the connection of child to parent,

the child, no longer a child, somehow  has to deal with loss,

with the morphing of flesh-and-blood reality into nebulous presence,

all tangled-up in an emotional maelstrom 

of love, appreciation, anger, the unresolved,

to be without the physical parent slaps us 

into having to grow up, and deal, with it all,

like being expelled from Eden,

we are on our own,

and we have to give birth to our tomorrows

feeling alone and feeling pain.

by Henry H. Walker

March 6, ‘20

the forest calls

I walk in their beauty

“Whose woods these are?”

Whose forest?

I love to walk in woods,

wherever I can find them,

trees can draw me,

as almost all of us are drawn by a waterfall,

we humans love right angles,

what we make usually has 90 degrees

as what is most right,

the tree grounds itself in the Earth,

and then reaches to the sky

in opposition to gravity,

the gravity which seeks to deny the sky

and hold us close to the beginning,

their journey up is of the right angle, reaching for the sun,

and establishing themselves as worthy of the light,

they can tell their story with shape, with flower, with grandeur,

and seek to continue the story with seed and nut,

or even with the quaking aspens’ answer

of roots remembering, and asserting with new trunks

the beachhead won, the advance continuing,

flowers draw me into the woods,

those most ephemeral gifts

who usually have to wait till the cold retreats

so that the phase change of water into ice

doesn’t wreck their dream

of making more of themselves,

witch hazel intrigues me

as it waits to flower,

winter pulls its flowers into being,

February is ending today,

snow and ice sit upon the mountain above,

and all the early wild flowers I sought today

bide their time and do not show themselves to me,

in the next weeks they will leap upward into profusion,

to grab the light before the more cautious trees

push themselves to the front of the line

to dominate photosynthesis as much as they can,

we humans love to break in line if we can,

so daffodils, forsythia, even flowering quince, 

huddle where they’ve been planted and sing their flowering today,

in between tree and flower are bushes,

they who have found different niches,

some evergreen, maybe huddled by water, 

some tough enough to handle the dryness of exposed ridges,

whose woods these are is beyond what I can know,

but I do want to learn their moods and to walk within their beauty.

by Henry H. Walker

February 29, ‘20

sorrows lie hidden

Fergus and Me

Why do I need to come to the mountains by myself?

to sit by the creek in the dark,

and listen,

and follow whatever in me

needs to be thought, to be felt,

without people all around me 

to pull and push me hither and thither,

to let out the sorrows that underlie

all of the webs of connection I live with my life: 

the price of empathy,

the price of pulling back the curtain

and feeling what lies beneath,

what Yeats had Fergus feel,

as the Druid’s gift opened up more to deal with

than the human had strength to hold,

I love to do, to help, to connect,

to be true to my heart,

I need also to let go,

to shake off obligation,

to open myself to a world where I am as nothing,

a passive visitor where the emptiness 

of what the world needs from me

allows me to empty myself of obligation for a spell,

and meet myself anew, refreshed,

more able to feel invigorated than burdened,

by the challenges for which I seem to have been born.

by Henry H. Walker

March 1, ‘20

tugging at me to notice

my roiling psyche

it feels to me that I only skim

over the roiling depths of my psyche,

I follow a thread of routine,

a calming friendliness of being on a path

that I understand and from which 

I act with sureness and volition,

then in the night my psyche assaults me

with worries I have pushed down,

sometimes with lessons that shout at me

to realize what I need to notice,

what I need to deal with,

like little kids tugging at me

to drop lower into their world,

I am a confident adult

who is also a frightened child,

and who knows who else I am, too?

my psyche roils, and I still have to act,

live every day the best I can,

to walk forward even though

the way forward seems to be trackless,

we have to hope that intuition, and a good heart,

keep us true to a path that is more right than wrong.

by Henry H. Walker

February 28, ‘20

a feeling of emptiness now without him here

Paul Brown

a friendly smile,

a firm hand,

an engaging eye,

one of a Bunch of Guys,

a draft counselor who helped me

reason out my options as to Vietnam,

the Big Muddy where country pushed on

and so many of our generation were lost,

Paul and Julia upstairs from us on West Club Boulevard,

we share a news break of a child on the way to us,

and they reciprocate with the same news for them:

our Aaron and their Arlo inseparable as toddlers,

years turn to decades:

Paul visits with my mother in Gatlinburg,

serving as accomplice to her political tilting,

those windmills out there all needing

the right political stance,

and getting it from her, and from Paul,

his whole life,

Paul called to helping people with his social work degree:

“All those Type A folks at Duke Hospital need a Type B like me,”

maybe his family’s Georgia roots

helping him slow down and sit a spell,

his love for rod and reel:

“Time spent fishing is not counted against one’s allotted life-span,”

hiking with our big group up Mt. LeConte,

even once adding a few miles by starting at the Cabin rather than trailhead,

he didn’t get around to being ready till all the rides were gone,

religiously attending our pig-pickings,

which he’d call “the one event on my social calendar,”

devoted to grandparent, to parent, to child, to grandchild,

Paul was one of those rare individuals

who was so true to self

that his life had a clarity to its sound,

a profundity to its meaning,

a feeling of being at home when with him,

a feeling of emptiness now without him here.

Image courtesy of Halll-Wynne Funeral Home

by Henry H. Walker

February 27, ‘20