“I’m not bitter” – an excerpt from an interview with Lucy.

NEW YORK – Taking a break from her show at Discovery Times Square Exposition, the hominid formerly known as Australopithecus afarensis leaned back and sighed wistfully.

“You know, in a way I kind of feel like Etta James, after she heard Beyonce sing ‘At Last’ at the inaugural ball. It’s like – how quickly they forget...”

Lucy, as the 3-million-year-old reconstructed skeleton is fondly known, has been the darling of the Nat Geo set since the early 70s, and is regularly billed as “Our Oldest Ancestor.” But the recent discovery of a much older prehuman, nicknamed “Ardi,” has stolen some of the limelight from this feisty, three-foot-tall bone woman. And maybe more than some.

“OK, so she’s taller,” concedes Lucy, firing up a Marlboro Light. “But she’s a lot older – and it shows. Maybe in dim light she can get away with it, but she’s got more than a million years on me, and I don’t care how much work you get done, that’s not going away.”

What’s got scientists all worked up is how primitive Ardi is – she walked on two feet, unlike her ape ancestors, but she mainly lived in the trees – her feet had no arches.

“Honestly, I feel a little sorry for the bitch,” Lucy says. “Watch her try to get into a pair of stiletto pumps and walk these exhibitions 6-8 hours a day with no arches. Fame looks good to her now, but she’s gonna have to pay some serious dues.”

Lucy’s publicist admits that in the two days since Ardi’s discovery has hit the papers she’s seen several booking agents pull out of appearance agreements with Lucy. An unnamed source says that her endorsement deals are “in the toilet.” And the much-anticipated Fox reality series, “Lucy: The Homecoming” – in which the skeleton revisits her former stomping grounds in the Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia and discovers that things have really changed – is on indefinite hold.

The question is: Can this once-celebrated diva of modern paleontology handle being thrust into the number two spot?

“That’s not the question,” Lucy counters, digging a big piece of lint out of her pelvic bone. “This Australopithecus Ramadan ... ramidus – whatever! person – she’s got a brain the size of a grape! There’s just not a hell of a lot going on upstairs. Now, you know I’ve been taking night classes. When my run is done, I’m going to have a career to fall back on. I mean, I’m gonna be a paralegal. Ardi? Sure she’s old, but she doesn’t have the sense god gave a gibbon! What’s she gonna do when the ax falls and she’s yesterday’s news?

Lucy leans forward and puts her skull in her hand bones.

“I’m not bitter,” she says quietly. “I just wish these homos had a little loyalty.”

"My Old Friend" (John Hiatt)

This is a song I recorded a couple of years ago.  Birthday present for "my old friend," Ann.

Posted at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Incarnation Camp July 1971

Why am I wearing an army jacket when everyone else is in a T-shirt?

And So It Begins ...

We all have one foot in where we came from and one in where we are.  As the two places diverge, the split intensifies and our mental hamstrings start to burn.  Needless to say, the older you get, the greater the disconnect between the world in which your values, tastes and frames of reference were shaped -- and whatever this absurd thing is that we call "the present."

There was a time when thoughtful people carried around something they called a "commonplace book."  Passages from books, sketches, random thoughts, quotations -- these were thought to be a big part of what made a person what he was.  The commonplace book was not intended as a form of public discourse, but it did sometimes end up being just that, for example when someone died and their commonplace books turned up in someone's inheritance or in a library collection or in an attic.

The blog can serve many purposes, and most of them don't really interest me, at least not at the moment.  But there is no question that I miss the opportunity for regular conversation, debate and communal mulling.  Nor is there any question that the world I seem to inhabit now, in my 54th year, offers fewer occasions for these things.  There seems to be a lot more access to information but a lot less intelligent conversation.

Who knows, maybe this nugget of modern technology has something to offer in this vein.  I guess there will always be chuckleheads in the world, and blogs certainly don't make us smarter or more interesting.  But I'm willing to throw a few artifacts -- verbal, aural, visual -- at the wall and see what sticks.