(New to Quantum Shift series) This is a rework of the first draft.
Forget epistemology, for the moment,
then set aside onotology too.
With common sense as our guide
let’s examine what may be true.
Brane theory, with branes flapping
in some marvellous cosmic breeze:
brushing against each other,
with a poke, a crash, or a squeeze.
Superstring theory, with shivering strings
vibrating in endless dimensions,
couldn’t this interdimensional weird
fill our lives with a strange jangling tension?
Little wonder how we live in turmoil,
with gravitational waves breaking
at the speed of light, with ripples
and rips: catastrophes in the making.
Never forget the Mandelbrot set,
with spirals infinitely repeating
with iterations odd and wondrous,
continuous, and never completing.
The many-world theory, especially
Everett’s interpretation,
where every thing that could be is,
just confounds imagination!
I could go on for ages
about theories, tests, and facts,
but the essence of my narrative
could then fall between the cracks.
Notwithstanding Bohmian physics,
quantum entanglement, and mechanics,
our species, when contemplating the unknown,
invariably panics.
The supernatural answers
to all that puzzles and perplexes,
make us feel safe, and cozy,
because some god provides the nexus!
It isn’t all just about us,
but we strive to give life reason,
and manufacture yet another god
that changes with the season.
We don’t need gods to make things work,
nor accept our eternal fealty:
we are more than capable by ourselves
to understand reality.
Learn, observe, make valid tests:
knowledge isn’t something terrible
Look for proof, not folk tales,
shun dogma, avoid parable.
On your path to understanding,
you must first open your mind:
abandon faith, seek logic,
and be amazed at what you’ll find.
With no cosmic Geppetto
pulling our cosmic strings,
you can learn, and love to embrace the joy
that natural progression brings.
Deus ex machina:
why can’t we use our brain?
Stop dangling gods from a hook,
and make good use of the crane.
(Part of the series: On the Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)
I am running off into the woods:
I can’t take it any more.
Far too much stupidity
from far too many boors.
Off into the quiet woods,
with no talk of various gods,
no ideological dogma
spewed from plastic-minded frauds.
No fences in this forest deep,
not a uniform in sight:
not a storm cloud in cerulean sky:
quiet peace, with dappled light.
Willful stupidity offends me,
and it now seems epidemic:
love and logic have been erased,
and hate has become systemic.
I know I should stand and scream,
and man the battle lines;
but I have grown too old, too fast,
to hope for better times.
So I’ll hide in my intellectual woods,
and heal in shadowed tranquillity;
and wait, dreaming of a world
devoid of hate, tribes, and hostility.
(Part of the series "On the Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters")
Don’t squeeze me into templates,
or assume that I’m like you:
you’d actually have to be me
to know what I call “true”.
Don’t quote me words
from your myriad gods,
sold wholesale with ten percent markup
by televangelist frauds.
Don’t tell me your country is the best
while flapping your flag at me,
and kindly cease this meme about
land of the brave and home of the free.
Stop for a while your vapid speech
about conditioned point of view,
and seek out wisdom in others:
learn truth you never knew!
Don’t cram me in your little box,
full of dogma too demanding;
come join the march for global peace,
inclusion, and understanding.
(Part of the series: On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)
We each construct our fences
to give order to our lives.
They protect our paranoia from the different,
and the strange,
So we fence off this idea,
that concept, or belief,
then mount a set of guidelines,
protecting it from change.
Our neighbours have their fences,
their moats,
and their walls,
guarding ideological boundaries,
and isolating all.
We wave our patriotic flags, flying on each fencepost,
with rousing martial music
giving frisson to our pride.
Our hegemonic leaders give proof
to Gramsci’s thought;
empowering us to build more walls,
and do exactly as we are taught.
Inside our tiny separate worlds,
behind the barricades,
we celebrate our freedoms,
with rockets, and with parades.
One fine day we may awake
and find our world has changed,
with our fences turned to cattle pens
as our leaders had arranged.
Can we not tear down these fences,
these abhorrent tribal walls?
Let us hasten to embrace the light
before the darkness falls.
(Part of the Series: On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)
Just who do you think you are,
to speak to me like that?
How dare you think that I care
about anything you have to say!
You think you know me?
You believe you “understand” me?
The inhabitants of my reality
have no reference point
in your experience;
they are strange and frightening
(for the most part)
with verbal barbs
to infect and destroy
fragile flesh and feelings.
Leave me alone!
I am trying to protect you from me,
but you keep returning,
pretending that you have a sense
of me, and what I really think.
Acting kind and understanding
will not spare you, should you
dilute my anger,
and deflect my searing gaze.
Leave me alone!
I have problems with which I must cope:
a moment of quiet, please,
so I may seek resolution.
My anger is my regard for you,
and the desire not to flail out verbally,
hurting you, and scarring the core
of who you can be.
I gird myself in anger
that you may walk in peace.
(Part of the Series: On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)
Each of us maintains a book,
with ragged, dog-eared cover,
and read it faithfully every day
with no surprises to discover.
In each of our relationships
the script makes dialogue clear:
no unexpected exposés
to cause us dread, or fear.
Sometimes we have to extemporize,
when a page is smudged or stained,
and we stumble with words and narrative,
until the storyline is regained.
And sad the day when we go out
and leave our script behind,
leaving us to prattle foolishly
forgetting each and every line.
Each of us maintains a book,
with ragged, dog-eared cover,
and read it faithfully every day
with no surprises to discover.
(Part of the Series: On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)
Vestigial memories: huddled in a cave,
hungry, frightened,
destined to die
in two or three decades,
if not painfully and suddenly
as prey.
We live longer now
but still seek the tribal cluster,
for security,
but mostly to assuage
the overwhelming and debilitating
sense of being alone,
and insignificant, against the void.
We develop secret handshakes,
certain ways of dressing,
arcane reference buzzwords,
and mark our bodies
so those we seek to emulate
may recognise us as one of
“them”.
When shall we evolve far enough
to recognise that,
in order for our species
to survive cosmic extinction,
we must stop tribal wagon-circling,
and accept that we are one?
We are one species,
wrought from elements
of dying stars.
Our destiny is one:
we are born,
we live,
we die.
Beyond that no evidence exists for furtherance.
It behoves us, then,
during our breath-taking ride
on the arrow of time,
to strive for peace,
for inclusion for all,
for kindness,
for understanding,
for acceptance,
and for love.
All else is folly:
just a crude tribal tattoo
to mark the passage
of a brutish species
who refused evolution,
and tribalized themselves
to extinction.
This poem is part of the series:
On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters
The Strange Case of the Fallen Guard
This is the way of things:
I recognise you, and
react towards you,
and interact with you,
in this manner.
Through a series
of mind tricks, I am aware,
but do not react
to the person you present me.
Seeing you for what you are
forces me to hide.
The mind structure is tower-like,
but not a Disney castle,
more like Bran Castle
on a dark and stormy
All Souls’ Night.
I have arranged complex schedules
for the guards:
never look within the rooms
never open the doors
be deaf and heedless
to strange whisperings,
and,
stay alert.
We may speculate on why the guard slept:
too tired for too long?
spite and the hatred of a boring job?
Or had he perhaps always known
he would sleep.
Speculation does not change the fact:
when the guard was fallen
the truth of our relationship escaped,
and things were never the same.
A slow motion cascade
of gold, and dawn
teases her way slowly
into the day.
The dunes are drenched
with warm shadow,
and displayed with endless variations
of sand, sun, and shadow.
In the silence of this jungle clearing,
an orchestra slowly grows.
Soft sounds of life,
unseen but felt
as a rhythm slow
and eternal.
The stars stretch to forever,
and the lanterns
on the dugout fishing canoes,
scale universal splendour
to this night.
And the waves that bob the lanterns
flow relentlessly south
to a distance Antarctica
ten thousand kilometres away.
I hear your breath in the night,
and feel the harmonic
being near you brings.
Then, just as smiling sleep
reclaims, we touch,
to travel, yet again,
our variations on a dream.
My father's face surprised me one morning,
peering at me from my bathroom mirror.
My joy at seeing him (dead these many years)
was tempered by a sudden knowledge of the message
he brought.
I never sought wisdom from my Dad,
but in my blundering adolescent way
found much that would return in later years
to haunt, and to guide me.
He, a quiet yet vibrant man, taught me
that sorrow and tears were never solely
the private prerogative of women:
men also wept in private anguish.
He, an undemonstrative man, showed his love
at the most unexpected times.
A sudden gift, and shy explanation
of how he thought I might like it.
He, an unlettered man, offered support,
approval for my serendipitous ways.
With hesitant words he voiced his pride
in the directions I had taken.
Seeing myself in my children's eyes,
I can only hope that the genetic gifts
I leave with them can partially repay
the legacy of my father's love.
Welcome, and Namaste
Greetings fellow travellers,
For you American friends visiting, you will notice that this old Canadian uses Canadian English in this blog: kindly bear with me. As I blog primarily on subjects that are vitally interesting to me, I appreciate all feedback.
As I tend to be a bit of a language usage freak, I will, as required, edit obscenity and rude comments. That said, I welcome your opinions and discussion.
May your Dharma be clear
Peace
"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumb'red here,
While these visions did appear."
Puck’s epilogue to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
