World Strata

World Strata.

The earth’s crust is made up of bedrock and unconsolidated material. Bedrock is formed of earth processes, and can be of igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary genesis. Sedimentary bedrock is made up of layers, called strata. The various forms of bedrock, the unconsolidated material, the oceans and seas, and the mantle and core below the crust integrate into the world.

Similarly, so do those of us who live here. Our connections – seen and unseen – integrate us into a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. And each of us is made up of layers – of strata – as it were. The layers integrate into the whole.  The patterns repeat, microscopically and macroscopically.

My desire is to be conscious in each moment of those connections, and those strata. My goal here is to examine them. This site is a catalog of my personal examination of these phenomena. It is a lifelong process, and I’ve been using writing as a medium to facilitate that examination for several years. World Strata is a place where I will archive a lot of my previous work. Like the world itself, that body of work is of varying style and quality. Some of it may not be extraordinary or standard-setting, but it represents an honest effort, which is what I pledge to continue as I live my life and ponder those patterns and connections.

Where to start? The conveyor belt of life keeps churning along, and sometimes it is difficult to avoid becoming a little cynical. Neil Young skirted cynicism when he wrote:

“We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.”

But he had a point to make. He was using satire to skewer a culture which ignored the important in pursuit of the banal. Keep on rockin’ in the free world indeed. I don’t claim to possess the artistic merit of Neil Young, but I hope to use the tools I have to fulfill that pledge of pondering patterns and connections. Please join me as I keep on rockin’ World Strata.