Life is a battle, one we all lose, but we MUST fight!
Generally speaking I am an optimist, but I am also a realist, and a skeptic (boy I sound like a pain in the ass). Death is usually not gently slipping into the ever-after in your sleep, rarely. How many of us have this belief? or is it a distraction for what we really know deep down as truth? I have been lucky (some may say blessed, that’s fine with me) that I have had very little death in my family, at least those close to me. But as all things are, things end and I sense a wave of coming (unfortunately a whole generation). We may not want to see what that looks like, restraints, screams, bodily functions, the knowing the end is there but the days must be the days in hospital watch, the pulling out of tubes, the curses, the fever, the thrashing of anger as life escapes bodily form – and reason flies out the door, surely – not the dream of dying in our sleep. But this is what makes us most human. What we do with these things, these situations. We are given a choice. We can delve down and be drowned in the specter of death (and succumb ourselves)… or live, holding up the full sword of life, because we may not know what death brings (a true end?) but we do know one thing… life. we are alive now, there is nothing more certain than that, and in that I put my faith… to fight some more, for those I love, and for myself.
overlooked by the mainstream and even the rehash metal movement that embraces Metallica etc these days, this is a beautiful piece from years ago, it tempered the thrash fury of an album but also informed some souls… like mine.
Anthropomorphism… ah, some days it is good to be a word nerd, I was an English major back in the day @ Rutgers (color you surprised) who wound up as an IT tech these days, Rutgers was a good time, the grease trucks were near frat row, the fat cat was the only ‘fat’ sandwich (the category is quite cluttered now, call me a purist), Mr. C’s was parked right in front of Tinsley Hall (I was there when it blew up, quite literally which was the beginning of the end of the truck freedom – way ahead of the country in terms of food trucks by the way, we are talking early 90’s), our football team sucked, our soccer team was boss (we had Alexi Lalas when I was there but no one cared (the crowd was dozens)… and man those soccer players were nuts, oh the parties, off frat row in that one house), damn, how I get off track, I will one of these days put all my anthropomorphic poems in one spot, it is something I like to do writing wise or as an exercise, I like it to flex the mind, we can never be truly something else than anything we actually are, we can pretend however.
After all I am a bit of a science nerd, and the Voyager probes (launched in 1977) are only slightly younger than me, probe #2 has finally left the heliosphere becoming the second man made object to do so, in short the sun’s influence extends out way farther than we can imagine in our day to day terms but there is a horizon where it does end, and our emissaries are out there now for all time (the chances of them colliding with anything is very low, space is quite empty, when you view pictures of galaxies and what not the space in between individual stars is vast, even galaxies colliding do not collide per se but the gravitational forces do the collision work/damage, we are of course, on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, not you or me will be around to see it however, nor those who first see it as it will take billions of years even when it happens)
What is the point of all this ? perhaps a metaphor. In 40 years what have I accomplished ? And yet in 40 years our species launched some probes that are now all that might be left of our civilization. The realization of that achievement of our tech of that day visiting the outer planets and now beyond our reach. I believe it is a pinnacle of human achievement, and on a personal level we can scale that down the same. Shoot for the moon they say, nah, shoot for it all, even coming up short leaves you at neptune. I should take my own advice, and I truly try, maybe every time I look upward, into the sky, I can remember those little probes with less memory power than my phone, racing out into the universe, so far from home, but with all of us on board, in some capacity, for some other life form to discover, maybe a billion years from now, maybe four billion, at that point what does it matter, but at that point we all will matter, touching another form of life, out there, humanity will have existed…
10.30.2018
a path of stars
cosmic dust footprints
to follow, out beyond mars
into the cosmos
maps of constellations guides
mariner of the universal sky
I disappear off into the night
of space, and to explore
the space, of infinite expansion
the universe, final destination
My Voyager series is here. I often contemplate the universe, surely beyond my comprehension in totality but why not consider it… humans are capable of a great many things (yes both good and bad, we need to choose sides at times).
Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated, as well as recipes for strata…
notes… a good amount to unpack here, if you don’t want my explanations and thought levels stop reading… ok, now just you and me left talking, this is based on the danse macabre, a movement, well, a thought that became a movement back in the 1400s that spanned well over a couple of hundred years, the catharsis or the pinnacle thought being that we are all going to die, true enough, but it embodied modesty with theme, from a child to a king there is no escape from the ultimate end so why not party on dudes ! well.. maybe more elegant than that… the whole “pope” line is based on art of the day which typically showed the five figures I describe, note I use “a” and “the” in spots, “the child” is both a reference to literally children and also jesus christ (“the” child), the fifth member of the party is the laborer hence my plowman’s line (another biblical reference as well), I also am using double meaning in “plot” and “lot” in the following lines, ‘memento mori’ in latin is “remember you must die”, pretty much the rallying cry of the danse macabre movement, and the last line is my play on “the night is young” and also “the good die young” (revelers), the night has been there all along, and with that I bid you a good night, or a good day, this poem came to me and made me full with muse, that nimble minx, thank you my dear… for this.
music… going deep doom metal here… no death vocals, just the grinding forward sound of life, the constant sound, this song sums it up with sweeping piano and languished guitars…
notes… I finished up work about 3am last night (after a 1:30am jaunt monday… virus protection on your PCs people argghhghgh!!!), I was down in the boogie down bronx (actually a historical site turned into a supermarket), not exactly the nicest area but I have to say I enjoy traveling all over the tri-state area into every conceivable economic situation from Newark, the Bronx, Franklin Lakes, Millville, Smithtown, Copiague, Danbury, Hastings-On-Hudson, Cold Springs and so many more. It is a good way to stick the thermometer of life in and take a reading to see what you don’t have on the high end and how much you do compared to those who live with much less. I value that perspective, I try to ground myself in it (not always successful). sheesh I can ramble, point being I have been busy and tired (uninspired) but this hit me word for word as I got in my car this morning. I opened the car door, heard this one little bird, I scanned for it, I could not triangulate the little bugger, even with no cover from leaves, bare trees and this singular sound bouncing about, sure in my head I know there are birds that stick it out, but still, if I had wings, would I stay in a place, like this ?
music? … I must admit a guilty pleasure here, although they are technically sound I swear! Underrated band that met their end too soon (and of course there is a NJ connection, hey, I am a homer)…
I must admit I have been fascinated for a long time about the possibility of life out there, you know, the great vast out there, surely larger than us, our planet is literally a speck of dust, sure, we don’t like to think about it that way, but we can not all be ostriches about the whole thing, I ponder this topic in my mind, all the time, when I am buzzing about as a normal citizen my mind is trying the rubik’s of the universe out, so I am drawn to SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), our chances of finding others is slim because of the size of the universe (we will need some luck, but luck is what made the earth … the earth if you look at all the factors involved), we have been sending out signals to the stars via radio and TV transmissions for roughly 100 years now… imagine a million years from now that some civilization receives our signal, it will happen, but will we still be around ? there is more heady stuff to consider as well because of the sheer distance between stars, for example it may take 100 years for a signal to reach an amenable target, if their technology is like ours (not likely) it may take 100 years to receive an answer, and in that 100 years back so much will happen, furthermore imagine if some advanced society detected us in the 1700’s and sent a signal, we did not have the capability to respond, so our efforts might be the same, we truly have to pass through the eye of the needle at this point in our evolution to find another civilization out in the universe, i will probably not see it in my lifetime, but there is hope, humans are clever little beings, and I believe in their ability. thusly that brings me to this composition:
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
“echoes of the universe” 12.5.2018
voices from a distant star
a signal, or false alarm
or arrived to late
as civilizations fall,
our ears as dishes we turn to the sky
to the outer, to the beyond the space of our earth
The weekend, well, for me one day, I like to keep it light and post poems or jokes… or both, or just silly little things that have crossed my mind, so this is one of those posts (plus there is not as many eyeballs on wordpress because hopefully you are all out doing cool weekend things), so without further verbosity (I seriously can’t help myself sometimes…)
notes… OK, this is full on geek roots here, I am a coder (surprise, I love to write… code), heck I even remember my gosub routines, I used to write webpages from scratch (HTML), it is all so automated now, there was an art to it, but it is much easier to point and click, I must admit.
Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com on Pexels.com
fun fun fun band, one of the best ever silly albums (but great on a technical level) of all time, well at least to this guy… it spans genres (metal, rock, funk, classical, doowop – seriously) and themes, and by the way, don’t call me ‘dude’…
I would be remiss if I did not say thanks for reading this. All input, comments, questions and bake-ware is appreciated. (critique is especially valued, I can’t see myself now)
notes… life is all about perspective. As I have said in the past I do not write haiku (nothing against ya my haiku brothers and sisters) but this was haiku ‘feel’ to me (I have read tons of haiku books personally, I particularly like the death poem genre (jeez that sounds morbid, let me go paint my nails black…)
This song brings a tear to my eye, I must confess, and what does it matter now, when did it ever matter, how we put stock in what others think, the older I get the more I think… about how wrong I have been, and do not want to be going forward, all we can do is learn. be well anyone who reads this, and thanks.
notes… pretty straight forward fare here, on another note, I was in Harlem all day today (and night), for about the fourth day in a row (excluding Sunday, I do work Sundays, just not this one), I love re-programming a whole store worth of computers because they never invested in anti virus software (geek rage moment), that said, Harlem is transforming, gentrification is descending down upon them (I was around Frederick Douglas Blvd and 131st), is it a good thing? I’m not 100% sure, manhattan is becoming a place where rent will price out everyone not making at least 100K a year, I am watching it happen, I don’t fight things like that, I observe them, things balance out over time (in my opinion), but that doesn’t mean we can’t look, point, and discuss
Shades of My Garden 