Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: woodpecker


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Building a soul.

I was nervous to take the test. If I didn’t get it right, then what did anything mean? The podcaster explained how it would work. A professional author was being challenged by Artificial Intelligence. Both were given the same prompts. Each was to write a short story. Without giving away the authors, both stories were going to be played and it was up to us, the listeners, to guess between human and AI.

The first story began. Immediately specific and elegant. My heart quickly raised its hand with an “ooooo, ooooo,” convinced that it knew this had to be the human author. Hold on, my brain urged, but when they reached the part where, on the dating app, the man texted the woman that he made eye contact with the woodpecker that sat on the horse, simply to explain what sort of mountain biker he was, even my brain had to concede that this must be the human. (It sounds a little crazy without context, but it was delightful). The second story began. It had all the prompts. Contained the right words. Seemed grammatically efficient — so efficient that it was boring. One might say, artificial.

The podcaster began talking with the human author. Which one did you write? The first one, she answered. My all’s right with the world angels sang in perfect harmony. I shook my head in constant agreement when the podcaster said the second story – the AI one – lacked soul. Yes! I thought, maybe even out loud.

I am not afraid of AI. It will be able to perform all sorts of tasks. Quickly. Efficiently. I suppose what I am more afraid of are the humans that spew out, with the same ease and speed, words of hurt and destruction. Dehumanizing others, as if neither had a soul. And I am afraid of the humans that hear these words and simply fall in line.

For me, I’m not willing to throw it all away so quickly. It takes a long time to build a soul. And constant upkeep. I know I’m getting older. With a little grace, I hope I’m getting wiser. I know for sure that we have to begin and begin again. We have to trust in it, follow it, nurture it along the path, and when we find ourselves, shoes deep in gravel on the side of a mountain, the heart yelling, “ooooo, oooooo,” and the soul yelling, “Look, a woodpecker on a horse!” — we have to listen!

The brain agrees. Nods gently. Never breaking eye contact with the soul.

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Le pic et la belette (The woodpecker and the weasel)

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Since Covid began, I have made my daily walks inside of our yard. It’s a grand yard, so no complaints. Lots to see, smell and hear. I walk past the pool, the olive tree, under the pines, past the mailbox, the driveway, the fruit trees (all named) Officer Bob the peach tree, Becky the cherry tree, Abigail the apricot tree, Prune rouge – her name was just too perfect as is (the plum tree)…past the American and French flags…I walk over the space where Daniel used to grow – the almond tree – he didn’t make it – nothing to do with Covid… and past the back gardens, the art studio, the green house, the swing set… it’s lovely, full of life, and I go round.

This spring, some holes started popping up, (or I guess down), throughout the yard. No sign of who was making the holes, but nature certainly nurtured my imagination, and immediately I thought of a weasel. And the thought of a weasel led me to thoughts of burrowing, not just in the ground, but up my pant leg, and so I switched to my tightest, skinniest jeans and walked a little faster.

The other morning, making coffee, looking out as the sky turned from pink to blue, my husband and I watched a green woodpecker picking in the grass. Oh, how we love birds. Look at him. So quick. So agile. Wow, he’s really digging. Look at the dirt actually flying up. He’s really going at it. Wait… we looked at each other… wait, I have to go see… that pic is not just “picking”… why, he’s actually digging… I ran out to find a big hole. A big weasel-like hole. A big, no longer scary hole. It was just the pic (woodpecker). It’s just a little pic hole, I smiled.

Is there a moral to the story? Maybe. Probably. You can find your own. My first English professor in college told us to show, not tell. This is what I know for sure. I switched back to loose pants and joyfully walk in a weasel-free zone. Yes, there’s still Covid, a few holes in the ground, but the sun is shining, the grass is greening, my pants are loose and it feels so good to walk, once again, in the truth.

Becky winks a crooked branch to say, “I knew it all along…”