ARE WE THE METEOR?

Are we the meteor?


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EVOLUTION

From an evolutionary standpoint, except insofar as we are eggs and sperm, we do not exist.
Who we are as persons, what we have managed to achieve by growing up and working hard,
why we think we are who we are, none of this matters to evolution.
It's all about procreation.
Once we, as men, have passed our sperm on to the eggs of women, we cease to matter
in the great evolutionary scheme.
Whether we live beyond that moment is irrelevant.
Anything that we make of ourselves after that point is completely outside the purview of evolution,
the invisible, though no less iron-like, hand of evolution.
We can be especially proud of that.
We might as well invent a new kind of person, one that Nature would never have created on its own.
The Universe is immense.
Our dreams must measure up to that immensity.

TEARS

I decide to make my wife one of her favorite dishes for dinner.

It's an emotional thing, in the kitchen, cutting and chopping, sauteing and stirring, and I fail to hear her approach behind me.

She touches me gently on the shoulder and I turn to her, tears in my eyes.

"French onion soup, wow!"

I'll be damned if she doesn't have tears in her eyes, too!


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OOPS

I was mistaken.
My cat is singularly unqualified to kill anything
This summer evening.



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MY CAT

My cat does not seem particularly interested
In killing anything
This summer evening.

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TOTALITARIANISM

The trouble with totalitarianism, like a sinking stock market, is when to get out.


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THE GREASED PIG

We all get to wrestle the greased pig.
There are really no good tips on wrestling a greased pig.
But music helps.


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FEELING BLESSED

First day of summer,
Feeling blessed
For no particular reason.

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WHAT IS A THOUGHT?

What is a thought, anyway?
A thought is an interpretation of the passage of time, of an experience.
A question has always been: can there be thinking without words?
Is a visual image a thought?
Is a piece of music a thought?
Which is more important, the work, or what we can say about the work? Put that way, nearly everyone would say that, of course, the work is paramount, but, for some reason there always remains an substantial undercurrent of incompleteness to a painting or a jazz riff because we can't talk about it without talking ABOUT it.
Words, the naming of things, seem to be on a different level of interpretation, maybe less profound but certainly more accessible, maybe, for that reason, more "valuable".
There are always poems, words, that try to be less accessible and, therefore, more profound, but does this happen at the expense of relevancy?


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I WILL BURY MY FEARS

OPPURE, SI MUOVE

A long time ago, and far, far away, in Rome, to be exact, I sat in Piazza Navona, at a table that wobbled. When the waiter reached down to steady the table with a piece of cardboard, it still moved. He looked at me. "Oppure, si muove", I said.
He laughed and asked me if I knew who said that.
"Galilleo", I said back.
He clapped me on the back and offered to buy me a coffee after dinner.
Here we are, the earth still moving around the sun and that table still moving in Rome.
500 years later, and the truth resonates to this day.


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WHEN I BREATHE IN

Every breath of air that I inhale contains atoms of oxygen and nitrogen and who knows whatever else, all atoms, that predate my own today's existence by billions of years. When I drink water, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms were ancient before I was born. And when I exhale or perspire, the atoms that leave my body and return to the world in common do so remaining unchanged by being me for a short time.
I am composed of parts more ancient than I can ever imagine. And they have met in me, coming from all parts of the universe to coalesce in this body for a short time. Every instant, the person that is me is a dynamic conglomeration of mass and energy, changing constantly. When I am born, I accumulate a certain amount of particles to allow my spirit to call a body "home". When I die, my body's particles, having been only borrowed, return to the cosmos.
My spirit puts some serious thought into the next step.


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LOOKING AT THE HERON

TRUTH?

What is Truth?
It makes you wonder.
Summer lightning.


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HERE AND NOW

"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past" (Ulysses p. 153)

What if, instead of a life in a day, June 16, 1906, the work were to be a series of heres and nows that eventually becomes a life.
Rather than writing Ulysses later, after the life has been lived and examined, the point would be to allow Odysseus to live in the moment, goaded by the past and hungry for the future.
The present is never just here, nor just now, but a continuum of shadows and uncertainties extending into the past, achieving some degree of clarity in the present and then, stretching into the future, more shadows.
Why we choose to do something and the repercussions of that choice make every act less of an isolated point on a graph and more of line, a series of points, a string in fact.
Thus every single action that we take becomes the sum of where we have been and where we hope to go, a thread whose either end remains forever invisible.

The middle of the string is right now, with brightness and clarity extending into the past and/or future depending on the individual's awareness. Everyone's life is a fabric that unfolds decision after decision, idea after idea, action after action, which all up to what an individual does day by day. lf those thoughts and actions are the warp on the loom and the days, minutes, hours are the weft, then a weaving tends to be bright and distinct in the center and fading at either edge into shadow and farther from awareness. For an extremely aware person the image is wider. For God, the fabric is bright and endless from side to side, and endless top to bottom.


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THIRTEEN BILLION YEARS AGO

Thirteen billion years ago
a long time ago
Words-Falling-Apart ago

Complete silence
The speed and brilliance
of Creation
surprises

Why, once,
did the pin
of Insatiable Curiosity
prick the point
of Incandescent Possibility?

Every single atom,
every particle,
that makes up Me,
has traveled for thirteen billion years
throughout this Universe
since the beginning of Time
to coalesce right here
right now
in Me.
Temporarily.

Odyssey
Proteus
Prometheus
Akasha

The Odd Sea of Eternity

What are thirteen billion years
to a dream?


I am
here begun,
to change
many times
before I’m done

TOURIST OR TRAVELER?

If your idea is to "take nothing but photographs and leave nothing but footprints" then almost any experience out of the ordinary is likely a bad one.


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THE ART OF POETRY




Truth may be beautiful, beauty may be truthful but there is no necessary connection.

Craftsmanship aspires to beauty. Art aspires to truth. For myself, when Truth and Beauty collide, truth should be the last criterion standing.

Beauty is beguiling, like Money and Power. Truth couldn’t care less. I respect Beauty, Money and Power, but they need always to be measured against Truthfulness.

Art takes me to another place than where I live daily. When I go back and look at something that I have written in the past, I say, “I don’t know that person”, as if I wrote it in a different mind.

Haiku enables me, searching for the mountaintop, to stick my head up through the clouds and get a peek at the peak.

ST ANDREWS

I went to Scotland a few years ago, at about this time of the year.

I wanted to play the Old Course

I approached the starter and he sent me out.

I finished my first round.

I approached the starter and he sent me out again

I spent the second day the same way, playing twice.

I approached the starter on the third day and he sent me out.

I finished my fifth round in three days.

I approached my now good friend, the starter, and he sent me out.

I finished my sixth round

I approached him again and asked him if he gave out discounts.

"The fourth round the same day is free," he said.

Scottish thrift.

Scottish humor.

A CURIOUS DAFFODIL

WE ALL WONDER WHY...

What is it,really, that makes our life worth living? At some point,We all wonder why we exist.

One person who has managed to get a start on the question is Pavla Zakova-Laney and her non-profit organization, Educare Africa, where she is working with the people of Cameroon, in Africa, on educating the children there. you can find her at:

http://educareafrica.blogspot.com/

She has problems finding other people to whom she can entrust the future of the organization.

Will there be a legacy?

Are the children the legacy?

Will that be enough answer for her?

Are good deeds good forever?

AND ALL AND EVERYTHING

and all and everything

and why not pass by

and i

i sigh

and seek to remember

assured enough to love it

and yet,

not yet sure

of something else

Mmmm

ONE

All of the universe, every atom, every stone, every animal and plant, every human being ever is, every second of every minute of every day moving towards, while within, ONE.

As if we, the entire universe, were on a boat on a so-very-large river, flowing with the current, everything flowing with the current, everyone and everything in the boat, in the water and moving slowly and inexorably down the river, always toward ONE.

But, because the river is so wide and the shore invisible, there is no sense of motion.

Rowing with or against the current, the river always decides.

BEYOND THE UNIVERSE

LISTENING TO GARRISSON KEILLOR

In the car, I listen to Garrison Keillor, on the radio, saying how today is the birthday of Larry McMurtry, the author of "Lonesome Dove"

Later, I overhear a friend mention "Lonesome Dove" as his favorite movie and I assume that he heard the same broadcast. When I ask him, he is completely surprised and didn't have any idea that it is McMurtry's birthday.

An ever-so-small tip of one of the mountains of coincidence poking through the cloud cover of Reality.

They are astounded by the knowledge that I can call upon, seemingly at will.

I am more astounded by how quickly disparate skeins of wooly facts knit themselves together.

WALKING BRINGS ME TO MY SENSES

ISRAEL IS A BOWL OF WATER

Israel might be a bowl filled with water.

The religions which have come there are big, bright, colorful marbles.

They arrive with much splashing, and after they enter society they remain distinct.

They do not disappear, staying as visible and discrete entities.

While the water stays clear.

If India were a bowl, likewise filled with water, things could be described differently,.

The religions that entered India are colorful. yes, but colorful salts and colorful sugars.

They become part of the water, changing the water without remaining discrete entities.

The water takes on a hue, and both sweet and salty, a mixture.

The religions of Israel don't want to mix; the religions of India can't help it.

EXUBERANT IRRATIONALITY

As much as I would like to have made the trip to Israel and moved on, the latest news shows how pivotal the region is to anyone in the western hemisphere.

The aid ship, destined for Gaza, was attacked by Israeli commandos and many people were killed or wounded. The Israelis, as much as there is to admire in what they have accomplished since WW2, seem determined to hold the rest of the world at arm's length.
I hate to say it, but it reminds me of the behavior of a cornered animal, with fewer and fewer trees to climb.
There are certainly many people in Israel who still couldn't care less about world opinion, though I worry how much of a island any state can truly be in this age.
Having just been there, I know that this sentiment is not universal. But like the teabaggers here in the U.S., the loud, farting tail tends to wag the reasonable dog.


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