| Poetry (click on
the title (not the cover) to bring up each book)
 The
Versatile Verse
The
philosophical one. This is first collection I wrote. Not as good as the
others in skill but beyond compare in the range and philosphical nature
of many of its poems. It is plain Zen. The subjects were good and diverse,
and the rhyming was a device I sought to master and did pretty well at,
probably sometimes at the expense of the content. But the presise meter
and form was a straightjacket I learned still to move about in fairly freely.
 Repetition
The lite one. This was the first to be written in all in the same year,
January to December, as was Triumvirum
and Quadranine.
It
was consciously meant to be almost the opposite of The
Versatile Verse with short poems about nothing
too important, all written just for fun. Rhyming was often unimportant
or not used at all. What comes to mind first and foremost of this collection
was #1 on page one chronologically as written, This
Room. It was written about the Reading Room of the Library of Congress,
which had left an impression on me which I wrote about in that poem when
back at college in January waiting for a class to start.
 Triumvirum
The political one. Written while in college mostly in a dorm (deja
vu). I really hit a stride with this one.
It combined the light playfulness of Repetition with a return to more serious
subjects, and the structures became more complex within.
 Quadranine
The
complex one. (The
cover was a Tesseract!
Big time deja vu on
that one.) The title referred to the fact
that all previous collections ended up divided into 9 sections, and this
one was also, thus Quadra 9. All except Triumvirum's 3x3 format were just
coincidentally divided into 9 sections. I can't compare this collection
to the others. It just exploded creatively. Sometimes it worked, sometimes
it didn't. When or where it worked, it was awesome though. Ocassionally
dark and twisted, yet never without a purpose or soul. The Bleeding
Crowd section comes to mind in that respect. It ended with the epic
Vestabur
in December(turns
out I was wrong, Vestabur was written at the beginning of the year. My
bad.), written
while I was extremely feverish (like
105 F) with the flu and severely way way
out of it. Only when I was just as ill exactly one week later did I return
to writing it but skipped ahead to the end because I couldn't wait to find
out how it turned out. Where it came from, God only knows.
 Pentacle
The final one. Poetry just was no fun anymore with Pentacle. I began to
feel every poem had to be better than every one before in every way. The
original title was to be a word I found in a dictionary, Pentium, which
was a better name but some obscure computer chip company in California
forever warped its meaning.
(The sixth book was to be formulas and equations mixed with poems about
the dehumanizing effect of technology and was to have been called Hexidecimal.
Alas, I never got the math down enough to come up with Nobel prize worthy
original formulas to mix in with the poems <g T=D*V*-g?)
Besides, Pentacle took almost a decade between to get back to and finally
wrap up once I was no longer self-conscious about writing it. One day after
8 years, I just wrote Too Long Gone.
My mind was in a dark place, but the poem, completely contrary to its words,
was saying the fire and light were still in there somewhere trying to get
out, not just lamenting their loss. To admit you miss something is to admit
that it is still a part of you, even if you don't or can't see it that
way yet. Its ending point was at Going
Home, about both dying and about moving to Hawaii, which to me were
both the same thing. I was to live there for the rest of my life.
(From RCP2: "When I moved to Hawaii I vowed to stay there until humanity
destroyed itself, while I did nothing, and maybe got drunk afterwards.
I thought if I cared about nothing, I had nothing to worry about. That
makes me sound like a bad person, though I was not and was an agreeable
sort who got along with everyone. Like so many others, I just gave up on
the rest of the world outside my own little paradise and life." Turned
out I wasn't so lucky.)
The only future I saw was nothingness, all black. Though I was rich and
had much to look forward to, I sensed no future for me whatsoever, only
doom. I was shocked when the plane landed that I had made it there, so
strong was the feeling I could not possibly, and was in awe every day that
I was there. It was like existing outside of time. Ironically, leaving
Hawaii 3 years later, extremely poor, completely screwed beyond all hope,
I saw the future as being completely white, limitless in potential where
anything is possible. It is literally a whole new ballgame, a complete
rebirth, like going through a black hole into a whole new universe, or
a whole new life. A corner definitely has been turned somehow and every
step is into new and uncharted territory.
Lyricist
During my absence from writing poetry, since it no longer made me happy,
I turned to writing just songs instead. I had been writing songs off and
on since I was 15 but never as seriously as poetry. When I gave up on poetry,
I turned back to writing songs and wrote lots of them. As a book compilation
of the lyrics of my favorites from this period, an original version of
Lyricist was included with really old versions (1997
or so) of the ZRFW and Omega programs,
but it has been seriously whittled down over the years to this smaller
version, but 2 new songs were added around the year 2000. It originally
had 4 sections, Life, Love, Sex, and Death. Also, Dreaming
of you, originally written as a poem in Repetition,
was reworked into a song by adding a chorus.
Though there were only
5 original poetry books, there were 3 smaller recompilations of them worthy
of note. The collection of poems, The Dance,
which originally was called Montage, assembled most of the best 30 or so
in an order taking one on a journey from birth to death. The Dance I believe
is the best poem (for those who don't have
a clue what poetry is about, words and even entire poems can have more
than one meaning. In the poem, The Dance,
"borrowed
suits" also means our bodies. "The
night" and "rented
hall" also are allegorical for the Universe,
stars, and time. It is not just about a prom or a dance. Clues to these
deeper levels are "gather forth in stolen
time" and "within
this space outside of place". Thus
by that other way of reading it, "fade like
stars into the morning light" means the end
of time after all the stars go out, all matter eventually dissolves, and
another new defintion of existence or lack therof, either way a new era
of the Universe, dawns.),
and Tomorrow,
The
Immortals, and The Dark Horse seem
the most masterful ones. Longform was a collection
of the longer story form poems all in one place. Only 6 were really long,
but some other story type ones were included as well to make it a collection.
Starry Journeys was a similar recompilation which overlapped many in the
other 2 recompilations but grouped together the all poems that had traveling
or journey themes. It included 2 left out of the earlier works, Leaving
Home which predates
all of others except The Burnout,
and
Vangaurd
Ventures from the Quadranine
era.
It also included 2 new ones, Whenever You,
and From Being
to Becoming,
the latter written for Towards Tomorrow.
Other
poems written specifically for later works areThe
Representative of the Past to the Future,
Expectations,
and
First
or Last, also
for
Towards Tomorrow,
and
A
Pulse, Bent Paths, One Light, No One is Ahead, What Is, Each Thing in the
Universe, and To
Co-Exist, all for the 2003 .8 (In Wonder)
appendages added to 2002's Deconstrucing the Universe.
|
Prose
(in reverse order) (click on the title to bring up each book)
Towards
Tomorrow
As
being Deconstucting the Universe's
immediate
predecessor is the way I see Towards Tomorrow.
It was about time, many of its themes turn up somewhere or in some other
form in Deconstructing
the Universe, and also for the reasons stated to the left under
Pentacle,
it was to be a coda, a final note. Towards Tomorrow's
First
Words themes are found better developed
in Deconstructing the Universe's
Perspective.
Growing Expectations is the only reasonable
dispassionate look at cloning I have ever read. Love it (no
one does) or hate it, (most
do) like the worst weapon imaginable which
humanity can build, it is only a matter of time before it becomes a reality.
No countries will talk about cloning, no countries will admit to doing
it, but countries that can afford to given the present political environment,
will convince themselves they cannot afford not to, the potential rewards
are that great, though barbaric.
Barbarity never stopped humanity before and won't in this respect either.
Any strategic advantage is always considered so long as nations play the
power struggle game, and they show no signs of bowing out of that game
any time soon. Trust
as Faith was written in direct response
to the immediate response to the events of September 11th, 2001. It was
about the rapid erosion of the faith people must have in one another for
societies to exist and prosper.
Anger turned to fear, fear to paranoia, paranoia to blind murderous rage,
and anyone was fair game. Neighbors turned on neighbors, and innocent people
had their businesses burned or beaten or killed for looking like the wrong
sort of people. It was relatively small scale, but the minority involved
was miniscule, and so it could not escalate as it might have if it had
been a sizable percentage of the population. It was though, for me enough
to see how Bosnia or Rwanda can happen anywhere.
As it says "A murder in and of itself
is a horrible thing, but when it sets off a chain reaction leading to many,
then many times many other horrible acts, it is an even greater horrible
thing. And when that was the intention all along it is revolting to the
extreme. The target is nothing less than our goodwill, our trust of each
other, and nothing can we afford less to lose...it is easier when constantly
shown trust and respect to trust in others and to believe that most people
are good, for in fact they are, even if because of some few we stop treating
them that way, or even worse, stop believing it."
"Where trust does not exist, nations cannot long endure, so much in life
are we dependent upon one another. There are those who would pay any price
to destroy that trust in each other, and thereby any trust in any good
or positive future, and we must always be on guard that these visions of
our future do not prevail. So many more good men and women have given their
lives for the future, a better future, one where people don't live in constant
hate and fear, and it is to those who hoped so greatly for their children
and their children's children, for us, to live beyond their dangerous and
uncertain times in an age of peace and goodwill."
"These are the visions of the future worth believing in, however unlikely
they may someday seem likely to exist, but due to others suffering long
ago in less optimistic times than we can imagine, they held close to these
extremely radical beliefs so out of step with their times as any could
ever be, and made that optimism prevail on an Earth that comes tantalizingly
close to what they believed could one day be achieved. Remember those people
and what they hoped for us, how they were tortured and killed for their
dreams they could not have known would one day become our dreams and define
our world. Remember those millions gone, their hopes for this tomorrow,
when contemplating those would kill to destroy that better world they died
for. Whose vision for which future will prevail is in no ones hands now
but our own. No matter the odds, one cannot bet against the brighter future.
It is a reality built on trust, and losing faith in it, betting against
it, against ourselves, will destroy it."
Morality:
Individual and Social
This is from the introduction.. "I have only
recently started writing again after 10 years of not doing much except
occasionally some poems with years in between even at that. After having
read The Discourses by Epictetus, (http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/)
and seeing morality dealt with as an abstract outside of law and religion,
both topics which I have studied greatly, I found it intriguing. Morality
is something we all know really has nothing to do with what is legally
required of us. It is when we do as we feel is right not because we are
required to by law, or because to do otherwise would risk eternal damnation,
both valid reasons for doing or not doing something, but when it applies
to what each of us as a person believes to be right, we are accurately
judged to be or not to be moral persons. Simply doing something because
you are told to or are afraid of the consequences otherwise is not the
same as believing it yourself."
I tried to maintain a balanced look at morality independent of culture
and time, that notions of morality evolve over time, how some things which
were legal yesterday become illegal today or how things which were illegal
one day suddenly became legal the next.
Also, that "Not everyone one may agree today
on what if any changes should be made to our present notions of what is
moral or what is immoral, but through that rather irksome thing called
talking about it and bothering us with their notions which usually do not
often jibe with our own, that slow roll is inching toward what people will
find aghast 30 years from now which people are doing legally today but
just prefer not to talk or think about, just as racial discrimination was
30 years ago from today. Not having it happen at all would be to be completely
and utterly morally stagnant as a society as China has been in recent times,
attempting to eliminate all avenues of change. It is in the narrow-mindedness
of those who always think that today's culture is the penultimate and requires
no improvements at all which slows or halts societies from ever becoming
more just, by eliminating debates which inevitably will disturb and disrupt,
to a minor degree many or most in a society, but which future notions of
morality depend upon."
In retrospect, it was the beginning of the wider perspectives in Towards
Tomorrow and wide open perspectives in Deconstructing
the Universe. Thank you Epictetus, you dead
Roman former slave you. You still rock.
The
Relativism Books
These books are ancient history to me now. I reread them from time to time,
find little to disagree with, possibly because they use so many words to
say so little new. Or maybe that there is little left in them I do not
know already. Without them I would not have grown beyond them, but they
are to me now like the cornerstones of a bridge now submerged beneath the
river. Still they are, and bridges need their cornerstones.
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gone
with the wind, without influence, without force, without respect. Were
we to let it die, to enfeeble its vigor, to cripple its powers, we would
condemn our future. For in the development of this organization rests the
only true alternative to war--and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative.
Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no
longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the great powers
alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could
well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed
and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war--or war will
put an end to mankind. ... Today, every inhabitant of this planet must
contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every
man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by
the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident
or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before
they abolish us. ... And men may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament
is a sign of weakness--for in a spiraling arms race, a nation's security
may well be shrinking even as its arms increase. ... Such a plan would
not bring a world free from conflict and greed-- but it would bring a world
free from the terrors of mass destruction. It would not usher in the era
of the super state--but it would usher in an era in which no state could
annihilate or be annihilated by another. ... For peace is not solely a
matter of military or technical problems--it is primarily a problem of
politics and people. And unless man can match his strides in weaponry and
technology with equal strides in social and political development, our
great strength, like that of the dinosaur, will become incapable of proper
control--and like the dinosaur vanish from the earth. .... The events and
decisions of the next ten months may well decide the fate of man for the
next ten thousand years. There will be no avoiding those events. There
will be no appeal from these decisions. And we in this hall shall be remembered
either as part of the generation that turned this planet into a flaming
funeral pyre or the generation that met its vow "to save succeeding generations
from the scourge of war." In the endeavor to meet that vow, I pledge you
every effort this Nation possesses. I pledge you that we will neither commit
nor provoke aggression, that we shall neither flee nor invoke the threat
of force, that we shall never negotiate out of fear, we shall never fear
to negotiate. Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been
used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But
inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life
worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that
free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet
its own response.... We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like
systems--for conformity is the jailor of freedom, and the enemy of growth.
Nor can we expect to reach our goal by contrivance, by fiat or even by
the wishes of all. But however close we sometimes seem to that dark and
final abyss, let no man of peace and freedom despair. For he does not stand
alone. If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look
beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which
the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. Ladies
and gentlemen of this Assembly, the decision is ours. Never have the nations
of the world had so much to lose, or so much to gain. Together we shall
save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames."
