Spastic chiastic

Posted on June 26th, 2007 by george.
Categories: technology, history, synthesis, future, society, environment.

I cleaned my bathtub this weekend. I cleaned out my 200-email-deep inbox at work today. Figured it’s time to clean out the link repository as well. The video above is slightly related to some of the topics we’re going to touch on. There isn’t enough resolution for you to see the phrase “Hydrogen 7″ on the rear badge, but it’s there. You can see a bit of the fancy paint job on the side, though.  I shot this on the way home from work today. Funny the things you see at NASA.

Let’s start with some good news. How about proof that when evil strikes, good can fill the void? Virginia Tech is receiving such an outpouring of support (in the form of memorial gifts) that they’ve had to enlist nearly a hundred volunteers and they don’t have room to store it all. From the article, “You could look anywhere in the building and realize we’re not alone,” he said. “The world cares.”

The world is a funny thing, though. And it can be confusing. It helps to listen to someone with insight, someone who is fair and balanced. One of those people is columnist Fareed Zakaria. Listen to what he has to say about the root cause of terrorism.

Britain, the United States and most other countries have not found it easy to address the root causes of jihad. But clearly, they relate to the alienation, humiliation and disempowerment caused by the pace of change in the modern world—economic change, migration from Third World to First World, movement from the countryside to the city. The only durable solution to these ongoing disruptions is for these people to see themselves—and, most important, the societies they come from and still identify with—as masters of the modern world and not as victims. How to open up and modernize the Muslim world is a long, hard and complex challenge. But surely one key is to be seen by these societies and peoples as partners and friends, not as bullies and enemies. That is one battle we are not yet winning.

Atoosa and I have discussed this issue before: it is the hearts of humans that provide the foundation for world events. Baha’u'llah has said,

Know thou that We have annulled the rule of the sword, as an aid to Our Cause, and substituted for it the power born of the utterance of men. Thus have We irrevocably decreed, by virtue of Our grace. Say: O people! Sow not the seeds of discord among men, and refrain from contending with your neighbor, for your Lord hath committed the world and the cities thereof to the care of the kings of the earth, and made them the emblems of His own power, by virtue of the sovereignty He hath chosen to bestow upon them. He hath refused to reserve for Himself any share whatever of this world’s dominion. To this He Who is Himself the Eternal Truth will testify. The things He hath reserved for Himself are the cities of men’s hearts, that He may cleanse them from all earthly defilements, and enable them to draw nigh unto the hallowed Spot which the hands of the infidel can never profane. Open, O people, the city of the human heart with the key of your utterance. Thus have We, according to a pre-ordained measure, prescribed unto you your duty.

That world over which we have been given dominion? It’s in dire straits. The oceans are not only being systematically raped of all life, but up to 40% of their area is covered in a toxic stew of degrading plastic. And it’s not just the oceans. It’s in the air, in our food, in our clothes, our cars, our homes, our bodies. This is the legacy of oil.

Speaking of rape, (I know, that’s a horrible segue) the perspective of 40 years has done a lot for the baby boomers. Turns out the Summer of Love wasn’t as rosy as we like to remember it. Less “free love” than “free sex.” For the men, anyway.

And now, in true chiastic form, let us end with the beginning: a positive note, and a car video.

4 comments.

Waterborne

Posted on June 24th, 2007 by george.
Categories: poetry.

baptise me
in my own salty tears

feed me another spoonful
of your feisty love

sing a song to our child
in your amaranthine voice

let its strings
pulse with the poetry
of a life richly lived

let it ring

paint the heart on my sleeve
with the brush of your fingertips

listen
to the hum of your reeds

the gentle burble
of your babe in the basket

nestled down in the rushes

sing it again
sing it until

you believe

2 comments.

Perdix

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 by george.
Categories: poetry.

by the same force that knits together the celestial spheres
by the magnanimous magnetic miracle
that shields our soft blanket from the cosmos

hath this injured and care-worn seeker
found a gentle and yielding spot
in the forests below

midnight’s breezes
dispelling the fog of hubris
and lifting the spirit from the pit of self

the filtered rays of morning
lighting the prayerful path from the foot of the monolith
its shrinking silhouette against the azure sky

no longer a self-made cause of suffering
but a love fondly recalled

a journeyman’s lodestone
a reminder
casting its soothing shadow

along the chosen path

3 comments.

Epic

Posted on June 21st, 2007 by george.
Categories: poetry.

years to climb the mountain
seconds to fall
from such great heights

I cling to the rock with all my might
you reward my progress
with a bald face

a sheer stone wall
beautiful from a distance
but featureless when near

I find myself here
exposed
oblivion beckoning

with each new breath
a fresh pain
each gasp, each grasp more tenuous than the last

give me one good reason
to hold on
one sign
that this peak has a foundation
that this effort has not been in vain

here goes the rope
and there, my grip
sweet gravity
take me home

envelop me in the void
crush me in the depths
but for the sake of all that is holy

give me some small shred of truth

farewell my expedition
farewell my siren’s song

a nod to my fellows
and a prayer for your progress
may she shine her light on your faces
and open a path to her shadowed secrets
and impossible peak

I leave her to you

2 comments.

&#$@%

Posted on June 20th, 2007 by george.
Categories: technology, life, music.

Firefox has only crashed on me four times since I’ve had Elvis. I know, because there’s a neat little talkback function that tracks it. Before it crashed thirty seconds ago, I had just penned a five-page blog entry, including links, about my experiences this past weekend at Bonnaroo.

I am not rewriting it.

11 comments.

I’ve been tagged

Posted on June 11th, 2007 by george.
Categories: friends.

By Mojan. And then after I didn’t respond for a few days, I was politely reminded by Sarah. Again. Thanks Sarah!

Seven Random Facts About Me

1. I set a PR (personal record) today in the Turkish Get-up: 70 pounds. That’s after an inverse set, starting at five reps of 50 pounds for each arm, then four at 55, etc.

2. I have three nipples and a vestigial tail.

3. That last fact was a lie.

4. I was an agnostic for a decade before I became a Baha’i.

5. I get paid to crawl around every inch of the Space Shuttles fixing things.

6. I learned piano from my grandmother, a concert pianist, and played for nine years.

7. I would gladly sacrifice my life in the pursuit of space exploration.

I’m tagging: andrew, nas, shokufeh, denise, toufan, ezra, and falconboy

9 comments.

The Tapestry - Part I

Posted on June 7th, 2007 by george.
Categories: poetry.

Across the weft
From time to time
A warp will bridge
The daily twine

A string will sing
Across the gap
As flying shuttles
Trace their laps

And spin a yarn
As threads are woven
The future looms
Its secrets cloven

Transcending things
That we can name
It loops above
Outside the plane

Draws tight the bow
And singles out
One stitch to bless
And free from doubt

1 comment.

Exegesis

Posted on June 3rd, 2007 by george.
Categories: poetry, history, synthesis, friends.

So Sarah just poked me via email. Her message was short, sweet and, um, subtle:

Timetoblogtimetoblogtimetoblogtimetoblog.

Time to blog.

Time TO blog.

Time to BLOG.

Let’s all blog now. You.

Because this made me laugh, I think I’ll oblige with something I was considering posting. More than a few people have asked me what my poems mean or what they’re about, and I’m always happy to share. I spent a lot of time explaining what the last one means to a couple of friends, so I think it will be worthwhile to make that explication public. And it may temporarily silence the clamoring hordes.

On the surface, this poem is about Atlanta. It’s a tapestry of interwoven meanings, like I hope most of my poems are, but it is inspired by the city. One of the most beautiful things about the distillation of thought inherent in poetry is that the simplicity leaves it open to interpretation. The process of making sense of the collection of words within the brainspace of the reader is an act of creation in itself; the unique memories that make up that consciousness filter the poem into a new experience, with thousands of new connections and meanings. The poet provides only the spark; the flame burns in the hearts of her readers.

Indeed, there are many meanings to the words I’ve written that I discover only afterward, whether hours or years later. But as for my intention when I wrote it, let me break it down:

with each crested hill
you loom larger

as I pass beneath your bridges
their eyelids open
thrice full of your golden spires

I-75 North rolls over many hills on approach to downtown. There are three separate instances when you see a bridge on the crest of a hill, and as you near it, the city looms up over the hill as if the bridge is an eyelid opening to reveal a vision. It is particularly hazy in the South right now due to the drought and forest fires, so at sunset everything took on a dusty, golden, ethereal feel. It helps that the architecture is most excellent and some of the spires are actually golden. I liked that the three times it happened toyed with the concept of a third eye, and a golden city (El Dorado, heaven). Looming larger, well…there are big things on the horizon.

I trace your spine
through the orchard

I love this line. Obviously it has to do with temptation, Eden and Eve. “Crested hill” might make more sense now. But what you might not know is that downtown Atlanta runs north-south along a ridge line, or spine, that separates two vast watersheds. And the road that traces this spine is called Peachtree. Hence the orchard.

At about 1050 feet or 320 meters above mean sea level (the airport is 1010 feet), Atlanta sits atop a ridge south of the Chattahoochee River. Amongst the 25 largest MSAs, Atlanta is the third-highest in elevation, slightly lower than Phoenix, but significantly lower than Denver (1 mile or 1,600 m).

According to folklore, its central avenue, Peachtree Street , runs through the center of the city on the Eastern Continental Divide . In actuality, the divide line enters Atlanta from the southwest, proceeding to downtown. From downtown, the divide line runs eastward along DeKalb Avenue and the CSX rail lines through Decatur. Rainwater that falls on the south and east side runs eventually into the Atlantic Ocean while rainwater on the north and west side of the divide runs into the Gulf of Mexico.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta

by the fabled fox
who’s lost his taste for grapes

Of course you know the fable of the sour grapes.

Sour grapes is the false denial of desire for something sought but not acquired; to denigrate and feign disdain for that which one could not attain. This metaphor originated from the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop, where the protagonist fox fails to reach some grapes hanging high up on a vine, retreats, and says that the grapes are sour anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_grapes

But you may not know the translation occludes some meaning:

The moral of the fable centers on the qualification by the fox, when he finds his desire unattainable. The word “sour” was probably chosen by the translators in Western Europe writing during the Victorian era. Study of older versions of the fable suggest that “unripe” might be a more literal translation, the idea being that the fox would come back later to try in earnest. The word “unripe” may have been replaced with “sour” by the fable’s Victorian translators since the word “unripe”, in Victorian society, might have been interpreted as an innuendo suggesting an as-yet unripe woman.

Another view is that “sour grapes” is brief and concrete, as compared with “unripe grapes”.

In the original Greek, the phrase is “όμφακες εισίν” (omphakes eisin), the word omphax having both the literal meaning of an unripe grape and the metaphorical usage of someone too young.

Maturity has been a recurring theme for me as of late. Also, this line was inspired by my drive down Peachtree, past the fabled Fox Theater. If you sift through the details of the article below, you’ll see glimmers like “ablution fountains that have run dry” and “Moorish architecture.” The Moors were the Muslims who ruled Spain during the Caliphate. Why is Spain signficant? Keep reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Theatre_%28Atlanta%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorish_architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain#Muslim_Iberia

past the salty old man
so far from his sea

As I drove down Peachtree, I saw a man who looked just like Ernest Hemingway walking with a cast on his left foot. It was perfect: Hemingway wrote “The Sun Also Rises,” which popularized San Fermin, the Running of the Bulls, and turned the sleepy little festival into the world heritage event that it is now. This reflects my ongoing thoughts of traveling to Spain. He also wrote “The Old Man and the Sea,” which ties in perfectly with the oceanic theme of the poem. Plus I sometimes feel like an old man; friends in college called me Old Man Hatcher. The “so far” is a reference to Atlanta being landlocked, and the distance between me and my Beloved. “…cast the pearls of pure and goodly issue on the shores of life…” “…from each He bringeth up greater and lesser pearls…”

http://www.toastforbrekkie.com//?s=pearl

http://www.bahaiprayers.org/marriage2.htm

I take rest on your sonorous shores
here beyond the pillars of Heracles

It was Lazi who informed me that the pillars of Heracles (Hercules to the Romans) are a symbol of Spain, and I’d been planning to go to Spain for my birthday in July (San Fermin, 7/7/07) until I realized I can’t really afford a $1200 plane ticket. Makes sense:

The gateway to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic ocean, where the southernmost tip of Spain and the northernmost of Morocco face each other, is, classically speaking, referred to as the Pillars of Hercules/Heracles, owing to the story that he set up two massive spires of stone to stabilise the area and ensure the safety of ships sailing between the two landmasses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles

You may not know of my obsession with the Mediterranean, but it fits.

Atlanta is derived from Atlas, a character in Greek mythology (and not the heroine Atalanta , as is often mistakenly assumed). Most cities or towns named ‘Atlanta’ are named after the Atlantic Ocean or some entity referencing the Atlantic Ocean, as in the case of Atlanta, Georgia, which was named for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which in turn was named for the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean itself is named after the Titan Atlas, who was condemned to carry the world on his shoulders for eternity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_%28disambiguation%29 Rather than Atlas, I had imagined that the name came from Atlantis. It made sense to me, given that the pillars of Heracles were the gateway to the Atlantic. That line was supposed to be the clue as to what the poem was about. I could have named it “Ode to Atlanta” or “Atlantis” but chose “Oceans fall” because of its implication that they will rise again after the dormancy of the ice age.Pillars of Heracles. Two spires. Spires, seen in the bridges of the third eye. Two continents, two watersheds.

Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, “Island of Atlas”) is the name of a legendary island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias. In Plato’s account, Atlantis, lying “beyond the pillars of Heracles“, was a naval power which conquered many parts of western Europe and Africa 9000 years before Plato’s own time—approximately 9400 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantisand drink in the night

This is simple. I love life. I took in all these realizations (and now I gather even more explaining it) as I listened to the poem in my head, there at that wonderful little Mediterranean restaurant right on Peachtree that has the most amazing falafel I’ve ever had (until I visit Haifa). The “sonorous shores” is both a reference to the siren’s call

http://www.toastforbrekkie.com//?p=190

and to the noisy, busy street that I sat adjacent to, reminding me that I’d rather be sitting in Monaco (named for its Greek history) on a real shore of the Mediterranean. The rushing wind of the cars was my waves instead.

Monaco apparently first gained its name from the nearby Phocaean Greek colony of Marseille, in the sixth century BC, which referred to the Ligurians as Monoikos, from the Greek Μόνοικος — μόνος + οίκος, “single house”, which bears the sense of a people either settled in a “single habitation” or of “living apart” from others. According to an ancient myth, Hercules passed through the Monaco area. A temple was constructed there by Phoceans, the temple of Hercules Monoikos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco#History

As you can see, there is more meaning to life than we can even fathom. Get it? Fathom?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathom#Use_of_the_fathom

Sarah, I hope you’re happy.

5 comments.