"Great Unconformity" (notes on Reg Saner's essay)

[Nazz]

Rolling red soil, blackbrush, juniper.
Portrait of empty, mononony of peace.
The herd trudges into mystic overflow,
until it drops away.

A nineteenth century cowhand stumbles onto it.
His grand canyon is instantly "all there", no slow revelation.
He is a speck on a continuum of mineral eons.
"Something has happened here!" he yelps.

To see epochs we flit over and ignore, descend.
Your inner eye is visionary, invited into its own past.
Vertical travel is trickier than horizontal on this plane.
Was it ever as simple as up versus down or a path?

"Astronomy" and "physics" have been here for millennia.
Things in the sky, they might ordain control, even foretell.
"Geology" by contrast goes back only a few hundred years.
Earth was just dirt, and why go down when you can go up?

Venus and Mars were sky fire too close.
We looked down on things underfoot for much of our life.
No one wants to be remembered for doting on rock.
It is our skyward ambitions that matter.

Note: Thoughts derived and/or distilled here are duly credited to Reg Saner's essay on "The Great Unconformity and the Ideal Particle," found in his book, "The Four Cornered Falcon."

(and in quatrains no less!)

[hester_prynne]

"The herd trudges into mystic overflow,
until it drops away"

I love that line.
Enjoyed the whole read.
H

[mtmynd]

"Earth was just dirt, and why go down when you can go up?

Venus and Mars were sky fire too close.
We looked down on things underfoot for much of our life.
No one wants to be remembered for doting on rock.
It is our skyward ambitions that matter. "

i liked this passage, especially doting on rock. if we only knew then what we've learned today... rock is for doting. witness the story of mohammed, eh? rock is THE be all and end all of this fragile existence that supports are foolishness. rock on!

i'm with Hes'... good read.

[Nazz]

Thanks Hes and Cec.

The book is pretty good, though he has moments of "advanced-hiker-backpacker snobbery." Ha. Originally I was just going to take notes on the essay, but then I wondered if I could make them into verse somehow...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Continuing:

Earth insight flickered in the seventeenth century,
but the scripture mob owned the law, paid the pols.
Question the earth’s age and the God goons came.
The answer is 6,000 years, declared Pope Corleone.

De Maillet wrote of billions,
numbers later discreetly whacked.
The scripture mob moved decimals to the left.
Time timidity made Lamarck and Darwin furious.

Fossils? Extinctions? Heresy!
Fossils were planted by Satan to confuse.
Tiny crinoids in Paleozoic ooze became Gorgons!
Men tapping at rocks chipped away at Genesis.

Folly!
Blindness!

[mtmynd]

Question the earth’s age and the God goons came.
The answer is 6,000 years, declared Pope Corleone.

Let's see... enlightenment is freedom.. freedom from dogma... dogma written by those that mock freedom itself. what's wrong with this?

I find this to be thought provoking... evidence of a good read.

thx, mark... enjoying the trail you're leaving...

[Nazz]

Cool, Cec.

Scientists, especially budding geologists, had to really watch what they said about the earth in the 1600s-1700s, apparently. Or possibly be charged with heresy by the church. I don't know if Saner is exaggerating all this for effect, but he does a good job in his prose of building resentment in the reader's mind against the churchmen's dogmatic oppression.

[mtmynd]

dogma/amgod

the mind is a terrible thing to trap

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