One more thing is worth telling. When she was coming out of anesthesia in Salt Lake after repairing the bone around her amputation, and as her mother hovered over her in the recovery room, Gilda sat bolt upward and smiling at her mother as broadly as a court fool said, “She was going to say, ‘Love,’ Mom. I know it. The ancient shaman was going to say, ‘Love.’“
Vignette 11: Gilda’s Poem My Turn on Earth. Written Circa 1951.
The following theological poem was found in one of Trillim’s high school notebooks. While the title appears to be tongue-in-cheek, playing off of the Lex De Azevedo and Carol Lynn Pearson LDS musical My Turn on Earth: A Family Musical Play1 from the 1970s, and added years after she wrote this, the rest seems a kind of poetic theology. What is astonishing is that she seems to anticipate many current issues—like unscientific intelligent design creationism.
There is much informal discussion among Trillim scholars about what this work was supposed to be. It seems to be a play of sorts. Or perhaps a hymn of praise. It is clearly a poem and she draws on several poetic forms in its construction: sonnet, villanelle, sestina, pantoun, free verse, and even limerick. It is difficult to classify and lies outside the genre Trillim usually uses in her minimalist novels. There is the typical maudlin quality to such re-imaginings of the Mormon doctrine, as is found in Nephi Anderson’s work, Added Upon, about the pre-existence. Nonetheless this one explores things like consciousness and free will in original ways. The poem is especially interesting in light of her just described drug-induced vision, which appears to draw elements from her subconscious portended in this work from an adolescent Gilda Trillim.
My Turn on Earth
I sing in praise of the High God!
Material Father.
Embodied Mother.
He that sorrows and weeps.
She that worries and cries.
Praise Him!
Praise Her!
For they stood and said, “These!”
“Praise them, we also are these!”
“And these will be made like us!”
And lo.
And lo.
There was a place.
There was a space.
Where matter was not yet matter.
Unorganized.
Wandering.
Here and there ascatter.
(The Spell)
Knot it.
Bind it.
Fasten it with glue.
Hold it.
Twist it.
Into a matter stew.
Shrink it.
Crush it.
Until it’s just a tittle.
Pack it.
Stack it.
Until it cannot wiggle.
Until …?
Until Bang!
Until KaBoom!
Expanding space
Extending time
And then there was light.
And it all seemed quite right.
The children gathered round to watch the great unfolding.
“Patience,” said Father.
“Patience,” said Mother.
And then a swirl soft lit appeared,2
Of stars thick spinning through the cloud,
Then another and another graced the expanding mere,
As light through night serenely plowed,
Then for joy the sons cried at a universe made,
And in ecstasy daughters clapped and sang,
For the foundation of delight was in matter laid,
And from that beginning all that would later emerge sprang,
“How long?” his children begged and pled,
“Before our warm bodies completed stand?
What wait before complexity will widely spread,
That we may in doughy matter gently land?”
“No one knows,” said God, “What the future holds,
But we must watch and wait until it all unfolds.”
Great is Their wisdom!
Mighty is Their watching!
Praise His mighty patience and Her forbearance!
For the universe spins as it must spin,
with matter in motion,
the laws are set,
and waiting and patience,
are also Godly acts.
For not until consciousness enters the worlds,
can They be heard and Their hand be raised.
For moving matter from those
courses to which it has been set
requires mind,
and mind matter.
And every act an agent.
And for every agent an act.
But lo, what horror did wetness unfold!3
For substance found swift ways to replicate,
And thus began generations untold,
For suffering—pain undergird the second estate,
For through blood, semen and terrors thick rife
Complexity crawled mad in to the universe,
Growing, adding, emerging quickening life,
Bringing blessings though in curses immerse,
Then wept daughters and cried the sons at sere
Earth’s monstrous demands in blood and tooth,
“Is there no other way?” wept mouths tight in fear
And Father answered, “Will you know the truth?
If freedom complexity and creativity will reign,
Matter must face its existential bane.”
Then star bringer held up his hand.
And God nodded.
Mother bid him rise.
Stand still sweet parents swift and bright4
Holding back darkness, wielding light
For I have found the Apollonian way,
No need for messes, wet with clay
No blood, no semen, or menstrual mess
No offal, sickness, age, distress
Make it craftily designed and certain,
Forget this grassy, slimish, verdan
Here’s how …
(And the children listened as he spake)
Tick tock tick tock5
Turn the steel precision gear
Now wind up the iron clock
Metal to metal, key to lock
Torsion, tension, forces shear
Tick tock tick tock
I will teach you how to walk
Set courses given, never veer
Now wind up the iron clock
All is determined, never ad-hoc
All to metronome adhere
Tick tock tick tock
Set with pulley, tackle, block
Let all in lockstep-click appear
Now wind up the iron clock
Toward exact prediction flock!
And every outcome engineer!
Tick tock tick tock!
Now wind up the iron clock!
A lone figure walks in the distance, His head bowed,
As the machinist unfolds blueprints
Exact and precise and shows his devisings.
The figure kneels and wonders,
Is a less cruel way possible?
Can this cup be replaced?
Can complexity emerge from other than freedom,
variation, inheritance, selection?
Is the machinist right?
Or is there another way?
The contriver can be seen
waving his hands and building a scale model
of a universe engineered to be set, certain,
no slop, all is measured and precise,
fixed, so that no surprises enter in.
The machinist shouts, “Where all is arranged from the beginning.
And once in motion it starts to spin—
all ends are determined from
What beginning laid.”
The other looks upward, is there hope in him?
While the Bringer with tinker toys played and stacked,6
Another looked at heaven’s ecologies,
At life manifold, diverse within spheres,
Turning, emerging, knots in kno
ts folding,
Living things striving upward creative,
Evolving, ascending, to new rife forms.
Who would enter this chaos? Pinning forms,
Spirit and matter joined, new made and stacked
Together, forged by bold acts creative,
To enable celestial ecologies,
To embrace topological folding,
So severe as to rupture holy spheres?
Alone to deftly hold those spinning spheres
Crashing, in sins of many confounding forms?
Who would stand to embrace such bleak folding?
Such a cross to bear! Against the world stacked!
On whom the fate of all ecologies,
Would rest? Who can dare be so creative?
As to fashion salvation creative
And reckless, to transcend all mortal spheres?
To save meek creaturely ecologies,
And those of keen humans whose godly form
Strains among its temptations sharply stacked,
And who against nature’s lien is folding?
Who will stand to face staid fate’s unfolding?
Against dark evil’s relentless creative
Disillusionment, fierce against us stacked?
Search high and low among heavenly spheres,
Hunt among all conscious, sentient forms,
For one to hold tight the ecologies,
Willingly, lovingly, ecologies
Thick wrapped with matter and spirit folding,
Able to embrace hallow living forms,
And perform an act, holy, creative,
Beyond that which as yet emerged in spheres,
Endlessly spinning or in fell worlds stacked.
Who made the ecologies creative?
I. Send me therefore folding into spheres,
Where I will free willing forms, saved well-stacked.
“No don’t send him send me! Send me. Send me,” ticked the Tock,
I can engineer this with certainty,
such that none will be lost.
For every gear will turn as turned,
and every piece in place,
completing the whole
with exactness,
well designed,
ably constructed,
fit to all existence’s need.
And all outcomes sure.
And then the tick-tock man of morning light sang:
Brood on blood spilled in thick fetid fluids that drain,7
in a broth of anguish lapped by tongues wet—
Slick behind bone teeth made to tear, crush, set
within flesh made to feel every rush of pain.
Watch razor claws that leave wounds spelling bane—
not quick, nor merciful—a constant threat
that mad suffering will never abet—
Leaving on existence naught but a stain.
That fate on creature, will thus fall to us,
and alone will our bleak children fall dashed,
smitten by nature’s relentless cunning.
Think hard what cruel gains come of such a thrust,
where all we love can be cut and slashed—
Leaving us from mortal fears ever running?
Father/Mother in answer wept,
Since in complexity is freedom,
and machines made, even of
sweet biology are still machines.
We chose He that chooses life
over overt design.
We chose flourishing over
mandated determinism.
And they chose the life-giver.
And the intelligent designer was angry and kept not his first estate.
And Mother and Father gathered their children around them and said:
A Trilobite of order Redlichiida,8
Evolved into an Asaphida,
Though they all went extinct
Their time on Earth quite succinct
Permian seas still contained some Proetida.
Fish arrived in Devonian Oceans
With fins they could use for all their motions
For limbs, hands, and feet
Are for Godlings quite sweet
And allow them to apply crafty lotions.
Amphibians soon came upon lands
And in doing so formed little hands
They could hold onto walls
And make squeaky calls
Meeting all their terrestrial demands.
Reptiles next appeared on the scene
(Some shaded a glorious green)
The dinosaurs bold
Or so we are told
Also had quite a wonderful sheen.
A great calamity struck the lan’,
And smashed into an alluvial fan,
The dinosaurs died,
‘cross the world wide
Bringing joy to a small mammal clan.
There once was a Therapsid from Nantucket,
Who evolved into a thought bucket,
Finally stood on two feet,
And with spears hunted meat,
Using language all the better to thunk it.
Two alone stand and watch,
Hand in hand, waiting, wondering.
Could the machinist be right?
Could the way of the gear’s precise turning,
engineered with care, laid out in set
exactitude without play—smooth running,
machines clicking and clacking forward
in righteousness, humming sweetly, into a
shiny and grinding future been
better in the end?
Many have followed him after all.
She turns to him,
“They will worship him when they get below.”
“I know.”
“The designer God.”
“Yes.”
“Omnipotent.”
“Yes, working through consciousness has its limitations. Much better the myth of the God who can engineer any end.”
“Omniscient.”
“Yes. In a deterministic world if you know the initial conditions all else follows. There is great comfort in such a system.”
“Omnipresent.”
Looking down and spreading his arms he answers, “And here I am that I am. An object. Made of matter like them.”
She laughs, “Yes. Like them. Our children.”
“They will build machines great and complex.”
“It’s what they do with them that matters.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder, will they care for the world? Will they know the time that went into that cactus? That flower? That snake, that bird in bright plumage a half billion years in the making? Will they treasure the emergence?”
“We shall see.”
He looks across the expanse,
“Existence is hard.”
“Yes.”
“We must prepare them for it.”
“Yes.”
“We are not machines.”
“No. But emergence has its pleasures.”
“Yes.”
Sperm, egg, wet cells, sticky fluids spilling, sloppy, silly things9
slide across membranes inexact, error prone
accidents of selection slip, flesh swings,
through channels forming rough and brittle bone,
genes slip and slide through motions mostly right,
but cough and jerk from time to time, hiccup trip,
springs unwind, chemicals push through and fight,
splashing nonsense far and wide, loosing grip.
But from the grass the cheetah bolts, relentless.
Clear eyes focused on motion swift, fleeing.
Fleet legs stretching, back—a coiled spring, exactness.
Retractable claws in air stretch, seizing.
Chaos from below; quite a messy show,
But from above bides beauty’s steadfast flow.
The children want the parents to hurry things along.
among the random variation, passing it on though
time, slowly. There are many false starts. Much waste.
The children become impatient.
Can you not by force move things forward?10
Just a little stir of the pot?
To hurry things along a bit?
Must consciousness be the only influence?
Just a little stir of the pot,
would make the stirrer culpable, so
must consciousness be the only influence,
as matter in motion does what it will,
Would make the stirrer culpable? So?
Bodies need to find joy,
as matter in motion does what it will,
with spirit to guide it to new ends.
Bodies need to find joy,
true, and claim those courses
with spirit to guide it to new ends.
But spirit needs a consciousness if it is to find expression
true, and claim those courses
shadowed by force and law.
For a spirit needs a consciousness to find its expression
in the courses through which matter flows
Shadowed by force and law,
constrain all, even I,
in the courses through which matter flows
from consciousness to consciousness.
Constrain all, even I,
so through soft influence I push,
from consciousness to consciousness,
my work to do,
So through soft influence I push
through you to put matter into motion,
Gilda Trillim Page 11