POETRY
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Photo Credit: Tyler Nordgren
Our Planet, Our Home
By Rua Lupa June 2013
Our planet - Our home Sea waters - Land loam Crawl, Walk, Swim and Fly Within the ancient vast wet did slowly beget motion of a different kind Green some grew, bringing air that blew Shield and breath above From floating to crawl, onto dry earth did haul beings that took a chance Within dead grew life Strength and Strife To adapt meant to go on Adapt we did and now are amid others that did the same Our planet - Our home Sea waters - Land loam Crawl, Walk, Swim and Fly 
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR of
The Price Paid in Heartaches Can science be beautiful? When I first began to think seriously about consciousness, the idea that the mind might be reducible to chemical changes in the brain struck me as dehumanizing and ugly. You mean all my hopes, dreams, aspirations, talents, fears, and weaknesses, indeed the sum total of all that makes me human might be nothing more than ions sloshing around in a three pound piece of meat? I don’t think I’m alone in this. It seems like many people’s initial reaction to this brand of reductionism is outright rejection and, despite the fact that I was (and still am) a physicalist, unconvinced that the mind can be anything but the brain, I still shared their reticence. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance going on back in those days. This reaction, in some cases at least, seems to generalize into a broader hunch that somehow science and humanness are incompatible. In debates I usually be sure to point out that “I don’t like that answer” doesn’t change whether the answer is correct or not. But another way to address this uneasiness with a scientific worldview is to demonstrate that the uneasiness is baseless to begin with. The truth is, there are some magnificent vistas to be found within science. Going back to the example of consciousness, I believe the notion that I’m a stable pattern in a sea of entropy, a glimmer of light that somehow shines from within a seething mass of neurons, couldn’t be more beautiful. No dualism or fairy dust necessary. Contemplating how matter becomes mind leaves me with a sense of intellectual vertigo which has to be experienced to be appreciated, and reminds me that reality isn’t just stranger than I imagine, it’s stranger than I can imagine. Though I’ve only briefly discussed scientific beauty through the lens of neuroscience, it works for other branches of science as well. Evolutionary biology, particle physics, thermodynamics, psychology, even economics, they’re all beautiful in their own way. Far from being dehumanizing, science places humans squarely in the unimaginable infinity of the universe, helps us understand ourselves and the world better, and furnishes us with the single best means of attaining truth and improving our material circumstances ever devised. I think if more people understood how awe-inspiring an honest look at nature can be, we would have a lot fewer attempts to desperately ram a creator god into the foundations of existence. Why poetry? Poetry and narrative have long been tools by which humans pass down information and organize the most important principles in their lives. I don’t know whether or not epic poetry is considered a human universal, but it’s damn sure prevalent. Many are the tribes of Man that have told the stories or their cultures, their peoples, their heroes, their villains, and their gods through verse. There is something about the lyrical quality of poetry which makes it deeply resonant with human psychology; some combination of rhythm, rhyme, imagery, and word play makes poetic themes easier to remember and easier to assimilate. And though poetry often deals with mythical or supernatural themes, I see no reason why it must be this way. Surely poetry can be used to express the development of humans through the deep time of evolution or the birth of the universe as readily as it can be used to detail the adventures of Odysseus. Trent Fowler is an English teacher in South Korea. He graduated with a degree in Psychology from Hendrix college, where he also studied philosophy and neuroscience, among other things. Though he considers himself a staunch atheist, he is still very much interested in ritual, meditation, and various religious practices which can serve as a means for exploring and changing consciousness. As a writer, he has worked for numerous websites, blogs, and small businesses. He also enjoys hiking, playing guitar, dabbling in electronics with mixed results, and learning everything he can about anything he can. |
The Price Paid in Heartaches
By Trent Fowler February 2012 Days like today always made her feel like the atoms in her body were drifting apart. Her eyes were pools that reflected the sky, her body another wind-kissed wildflower. Smells reached her from the surrounding trees in the seconds after she settled into the grassy hillside. They bypassed the switchboard in her brainstem and went straight to their task of resurrecting memories. Like the breeze that ran its fingers through her hair, these memories floated from her hippocampus and reminded her what her ten-year-old toes had felt as they wiggled in the grass. The same grass she was laying in now. She had been coming to this hillside to watch this spectacle for years, waiting for the moment when the great fortresses of clouds would quietly surrender the evening sky to the stars. It hadn’t happened yet. The sun was still a god bathing in the reds and oranges of twilight and casting it’s hues across the firmament. As her hands were in a Whitman verse, sweeping slowly over the blades of grass, her eyes were in a Monet piece, watching the watercolored splendor being born. The words, unbidden, rose: To be the Earth, and all that’s in it, sing it with your bones, To be the Sky, and it’s farthest limits, where truths sleep unknown. To be the bridge that lies between them, a lovely little spark, To be the face where they interface, flickers in the dark. She settled deeper into the stillness and pushed her fingertips into the roots of grass. Her breaths created a kind of rhythm with the rising of her rib cage, a steady pulse that marked the cadence of her thoughts. She had the sense that she was slowly occupying more space, like a liquid moved into a new container, she was spreading into a different shape. The grass seemed so much closer now, the wildflowers were getting taller. She thought about what she was before she was born. The atoms that made her had been reincarnated an incalculable number of times since the beginning of time. Maybe she’d been part of a dinosaur or a maple tree; Maybe she’d been thrown into the void by the violent death of a star; Maybe she had pumped life through an animal as a heart valve, or animated it as an axon. A wordless soliloquy wrought in her synapses read: I’ll be the Earth, and all that’s in it, I’ll sing it with my bones, I’ll be the Sky, and it’s farthest limits, where truths sleep unknown. I’ll be the bridge that lies between them, a lovely little spark, I’ll be the face where they interface, a flicker in the dark. She knew suddenly that she was like eyes that caught light or hands that made mirrors. She was how the universe watched itself, how the sun knew it’s glory and the moon its austere beauty. She was a fractal, an evanescent pattern pondering patterns and carbon contemplating carbon. She was a strange loop in a universe with a resounding sense of humor. Part and parcel and the whole besides, she was a house made of matter where consciousness rented a room. The price paid in heartaches, tears shed, and existential angst was steep, but the view couldn’t be beat. Feeling the light at the end of the ego tunnel, she noticed that her breaths had stretched into minutes and she was losing any sense of self. She exhaled one last time, melting into the breeze, and the music of the spheres framed the words: We are the Earth, and all that’s in it, sing it with our bones, We are the Sky, and it’s farthest limits, where truths sleep unknown. We are the bridge that lies between them, lovely little sparks, We are the face where they interface, flickers in the dark. |
