I didn’t really produce so much so quickly, for I already had my set of quatrains to expand upon—and those poems took several years to write and probably another twenty years before that of just observing life.
I thought of putting an appendix to the book of quatrains to explain them further and made a bunch of notes, but then saw it was better to make a prose book out of them, sort of a picaresque journey through the human condition, although some of it is still some poems in prose as you noticed. From there it is just a matter of further elaboration that is made easier since there is already a basic structure—just have to combine a bunch of notes and poems with similar concepts together, which gives it more strength than if they are all separated and is somewhat easier than being restricted to ten syllables per line of verse, although the poems are still the fundamental pearls for the reality of the book. (As for scientific poems, rhymes are tough include and so I gave up on that.)
The Fundamental Possibility words came quick, but then again, like everyone in the forums, I had to wade for years through ideas of how things came to be, often follow each and every path even if I wasn’t really for that path so that we’d end up in some corner that was close to true.
I suppose a true absolute nothing would never amount to anything, so there must have been a near nothing that had potential in a way that’s different from what we’re used to as real, and perhaps it still works this way even as we speak when subatomics pop in and out of existence.
What I am wondering lately is how an eternal substance that we know and love and is really there in some way, say a superstring for sake of argument, is a specific particular thing that works just fine instead of some other thing that flopped and failed (unless no other thing was possible due to some constraints).
So I stole quantum physics probable possibility ideas of seeing all future possibilities at once since I ran out of other avenues.
Or if not, it could be like the non-zero potential gave rise to “plus” matter and forces and was balanced by “minus” gravity or some such thing that will still, someday, add up to nothing if it all got back together.
At least in quantum physics we may eventually be able to see something appearing from nowhere and get some satisfaction that we’re on the right track.
As for Omar, at least he invented algebra, as well as a calendar that has only one day: TODAY. Actually I think he did revise the calendar. I made up a new calendar, too; it kind of a comedy. Too bad there’s not a comic-relief forum or I would post it there.
Meanwhile, the ex monk and nun continue to mostly investigate enlightenment and human nature, but the TOE as well:
“I am both relieved and astounded that the Theory of Everything is so simple and uninteresting, although it does border on the unapproachable world of Possibility,” he said, “but I’ll have to think about it some more.”
“At least we might be able to see what comes and goes across this Possibility border,” she answered.
With that they moved on, noting a movement in the bushes, for a man was trapped therein. Upon investigating, they saw that he was snared in a web of promises that weighed him down, for he was a person who had always put things off, one who had always waited for tomorrow. They showed him a page from the ‘Book of Quatrains’ that they now carried as their ‘bible’. The web then collapsed, freeing the man. He looked down at the writing on the ground under his feet: it read ‘NOW!’ in big letters. The revelation hit him like an hourglass, one made of the heaviest welded brass, and a great relief of realization washed over him. They could hear him muttering to himself, “There is only today! Why fret about other days if today be sweet? Stretching my present row to distant calendar columns by all my tenuously made vows is what created the complicated web of promises in the first place—a trap that took away all my ‘nows’. ‘Now’ is the time! I must seize the moment or lose its momentum forevermore!” The man went running off, seemingly weightless.
He and she, the harmonic subjects of our story, wandered ever onward along the path. Love was in the air and filled the space around them. She turned to her partner, reached for his hand, and spoke softly amid the splendor and grandeur of the forest, “It’s a fine season. What a time for us to be outdoors in this wondrous world.”
“Never wait!” he said. “The only real time we have under our feet is NOW! That we have just seen a demonstration of.”
“These lovely moments,” she added, “are giving me the time of my life! I savor each one, and then comes another just as sweet.”
( NOW! )
Holding hands, they walked through the dense woods filled with shadows and mist. An old witch suddenly sprung up behind them, she being the specter of fear and all that was worrisome. “What is your deepest fear?” the witch asked of the man. “Hell, death? Which shall it be? How about Heaven? Is that it? Chose one.”
“I banish you,” said the man, “for death is merely the natural end of all living things. What has no death has therefore no life principle! My turn to live would never have come if it were not for the deaths of those who came before me. As for Heaven and Hell, those are only conditions that we create within ourselves: We turn our souls inside out to create a Heaven from the terrible image within. Hell arrives when we make our own difficulties in life by not using common sense. However, I do have one fear, although just one alone.”
“What is that fear?” asked the witch, her hopes suddenly rising, although her form was already beginning to fade away for the lack of his anxiety.
The man’s partner answered for him, for she was his opposite twin and could think his thoughts, “His one and only fear is that of not living well!” And with that answer the specter of fear vanished like mist unrolled on the morning wind.
( NO FEAR )
They moved on bravely now, continuing to hum the two-part Pachelbel canon, its soulful music sweeping them ever onward, upward, inward, and outward as their voices blended and parted, weaving in and out.
“When does the rose bloom?” she asked, seeking some general botanical clues to the book’s mysterious and questionable name.
“The rose blossoms on the summer solstice, arising from the only kiss ever given to the arriving summer from the vanishing spring, a kiss of which spring dies in giving, by the way.”
Before she could ponder this, they came upon a cemetery and therein stopped cold and abrupt, for there was an empty grave in front of them. They jumped right into it so that they could better read the gravestone’s inscription. It read:
The Last Remembrance
En-graved is “THE END” of your earthly sigh:
Six sides ’round you: five are dirt, one is sky.
Shov’ling, Death talks to you at last and says:
“What were you doing during all of nigh?”
A little girl soon arrived with a withered rose and said, “Those who live must learn of death so that all the better they may live. Run along now, you two, before Death himself arrives with his shovel, for you are standing in a grave site. Which of you is ready for him? Behold my rose as you go and note my eternal youth—for that which never can die must be forever young!”
They hurriedly continued on, a bit shaken, but feeling much more alive. “One must be aware of death in order to live life more fully,” he surmised.
“How then shall we live?” she asked.
“Let us live each day as if it were our last.”
“I can improve on that,” said she.
“How so?”
“Let us also live each day as if our life had just begun!”
“It shall be so.”
“May I look again at that living book of philosophy,” she requested.
He handed it over to her.
“It has words with matching pictures in it!”
“Or perhaps it has pictures in it with matching words,” he countered.
“I am neither,” the living book said, “yet both, for the pictures and the words offer mutual support, reflecting each off of the other, thus building and spiraling in the mind’s eye into a more complete perception of the poems’ ideas. The words appeal, at first, to the logical, intellectual part of the mind. The pictures appeal, at first, to the passionate, artistic, and sensual portion of the mind. The two mind ‘images’ then merge into the wholeness of truth combined with beauty. The intellect can ‘sense’ without the senses, while the senses can ‘intellectualize’ without the intellect.”
“It’s a rather thorough experience,” she commented.
Enlightened, they gave each other a warm hug and continued on.
A nightingale was flying by.
“Look, it’s the bird!” he exclaimed.
“And someone is chasing it.”
The wingéd creature was carrying an hourglass. The bird was evidently one of eternity’s livelier moments, one that had resisted or escaped capture. A man was running after it, but the bird never landed—-it just flew higher and higher and then, finally, disappeared altogether.
“That was my momentary bird of time,” said the running man. “One of eternity’s moments was within my grasp. I had seized it, however, I had then decided to wait until some later time to view it, but, in the meanwhile, it flew away! That bird stole my time; now I am running after the moment and trying to recapture it. But the bird never lands!”
“Time flies!” she said to the bird chaser. “It’s gone to never-never land! The moment is lost! The bird is flown.”
( TIME FLIES )
They stopped at a rosebush to inhale the fragrance, noting that the rose was certainly the most beautiful and famous of all the flowers.
“Perhaps a rose does smell just as sweet by any other name, just as Shakespeare also said,” she wondered aloud.
“Could be, could be; perhaps the rose’s name doesn’t really matter.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”