Weighing the plumage

The queen owns all the swans in England. This must include the black ones. She uses sheep to keep the lawns trim, or was it goats- even so there must be a black one in the herd. I think Taleb is onto something. Maybe I am a black swan? Maybe I’m just a duck that think’s it’s a swan. My cats’ middle name is Waddles.  Countless humans have accused me of quackery, but I don’t understand the language, so I must speak chicken (and a little peacock). Well, if it struts like a rooster and sings like a mockingbird, it may just be a Phoenix.   

“Ever heard the old trick question, "which weighs more a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?"

The answer is supposed to be neither, because both would be a pound, yet that answer is technically incorrect.

Gold is universally weighed using a different measurement system than most other materials. It is weighed using the troy system, and troy ounces.

This system is measured so that 12 troy ounces makes up 5760 grains to the pound, while the common measurement for feathers would make them equal to 7000 grains to the pound.

Thus, a standard pound of feathers technically weighs more than a pound of gold!

(Source)” -OMG Facts

And just now I have come to discover, I am mature enough, informed a bit, I am shown clearly and unavoidably, that predictions, planning, forecasting, and intentions are all just busy-body-bee-hive activities. I’ve subconsciously known this, like you, rationally, anything goes, right?  That’s why we have “Murphy’s Law”, “margins of error” and certitudes like “more or less” and countless (literally uncountable) ways to say the same thing-‘I guess’…

Yet I have not been a great planner. I have been a better gardener, planting seeds and then amazed when they grow into more than I initially ‘anticipated’. I have what I need and want. I recognize continuously wanting more is an American affliction and I quarantine myself if any symptoms arise.  

I think Karma is a great concept, instant karma even more so. Just like you I don’t know for certain, but I sense that there’s some higher form of justice-or maybe purpose. That is why planning is useless really. I have taken many dumb risks and survived. I took the largest calculated risk of my life and am still in a free-fall, but learning to slow it down and look around.  I believe that we should all believe in ourselves first before we try to go around believing in other things that cannot be proven.

It could be the butterfly effect. I can feel invisible strings. I think science and philosophy are inextricably intertwined but have been made thin as individual strands by the constant resistance to each others symbiotic connection, over the last 150 years.  Even as a layperson I feel obliged to try to understand as much as I possibly am able to of both fields, of their shared territories and studying poetry, the middle ground in which they both dance.  I do not expect to discover anything new, perhaps it's all just déjà vu.  

I think if I think things will work out, they already have, maybe the way they were supposed to, or maybe just the way I hoped or planned. Being optimistic is only half the glass, but it’s the replenishing part.  Is there such thing as luck if anyone can be born a black swan? Why do we bother being pre-occupied by our own conventions, nose in the microparticles instead of eyes wide open, terrified and exhilarated at the taking the biggest risk possible, to try, to go for it, to give yourself permission while you’re here to do what you want with your life. That is its own reward.

Risk is an irrational calculation. We are all accidents about to happen. Will is not free. Exposure is embarrassing. Jeopardy is a game show. A gamble is an investment.  Possibility is the address of Emily Dickinson. One’s fortuity is directly proportionally to how fortunate they feel, minus the scruples paid in interest.  Uncertainty is certain.  

“Hope is the thing with feathers…”-Emily Dickinson

1st Image photograph By PookieFugglestein (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. 

2nd Image, drawing via Wikimedia Commons, c. 1885, sourced uncertain.

Otherness (Def.)

“The highest form of prose is discourse, in the literal sense of the word.”

“The word is man himself.”

“We are made of words.”

“Words are born and die like men.”

(All above quotes from Octavio Paz in “The Bow and the Lyre” University of Texas Press, 1973)

The following conversation is a real conversation based on the prose piece by Harryette Mullen entitled, Sleeping with the Dictionary.

"What a funny title! What does that suggest to you-even if you hadn't read anything? If someone said to you-Oh, I have a book, it's called Sleeping with the Dictionary-what do you think?"

“Um, I think of someone cuddled up in their bed with a dictionary…um, that’s usually-that’s the first thought…do you want to hear my second thought?”

giggling

“Cuddled with the-cuddled sounds a little innocent-”

“Well. Well, I literally-that’s what I first thought of. I literally thought of someone just like, falling asleep with a book…”

“……….falling asleep with the dictionary.”

“Yeah-”

“Yeah-we do that a lot…”

“Do you want to say your second thought?”

                                 “My second thought-

having sex with the dictionary.”

“So what does that-”

all together             “Making Love.”

“F***ing the dictionary…what does it mean to “F” the dictionary?”

“Well, I mean. I think it means that…you-if you-so if you just translate the things that we mean when we say that about like, sleeping with another person. So it means, like, you know the dictionary really intimately. You feel almost, sort of, like you have the same access to the dictionary as you do to your own body. Um, so, like you just…and, and there’s an erotic dimension to all of that so…”

“Let me get back to the erotics of language and words. But let’s-What kind of person has a special relationship with the dictionary?”

unanimously             “A writer.”

“A writer-why? I mean, what is the real-the writer is to the dictionary as a dictionary is…what?”

“A construction worker to bricks. A plumber to pipes-”

“Let’s stick to bricks. Let’s say a mason and bricks. So, the writer is to the dictionary as the mason is to bricks. So what does that mean for the dictionary-

pause

It’s the things…that you put…to build with…poiesis, poiesis, you make with bricks. 

Words of bricks.”

“A writer as a sculptor to clay...”

“The spoken language is closer to poetry than to prose; 

it is less reflective and more natural, 

and that is why it is easier to be a poet without knowing it than a prose writer.”

-Octavio Paz

Image By Tomasz Krzykała (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

1st image By Andrews, William [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

passiflora

“...the bloom is clasped by 3 leafy green bracts, 5 pearlesque petals, a fringe like corona of white tipped rays, flagged with 5 antlers or stamens,”  I read...

It started with a large bowl containing forty-six shriveled maroon brown (ugly) palm-sized fruit in a wicker bowl on my kitchen table. That day I wrote my first published piece purely inspired by not knowing what to do with those wrinkled empty fruit, with myself, with my story. Lazy Susan didn't even know what to do with them, I asked and she just spoke in circles. The pursuance of purpose with passion(fruit) began with those little spent and shriveled fruit. The time was ripe. Since then, I have hidden and sprinkled little seeds in each poetic line, a memento sometimes I only know. Passion is preserved in my pages, not as obvious as photos in a scrapbook, but stashed between If & A Very Minor Poet Speaks. In the art of Oshibana time still becomes brittle. 

It could have been Dickinson that made me do it, or inspired me-alas her sadness never infused my muse. Besides we had not even been formally introduced academically. She seemed to see the same things in the garden, as the way one reads the sky, we both speak poetry.

 Instead of grapes, I planted a single passion fruit vine, on a pilgrimage of its own, running east to west along the fence line, signifying the borderlands, sharing its own passion with the sun.

No sour grapes, I am not whining, but the passiflora is out of control, overzealous and runneth over.

The passion fruit is a vigorous, climbing vine that clings by tendrils to almost any support. It can grow 15 to 20 ft. per year once established and must have strong support.

–Passionfruit

That is how a passionflower ended up pressed in between the pages of my grandmother's 1936 edition of the Best Loved Poems of the American People (no further comment on the content selection). I do not know why I robbed this fruit of its seed, cryogenically frozen in a wax paper sheath, a plan aborted, its architecture in perfect symmetry...the Holy Lance of leaves accented by tendrils or tamed tails, 10 virginal milk quartz petals as pillars, 10 faithful apostles guard the crown of thorns. Heaven and Purity, blue and white, fire and ice, behind lilac hued velvet drapes, yellow fireworks accent flashes of light.

The flower has been given names related to this symbolism throughout Europe since that time. In Spain, it is known as espina de Cristo (“Christ’s thorn”). German names include Christus-Krone (“Christ’s crown”), Christus-Strauss (“Christ’s bouquet”), Dorn-Krone (“crown of thorns”), Jesus-Leiden (“Jesus’ passion”), Marter(“passion”) or Muttergottes-Stern (“Mother of God’s star”).

–Passionflower: Etymology and Names (source: http://signum-crucis.tumblr.com/post/23014727480/passion-flower-passiflora-symbol-of-christs)

I see now why one would like to preserve life, preserve energy mid-life, like passion interrupted, full and pregnant with expectation, abundantly awaiting night to shape shift in peace,

Letting go, forgetting all you know about the natural course of things, it's all the same and doesn't change the outcome, unless you've been interrupted by the existence of infinite possibility, unpredictably. Passion possesses. 

And that gentle hand of fate, the nudge in a direction, can be a push, a shove, a pull, a punch. A gentle hand can be made into a fist. We stand up to change, not letting the wild beast order us around, even knowing the beast is trying to scare you into a more beautiful you, we cringe at this reflection, we could fail. Change takes us to a new place we think we've never seen, but it knows us, has our placard and makes us feel dumb, Hello my name is Stationary.

I built this intricate and dynamic machine called daily life, I am its humble servant, I obey.

I only hope to be preserved one day myself, not by Botox, like the passion flower of poetry, the passiflora of faith, the seed of inspiration and the serum of my stimulation. Oozing with potential, already hidden in history, I write as though nobody's reading, I press flowers for all they are worth, for those that give a Dickinson. 

1st image of Julia Margaret Cameron [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Pasion flower at garden gate.