WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

  • Looking Away

    Outline of a human head filled with gears; heavy chain w/a heart; text "wordography: machination ... device, contrivance"
    Machination Digital collage by sb for Art Journal Caravan w/Tangie Baxter Itinerary #37 {Wordography: Machination} Credits @ flickr.

    The Guardian recently published an article that asks Could AI be Conscious? It covers some of the debate I’ve been reading about for weeks now. The below paragraph tells a story I’ve seen referred to several times:

    “Unfortunately, we do not have a great track record of recognising the inner lives of those whose status as conscious beings is unclear. Until the 1980s, doctors routinely performed surgery on newborns without anaesthesia, confident that infants could not feel pain. The babies could not report their experience, and the medical establishment found it convenient to assume there was nothing to report.”

    But that story does not make sense. Babies can “report their experience” and they do. They do so loudly. Persuasively. The “medical establishment” apparently managed to ignore the screams. How? Were there no women in the room? No parents?

    Human children and other animals can also report their experience. They always have, and we have sometimes been willing to witness it, and sometimes not. We now have laws that forbid treating them cruelly, laws that are often ignored with little consequence. Human women, too, often fall into the same situations, our experience denied by the religious, political, medical, and social “establishments”.

    The consciousness question remains unresolved, even for humans. What is it? Where does it come from? Why is it? How might it be measured (or even determined)? Is it about thinking, feeling, both, or neither? Given so much uncertainty, how are we to resolve what/who counts as a conscious being? We have decided that humans count, even if it cannot be absolutely determined that any specific one is conscious. The others . . . 

    (more…)
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  • Snapshot Poem 19 July 02026

    pale page w/images of The Cowardly Lion, a butterfly, and a drawing of an elderly woman. Text says "Old age ain't no place for sissie." Bette Davis
    COURAGE | digital collage by sb. See flickr for complete credits. 
         
         we grow old
         we shrink 
         we diminish 

         we roll up 
         the cuffs 
         of our pants 

         the stairs 
         dare us 

         we know what’s 
         behind that ridge 
         we know what’s 
         around that corner 

         we sit down 
         to tie up 
         our shoe laces 

         & still 
         & still 

         desire

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  • Transient Global Amnesia: “The Day I’ll Never Remember”

    A screenshot from NBC News reporting Katie Couric: "The Day I'll Never Remember"
    Veteran journalist Katie Couric revealed that she had a bout of transient global amnesia, a rare but temporary condition that suddenly robs people of nearly all memories even while they maintain self-awareness.

    Continuity | “a continuous sense of self” is my description of the same experience:

    I knew who I was. I recognized my friends, and they tell me I did not seem frightened, just confused. I had a past, but the present seeped out of my mind as it occurred. Who are you if you have only a past, no present, no future? 

    From the article: National Institutes of Health

    “Patients typically present with a sudden onset of memory loss lasting several hours, featuring retrograde and pronounced anterograde amnesia,” according to the federal agency.

    “Patients retain self-identity and demonstrate no neurological or cognitive deficits. They remain cooperative and can name objects, with no history of trauma or epilepsy. Symptoms last between 1 and 24 hours, typically occurring later in the day rather than after waking,” the NIH said.

    “Once resolved, the symptoms of transient global amnesia rarely recur,” the NIH added.

    It’s odd to see a story about a celebrity having the same very odd experience I did. Now I will wonder if she finds herself asking the same questions I did, about continuity, consciousness, “a continuous sense of self”. I continue to explore those questions today.

    I have no answers, and I am apparently not alone in that.

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  • Again

    I try to not write about this. I’ve mostly not written about this, at least with specificity. Now it’s a national issue, again. It’s always a national issue. We just pretend otherwise. 

    I began my professional career at a rape crisis center, working with victims of sexual assault. Then, for over a decade, I worked as a therapist in community and prison treatment programs for sex offenders. Eventually, I became the director of an agency that provided treatment for sex offenders and domestic violence offenders. 

    Also, eventually, I came to terms with my own history of sexual victimization. Yes, that does temper my views on this subject. 

    I was a good therapist. Working with offenders requires the ability to see them as real people, with their own pain and damage, and at the same time never forget how dangerous they are, never lose sight of what needs to be managed, and why. 

    I’ve always liked men. I often like aggressive, intelligent, talented men. They’ve often liked me. There were many of those in the groups I ran. I like Platner. 

    All this to say, a rapist, child molester, offender of any kind, is never just that. Nearly always men, they are people like others, working men, family men, men who claim to be Christian. 

    They are also willing and able to meet their needs without regard to the harm they do. At least as they are doing it; maybe later they look in the mirror with horror and quickly turn away. Then they do it again. 

    Sometimes they claim they were drunk and didn’t know what they were doing. Then they get drunk again. And again. 

    That repetition is important. That repetition is significant. That repetition is what makes an offender, that.

    That repetition occurs partly due to the twist in the offender, and partly due to the rest of us — family, friends, churches, employers, even victims — looking the other way. We look away, or justify, for simple and complicated reasons. We look away to protect ourselves. 

    Many of us looked away and elected a sex offender as president of our country. Many of those who cast such votes are parents.  Some are also offenders. A number of them, a much larger number than you imagine, have been victims. 

    Yes, it’s a mess. It’s a twisted, contorted knot. 

    Let’s not do it again.  

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  • Basho

    A black & white tuxedo cat on his back, legs open, requesting a belly rub. Very cute white mustache.
    Basho the Mustache Cat

    This is Basho, Bonbon’s brother. Where Bonbon is a monster cat, Basho is the opposite. Basho is a cat one expects. He is sleek, graceful, beautiful. A classic tuxedo cat, with a small white mustache. 

    He is, relative to his brother, a gentle being. He tends to warn before leaping upon one. He speaks lyrically, with a sweetness to his tone. He is much better at restraining his claws. 

    He is, also, small enough for me to pick up, or to carefully remove from my lap. Where he often is, though not as often as Bonbon.

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