graves in autumn. under red-leafed trees -- soon to be bare
Graveyard Autumn [Haiku]
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Category Archives: Life
A Day in the Life of a Hobo [Free Verse]
I saw an old man
nestled in a nook
beside the sidewalk,
a plastic jug
of night diesel
beside well-worn,
second-hand boots,
combing greasy hair
with parted fingers,
and rubbing his eyes -
child-style -
with loose fists.
He was awake at an hour
to get to a job
that he didn’t have.
Instead, he’d amble / stagger
along the riverside,
taking frequent stops
to taste the bathtub concoction
made in the bathtub
that he didn’t have.
And somewhere,
at some undefined hour,
he’d drift into
a restless death-slumber
to repeat it all again —
“Groundhog Day” style.
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Old Stone Wall [Haiku]
old stone wall, now overgrown with moss: live & not alive?
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For Those Seeking Immortality [Rondeau Triolet]
To stretch a life beyond the time of trees be ready for a glacial shift of pace. There'll be no undulation of the seas. To stretch a life beyond the time of trees, the tradeoff is what's quick will pass unseen. So, what say you, Kings of infinite space? To stretch a life beyond the time of trees be ready for a glacial shift of pace.
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Wheel of Life [Haiku]
The End Times Ball [Common Meter]
A sign that hangs on down the street proclaims to one and all that coming soon there will be a Lonely-Hearts Club Ball. A dance of manic turbulence where singles 're all & none. You can come all by yourself, but you'll never leave as one. You'll be swept into unity with undulating hoards. Bound by bindings you'll feel, not see; you'll never cut these cords. So, welcome to the end of you, as only you can know. And welcome to the beginning of the everlasting flow. For an end is a beginning of something bold and new. And a beginning is an end: 'cause we're just passing through.
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Westward Run [Free Verse]
Put the sun at your back and run headlong toward the darkness. Killing days at record speed, leaning into the terminus, and you wake up in the light and prepare for another westward run.
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Cyclone in a Cup [Free Verse]
coffee flecks swirl in a steaming cup cyclonic do-si-dos, swinging and folding, merging into clusters between the cyclones there are highspeed byways cutting across the surface a jitter of the table seems to stop the dance, but then it resumes entropy falls to eventually follow its imperative -- entropy rising: using order to turn all that energy into a lukewarm cup of joe this same fluid clockwork played out in primordial soup to begin the dance of life
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BOOK REVIEW: The Romance of Reality by Bobby Azarian
The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity by Bobby AzarianMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Out: June 28, 2022
This book presents a metaphysics based on the relatively new (but increasingly mainstream) sciences of complexity, chaos, and information. It boldly explores some of the major questions that consume both philosophers and scientists, such as: how life came to be, what life’s purpose is (to the degree it has one,) what consciousness is and does, and how come we live in a universe finely-tuned to generate and support life? (Particularly, if one doesn’t like explanations that are audacious and unprovable like “god did it” or “there are infinite parallel universes.”)
The book starts out in territory that is fairly uncontroversial among physicists, arguing that life comes about (and does so with striking speed – i.e. fast abiogenesis) by a process through which nature moves the ordered / useful energy that Earth has in abundance into disordered / useless energy (e.g. waste heat,) a process that runs on rules not unlike Darwinian evolution (molecules have an informational existence that allow something like hereditability [passing down of “blueprints”] and mutation [distortion in copies, some of which will make the molecule or organism more efficient at using energy.])
The book then ventures into territory that is quite controversial, arguing that life has a purpose (beyond the tedious one of moving low entropy energy into a high entropy state,) and that purpose is to be an observer – i.e. to be the first stage in a self-aware world. I should point out a couple things. First, when I say this part is controversial, I mean that it couldn’t be called the consensus view, but that’s not to say that these ideas don’t have a following among some high-level intellects. Second, I think we need people to consider ideas that might seem a bit “out there” because there is a danger of not progressing because we’re trapped in morass of assumptions. Science has quite a few self-appointed guardians who mock as pseudo-science any idea that strays from scientific consensus or from a rigidly reductionist / materialist / Copernican worldview. The author doesn’t abandon a scientific point of view, even though it might seem he does to some because he abandons the nihilistic view that’s taken as a given by many in the scientific community (i.e. that life is a happy accident without purpose, significance, or influence on the universe – and that life consists of automata, playing out programs — devoid of any kind of free will.)
I don’t know how much of Azarian’s metaphysics will prove true, but this book was superbly thought-provoking and opened up to me whole new vistas of possibility about the big questions of philosophy and science. I’d highly recommend it for readers interested in the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
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Brimming [Haiku]
rimmed with black tadpoles
& roiling with orange koi,
the lake brims with life
Tiger Riding for Beginners 