Petit Mort

[lizzytysh]

Very interesting commentary, Jack.

My very initial response to your comment and question, as well as to your own speculated answer to such, was "How can I possibly know if he is joking when he hasn't used an emoticon?" I noticed over there in that other locale that you commented to Diane, when she was teasing about something, that you had forgotten how funny she is, with your remembrance of that as the resolve. I bit the tips of my fingers to keep from suggesting "Such is the value of emoticons, Jack" .

For me, a poem that works and is by my personal standards a 'good' one [translation: not a legitimate assessment of quality, but one that I really like or love] is, amongst some other factors, one whose images impact me at the time and then stay with me.

With Manna's poem, the first stanza has a feeling of a bit of struggle to it, probably because of the term "manage" and sets up an expectation of hearing about the event of beauty.

Immediately, it's there... this image was impacting for me because I love drums and I love dance and I love dancers who dance to drums. I've seen that kind of worshipful interaction between them, and they really are symbiotic, as the drummer sees the dancer hearing and responding to the layers of rhythm, he increases them and lengthens his playing... as she sees, hears, and feels what he's doing in his drumming and that he's obviously enjoying her interpretive dance, her own creativity is heightened... and the two evolve in response to each other in that fashion. It's very beautiful to watch. The elongation of her body through all of her appendages... and the source of her rhythms really being her solar plexus and hips, those places so closely associated with birth and primal emotion... was dynamic and vivid.

The two squirrels with their love affair, as if inhabited by twins of love and fighting, reminded me of "the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen"... whose impact is suicidal in the bedroom; though I've still not been able to wrap my mind around where Manna suggests this impression is given in her last two verses. Maybe I'll get it later.

The moon and the sun are clearly seen in the sky... those mornings where they actually appear together, as well as in the eclipses.

The last two verses take me to different realms of interpretation, so as images they are quite as precise nor lasting... though, certain elements of them remain, they create more of an impression than an image.

When I selected that particular equation from that link you provided 'over there,' I specifically imagined spheres of connection between the drummer and the dancer, as though they could be dotted in as an overlay to a real photo... and I saw their connection in the same sense I described above, with their inspiring each other to greater heights of expression.

One of them is a converging IN wave and the other is a diverging OUT wave. (kind of like Manna's sun and moon)

This also seems demonstrative of sexual expression.

Your demonstrations with your son were, once again, inspired in the way of teaching toward true understanding. Delightful to imagine a father going to these extents with his son. Even though I've also experienced the effects of your experiments, I've not understood the reasons for their being that way. I've had the rope 'torn' out of my hand by the impact coming back, as it also seems to increase a measure upon its return.

It really doesn't matter to me who writes a poem, as what touches me doesn't enter my heart, via announcement, as though a butler's at the door. What touches me justs bursts through unannounced.

Regarding the 'round robin' transpositions, my immediate thought was that they begin with love, they end with love, and that love is the constant energy that enervates them, propelling from one realm to another. I feel that's probably far too simple for the kind of scientifics you had in mind for figuring this out, though . It doesn't take into account angles or degrees or other scientific phenomena, beyond energy and movement. Perhaps, Pete, the mathematics man can offer some explanation... though, if anything, I'd settle on its being physics.

Anyone who posts a poem to a group like this is in some way dropping a pebble into a bathroom sink keeping in mind that the pebble is also all waves.

This is also very true, including what followed it, that we really don't know "Manna" as a person, at least not the majority of us. It's nice to see that she got to experience the ripple effect of her poem.

I don't know if I've figured out a single, solitary thing here, but I sure do like Manna's poem. Sometimes, there's just no accounting for taste; yet, I believe I can here.


~ Lizzy

[Manna]

whose impact is suicidal in the bedroom; though I've still not been able to wrap my mind around where Manna suggests this impression is given in her last two verses. Maybe I'll get it later.

It's the calm and the danger that brought the suicidal thought to me. When a person makes the decision for suicide, he often appears to have "snapped out of" his depression, and the reason is that he has found a way out of that depression, albeit a dangerous way.

There is a scene (possibly a deleted scene?) in the movie Cold Mountain. (Once I see a movie, it's often hard for me to remember what happened in the book, so I don't remember how things went down in the book. Being an Old-Timey girl myself, I really enjoyed this book.)

The scene is where Inman has holed up with a young single mother. Some starving soldiers come and take her baby hostage. He's a sick baby and they put him on the cold, cold ground. He's crying and shaking and struggling. They say that when she gives them some food, they'll give him back to her. She gives them a pig saying, "This is all we have for the winter. If you take this you're killing us." Inman cannot help because the soldiers will kill him. The soldiers take the pig, return the child to its mother, and leave.

Inman tries to be kind to the woman. I think he tracks and kills the soldiers, but I can't remember for sure. He remains outside doing something helpful while she takes the baby inside and tries to feed him. She sings to him in a broken and crackling voice, but he stops crying and dies. Then the young mother brings Inman a plate of food, and she seems quite cheerful. She smiles and is calm. Then she goes back inside and shoots herself.

The calm and the danger.

I guess there are elements of calm and danger with most decisions, so I don't know why I thought of suicide, but I did. I recently made a major decision, and we're still figuring out how we'll deal with it.

Jack,
Thanks for all you've written here. I think I'm figuring out how this poem can work, and even how it can work with the reality of my life. Not sure I want to disclose it all here, so I'll leave it open ended for those of you who want to continue to play with it, which I am really enjoying.

[lazariuk]

"Such is the value of emoticons, Jack" :P .

All they do is take out the element of surprise. I like being surprised, taking someone very seriously and then finding out that they were joking. It's like being tickled. You sometimes don't let people get close enough to really tickle you if you know that is what they have in mind.

And how will I know when to put a laughing emoticon when I am never that sure if I am being serious or when I am joking. I usually always try to be serious but I also know that my seriousness itself can be very funny and then I come to learn that I was joking.
KILL EMOTICONS

[lizzytysh]

It's the calm and the danger that brought the suicidal thought to me. When a person makes the decision for suicide, he often appears to have "snapped out of" his depression, and the reason is that he has found a way out of that depression, albeit a dangerous way.

Ah, yes, exactly right... now I see it. Thanks, Manna.

Good scene to illustrate it. I've seen the same dynamic unfold in real life.
It catches you by shock, but you learn to look for it. Not sure why I didn't look for or see it in the poem, even after you mentioned it. For one thing, I took it as strictly metaphorical... yet, even there, it has broad application.


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Yesssssss, I knooooooow, Jack... KILL EMOTICONS!!

Still, some major misunderstandings have occurred here, where the seriousness of interpretation precluded the joking of intent... and there was no going back. So, sometimes, just better safe than sorry when so many people come from so many wheres.

I know what you mean about the surprize element, of course... that of subtle humour and wit are delightful in that very same way... and it's that very element of surprize that makes it so.


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

The 400 part just makes it even more so.

Is the 400 part something constructed by you to logic it out... or is that the way it truly is? If it is, it constitutes what seems to be a perfectly scientific explanation.

It is the way it truly is but it doesn't constitute a perfectly scientific explanation. It doesn't explain away the wonder but we do often let explanations like that do so.

Even so, if it's really that way, the wondrous mystery remains, as how is it that we became so perfectly joined with two celestial bodies... one for our days and one for our nights... that are so precisely matched, relative to their size and distance from us.

Exactly the wonderous remains. If someone were to speculate that the sun and the moon are the way they are because our mind is the way it is, we have no scientific evidence to prove otherwise. If that kind of speculation brought them some kind of enjoyment and it didn't hurt anyone I would say go on and speculate. Imagine something wonderful !!

Do you know that the back of the moon is the only surface in the visible universe that we cannot see except by leaving our planet and going around the back to have a peek?

No, I had no idea. Do the stars rotate so we can see the back of them?

Yes stars rotate. What is a little bit interesting about them is that not all of the star will rotate at the same speed due to their fluid nature. The moon is the only body in space that we can not see the back of.

Here is another interesting one to wonder about. Kepler didn't get layed much as he spent so many evenings looking out at the stars. One day he decided to measure the distance travelled by the planets over a twenty day period. He did that and looked at his figures. Since he didn't have anything better to do he started playing around with the figures. One of the playing around he did was to calculate the size of the area of the pie shape that was formed by the distance the planet travelled in relation to the sun. Get it? Line from sun to planet at day one, line from sun to planet at day twenty and the line of the planet's travelling. He did this for all the planets and what do you think he found?

All the areas were the exact same size. Keep in mind that he calculated with no idea what he was looking for. He almost died from an overdose of wonder. How come the schools do not pass on that sense of wonder? What happens is that in school the teacher might come across something like this and when asked by the pupil "Why?" the teacher will say something like "well it is because all planets are under the influence of the gravity between them and the sun" Everyone will think that is some kind of satisfactory answer.

The fear we have of how much we don't know and our attempts to pretend that we do or that someone else does must have some kind of purpose, a survival thing so that we don't get crushed by feelings of inferiority. I think we need to give each other all the help we can to deal with how much we all don't know.

[lazariuk]

Jack,
Thanks for all you've written here. I think I'm figuring out how this poem can work, and even how it can work with the reality of my life. Not sure I want to disclose it all here, so I'll leave it open ended for those of you who want to continue to play with it, which I am really enjoying.

I guess the chances of getting you to try to make it work to fit my understanding of it are pretty slim eh? I hope you realize that this might turn into a fight.

[lizzytysh]

He almost died from an overdose of wonder.

Is there a better way to go?

What happens is that in school the teacher might come across something like this and when asked by the pupil "Why?" the teacher will say something like "well it is because all planets are under the influence of the gravity between them and the sun"

Everyone will think that is some kind of satisfactory answer.

Yes... in that the teacher followed the above with, " ... and you need to memorize that because it's going to be on the test."

I think we need to give each other all the help we can to deal with how much we all don't know.

It may sound trite, but for perspective, even if you already knew all there was to know, you'd still have to learn a set of encyclopedias the next day, to accommodate all the additions and changes.

Trying to pretend you know everything is such a heavy load of self-assigned responsibility. Quite crushing, in fact. Jumping topic a tad, it's one reason I've always been drawn to men younger than me. The likelihood is so much greater that they don't already have life all pigeon-holed, with no sense of awe or surprize left.


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

You've quite likely already seen this, but what the hey... with your being an Old-Timey girl, yourself, Manna, this is for you. It just seems to fit here, somehow:

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER - by Erma Bombeck
(written after she found out she was dying from cancer).


I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.

I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have sat on the lawn with my grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life.

I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil, or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner." There would have been more "I love you's" More "I'm sorry's."

But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it... live it and never give it back. STOP SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF!!!

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what. Instead, let's cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us.

Let's think about what God HAS blessed us with, and what we are doing each day to promote ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally.

I hope you have a blessed day.

This isn't for you because of these being things I feel you ought to know, but somehow don't; they're things I feel you already do, and it's being given to you just because...

Okay, now back to the poem...


Love,
Lizzy

[lazariuk]

He almost died from an overdose of wonder.

Is there a better way to go?

An overdose of satisfaction?

It may sound trite, but for perspective, even if you already knew all there was to know, you'd still have to learn a set of encyclopedias the next day, to accommodate all the additions and changes

.

Let me see if I can transpose that and send it back to you.

Finding out how much information there is and how little we know and how information changes so much might bring one to that feeling of peace and danger that Manna writes about. But before we throw ourselves over the cliff we take a look at what we are left with.

We do know a little, we know some things that seem to be eternal, that never seem to change and from all appearances there seem to be a small enough amount of those things that it might be within the capability of anyone to know all of them. That everyone can know all we need to know at least for this period of time.

What I am talking about is the family of generalized interaccomodating principals of universe that never have any exceptions and can be demonstrated. Some examples are things like gravity or leverage. We cannot know all the special case occurances of these things but we can know the general principals. I think that a good education should have that as a goal.

Knowing that you are applying a principal that is eternal does give you a certain confidence. I'll give you a personal example to demonstrate what I mean. I have learned that every action has a reaction and then some time passes and then there is a result. I've thought long and hard about that and I try to apply it to my life. I know that the reaction is different from the result and so if I do something and see a reaction I know that it is just a reaction and not something to get too excited about and that I should wait for the result. I might not like the reaction but that doesn't mean that I won't like the result.
So in response to your saying that we can not know all there is to know I think that we should try to know everything that might be useful to know that can be applied to all special cases.
Another example that is so fresh in my thinking is this principal that is used to turn a wave around. I know that has to be an eternal principal and although I don't understand it yet, I know that doing so will help me in whatever I am trying to do and if it is useful now it will always be useful.

If it is an eternal principal and can be demonstrated I want to know about it. If it is some theory that can never be demonstrated it doesn't interest me that much.

This is me experimenting with seeing what is involved with transposing. I wonder if transposing can be a word used to describe helping a wave turn around.

[lizzytysh]

Hi Jack ~

Knowing that you are applying a principal that is eternal does give you a certain confidence. I'll give you a personal example to demonstrate what I mean. I have learned that every action has a reaction and then some time passes and then there is a result. I've thought long and hard about that and I try to apply it to my life. I know that the reaction is different from the result and so if I do something and see a reaction I know that it is just a reaction and not something to get too excited about and that I should wait for the result. I might not like the reaction but that doesn't mean that I won't like the result.
So in response to your saying that we can not know all there is to know I think that we should try to know everything that might be useful to know that can be applied to all special cases.

Is this something that you learned the principle of through an outside party or something you figured out on your own?

It has tremendous possibilities for making one's life much simpler and easier. I like it a lot... and as soon as I read it, began thinking back to so many things that I've encountered which support it. I would like to be able to follow it as a principle much more closely. It seems to move along very steadily in the direction of wisdom.

Another example that is so fresh in my thinking is this principal that is used to turn a wave around. I know that has to be an eternal principal and although I don't understand it yet, I know that doing so will help me in whatever I am trying to do and if it is useful now it will always be useful.
. . .
This is me experimenting with seeing what is involved with transposing. I wonder if transposing can be a word used to describe helping a wave turn around.

When I read this, I thought "yes" to it. I thought specifically of what I said regarding having experienced a similar action, where I did a 'whipping' movement with a rope and going out it's much gentler than coming back... coming back it had gained momentum and force and 'ripped' itself out of my hand. I wonder if that was based on an eternal principle or was just unique to however it was that this occurred in my experience. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact details of it. Sure would be helpful if I could.


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

Is this something that you learned the principle of through an outside party or something you figured out on your own?

I think it is pretty standard physical law stuff. Every action has both a reaction and a result. You bat a ball, the ball goes in the opposite direction, time passes and it stops somewhere. Pretty easy to understand. Einstein once commented that there are many people willing to ask the question "why?" but far too few who ask the question "To what end?" I think that has something to do with looking for the result rather than just the reaction.

It has tremendous possibilities for making one's life much simpler and easier.

I agree.

When I read this, I thought "yes" to it. I thought specifically of what I said regarding having experienced a similar action, where I did a 'whipping' movement with a rope and going out it's much gentler than coming back... coming back it had gained momentum and force and 'ripped' itself out of my hand.

It will only return to you with the force you gave it minus a little that gets loss along the way, which travelled off in another direction but will return later from another direction.

If you don't like the way it is returning them put a little more care in not giving it so much energy when you send it out. Also another thing about the wave. If it leaves your hand at the high part of the wave it will return at the low part. You can come to expect that the universe is always trying to balance itself and then you won't be too surprised when it does.

[Manna]

I've been thinking about this:

Every action has both a reaction and a result. You bat a ball, the ball goes in the opposite direction, time passes and it stops somewhere. Pretty easy to understand. Einstein once commented that there are many people willing to ask the question "why?" but far too few who ask the question "To what end?" I think that has something to do with looking for the result rather than just the reaction.

I think a result is harder to find because it may imply some finality, ie. "To what end?" If you hadn't hit the ball into left field, then the left fielder wouldn't have picked it up and tossed it to third to get your teammate out. Is that the result? I know that I'm talking about another action on the ball itself, but that second action was dependent on the first. It's all connected. And then your teammate wouldn't have slumped into the duggout feeling like a dork, but shrugging it off. Is that the result? I don't know, I'm just thinking...

If you're going to apply this to real life, how do you decide what the result is?

[lazariuk]

If you're going to apply this to real life, how do you decide what the result is?

well first it does get you away from being distracted by the reaction and knowing that time is one of the players in the game.
As you point out it is pretty hard to keep track of all the actions and all the results and the first time you get back information about the result of a particular action it probably won't mean much. The second time you start thinking : hmmmm this has happened before maybe it is something that I should look out for. The third time you think: Yep I'm on to something, it's time to experiment, I'll do the action and wait for the result. When it comes that fourth time you start feeling that you found something that you can have a certain confidence is something that you can apply and get the results you want. That is the way it seems to be for me, but I certainly can't keep track of everything, but some skills become a habit and don't need to be maintained.

jack

I am standing on the treshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated
business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing
with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must
make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round
the sun - a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be
miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet, head
outward in space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how
many miles a second through every instice of my body.
-- Arthur S. Eddington (British Astrophysicist, 1882-1944) in The nature
of the Physical World (1928)

[Christopher T. George]

There are times
when I manage
the good fortune to note
an event of beauty.

I saw a drummer and a dancer
who worshipped him
spraying her arms, legs and fingers
as if from the focus of her navel,

And two squirrels engaged
in the bickering chatter
of their love affair
as if fighting and love were twins,

And the moon and the sun
just winking at each other
from opposite sides of sky
for their impossible longing.

No, love, I am not feeling sad,
but I know the peace
of that final decision
and the danger,

Because it is this incongruity
when I come to you.
Oh, darling, don’t you see
how you excite me?

================================
Well, gang, I wrote this, and I don't know what the heck it means. I'm hoping someone can tear it up for me, but I like it too much to do it myself. I'm not even sure to whom I am writing this.

Hello Manna

This is fine work, strong throughout except perhaps for the ending which seems a bit weak with

Oh, darling, don’t you see
how you excite me?

You need a stronger ending statement, something more unusual and interesting than "you excite me" that would fit with the quality of the ideas expressed throughout the rest of the poem. I might suggest that dropping those two last lines might be an improvement. Good luck in revising if you choose to do so, Manna.

Chris