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Most Recent Adventures in Thought
Opening
Opening from my core
Allowing the river to flow
Tepid river, strands connect of silver
Vulnerability of creation
It starts with the trigger
Quiet – click
I
Press away
It
creeps forward
You must be mistaken
Please oh please
Turn away from the devil
The frame of reality tilts and drives into focus
Gloom and horror mix
Last one in all of eternity
Alone
You have survived before
So you can survive again
Surging pain that reminds
Of life
Permanence of the moment
Reality distorts as pulling away
Tries to protects
Torture of desolation
The ice sheets shear against the flesh
Frozen sheets, tapered spiderwebs
Closing from core stalled
Ride it out
Midsummer Sun
You are the midsummer sun
Gleaming off pellets of rain in a late afternoon drizzle.
I find myself dancing among the endless glitter,
For the clouds cannot block your light.
Hope
A man gardens each morning. His knees ache and his arm isn’t as steady as it once was. But the routine brings him a feeling he can’t quite place. He stays out well past lunch time, to his wife’s contempt.
A woman spends her mornings in the garden. Her back aches and her legs aren’t so steady anymore. But to her, gardening is something she can’t quite let go. She stays out past lunch time despite her husband’s pleas.
“Am I your second wife?” the man’s wife demands. It seems to her that his first love is the garden. But the truth isn’t so simple.
“Am I your second husband?” the woman’s husband demands. It seems to him that her first love is the garden. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The man consoles his wife. He tries to put words to the feeling the garden brings him. “When you maintain a garden, you believe in the future. And when you believe in the future you have hope.”
The woman tries to share the feeling with her husband. “Look at the perennials. Aren’t they so beautiful?” she pleads. Her husband nods pleasantly but his sight is waning. He turns his attention elsewhere and tucks away a feeling of immense loss.
Five years later the man is on the floor. He has suffered a stroke and he will never maintain a garden again. His wife lets the garden fall into ruin. Then it becomes a graveyard. As the last perennial wilts, she thinks to herself, “why should his garden wilt with him?” And so she lifts the watering can and begins to work.
For a decade, the man’s health deteriorates as he watches the woman working in his garden. But the garden is no longer his. And he no longer believes.
Holes
Rhythmic shockwaves ripple through her.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Suppress.
And just like that the pounding in her head dulls to a hum.
That voice. That grating voice.
“Mom, it’s me. You’re alright.”
Gentle hands pull the sewing needle from hers.
But these days she resembles the holes more than the thread.
II – The most significant thing in the universe
And yet He welcomes You to His table.
He nurtures You and cherishes You.
For You are the most significant thing in the universe.
—
Reflections of The Damned
If there is some ideal state for the universe (call it God’s will, utilitarian optimality, or something we can’t begin to comprehend), change will be essential. And as long as there is capacity for change, there is capacity to achieve God’s will.
As a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, the universe will eventually run out of potential energy from which to enact change. We have only a few quintillion years before entropy prevents significant change. To an infinite God, a billion billion years is a mere blink of an eye to achieve perfection.
But we are the most efficient converters of potential energy to ever exist. Coincidentally, the Earth receives about the same amount of energy per day from the sun (~10^22 joules) as humanity has used in all our existence as a species. With just the energy the Earth receives in a day, we have done immense good, and immense harm. Which is to say: we are capable of enacting immense change.
Great Basin
I’ve put my soul in a box and sent it West.
Past the magnificent Appalachian forests.
Across the great rolling Midwest plains.
Over the vast towering Rockies.
Through the bone dry deserts of the Southwest.
All tethered up in twine, wrapped a thousand layers thick, the thing’s given me more than I’ve deserved, so I’m sending it back.
Perhaps an old friend down in Ely will happen upon it and nurse it back to health. I’ve always dreamed it would find its way back to Steptoe or the White Pine fields. Perhaps they’ll take it to Sacred Heart, that I might find salvation where I was first cleansed.
From our first kiss at 1205 to my first regret at the end of Bell. From our night at the racetrack to Chelsea City Hall, you follow me. So I shall return to Wheeler Peak, or to Stella Lake, that we may be together once more.
A soul returned to the basin.
A soul less to forgive.
Baseline
Man’s ineptitude is only disappointing when compared against expectations of competence. Man’s failures are only disheartening when met with expectations of success. Man’s setbacks are only discouraging when measured against expectations of effortless growth.
But life is not so simple. Life itself is a battle against the one unavoidable truth of the universe. Life is the force that will inevitably lose to entropy. Chaos never meant to let us build. Chaos is constant. The baseline. And life the gentle heartbeat we ride against all odds.
And against the destruction that surrounds us, we have built. And against the sterility of the universe, we have grown. And against the infinite nothingness, we have created.
Amongst the boundless chaos, Man has found our glorious, riotous moment.
Elevator Music
I want my life to be like elevator music
Like 1980s water cooler talk
Dimmed by sconces and the latest office scandal
Bossa nova music and the scent of candles
Dulled by suburban apathy and psychiatrists
Laughter and clinking of glasses
White noise and waves upon the sand
Shoes never drop
Doors never slam
I – An Ant
Would you dare?
Look into the eyes of God
And claim to understand His desires?
Would you dare?
Claim a seat at God’s table
An ant upon an equal throne?
To behold His will is to be Infinite.
To behold Infinity is to be God.
But you are an ant
Crawling upon His table
Understanding Nothing.
—
Reflections of The Damned
Life arose 3.5 billion years ago as simple self-replicating molecules. The first multicellular organisms, and thus intelligence, didn’t arrive until 600 million years ago. Ants evolved 150 million years ago, apes 25 million, and humans just 300,000 years ago.
We are not the pinnacle of evolution. In the same way a bacterium cannot comprehend the intentions of an ant, and an ant cannot comprehend the intentions of an ape, nor an ape a human, we will never be able to comprehend the intentions of an intelligence that evolves in a billion years. And that intelligence may never comprehend God’s intentions in their infinitude.
The Ocean Calls Me
I crest over a hill and see
the supple ocean waves blanket the sand,
lapping at the grounds edge
Right at the point the mighty sea
connects to the stoic coast
Harmony millennia long
I am at the breast of the sea
that gave the first life
and holds more than any other
Being by the tides,
I feel the great power of the ocean in me
Gazing out over the infinite waves,
I am merely tiny,
and while the calm waters last,
I will be safe in her arms
The rhythm of the waves,
a heart beat from the great mother
When the tides reach out to touch me,
I am only a vulnerable infant awaiting her grasp
though there is lightening on the horizon,
wrath of the storm only churns
the sea to birth new life
as I move toward her, the skies darken and the waves begin
to crash, excitement wells up inside me
the cyclic power of her great might
brings me to awe
The waves fight against the shore,
and the energy of life mixes with the
gateway to the beyond
white cotton fills the ocean
and she reaches up to me, inviting me to join her
I push fervently against the sand and crawl forward
As a towering wave comes towards me,
I make one final attempt for freedom
The wave crashes down on me
as I am rolled over and over again
Swimming to right myself, I am pulled out to my new home
With one final glimpse of shore
I plunge down in the waters
and use my flippers
to ride the currents deep into her awaiting arms