[austintorn@aol.com]

It's like the sufi saying that goes something like ...the end of all our exploring is to arrive at the place we started from and know the place for the first time.

[Graybeard]

Originally Posted by austintorn@aol.com It's like the sufi saying that goes something like ...the end of all our exploring is to arrive at the place we started from and know the place for the first time.

Very true Austin .. but with this addition .. its accompanied by a feeling of Deja Vue


greg

[austintorn@aol.com]

—— FUMES FROM ANCIENT TIMES ——

A man and a woman, feeling young again, were walking through a fertile valley, traveling toward the misty mountains and beyond. He carried an ancient book that he’d salvaged as the monastical village had burned to the ground, and she carried but a single red rose. Together they softly hummed the melody of the Pachelbel Canon, each of them singing one of the canon’s fugal voices, for they lived in two-part harmony—as equal partners in life and love: They were, at once, free yet attached, playful but serious, stable yet changing, thinkers yet doers, adventurous though not foolish, poetic as well as prosaic, and reasonable but passionate.

“We’re free now!” she said, playfully nudging him.

“Yes, we’re free at last,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

A smile of love passed between them, for even though they were now quite homeless, their life together had become a celebration, and thus they happily walked on through the valley in the dark by the light of the setting moon. False dawn came and went, and soon morning twilight glowed in the east. A familiar nightingale sang in the branches, but just as quickly flew away. Whither and whence it flew, they did not know.

Although the day’s tide had not yet broken, he, nevertheless, opened their precious book—a mysterious book of poetry that had been sealed for over ten centuries in the secret chamber of the library of the old monastery. The tome was written in some foreign language, in verses of thirteen syllables in four-line stanzas. A small bottle was encased inside the front cover; some of its spirit had apparently escaped when the book had been opened, for they had been captivated by the fumes—it was the perfume of ageless rhymes from ancient times.

“It’s written in Persian,” she noted, having handled many foreign books in her role as editor for the abbey.

“It’s the library’s most valuable book,” he said, having illuminated many of the monastery’s great books. “It was the only one I could save.”

They watched, amazed, as the book came to life. The words of the Persian poems began to move around the page, sometimes briefly changing into English—even whole verse-sentences jumped about—then, soon after settling down, the words would again juggle, changing back and forth, darting around through the verses of each stanza to form new lines, but lines which merely stated different aspects of the original concept. It was as if this magical language transmogrification was attempting to preserve the entire original poetic scheme throughout the whole translation process, including literal meaning, rhyme, rhythm, melody, and meter; however, this didn’t seem to be working, and it followed that something had to give, and that ‘something’ was that which is usually lost in the translation.

Finally, out of apparent desperation, the Persian verses jumped right off the page and splashed into the bottle of perfume, wherein they redistilled themselves, leaping back out and on to the page, where they recondensed and recomposed themselves into Victorian style verse—into quatrains in which only the essence of the original concept of meaning was preserved. The lines were now ten syllables, rather than thirteen, but the verses were still in groups of four per stanza, and the correct lines still rhymed, although the rhyme words didn’t always have quite the same meaning as before. Yes, something had been lost, but something new had been added, too—something somehow better, although still within the spirit of the old.

However, all the stanzas disappeared but three:

— The Poetic Form —

— The Poetic Form —

The verses beat the same, in measured chime;
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting—just in time.


— Omar’s Persia-Fume —

Through his Rubàiyàt, you’ll sense enchantment,
Essence distilled by the translator’s scent;
Recomposed from Khayyàm’s dust and spirit,
Potent elixirs escape interment!


— Up and Up —

Of your love-sweet companion take a sup,
While s/he as your chalice is lifted up.
Drink deep the wine that satisfies love’s thirst;
Drink—before the winds of time dry the cup.

“What are you?” she asked of the book. “Are you alive?”

The book replied, “I am the book of life, a conscious dream, a living philosophy—I live forever through my words. On my pages you will find all of man’s joys, follies, sorrows, and wisdom, as well as the Theory of Everything. Read me and my ideas will come to life! It is by experiencing my words that you shall know them. Yes, the arts may enrich human experience, but they’re certainly no substitutes for the living of it.”

“What is your name?” he asked of the book.

“My name is a question—a mystery that you have to solve, namely, ‘What is the name of the Rose?’”

They looked at the book for a minute, deeply inhaling its perfume. The aroma cast a charm upon them, granting them an indescribable joy that was quite beyond all sense and thought.

( It was Persia-fume )

The stars began to take flight. Night’s cup had seemed empty, bottomless, and cold, but daylight was about to refill it with gold, and as they walked they began to see the light, for the sun was rising. They felt the touch of that dawn as its freshness washed over them—it was a sweetness and a serenity that crept all through them, like the mist that drifts into a valley and fills it fresh with moisture. Day had begun, and therefore some refreshment was anticipated. Reaching up to a rose bush, they bent down a branch and drank the dew from the roses, beating the sun to the treat, then stooped to pick some breakfast strawberries from the trail side.

What is the name of the rose?, they had wondered silently until they each had spoken it aloud to the other, although without answer from either one.

They strolled into a forest of floral colors that were lush and soft: lavender, crimson, and ever-during green. It was spring, and the leaves of the previous autumn had made a multicolored carpet on the trail. As they walked, so many ideas cascaded over their minds—thoughts suddenly loosened by the inspiration from the exertion of their outdoor experience. A light rain was falling and it seemed to excite their senses and jog their poetic thoughts even more.

“Walking is good exercise,” she said. “I am feeling energized.”

“Yes, it seems to give back much more than it takes.”

“Walking is as easy as falling forward makes!”

“Oh, yes; breath deeply. Relax, let your thoughts flow up and out.”

“OK. I am doing it. My thoughts are becoming clear. Alertness tingles in my senses. Oh, I am becoming so wide awake. Now I know that I love this world and everything in it.”

“Breath in all that’s good, then breath out all that’s bad. What do you feel?”

“I feel peace flowing into me—it’s warm and wet and glad.”

“And it’s spreading throughout your body and into your spirit?”

“Oh yes, oh yes, dear yes. I’d say that this is the best life I’ve ever had!”

“I feel it too. It’s like an eager sap rising in the veins, for I’m inspired by the warmth of spring.”

“Because you’ve lived through winter’s chills,” she remarked, in the voice that they usually used to start a rhyme with.

“To see another spring of daffodils!” he continued, adding “Now I remember it all, and I am basking in the sunshine.”

“Like sparks from the smoldering embers, we rekindle our fires from the eternal flame, from that light divine.”

“I wonder,” he said, thinking back to the book’s questionable name, “could it be that a rose is a rose is a rose?”, like Shakespeare said.

“No, for that answer would be much too easy.”

“That’s right,” said the book, “I mean that’s right that your answer is wrong. But I will tell what is the ultimate basis of reality, for that gives little away, for it is simple and therefore not so interesting. What is interesting are the complex composites that are built from the fundamental beginning, in other words, life, as you shall see in your wanderings. Here is the simple answer to Life’s ultimate question.”

The book opened to its first full page.

— Beyond Local Reality —

Time, space, substance, and form were real-ized from
The Fundamental Possibility,
Becoming our penultimate reality—
One possible from all probabilities.


— Quantum Superposition is Real —

Our reality came not from nothing,
But existed always as possibility,
One that amounts to something workable,
Among all in superposition.


— The First Impossibility —

No one form of penultimate realness
Could have existed alone before
Everything was quantum-known-all-at-once,
For what could have made the choice among many?


— The Second Impossibility —

Nor came it from an absolute nothing,
Since there can be no such “thing” at all,
So, since either way is impossible,
Fundamental Possibility is.


— The Unbelievable Truth —

This ultimate basis of reality
Though not much like our local reality,
Is hinted at by quantum physics—
And forms reality real as can be!


— The Confirmable Truth —

So how else could it be, for particles
Do appear and disappear from somewhere,
Going from here to there with no between,
Manifesting from no-where to now-here.

[Graybeard]

Hmmmm .... I am going out on a rose limb here .... but I guess the name of the book to be 'The Parliament of Birds' or 'Mantiq Ut-tair' by Farid ud-Din Attar (Attar of the roses), written in the 12th century.

This was the parliament of Birds
And this,
The story of the Host who went amiss
And of the few, whom better upshot found
The story ... being now recounted, lo the ground
Falls underfoot
But this to tell...
..... Their path is Thine....
............ Follow and fare thee well

greg ... am i still on a roll ???

[austintorn@aol.com]

It is Omar Khayam's Rubaiyat, sort of—over 500 quatrains that I wrote after reading it and getting inspired. I could have been a few centuries off. FitzGerald translated the Ruyaiyat and also the Parliment of Birds, giving them perhaps a similar Victorian slant. The Fundamantal Possibility stuff at the end is what I thought of yesterday and I need to put it out as my TOE. If it weren't for the impications of quantum physics, it would sound crazy but perhaps the TOE is way different than our intuition suggests.

[Graybeard]

Yes of course you are right. What threw me was the 'perfume' and the 'roses'. Attar means perfume. And he was known as Attar of the roses.

Reading your post I am sure you are aware that Fitzgerald wrote the rubyiat from his translations of the quatrains. I don't think Fitzgerald translated 'The Parliament of Birds'. This was a bird called C.S. Nott.

Omar was a Mathamatician. Possibly the leading one (in the world) of his day. Unfortunately Maths is constantly being improved upon and does not partake of that 'elixir' of imortality ... Poetry however is immortal. And so Omar is remembered for his poetry.

Your work is very good. I don't know how you produce so much so quickly.

Regarding your 'Fundamental Possibility', an excellent term by the way. Some Physicists believe that the Fundamental Possibility has some substance, if you can excuse the pun.

If you haven't heard it may help you with further prose. It goes like this. If you take an innocent rock sitting on the ground you know that the rock has zero potential, that is, in can fall no further so its stored or potential energy is zero. If you lift the rock and put it on the table you can now calculate its new potential. ie: the distance it would fall and the work that could be done with this. This potential is not zero and yet the rock hasn't changed. Of course, this is obvious as we put the energy in when we lifted the rock to the table.

The theories that I have read about propose a void of absolute nothing. 'Absolute' here is just an adjective, not like Lloyd would refer to it. Nothing, of course would have zero potential. But the proposal is that this original 'Nothing' or 'Void' had non-zero potential.

Non-zero potential in this instance is not exactly like putting the rock on the table.

This non-zero potential void is as empty as empty as nothing can ever be, and yet it has the possibility of being even emptier, but unfortunately, to achieve this you would have to expend energy in order to do so. As you cannot do this without polluting the void ... then the void can scientifically be considered as truly empty as it can ever be.

With this new definition of 'Nothing' it is possible to build a Universe.

This definition is certainly implied in your 'Beyond Local Reality'

You were probably aware of this already ... but just in case you wern't then I again proclaim ... you the Author, me the Translator.

greg

[austintorn@aol.com]

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.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

In a Theory of Everything forum long ago in the 9th century, Abunasr Farabi wrote:

Vague and unrefined did the secrets of existence remain.
Unpierced did that highly revered pearl remain.
Each person said something according to his reason.
Yet untold did the point which was of essence remain.

And Abulhasan Kharquani replied in the forum in the 11th century (the internet was slow in those days):

The primordial secrets neither you know nor I.
The words of the puzzle neither you can read not I.
Your discourse and mine are behind the curtain.
When the curtain falls, neither you remain nor I.

But they didn’t know how far science would advance and that we would actually be able to see the curtain and derive the truth from it. So we say more as our harmonic couple continues their journey through life...



Some thoughts arose out of the depths of his wondering:

Since we all became of this universe,
Should we not ask who we are, whence we came?

Another thought, more of vision, soon arrived:

Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance—
The Theory of Everything shines through!

“I’ve been thinking about Fundamental Possibility—it solves a lot of problems!” he exclaimed. “It’s also what I’ve been leaning toward lately, although the book’s revelations clarified it.”

“Like what?” she inquired.

“Like how the penultimate reality, the fundamental substance, could still have existed forever, or at least in its potential form, and how its particular form was specifically one that worked instead of one that didn’t.”

“It existed forever because time was born with it, from possibility, the both of them always there as potential.” she replied.

“Yes, there was what just what is, rather than what was not—for a nothingness could never be, for there is surely something here.”

“The fundamental substance was the most probable of all possibilities,” she surmised.

“Yes, and perhaps it was the even only possibility that would work.”

“Or the others fizzled and failed by going nowhere, sort of a survival of the fittest of all the scenarios of consequences of what could serve as reality.”

“And Fundamental Possibility had to exist, rather than not, for that’s all there could be. Yet, I’m trying to adjust to this new way of thinking.”

“True,” the book chimed in. “Fundamental Possibility is a bit like your mind sifting through eventualities of possible actions, only Possibility forms substances. It may even be forming some now, here and there, but on a lesser basis than when the universe expanded, for then all was wide open. Of course, this Possibility must remain simple in a way, that being the price of being Fundamental, but you, a 13 billion-year complex composite, are much more advanced, and that’s where real meaningful life occurs. If Fundamental Possibility could talk, which it can’t, for it is not a system, it might say something much the same as you would now in your quest for the theory of everything:

I’ll follow every single avenue,
Whether it’s brightly lit or a dark alley,
Exploring one-ways, no-ways, and dead-ends
Until cornered where the truth is hiding.

And now you’ve arrived in that dark corner and so you can live life better by knowing who you are:

One simple substance gave rise to everything,
Chosen as probable above the rest—
Knowing at once that it would function well—
The most promising—the possible one.

However, unlike the simple beginnings, the possibilities of the complexities of everything are unbounded and that’s the greatest thing:

As to how complex, there is no limit,
Except perhaps when it makes a black hole,
And the smallest is the planck distance,
So size is absolute, not relative.

All in all, you are the lucky ones standing atop the pinnacle of time, change, form, and substance. Life awaits:

Like the moon, challenge night and gain the light;
Like the rose, suffer the thorn—gain the fragrance;
As life, surrender to live forever—
Enlightened more than a thousand suns.

Life is waiting when you have the right attitude—you will come to not even know what sorrow is:

World does not pass by—you pass through it;
Clear your being so the treasure may arrive;
This spirit sparkles of a different light—
The gemstones are of a different mine.”

They continued through the entangled forest.

“Our minds do seem to make the actual from the possible, don’t they? she proposed.

“Well, Possibility was our birthplace, so perhaps we retain a version of it.” he answered.

“We create thought.”

A spectral vision appeared before them, a brightness that shone like the sun. “I am Dame Fortune—Lady Luck shining upon you. In turn, I visit everyone who lives in a state opportune. You two have turned your chance meeting into good fortune. You are lucky—others don’t see me when I come, or they ignore me; some refuse to take a chance on me, for they are busy going nowhere; and many are just plain unaware. Of course, then it is awhile before I come to visit them again. Farewell. Good luck.”

They bid her fond farewell and sweet return, and he and she walked on through the strange land, the place where all things were possible, but where all ideas had to be lived before they could be written.

She looked at the red rose that she still carried, and said to him,

“It’s for you. I give this rose to you.”

“I will surround the blossom of your flower with unselfish love,” he answered.

“My blossom unfolds over you, as does your own around me.”

“We’ll refold and enfold each other.”

“I’ll enrapt you, like the words of a poem,” she answered. They again opened the mysterious book of poems, which soon came to life.

“What is the name of the rose?” he asked of the magic book. “Can you not tell us now after all we’ve been through?”

The book replied, “There is much more to come. I shall answer you as time wears on. It all has to do with the life of the rose, though. So you shall see.”

They walked on, eager for the quest of life’s possibilities, entering into the innermost bowers of their flowered spirits, savoring there all the flora within. They could now understand much that their speechless memory had devoured, all that life’s drudgery had stolen and overpowered.

They hiked up a slight hill whereupon they saw a woman sleeping in the middle of the path. There they stopped and looked, and he turned to she, his rosy partner, saying, “In my mind I see a flame that’s growing dim, it’s the depressed spirit of the sleeping woman.”

“Tell her,” she said, “tell her! Bring her alive.”

He whispered in the woman’s ear, “I am Life. Long ago I found you sleeping in your mother’s womb, and one day I shall have to leave you all too soon when you sleep in earth’s silent tomb. Now I find you newly abloom, but sleeping away the time in between those longer and deeper sleeps. I am whispering a lovely dream in your ear. Wake! Live! Life is a dream come true. The rose abloom withers all too soon.”

She laid the rose on the woman’s chest as they continued on. Looking back they saw that the sleeping woman was now sitting up and clutching the rose.

“Her flame is growing,” he noted, “for she’s now looking on the bright side.”

“The woman probably thinks that she had a vivid dream, a phantasmic reality, so to speak” she said.

“I always listen to my daydreams,” he noted.

“Yes, me too. Daydreams pierce the noise of consciousness to tell us of that which is best for us.”

“Daydreams are full of thoughts promenading on parade before our eyes.”

“Wishes and fantasies cascade freely over the mind, directly presenting themselves to us as our very own suggested ways to live.”

“Well, by merely aspiring to a goal, one is already halfway to the realizing of it.”

“Yes, and all that we now have together was once a dream, no less, that was loved into being.”

“Because life grows from the visions that we contemplate, those that we orchestrate.”

“Yes, but one must act quickly on those ready-made plans that daydreams present.”

“True—because by dusk the phantom shapes may fade.”

“Well, if beliefs are halfhearted, then so’s life.”

“Let our dreams, wishes, and life become one and the same!”

“Pay close attention to your innermost desires, wishes, and dreams. Deny not the desires welling up from your soul—for it is your duty to fulfill them.”

“It guarantees happiness, for then you know exactly what you require to be happy.”

“Come along, sweet-dream!” They moved on, musing in a dream world of their own making.

( DREAMS )


The Bird of Time flew by once again. The bird chaser could never catch it, for the bird lived in a perpetual ‘now’—a constant sunrise in which it flew forward into the future. One wing of the bird was black and the other was white. As the bird flew overhead, a checkerboard pattern formed on the ground all around. “What can it mean?” she wondered aloud.

“I think I’m starting to catch on,” said her partner. “The wings of Time are black and white, for one is the day and one is the night—for fluttering ‘round the night flies the day.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know too! We are all players on the checkerboard of days and nights, as on a calendar, until...”

“...until the game ends and we’re put back in the box of nonexistence” he finished.

“But in the meanwhile I thank Destiny for at least letting me play the game!” she shouted happily toward the sky.

“Of course, my dear. We’ll make a game of that which makes as much of us!”

“Let’s play!”

“I’m game.” And so they traveled on, ready to make their moves.


In the midst of a scenic meadow they were surprised to see what looked like a very large pen walking by. “What are you?” she asked of the large pen.

“I’m the artist’s pen,” replied the pen. “I am finally free!”

“From what?” he asked.

“I will no longer illustrate the written word. From now on I will draw whatever I see or whatever I feel. Then writers and poets can describe my sketches with their wondrous words! I say write what is real!”

“I get it,” she said. “The proof of writing is in the living of it, especially philosophical advice. Live it, feel it, and then write it.”

Next they ran into a living poem, a companion of the artist’s pen. “What are you?” he asked of the living poem.

“I deal with ever enduring themes, those which are universal to everyone. As you can see, I am structured, intense, rhythmic, and melodic. I am a unified body of sensation, thoughts, and passions. I translate all that is felt, though often only very roughly.”

“Are you essence or existence?” she asked of the living poem.

“I am both—I am the form and the idea. I am an object that is born from one’s profoundest visions. I am the image in diction of feeling. I am, at once, both the container and the contained.”

“You’re an expression of all that is difficult to express,” he added.

“I am truth fleshed in living words. I express thoughts that would otherwise go unapprehended. I lift the veil that separates mind from soul—and thereby show the proof of the hidden beauty. I am life’s image drawn in eternal truth.”

“You are immortal then” she said.

“Poetry makes immortal what is best in life by freeing images in our spirits that are deeply impressed. I arrest the vanishing notions, clothe them in words, then send them forth, fully dressed.”

“How do I know if I’ve written a poem?” he asked.

“Well,” said the living poem, “use the highest powers of language and wit to translate your soul’s nature into the poem’s words. The reader will translate the words back into spirit; and then, if the reader’s soul responds, you’ve written a poem!”

He and she tried to write a poem about love, for that was the greatest thing, but they couldn’t get it to rhyme. Finally, in desperation, they came up with the following:

The Trouble with “Love”

Only a few words rhyme with the above,
Like the overflown “dove”, the heartless “shove”,
And the ill-fitting “glove”. Alas, “love’s” rhymes
Remain unheard of, or aren’t well thought of.

They walked on, feeling but a little bit more poetic.

( WORDS’ WORTH )