The four fundamental forces:
Zeus, Aphrodite, Ares (or Mars), and Adam and Eve.

                            <<0>>                                          >> 0 <<

             Electric field induced by             Electric field induced by
            a positive electric charge            a negative electric charge

"Deutsch thinks that such 'jumps to universality' must occur not only in the capacity to calculate things, but also in the capacity to understand things, and in the closely related capacity to make things happen. And he thinks that it was precisely such a threshold that was crossed with the invention of the scientific method. There were plenty of things we humans could do, of course, prior to the invention of that method: agriculture, or the domestication of animals, or the design of sundials, or the construction of pyramids. But all of a sudden, with the introduction of that particular method of concocting and evaluating new hypotheses, there was a sense in which we could do anything. The capacities of a community that has mastered that method to survive, to learn, and to remake the world according to its inclinations are (in the long run) literally, mathematically, infinite. And Deutsch is convinced that the tendency of the world to give rise to such communities, more than, say, the force of gravitation, or the second law of thermodynamics, or even the phenomenon of death, is what ultimately gives the world its shape, and what constitutes the genuine essence of nature. 'In all cases,' he writes, 'the class of transformations that could happen spontaneously--in the absence of knowledge--is negligibly small compared with the class that could be effected artificially by intelligent beings who wanted those transformations to happen. So the explanations of almost all physically possible phenomena are about how knowledge would be applied to bring those phenomena about.' And there is a beautiful and almost mystical irony in all this: that it was precisely by means of the Scientific Revolution, it was precisely by means of accepting that we are not the center of the universe, that we became the center of the universe."

Danger comes from the root bad brakes and bald tires. Chain saws
      and wildfires. Poisonous
ideologies, housecleaning chemicals and toiletries. Powerful
      industrialists, alcoholic fathers.
Invasive species, illegal immigrants. Concentration camps, attention
      deficit disorder.
Performance phobia, identity enhancements. Pleasure, applause.
      Quiet moments, walking and
talking war buddies. Electoral politics, marriage and divorce. Pest
      exterminator, Yeats seminar.
Love affair, pencil sharpener. Whatever, matter. Ionic and covalent
      bonds, republican hairstyle.
Events in their mere chronology.

"What is a typical place in the universe like? Let me assume that you are reading this on Earth. In your mind's eye travel straight upwards a few hundred kilometers. Now you are in the slightly more typical environment of space. But you are still being heated and illuminated by the sun, and half your field of view is still taken up by the solids, liquids and **** of the Earth. A typical location has none of those features. So, travel a few trillion kilometers further in the same direction. You are now so far away that the sun looks like other stars. You are at a much colder, darker and emptier place, with no **** in sight. But it is not yet typical: you are still inside the Milky Way galaxy, and most places in the universe are not in any galaxy. Continue until you are clear outside the galaxy--say, a hundred thousand light years from Earth. At this distance you could not glimpse the Earth even if you used the most powerful telescope that humans have yet built. But the Milky Way still fills much of your sky. To get to a typical place in the universe, you have to imagine yourself at least a thousand times as far out as that, deep in intergalactic space. What is it like there? Imagine the whole of space notionally divided into cubes the size of our solar system. If you were observing from a typical one of them, the sky would be pitch black. The nearest star would be so far away that if it were to explode as a supernova, and you were staring directly at it when its light reached you, you would not even see a glimmer. That is how big and dark the universe is. And it is cold: it is at that background temperature of 217 Kelvin, which is cold enough to freeze every known substance except helium. And it is empty: the density of atoms out there is below one per cubic meter. That is a million times sparser than atoms in the space between the stars, and those atoms are themselves sparser than in the best vacuum that human technology has yet achieved. Almost all the atoms in intergalactic space are hydrogen or helium, so there is no chemistry. No life could have evolved there, nor any intelligence. Nothing changes there. Nothing happens. The same is true of the next cube and the next, and if you were to examine a million consecutive cubes in any direction the story would be the same."

The 5 colors of sadness:
disappointed, didn't get what was wanted
confused, don't know what to do next, where to go
lonely, no one to love or be loved by
sorry, unable to help or change what happened
depressed, can't get out of bed, want to **** self

"Unless a society is expecting its own future choices to be better than its present ones, it will strive to make its present policies and institutions as immutable as possible. Therefore Popper's criterion can be met only by societies that expect their knowledge to grow -- and to grow unpredictably. And, further, they are expecting that if it did grow, that would help. This expectation is what I call optimism, and I can state it, in its most general form, thus: The Principle of Optimism -- All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. Optimism is, in the first instance, a way of explaining failure, not prophesying success. It says that there is no fundamental barrier, no law of nature or supernatural decree, preventing progress. Whenever we try to improve things and fail, it is not because the spiteful (or unfathomably benevolent) gods are thwarting us or punishing us for trying, or because we have reached a limit on the capacity of reason to make improvements, or because it is best that we fail, but always because we did not know enough, in time. But optimism is also a stance towards the future, because nearly all failures, and nearly all successes, are yet to come.

As I think of things to do I do them.
Thing by thing I get things done.
That's how my father and his father did things.
I guess my mother and her mother did things that way too.

Sometimes I'm driving and I think how my father and his father drove
      too.
There was weather and they had problems. There is weather and I
      have problems.
Time exists only in the human mind. But if the mind exists, time exists.
Joy everywhere. Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy, all times.

I lie in the sand under the palm tree
Sand between the toes, crashing in the sea.
I count the stars, for the seventh time now
With the moon out, I nearly forget how

My meals come few, and far in between.
Could the fish be sparser, so it would seem
There's so much time between my feasts to think
Ocean surrounds, yet not a drop to drink.

I ponder at the moon and recognize
How its hue reveals the deceit and lies
You, my misty moon, I remember you
When I saw you last, in agony, too.

Those I held dearest left me here to rot
To wander about, within pain and thought
To fend for myself and survive alone
And march ahead in bracing the unknown

I lie in wait tearing my own nails
Wondering what first will come, death or sails?
Until then, I'll forsake those who left me.
And draw closer to the sun whilst I be.

(Hive Wired)

As wires round the world get lighter and thinner
the autoscroll feeds you fourty-nine homicides
from desktops at noon to plasma at dinner
the auto-cue commits sixty-five more crimes.

Mad and red in the face, you picture yourself
pace by pace, walking the span of the kitchen
but the network fail to mention the other seven billion
who kept living their life devoid of such sinning.

Typhoonous winds and hurricane fever
head out the window, yell for your kingdom,
yell so we hear you ’til you’re hoarse and unkempt.
yell 'til your sad old neighbour get’s hell bent.

Step back to the desk and slam on your keyboard
tell all that you know that there’s more to life
than watching the ’strife of idiocy’ part two thousand
and something, there’s more to this world

than serving a system; there’s more to a system
than the buds at the top, the roots don’t need trimming
the buds must be stopped from dying and rotting
and killing the crop. Still glum? Relax in your favourite shop!

With a roof overhead and your screen polished down
forget the anger, the strife, and fantasist who yelled.
tip-tap the day away, earn and pay away that frown
forget how lonely you are and buy some new health.

Tip-tap-a-tip-tap-a-tip-tap away the evening and next day
Now you live vicariously through social media
you cannot stop networking, lonelier… lonelier.
Connections you make get quicker, and quicker.

You pick and you carve a residual image.
‘Life is the greatest’ on appearance
the best fools fool themselves, it’s addictive
post after post you build up a rhythm.

Second life, third face, prosodical features:
hive mind rewired you’re speechlessly grinning
Staring at screens you’re now silent at dinner,
your diary entries get sparser and sparser

you forget appearances are a farcical demeanour
sixth chord diminutive, false life fever: your square
-eyed and ill groomed head sits on a hunchback miser,
the hive mind keeps ticking you keep getting wiser.

~for Honey~

upon arrival in May, 2020, at the sheltering island:

sparser, leaner, the overage of summer fullness lacking,
some of the presumptuous early blooms silly attempting
with no success, the deceiving of new arrivals, while the many
naked branches, leaf-less, trees, struggling be fully realized, needy
to join, volunteer, with the troops of advancing green recruits

this no poem, just descriptive, a viewpoint, my eyes awaken
to calm waterways, white boat dots trawling, looking
for new births, bounties of raw refreshment, sailing to an audience
of landed, gentrified emerald grasses, their chorale singing ‘thirsty!’

of me they ask, who be you, we’ve not seen nary a human trod
our land and seascape for months many, we have no recollection,
no issuing, of an invitation to any two legged slightly-familiar interlopers, reply simple, essence of essential, I’m being, being here!

your shores shore me in ways undefinable, that my
travels and travails don’t dare accompany or defy,
looking for old friends, natural ones, some likely passed,  all
whilst I sing Over the Rainbow, wishing wishes wonderful

already becoming truth, eyes daren’t deceive, my somewhere
here, where a winter’s rainbow made its landing, dreams truthful revealed, richly greeted, our presence yet welcomed, by sea salted
odiferous air, lapidaries of sapphiric waves, animals of the Kingdom

the poetry nook members, askance asking, why, what so long took,
we, your audience, waiting patiently for a coming, to pen our
woods and tales, long, short and tall, prophecies of storms,
lighting crashes, of a stilling peacefulness, heaven-bequeathed

the Adirondack thrones, four kings, wearied worn, beyond gray,
show their weathering rings pride of ‘another year, we’ve survived,’
saying now, we’ll speak to the world, through you-man-poet,
our minions too, deer, wolves, rabbits, starfish, osprey, sea trout, piping plover, all winter survivors, will enjoin your verses

much to tell, newly created, new spells, to trance your eyes,
you seeing only our surfaces, guessing at our depths, our inherency,
looking for recovered keys to unlock your own hardy boyish mysteries, but ours, are perpetual unsolvable which is why,
you humans, ne’er fail to return

your soft footfalls, children’s shrieks, jewels to adorn us,
our nature, needs adoration and adulation, our tree limbs
for swinging on lumber-cut swings, flying towards our blued skies, requires humans to summer-slum, breaching the winters remaining slumbering yet few ends to join you when you at last first chant,

                               that, that’s where
                               you will find me, 
                               thinking,
                               think to myself,
                                                         ­ oh, what a wonderful world!

I lie in the sand under the palm tree
Sand between the toes, washing in the sea
I count the stars, for the seventh time now.
With the moon out, I nearly forget how.

My meals come few, and far in between
Could the fish be sparser, so it would seem
There's so much time between my feasts to think
Ocean surrounds, yet not a drop to drink.

I ponder at the moon and recognize
How its hue reveals the deceit and lies
You, my misty moon, I remember you
When I saw you last, in agony too.

Those I held dearest left me here to rot
To wander about, within pain and thought
To fend for myself and survive alone
And march ahead in bracing the unknown.

I lie in wait tearing my own nails
Wondering what first will come, death or sails?
Until then I'll forsake those who left me
And draw closer to the sun whilst I be.

Your words grow heavy
the sparser they become, and
slippery as well.

I'm wandering still,
looking for a pain that feels
closer to the "soul".

I'm desperate now,
I can taste his sweat on you
but I say nothing.

Everyone's alone,
but it's a human concept
to be so lonely.

Everyone's dying
without any dignity,
soulless and divine.

Everyone's silent
under the deafening sound
of thought in practice.

Everyone's losing,
and we've only learned how to
fetishize the pain.

the draw
five cards
three
maybe just the one

i don't flinch
empty cups
nothing new
laughter, empty

paths of green
ivy and oaks
sumac i hear
i listen

sparse in other woods
sparser than here
webs catching passerby
my eyes watch

in the distance i see the melting
heated
a wanderer's corpse floating
swim upstream the message declares

I told myself to breath in deep.
The pain was just a subsidy
of love.
I watched the days, weeks, months go by;
I’m in need of an alibi
other than fleeting moments of joy.

Because they come like a lighthouse for a ship that’s stuck at sea
and only when I find them in the storm do I feel your love for me.
And all the time they’re getting sparser and though I feel love for you,
On days like this I wonder if my voyage ought to continue.

The nights were long and the days brought no light.
I came to you with a heart contrite,
asking if you’d relieve my suffering.
As the orange sun eclipsed the horizon
That final night brought our love’s demise in,
in the form of one last fatal kiss.

Because you were the winter to my autumn jubilee.
You took the weather that was already cold and you made me finally freeze.
And all the brightly colored leaves are now fallen, brown, and dead
just like our love. I should’ve left before the season changed, but I stayed instead.
And that last night, it was like a ball and I asked for one last dance.
But as the music started playing I realized my only chance
to be okay was to leave you, so when Fate asked to cut in
I gladly let him, and I left you praying I could start over again.

Sparse these threads of vapour fine, of misty trails of know
Of effervescent gaseousness, wherein the mind should flow.
Sparse the shades of knowing, which  whereupon we dwell
And sparser still, when suddenly, the mind set sheds it’s shell.

That vacant hall of ordinary that hangs without a trace
Of yesterday’s familiar touch of golden knowing’s grace,
When everything just vanishes to leave this empty tomb
And life suspends to nothingness’s, cold and pallid moon.

How suddenly, how cruelly it flings away the key
To all that recognises these factors that are me,
How brutally it scarifies the topsoil from the loam
To leave the fragile flailing, futilely, so far from home.

As film’s fear descends, it seems, while realisation dwells
Of all that’s been so ruefully and painfully dispelled
What hangs now may well be my lot, my fortunes saddened song
Or perhaps should I give cheer, for stuff retained.... prolonged?

M.
Foxglove, Taranaki, NZ
7 February 2018
Threaded the needle path of the dreaded septuagenarian stroke.

An End To Everything

Driving in the car looking at the trees;
November colors, sparser leaves.
Their stunning, sunning profiles clear;
Tree trunks far or close together;
Defined the birch and pine, the heather,
The whole divine to me.
And yet one sees finality.
Winter sends a different sense.

Seasons brief;
Some bloom, some gloom, flame, flume -
All short.
But lying in my world of thought
I see the tree. the bird, the bee
As formed of start and end - and then,
A start again.

An End To Everything 11.14.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin