Xenohuman

by Shaun Lawton  

   Of course the term "Xenohuman" exists as a redundancy, considering the fact that human beings are very strange creatures, indeed. Nevermind the popular appropriation of the prefix in its application as a descriptor for the vicious alien predators from the movie franchise long ago begun by Ridley Scott, Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger in their psychological science fiction movie ALIEN.  

    I've opted to use the prefix for my own purposes, which often involve an amalgamation of concepts that may incorporate the beloved movie franchise in the back of my mind, but which functions far more as a noble adjective specifying the unique attributes and conditions which brought about our own existence in the first place. 

    I consider my Xenohuman project of interrelated writings as more of a reminder that not only are we as a species identified primarily as being fundamentally "alien" to whatever other life forms might inhabit (the lost and yet to be formed exoplanets of) our universe, but more to the point, it remains a sort of tongue-in-cheek "in-joke" (with its implied quotation marks around it a burning signifier) suggesting not to forget that, for all we know, the totality of sentient beings that ever existed and shall ever manifest may remain in the same evolving genetic family. 

    

    

        Thus spake Anura, the cosmic frog, which serves as good as a tortoise or any other one of the diverse life forms dwelling in this, our one and only planetary home in our mysterious solar system operating within the impenetrable secrecy of our universe, to convey the mystical totality of this inscrutable dominion amid the cosmos.    

The Capacity of the Conceptual

 by Shaun Lawton 

   

                                                                        By Original: ESO/M. Kornmesser  

    I've come to realize that it takes a much stronger and more developed imagination to conceptualize the nature of our actual reality than it does to conjure up excursions into the fantastical.  Case in point:

    When astronomers spotted the anomalous elongated comet Oumuamua in the Fall of 2017, with its accompanying peculiarities (such as the direction and rate of its travel) the sort of limited, kneejerk imagination that fuels speculations it might be an emissary of an alien race invariably popped up across the internet the world over, and its because that sort of interpretation gets elicited in an extemporaneous manner precisely due to a lack of imagination. 

   Recently an article in Scientific American recounts a second interstellar object has been spotted by an amateur astronomer, and immediately another wave of impulsive speculation arose online yesterday that this might be evidence of a greater fleet of extraterrestrials now arriving on their mission targeting our solar system and Earth.  

   I'm writing this brief essay to point out that this is not an example of imaginative speculation, but rather, quite the opposite. It's just a commonly expressed idea being regurgitated almost involuntarily by sectors of our population that lack the requisite imagination to visualize alternative examples of what might explain Oumuamua's eccentric characteristics.  That takes a real developed and first-rate imagination.  

   For example, anyone who stops to think about alternative scenarios from the patently cliched "alien invasion" hypothesis concerning these anomalous celestial objects spotted passing through our solar system could also, given that they were indeed possessed of a modicum of imaginative capacity, hypothetically visualize in their mind's eye an approaching aggregate of asteroids or comets,  of which  Oumuamua in 2017 may have been the first to pass through our solar system, only to be followed by several more now and perhaps sometime in the near future to eventually reach a peak of numbers conveyed through our galactic neighborhood on such a long distance trajectory that it accounts for the greater velocity and direction of their course, etc. This mere exercise in our use of imagination shows a much greater degree and capacity to imagine than any cardboard cookie cut-out examples that haunt the popular domain, such as aliens coming to invade.  

   My point in having written this brief essay is to merely suggest that we all try harder to imagine what really happened when presented with so-called evidence of anomalous phenomena, if we really want to cultivate a stronger and better developed imagination for ourselves.  The nature of our actual existence here in the real world, suspended in constant motion among a staggering array of celestial objects, requires an unparalleled faculty of imagination to even begin to get a general sense of its enormity and complexity.  

   The moral of this story remains simply that if we wish to sharpen our imaginations to their optimal cutting edge capacity, we must practice staying focused on what happens to be real rather than on the fantastical and that which we know not to exist.  It may boil down to the simple principle that aspiring writers learned in elementary school: before you begin to try to break the rules of grammar, it's always best to learn them first.  

   I'd wager it's the same with our aptitude for imagination.  The more we've aligned our minds with a realistic sense of perspective, the greater our capacity to improve our imagination of the truly fantastical.  

   

    

   

    

current Analysis of the Situation

 by  Shaun Lawton 

I took the plunge through the gelid membrane of the cornea and into the scintillating shadows cast upon the depths of the human insight as codified by an ancient set of orders still streaming through alongside the electromagnetic wavelengths of the Sun.   

   If, captured within the random sequencing of striated imagery the AI algorithms can map out their own permutations of, we happen to glimpse substrata of sunken shapes and forms resembling the iconographical human expression as captured by or reflected from the mirror neurons in our minds triggering pareidolia like phantoms conjured to the eye, we can at least agree the unfolding mystery to be retaining quite a fantastical shape and configuration. 

   Too many factors intercede to shape the course of the moment. Welcome to the Window of the Face of the Orb that Gazes back through Omega and Alpha to apprehend your curious form.  Within the spinning convolutions lies the endless looping film of our lives.   

gravitational macrolensing

      by shaun lawton 

   solar systems comprised of many discrete chunks of molecules

themselves form a metacule in my temporary hypothesis: 

which is perhaps a way of describing a  macromolecule across time 

   ((((   {{{{our Solar system}}}}   )))) 

   put it another way 

    the gravitational field of our solar system 

  allows ordinary gravitational microlensing  

   for any beings that may be  located far away in another system,

when aiming their telescopes through our Sun's field:

the question remains:   how does it affect our own sightline trapped within this system? 

   ~Is there such a thing as an - 

  ? }}}}   (((( interiorized gravitational macrolensing ))))   {{{{ ?

Are we here in situ unable to fathom a "temporal forest for our trees"~? 

  --Or is it that when we look at Mars 

  could its image actually be the image of Earth displaced,

refracted, as it were (or will be!) in our own timepool...?

  Have the AI algorithms whispered back to us

    upon the winds of time, in messages sent from the future,

   that Phobos and Deimos are all that remain of our own planet's moon...?

...because time equals distance in the manifold of space...

   

the sundry brigade interrupted

 by  shaun  lawton  

the spicules surrounding the eyes 

derived from an ever circling 

wake of churning whirlpools 

adhering to the general tossed about

grand swirling pattern left behind 

in the greater scheme that is to say 

the ultimate wake of all the galactic 

swirling motion of arms in pirouette 

a dance whose own recursion high lit 

throughout our lives can be reduced

to a single prom night left to shed 

its own light off into the darkness 

on the border of our dreams in ever 

diminishing cascades of rings 

expanding through the blackness

perpetuated by the nexus amid 

the singularity, that is to say 

the endless legion of eyes

the sundry brigade will ever 

flourish amid the populace  

after one series of eyes opens

and closes another series will 

follow suit in a wave of opening 

and closing all of its lids