IF YOU COULD, SOMEHOW, SEND A MESSAGE TO SOMEONE WHO WILL BE ALIVE ONE THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW: WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM? The universe has come together to create the unique and special life form that you are, with your hopes and fears, dreams and concerns. The thoughts you form and the words you write and say constitute information, never to be duplicated information born of your mind that goes out into the world and has the potential, however remote the possibility, to outlive you and be shared with far future generations of people. If you had the opportunity to send a message to someone in the year 3011, what would you say? Would you tell them about yourself and your life? Would you warn them about the dangers of hurting the environment or plead with them not to go to war? Would you talk about love and joy, sadness and pain, life and death? And if somehow you were granted this chance to speak to someone in the future, how would you get your point across? I think the answer is obvious: poetry. Poetry is a universal means of communication. “Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted”, wrote the English Romantic Poet Percy Bysshe (Bish) Shelley. “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” Wrote the American poet Carl Sandburg. And Plato wrote that “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history”. It’s poetry, I tell you, that would get your message across the expanse of time. It’s poetry that would most effectively allow you to speak from your heart and mind to a person who lived in a time where everything we know has changed. You really need to consider what you’re going to say to future fellow runners…because this dawn of New Media and Social Networking is making these opportunities possible. Although currently in it’s infancy, the infrastructure that is being assembled today will allow you to speak to your great, great, great, great grandchildren and to those of ages to come: and with that opportunity comes a responsibility to speak the truth and pass your information along…because there will never be another living creature like you in this universe again: and now is the time for your poetry. Poetry is all about emotion and passion. It’s this quality of the message that gets passed on through the ages and gives us that opportunity not only to speak to future generations: but to do so in a voice they’ll understand; for as long as there are human beings to read and understand the words of others, there will be poetry to pass along to common sentiment. Life and death, joy and sadness, passion and ennui. These are the same feelings and emotions that human beings have shared since our species first began to walk the planet, and until the great technological singularity to come changes the way we might associate the human condition with past and future generations of beings: we’ll have poetry as a way of reaching each other through time and space. Special thanks to my friends who took the time to read some great poems: Toni Harvey - http://www.drusy.blogspot.com Kevin Gwin - http://theextramilepodcast..com Maddy Hubbard: http://www.maddyruns.com Adam Tinkoff: http://slowrunclub.blogspot.com Gordon Scott: http://tiree.blogspot.com LINKS: http://www.online-literature.com/homer/iliad/ Please support The Mojo Loco Fund: http://mojolocofund.com The song “Pretty Colored Lights” written, produced and performed by an amazing musical artist and poet: Warren Lain, from San Francisco, off his new CD: Phonofield. Check out this amazing artist and teacher at http://warrenlain.com