Wick and the Cricket

[labelwench]

Doth the flame court the moth ,
or doth the moth court the flame?

Enlightened and extinguished in the same instant.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull sings:

"Moths"

The leaded window opened
to move the dancing candle flame
And the first Moths of summer
suicidal came.
And a new breeze chattered
in its May-bud tenderness ---
Sending water-lillies sailing
as she turned to get undressed.
And the long night awakened
and we soared on powdered wings ---
Circling our tomorrows
in the wary month of Spring.
Chasing shadows slipping
in a magic lantern slide ---
Creatures of the candle
on a night-light-ride.
Dipping and weaving --- flutter
through the golden needle's eye
in our haystack madness. Butterfly-stroking
on a Spring-tide high.
Life's too long (as the Lemming said)
as the candle burned and the Moths were wed.
And we'll all burn together as the wick grows higher ---
before the candle's dead.
The leaded window opened
to move the dancing candle flame.
And the first moths of summer
suicidal came
to join in the worship
of the light that never dies
in a moment's reflection
of two moths spinning in her eyes.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Kit opened her wings to take Crick in and they embraced lovingly, longingly, and thoroughly. They felt the unlimited power of the universe. She felt that she held the entire cosmos within her. They were weightless, warm, and together, drifting up through the forest canopy. There were no reference points, no walls, no rough edges. They became one as they floated heavenward, drifting up towards the clouds.

“You have enclosed my universe,” he said, “yet it is still boundless.”

She replied, “You have filled the universe that I enclose.”

“I will fill that emptiness with my fullness,” he added.

She said, “I will empty your fullness with my emptiness.”

“What ‘is not’ is equally as great as what ‘is’. We are equal partners in life and love. One cannot live by leaves and grass alone.”

“Yes,” she added, “celibacy is a crime against nature. One might as well stop eating, breathing, or any other such natural function.”

And so it went…they spoke of the philosophies gleaned from the learnéd books of life…

“When opposites are balanced, the edges of all things dissolve; time and space become as one; all dimensions are transcended.”

“Yes, everything melts into everything, yet remains as itself.”

“All is of a piece, yet, all is interconnected and related.”

“Yes, all things are interrelated; opposites are merely different aspects of the same phenomenon—like a tear and a smile, light and dark, male and female.”

“As equal partners, men and women may achieve a perfect balance.”

Soon he was saying what she thought and vice versa, and now they were speaking as one, like the merged voices in the Pachelbel Canon.

“The tide of love supports us and carries us along with it.”

“We are carried together down the mountain stream to rejoin the sea, for therein lies completeness. Life is a diamond, a rainbow of many colors.”

“Human beings need each other.”

“Body and spirit cannot be separated, for they are integral parts of the human—they must operate in tandem to make the being human. They are inseparable. It is as the flower drawing life’s spirit from the soil.”

“A man and a woman are drawn together by the same urge that’s between root and flower, leaf and soil, breath and wind, sun and water, star and planet.”

“Man and woman cannot exist alone; the nature of one requires the other to be complete. When they join in love there is wholeness again.”

“Like the Yin and the Yang, the man is in the woman and the woman is in the man.”

“From the hardness of the world, a male comes to the valley of the soft mountains to be overcome by the female. She is the roundness of Earth and moon, warm with promise.”

“The valley and the mountain each make the other possible; they are opposites, yet they are really one and the same.”

“My words to you are a faint echo of what my heart truly feels.”

“What ‘is’ and what ‘is not’ combine to make wholeness.”

“Love is lived by lovers. They come together, like mountain and valley, rain and river, air and mist, Earth and moon.”

“Yes, they go with the flow and give themselves to the moving whole.”

“Male and female are each the opposite twin of the other.”

“They are—just as we are each other’s satellite.”

“Yes, we are like twin planets, linked and traveling together through space.”

[labelwench]

(It was to this place Wick resorted to sit in the moonlight and open the bamboo cage. It was his intent, to converse with the cricket, to establish once and for all whether the human race was free or not. He needed to know. It was a matter of conscience.)

{"Yes, Wick, thats why I came to you in the winter two years past."

"You did that?" Wick dropped to his knees in the snow. The countenance of the rider shifted a bit, and suddenly in air was a swirl of snow so bright that all the other snows seemed to ignite sympathetically and the whole landscape melted away into a sea of light.

"Light is at rest, Wick. It was then and it will ever remain at rest. The universe is on the move. Time is an illusion. The conjunction is coming, Wick, but it doesn't depend upon the universe...it depends upon people...they must choose to work for more than themselves, to usher in a conjunction of dreams."}

"It is the space between the bars that holds the cage, Wick, but no cage has yet been designed that can imprison free thought ...."

The light faded and no rider remained.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Kit and Crick were nestled in the leaves and looking up at the night sky that was full of electromagnetic radiation, some of it visible.

“Hey, Kit, I can hear the earth and the newly romantical moon conversing,” said Crick. “Listen.”

“I am thy co-planet,” said the moon to the earth, like Shelley would write, “thy constant satellite, thy paramour of day and night. Around you, above you, below you, and within your sight I whirl about in loving delight!”

“As I am yours, too, a twin-planet, as it turns out,” replied the earth.

“My heavenly love, I am your pearl. In a magnetic dance I twirl and whirl about you, attracted to you—the sun’s liveliest world. Around you like a necklace I’m aswirl. You may wear my afterimages as thy crystalline gem impearled.”

“That you are to me, as I am, too, to you.”

“I am always with you. Wherever thou must goest, ‘round and ‘round Apollo, I must turn and whirl, hurry and follow, meeting meteors and dust, traveling far and wide through space not hollow.”

“Likewise.”

“You are my heart light. Thy magnetic beam, like Cupid’s arrow, injects life and love into my heart for my tomorrow. Henceforth, I shine with this light I borrow.”

“We are involved,” replied the earth. “As twin planets, our orbits must convolve. Into each other our tidal motions have dissolved. Around a common center we revolve, gazing on each other from every side. It’s the focus from which our love evolves.”

“I follow you, as you do me. You are not a moon, but a planet.”

“Yes, as twin planets, each other’s way we pave through space with the push and pulse of our gravitating waves. We’re captured by a romantic attraction, but not as each other’s slave, for to the sun’s light our orbits are concave. This is unconditional love.”

“Your love echoes in my heart and soul. I align my path with your magnetic lines of flux. I’m your constant paramour. Your world pours life and love on mine. On mine! Oh, it echoes. Dearest twin, I must be thine, must be thine, be thine… ”

“Your love echoes and reverberates in me. A romantic beam emanates from thee, attracting me, holding me, caressing me, kissing me. Your tidal love washes freely over me, linking you and me for eternity.”

“I feel the warmth. I am basking in your reflected light. Oh, I’m so bright, so very bright in your sight. In the love and light of your spirit bright, I need not ever face the endless night.”

“The vibrations of your electromagnetic waves travel without a sound. They come from all directions to surround, while your affection touches me all around. I’m close to you in orbit; I’m love-bound!”

“We’ll bathe in love’s radiance, cleansing ourselves.”

“’Round and ‘round each other, as twin planets, we dance, entranced in the whirl of our romance.”

“Although we’re as different as midnight and noon, we’re drawn close by the forces of sun and moon. As lovers we merge in a sweet eclipse, when world meets world as a kiss on our lips.”

“While your shadow of love covers me, I’m full, oh so full, in the shade of thee.”

“Our worlds overlap; this union is ‘us’. The ‘you’ is in me and the ‘me’ is in thee!”

“Thy heart hast touched my own; no, ‘tis more I love thee!”

“Yes, much more thou art loved; the ‘me’ is now in thee.”

“Thou art the soul of my soul and mine is of thine.”

“Nay, ‘tis more than that: thou art me and I am thee.”

[Wick]

"Then what is a mind?" thought Wick, "Is it not the cage that Providence has place in every soul to catch the thoughts of a lifetime?"

His pillow of columbine was tangled around his ears. He extricated himself from the purple blossoms and pulled off a flower petal to nip away the tip of the spur and suck out the honey inside.

"Dreams? A convergence? How does one make sense of such mixed up imagery? It was all rather confused--Crick playing pool with Kit, the quantum pool table, the rider and Caramel drinking the Austrailian Shiraz, the rider in the snow, the cabin, the smell of cedar, the light.

"Do we chose our dreams?" Wick pruned the columbine a bit to fix some of the damage done. "I think not. It seem like an unwinding of thoughts, a mixture of past experience and future desire woven into a web upon which the sleeping mind crawls about. And as the mind moves along the crossings of the web, it must learn how to cope with what's gone and what's coming. The dream prepares the thinker for the future."

Certainly my thoughts are still firmly caught in this bamboo cage I call my mind. They are mine, but I do not coerce them to stay. They stay of their own accord. They serve me as well as any cricket!!

And love...no cricket was ever so firmly caught as my would-be conscious has been caught in the bamboo cage of love. His thoughts are firmly in the thrall of his Kit. And she owns his thoughts like no cage. He has submitted to her thrall. She owns his every thought...well...almost.

Wick made his way back up the path to where the cricket and horse were sleeping. He was tired of dreams. There was no peace in dreams. There never was...

[labelwench]

Caramel was laying flat on her side in the grass, relaxed, outstretched legs gently flexed at knee and hock. Her eyes were moving beneath her closed lids, as evidenced by the dancing of her long auburn lashes.

Muzzle twitching, soft whuffling sounds issued forth, nostrils flaring with each rise and fall of her barrel. All four legs began a rhythmic promenade and her breathing increased pace. With a snort and a flip of her tail, Caramel startled herself into wakefulness, hastily rolling up on her sternum.

Had Wick cow-tipped her after all?

Eyes wide, the perplexed horse tried piecing together the back-story.....it was starting to come clear.

She and her rider enjoying a fine Australian Shiraz; Wick, Crick and Kit playing a most unusual form of billiards; and of course their Karaoke performance. WICK-ED good fun!

She recalled going in search of her rider, only to find knee deep snow outside the front door of the pub. As she was taking in the landscape of white, she briefly saw Wick and another silhouetted by a flash of light....and then....

....and then....now....here.

Dream travel was no mystery to Caramel, but to be a dream within the dream of others, this was uncharted territory.

Caramel craned her long neck. And just where had that brown-wrapped package gone? It was nowhere in view and she would know if she were lying on it. Perhaps it had been meant for the honey-mooning cricket couple.

Dazed and confused, Caramel was still attempting to ascertain which reality held sway at the moment when she heard familiar footsteps approaching....

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Eternal Return

Behind the Veil, being that which ev’r thrives,
The Eternal Cycle has ever been alive.

Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
And now well knows how these bubbles to pour,
Of existence in this meant universe,
That writes your poem and mine, every verse.

So thus thou lives on yester’s credit line,
In nowhere’s midst—now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl our cup of brew was mixed
Into this state of being that’s called “mine”.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent…

The Eternal Cycle has thus formed
Trillions of baubles like ours, and will form,
Forevermore—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
The universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not lest a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pour'd
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

When You and I behind the cloak are past,
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of our approach and departure knows
As might the sea's self heed a pebble-cast.

—Crick

“Hi Wick,” said Kit. “I going to get my antenna styled for the last dance tonight. Crick told me to tell you that he’ll be along soon. He’s gooooogling.”

“Well, he’s a fine guy and I wish you two all the best. Seems that a side effect of being in love and ogling you is to sharpen one’s wits in every area.”

“Yes, because wit lets one connect and combine original ideas from places like Google and ToeQuest into larger notions.”

“Yes, such as who would have thought that quantum cosmology would become a new field.”

“True, Wick, for perhaps the age-old quantum fluctuations were magnified into large scale features of the present universe such as black holes and galaxies.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“CRICK says we can see beyond the dense hot plasma that covered the universe for up to 380,000 years after it began.”

“He may be exaggerating, for no light at all can pass through that.”

“He has another way. Says we can see the beginning.”

“That would be amazing, to see the actual start of the universe.”

“He said that it can be seen, but perhaps he meant ‘some day’.”

“Maybe. And if he sees something other than the signature of the singular-type big bang?”

“Then it’s goodbye inflationary model and hello cyclical universe!”

“I googled ‘Crick’ the other day. It said that he discovered DNA.”

“Ah, yes, that was Crick grandfather, Francis Crick.”

“I see.”

“Yes, and my Crick is now the CEO of a gigantic research company, GRC.”

“Wow. How many employees? And how did Crick get the money for this?”

“The employees all work for free; they are everyone who contributes to the internet’s information.”

“It then all funnels into Mr. CEO Crick, as like it could to any one of us?”

“Yes, but he pays full attention. He’s also the President, the Board of Directors, the janitor and the only direct worker.”

“Oh boy, but I guess that’s really how we all really have people working for us all out on the internet. We do live in powerful times. And to think that Newton worked pretty much on his own!”

“See you later, Wick.”

…

“I’m back, Wick,” called Crick. “Where were we?”

“We were stumped—sitting on a stump.”

“No, really.”

“You were desperately trying to save the universe from being a one-time haphazard happening that will eventually die and spread out into sort of a wispy nothingness forever. How much time do we have left?”

“Oh, we have all of the dismal forever, but only about a trillion years until the universe becomes practically useless, but our sun will be gone in ten billion years.”

“How do we save the universe? Should we call Cricketman!”

“Yes, for I am thinking, as are you, that there is something outside the universe, in another dimension, unseen, which for me is the 10th dimension that separates 3-branes in string theory. As for the other extra string dimensions, they are curled up within the strings, so I’m not concerned about those.”

“A 1-brane is a string, a 2-brane is a membrane, and a 3-brane is the space we live in?”

“Yes, and so maybe there is another 3-brane out there that collides with our 3-brane that then produces the next cycle of the universe, showering it with new radiation that annihilates any existing structures leftover from the previous incarnation.”

“So, it is this dimension between the branes that expands and then contracts to produce your cyclical universes, not the dimensions of space in our universe—for they are hopelessly all spread out?”

“True, Wick. That’s the ticket to ride again and again. The branes remain expanded, nearly vacuous, parallel and smooth, the dark energy stretching it so by the end of the previous cycle; only the space between the branes shrinks to zero to cause the next universe to appear.”

“Then there is no infinite singularity of a big bang that drives Einstein’s equations crazy. Each new cycle begins with the same simple conditions as the one before. There are no wrinkles in the stretched out branes.”

“Yes, Wick, plus, the separation between the branes doesn’t matter if it varies from cycle to cycle, for the dark energy acts as a stabilizer, like a pneumatic door closer.”

“But none of our forces can communicate between the branes?”

“No, none except for gravity.”

“Why doesn’t the brane energy run out? Each collision of the branes converts some fraction of the branes’ energy into matter and radiation. The springlike force that draws the branes together should wind down.”

“During every cycle, a finite amount of gravitational energy is automatically converted into brane kinetic energy to compensate for the matter and radiation produced as the new universe. The branes then bounce back to their original positions.”

“Good, Crick. Conservation of energy is then not violated since gravity is a bottomless pit.”

“Yes, amazingly it is. Most forms of energy are positive, so there is a lower bound (zero) below which they cannot fall.”

“But gravitational potential is negative, and there is no known limit to how low it can go.”

“Yes, gravity acts like an engine to power all while still insuring the conservation of energy.”

“What about the increasing entropy density?

“The entropy on the branes is never concentrated, as it would be during the big bang of the inflationary universe, for the branes continue expanding even during the contraction phase that only involves the extra dimension. Any preexisting entropy is exponentially diluted.”

“And so when the branes collide…”

“THEN THERE IS LIGHT!”

[Wick]

"But there are a few problems with all of this, Crick."

"Not according to google!"

"Google, shmoogle, use your own brain and stop using the branes of others."

"But its all right there, in black and white!"

"Never trust anything black and white...there are shades of grey in everything. I'm concerned, Crick, that you're accepting as real something that is merely well thought out contrivances. The universe isn't really like that. A physicist and a mathematician go into a bar, and this stuff you've been spouting is what comes out..."

"But there is evidence...!"

"There is nothing of the sort. Take dark matter and dark energy for example. I expect better from a sworn atheist, Crick. The universe behaves in a way we can't explain...can't explain in a really big way, so we contrive "dark matter" and "dark energy". If its so easy for you to believe in dark matter and dark energy, why is it so hard for you to take an only slightly greater leap and scream out, full throated, "I BELIEVE IN GOD!!"

Why, dark matter and dark energy are sort of like my son who seeing evidence of two red eyes looking out of the darkness of his open closet. He begins to scream. It's 3 in the morning. He wakes me up, and into his room I run expecting to find a wet bed, or a puddle of puke.

"'Red eyes!" he screams, pointing to the open closet.

"I assure you, Crick there were no red eyes in my son's closet. He was just doing the best he could with the information he had. But he was wrong. The universe didn't have red eyes, any more than it has dark matter or dark energy. It simply had something my son couldn't explain.

"And even after I took his toy firetruck out of the closet and showed him how the moonlight from the window was simply reflecting from the red lights on top of the cab of the truck, it took me a very long time to convince him that nothing evil was in the closet.

"Science is going way off the deep end, Crick. No scientist has ever seen a brane. I promise. A brane is a mathematical device. Its no more real than my hyperspheres are. These things may lead us to some truth, but they in themselves are not the truth. They are a contrivance!"

"But they're in google, Wick!!"

Exasperated, Wick rubbed his hands over his bald head: "Caramel, where did you put the Shiraz?"

[austintorn@aol.com]

“Hi Wick,” chirped Crick. “You’re right about the extra dimension and the brane. Those are contrivances like God. As for dark energy and matter, we can detect their gravitational influence; we just don’t know their composition. Now, if I can show that there was no huge inflational energy and no singular-type big bang, then we know that there was a different method of the origin of out universe.”

“Ah, yes, THEN THERE IS A SEARING WHITE LIGHT!”

“It’s like a biblical thing.”

“So how do we know the other 3-brane is really out there along with that extra dimension?”

“We don’t and it could be that the one-time inflationary universe theory is indeed correct instead of the cyclical one.”

“Crick, what is a female moth called?”

“A ‘myth’.”

“So couldn’t the extra dimension thing and the branes we can’t see be a total myth? Could you be making a myth-take?”

“True, as we said, but we have tests. At least for the model, if not the actual brane and the extra dimension.”

“What tests can we perform?”

“Well, there are six tests, five of which support both theories, and a sixth that would doom all the inflationary theories and thus lend support for the cyclical theory.”

“I do get that the inflationary and cyclical theories differ but at the beginning and the end of the universe, being very similar in between. What are the first five tests that have been confirmed?”

“The first was the COBE satellite, which in 1992 gave the first indication that the cosmic background radiation temperature has a nearly scale-invairant variation across the sky. The second was that space was shown to be flat rather than curved, proved by WMAP and other detectors. The third milestone was confirming adiabaticity, meaning that ordinary matter and and dark matter in the early were distributed in the same up-and-down pattern as the cosmic background. The fourth showed gauussianity, that the distribution has the random noise characteristics that is predicted, again via WMAP. The fifth milestone was the detection of a ‘tilt’ in the amplitudes of energy density variations, a systematic deviance from perfect scale-invariance, meaning that the density of matter and radiation can be expressed as a sum of waves with similar heights, independent of the wavelength. Sorry to condense all of this into an overview.”

“Actually it is called ‘red tilt’ because the waves with the smaller wavelengths are produced closer to the end of inflation. WMAP found this in 2006. So, five for five and both the inflationary and the cyclic universe are still in the running, as they should agree in these areas. What happened with the sixth and critical milestone?”

“I have to go on a date now, Wick.”

“I heard. Enjoy. No sweat.”

“Then we crickets have to hibernate…”

“What! Really? Come back!”

“…We’re already two months late; it’s February.”

“See you in the spring. Hey, what’s the definitive sixth test that decides the cyclical versus the inflationary universe…”

“…Gravitational wave patterns that are totally distinctive will decide which model is right.”