The Tick-Tock Tractatus. By Michael Peter Garofalo. Speaking of Time: The Poetic Investigations, Part 1.

1. Time: time-space, movement
     measurement, counting
     physics, chemistry, days
     direction, generalities

A clock is the symbol of worldliness.
The ticking clock defines our life.
Time, steadily fleeing, is our world.

Calendars and ticking clocks redirect our lives.

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock = a mechanical clock on hand.

Substance is what subsists over time.
Time is both form and content.
The form of time is the possibility of the structure of place-time.
A picture of time needs a video.

We cannot think of any object outside the possibility of its
temporal existence inside our Time-World or its integration
and combination with all other other beings.

Give it some time, be patient:
More facts will arrive soon,
More information will come,
More reasons will be forthcoming---
We never have all the facts.

In my quasi-logical place of late
I did not hesitate
To stretch my feet out
And meditate on future
Facts in logical space.... What?

Creating a clear picture of time takes time.
Do pictures of time come easily to mind?

The logical structure of time, our pictures of time,
our inclinations about time all depict the World.

Loosing his memories, severe dementia, left him
in the realm of the timelessness.

Yes, facts multiply
But do they divide into facts?
Yes, the world has many facts
All stacked in rooms now called 'Now and Past.'
In the future, we will add more facts.

Newton's Principia
postulated both Absolute Time
and Relative Time frames
for exact calculus calculations
to explain precise movements of objects in space.

And the Earth rotates at 1,000 MPH.
And the Earth flies at 67,000 MPH.
And our Solar system files at 514,000 MPH.

        Time has names: Past, Present, Future
        Or: Fixed, Flexible, Planed
        Or: Before, Now, After

The World's-Time, my Time Zone, and
My internal sense of time are all
Part of my living in our time.

Time is one cinema of reality.

Do I need logic or a stop-watch.
Do I need a picture, film,
or a video to display real time?

Where is the tape measure of time?
We hear time in music.

We can estimate future events from present ones.
We assume a causal nexus,
Not a "superstition" without a reason.
We define future events in terms of present ones:
predictions, probabilities, guesses, estimates,
anticipations, expectations, schedules...
OK, not infer; but damn close anyway.

The Arrows of Time
never rest,
moving forward unrelenting
irreversible:
from hot towards cold

from stream to Sea
from organized to disorganized
from past to future
from moving towards stillness
from life towards death.

        Or, so it seems, to us,
                with our little particulars,
                        with our home brew views,
        with our social habits a must.

        The clock on the garage wall
Stopped working months ago;
Timelessly stuck on 12 to 4.
        Needs a new battery:
        Time requires Energy.

     The coffee
     in my cup
       was      Cold!
               A compass
                    for Entropy.

These yellow poppies reveal time,
These sweet razor clams taste time,
These brown seeds generate time.
The seashells speak of past time.
These gray leafless trees show time.

The Earth is Time; the Sky is Time.
And the five fingers of one black hand hold time,
And the blinking of two blue eyes cry time.
The dirty garden hoe and hoses water time,
The fishing line drops to the bottom of time,

The snows on Mt. Ranier glacier time,
Hood Canal ravens break open time,
The tulips in Skagit Valley sweeten time,
The roaring Queets River rapids erode time...

clocks, schedules, processes,
day, sunrise, motion, change,
memories, feelings, aging,
growing, evolution, meetings,
breakfast-lunch-dinner,

                        sleep-wake-sleep.
                repetition, cycles, repeating,
        expecting, anticipating, waiting,
planning, costs, work, starting,
                 patience, eternal, ending, death...

BBB Blue Book: p. 20, 26, 52-56, 106,
What is Time. Expectations. Before/After.

Is Mu Dark Matter?
Is Light Speed Time?
Is Gravity a Ball of Strings?
Is a Mind a Body-Brain?
Questioning, wondering, ideas rain.

Clocks measuring
        fragments of infinity
                quite bewilderedly
                        displaying pictures
                                of time's invisibility

     I turned the clock hands
back and hour in the fall.
Even though, in private time-space,
          nobody can ever
     turn the clock back at all.

The Elements do not die
And they in eternal time realize
a billion interactions in a second's time
a trillion interrelations in a millisecond of time...
I breathe the breaths of all past lives.

The electric clock is like a virtual monk
counting the rosary beads of the void.

The silence of decades dead
echo endlessly
in every muscle and vein...
Her kisses are remembered
by my tender love lips.

If you have a habit
You acquired it in your past.
Bad habits reside in the now.
New habits require:
Six months of your future time, and
girt and correct actions all along.

I am a ghost
of walking memories
a past embodied in me
a past only visible to me
a past defining the real actual me.

                Time passes past the past,
        No forensic evidence remains,
No clue to catch that Thief of Time---
        Little evidence, so suspicious,
                Is nowhere and everywhere.

in every moment
today is created anew—
          pristine possibilities
     changing opportunities
          depending on you

To dance at the still point of the Time beyond time,
Beyond pasts, within futures, this Moment
Now and forever, beyond minds.
Not knowing of Who or why
We stroll in rose gardens, and Love.

For the moment, Now, for me,
the world is the case.
Yesterday, the world was
actually the case.
Tomorrow's events are not the case.

Only the Present and Past are Actual
The Future is bounded by possibilities:
uncertainties, unpredictability, chances,
accidents, unknowns, contingencies ...
And quasi-informative necessities.

Some statements about future events
Are neither necessary nor impossible
and have no truth value.

"There is no there there"
For the Present is aware, that
the Past is no more, only
my obscure faded memories;
just nothing left here anymore.

'Is' is an insistent perplexity
of sometimes being identity
of sometimes being temporarily
of sometimes being actuality
Yes!, 'is' even postulates = equality.

Mythical time
unfolds in present time
unravels in literal minds—
real, imagined, fictionalized,
Always in Now-Time.

                        time runs
        does not wait
                        hustles fast
lingers not
cannot stop

The Pause is measured by a spoonful of time.
He paused and loudly yawned.
Everyone paused for a moment of remembrance.
He paused and took a deep breath.
It was the pause that refreshes.

'There is no
non-arbitrary way
to pick out what is meant by the
uniquely true
and real present moment."

Our sense of the Present
Is not continuous.
It starts and stops in
small discrete steps;
Every 20 to 60 milliseconds.

We don't notice the jumps, like watching
a 35mm film at 50Hz, 30-40 frames per second.

An instant has zero duration;
unlike miles per hour
or meters per second.
Even a millisecond is much longer.
An instant, like a point in geometry:
Dimensionless, timeless, imaginary.

Some old hold strictly to the Present
As actual given Reality.
The future is nothing.
From nothing comes nothing.
So nothing changes---claims Parmenides.

Time waits for nobody.

Tomorrow is a currency that can
only be spent in the mind.

Time provides the trellis, but the vine
grows where it pleases,
bowing to the sun.

I can know much about the future
without certainty about many things/events
and certainly about contingent events/things
and certainly not about everything---
I'm content, for now, planning a trip next Spring.

"The trouble with our times is that the future
is not what it used to be."
- Paul Valery

"It really is not the moment."
It's not a good time.
Something's important at work!
We'll talk later.
See Ya! Bye.

                        Time slipped and slid
                 On the path to the future
                 Unsure of its direction.
Pushed by the Past;
Traveling very fast!

        What is warm cools
What is wet dries
        What is ice melts
What is rock shatters---
        Time's arrow falls to the ground.

To dance at the still point
Of the Time beyond time,
Beyond pasts, within futures,
this Moment
Now and forever, beyond minds.

"Nothing" is pregnant with Possibilities.
The past is now-here Nothing;
And offering up everything.
Something and Nothing simultaneously
Point to the futures of Being.

No Guarantees that to the End
Our cherished ideals will survive,
Our great great grandchildren will thrive,
Our monuments stand ...
Our guarantees?

This tree my great great grandmother planted,
This dog-eared Leaves of Grass on my desk,
This classic folksong on my breath,
This heirloom apple in my hand ...

This day,
no guarantees
for or against.
Good! So we strive on,
Their and our hopes in our hands now.

Long ago I wondered why
the seas were rising worldwide
        the droughts were increasing stateside
                the population exploded in a decade's time
                the world was headed to catastrophe.

Words clothe time and place
hide something, show something new,
elevate our memories,
share an experience, relate,
leave something for posterity.

All the facts available
Say the past was/is the case.
The World of Facts is our place,
For now, at least, for
All of tomorrow is not the case.

We think we decide
and plan and devise;
yet, despite our intentions,
time has its own directions,
and everything just happens otherwise.

Tick - Past; Tock - Now
Tick - Present; Tock - Future
Tick - we persist; Tock - we exist

Reliability is proof of the future.
He was unreliable most of the time.
His 15 year old truck is as reliable as ever.

"Knowledge and thought, science and art, are conditioned by human history and are to be evaluated by a human future."
- Steven David Ross

Growth is time embodied.

"Past" does not specify a time,
"before" specifies an order.

The Onion of Being
Never stops growing
Layering layer over layers
Giving us one peel a day
On our life's way

"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance."

"To the attentive eye, each movement of the year
has it's own beauty, and in the field it beholds,
every hour, a picture which was never seen
before and which shall never be seen again."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nice to be Here
Nice to be 80
Nice to be respected
Nice to be healthy—
Nice to be Anywhere.

time has a rhythm
beyond ticktock---
a string quartet waltz
a dying walker's walk
a stewing pot

brown branchlets
bouncing up and down
dancing to wind songs...
A large branch broke and dropped!
Change is not an illusion.

no matter what
your selfish Elders want—
we will all be
forgotten
in sixty years

Frustration with aging
affects persons differently.
Some say getting old is a crime.
Others say they got wiser in time---
Most others are uneasy subconsciously.

We often chat about
What's not present,
Or never will be present,
What's missing, absent, lost---
Like dancing with Grandma Ast.

1. Moon of the Wind
2. Moon of the Herring
3. Moon of the Raven
4. Moon of the Grandmother
5. Moon of the Summer Sun

Rather forlorn:
abandoned my plans,
alone with my regrets,
forsook former fantasies---
facing blunt uncolored realities.

The thoughts carry themselves:
As cream floats on milk
As the beach ball bounces on white-water
As the dreams flow in sober sleep.
Sometimes BAD! As in: Smoke on the breeze.

Time travel - imaginary
Fictional - hypothetical-figurative
Back to the Future - reel time
Forward to the Past - speculate
Fantasies in the Now - create

If you understand,
things are changing.
If you don't understand,
things are changing.
Understanding change is changing.

Change, like life, is always changing.
Or, is only change not stopping?
The future is the earth, but changes are disguised.
The future is not nothing, otherwise,
nothing would change or happen.
Yes, change happens all the time,
and that is an unchanging fact.

Choices limited
Options constrained
Alternatives unavailable..
Stuck for now,
Can't change.

Th Uhr cycle is the Clock of Day!
Day and Night rule our life-ways.
Circadian rhythms our bodies play.
Over and over, our compass is the Day,
Our existence lives time by Days.

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
My words echo Thus, in your mind."

Wait awhile, give it time to cook well.
Wait awhile, the day will warm up.
Wait awhile, better to leave later.
Wait awhile, he will be here soon...
Wait for the right time---wait it out.

The starving died waiting for food.
The cancer patient dies while waiting for a cure.
The waiting tree died when the woodcutter arrived.
Childish adults have trouble waiting.
How long to wait depends on the expected rewards.

Winter weeks we huddled by the hot stove,
Spring days we shivered in the sun,
Summer hours we sat in the shade,
Autumn minutes we stared at moon.
We had idle thoughts, we had no thoughts.

Life made our hearts cry, and it lifted our spirits high.
The ordinary, the exceptional,
The chosen, the accepted,
The very good, the very bad,
Fresh figs, rotten peaches.

The beautiful, the deformed.
They appeared d and disappeared.
Samsara and Nirvana ....
Here and Gone.

Things could be completely otherwise
Than they are now.
But they are not.
In the future they will be otherwise, and
In the past they were otherwise alot.

drifted off on a dream
time disappeared
obscured by sleep
hours erased
timeless in dreamless space

Days do go on and on
Complaining about their dull mornings
And endless monotonous afternoons
Bringing only boredom and fatigue---
Even Time has a right to complain.

Changes come, Changes go
Different features for the Whole
Stability of Being floats on instability
Like rocking boats on a moody sea---
Change is the illusory world we create to see.

The clock in the classroom
Worked hard diligently
To avoid the Present;
Never stopped...
Tick - happens. Tock - happens.

An hour passed,
Left no forwarding address.
Tomorrow dreams of Yesterday.
Today forgets both...
Tick - silence. Tock - silence.

Where does the Present go when it becomes the Past?
Where is the past?
Where does the Future go when it becomes Now?
Where is the Future?

Where is Now?
What is Now?
How long is now?---
Misleading questions, confusing poetry.

one day is like any other
one hour is likely ignored
one second is rarely noticed---
our senses are limited
our mind ignores overload

"And now it is time to wait again.
Only waiting, the waiting: what fills up the time between?
It is another kind of wait, waiting for the wait to be ended.
Nothing takes up its fair share of time.
The wait is built into the things just coming into their own."

We are and are not!
Both true and false,
Both right and wrong
Both silence and song---
And, the changing River flows on.

"One day is like any other day.
Time is a child playing dice.
Into the same rivers we step
and do not step; we are and are not.
By changing, it rests."

A part of --- Reality favors Three.
Three roots, three branches of some trees.
A mother, daughter, and father family.

Past, Present, and Future are also Three
As are Before, Now, and After - quite complimentary.

The Parcae - The Three Roman Goddess's
Creating and Ending One's Lifespan.
The Parcae spin, measure, and cut
the cord that is your life.

"Perhaps it would be more exact to say that
there are three times:
a present of things past,
a present of things present,
a present of things to come."

"The "now", the moment, has temporal
duration--- of around three second segments."

Even the gods can't change the past
The past is fixed,
mostly forgotten;
often reinterpreted.

The hidden past
buried in the avalanche of years.
The worn monuments celebrating
pioneers and our versions of their history.

In the Future
Some will live as Real Creatures;
More will live as mere Machines
Who have lost their Souls for Free.
Which will You Be?

Is there a passage of time?
Or, a tenseless time:
Woke up A, ate cereal B, mowed the lawn C,
wrote a poem D, ate dinner E, etc: ABCDEFGH...Z.
A Sequence, an Order, passing undefined.

Gray day
Still.....
September noon—
Half-day and Half-night,
= Equinox Equality!!

6. Beginning: renewal, starting, enthusiasm,
spring, summer, emerging, developing

"You and I have memories
longer than the road
that stretches out ahead...
On our way home...
We're going home..."

On this day the world began.
A buzzard circled overhead.
A plane settled for a soft land.
A cook fried potatoes in a pan.
Happy dogs went out to play.

A crippled man put on his socks
On this day the world began
A drunk man could not stand.
A salesclerk totaled up our tab.
A child in class raised his hand.

A calendar outlined our plans.
Brushed her teeth, combed her hair.
He came in 5th, an also-ran.
On this day the world began.

"Oh, Day after day we can't help growing older.
Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.
Come let's enjoy our winecup today,
Nor pity the flowers fallen."
- Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring, 1740

"When the time is ripe for certain things,
these things appear in different places in the manner
of violets coming to light in the early spring."
- Farkas Bolyai, 1840

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."
- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

Refreshing as a cool breeze in summer
Letting go as trees in autumn.
Calming as warm sunshine in winter
Blooming as a garden the spring
Opening the doors of future years.
- BU3010

Life is a problem
without One solution;
not a theorem, not a catechism.
A challenge, not The Answer!
A restitution of creative innovations.

Did he find a Path
Through the thick Forest of Words
Past the copse of poetry
Into the open fields of meaning.
The questions are the Path.

An infinite series seems
satisfactory. No need for
a First Mover or God-Mind
to start the Engine of Time.

In the Time Before Everything Changed
the Transformers and Changers
lived in the Ocean's Womb
before the Waters receded.
Then They Came, and Everything Changed.

The Raven Broke Open the Magical Clam.
An Amazing New World then Began.
Both inside and outside the Magical Clam
Coming Forth, Coming From, Coming, coming—

Then They Came, and Everything Changed.
People and new plants were created.
New mosses, mushrooms, camas bulbs,
and huckleberries appeared.
New cedars, spruces, firs,
and salal berries appeared.
The San Juan Islands, Hood Fjord,
Salish Seas and King Salmon appeared.
Enemies, diseases, and famine appeared.

People learned from the Transformers/Changers/Teachers:
Raven, Coyote, Honne, Xwane, Turtle,
Bear and Thunderbird.
How to become Human Beings
in a dangerous World.
How to become heartless at times.
How to gather, hunt, and fish for food.
How to weave and keep a fire.
What plants to eat, what not.
What to Believe and Do
in order for their tribe to survive.
How to deal with surprise.

All kinds of beings emerged-created.
People lived, worked, Spoke and mated.

Coyote howled and cheered!
Thunderbird ordered the rain and thunder.
Shape-Shifters played and plundered.
Xwane saved two girls from blunders.
Xonne stopped a flood.

The Magical Clam: A Singularity Opening,
Beginnings Beyond the Understanding
Of Ordinary Times and Minds.

From Something New Came Something New.

Then They Came, and Everything Changed.
The English speaking people came to Reign.

Fully self-sufficient entities
Like the fading moon over silvery seas;
Can still can make the worldly resonate
And make manifest beings gyrate on time;
Like grunions flopping in the midnight sand.

What you see depends on when you look.
What you hear requires you to listen now.

The Specious Present extends consciousness
to include a pinch of the past,
a pinch of the future,
and the fullness of the now.

"The quality of attention determines
the nature of the experience."
Joanne Kyger

We knew that water was essential,
but did not know it was H2O;
We knew the sun was hot,
but had no concept of nuclear.
It works but we don't know how or why.

Implicate orders of a
Underlying Reality
Unfolding Being... and the
Explicate orders of
ordinary common things.

They ran out of time
The game ended on time
They lost this time.
They all got back to the bus in time.
They will do better next time.

I'm too old
for any real Destiny
except for Death
creeping up to me, tagging Me:
"Your It!"

Samsara is Nirvana?
10,000 Things are Nothing?
Past and future are gone (Empty?).
The Present is gone in a Flash.
What's left? Samsara won't last.

The sting of Death,
the sharp pains of unseeing,
the final closing of the eyes,
the silent lips of emptiness...
faces lost forever in future times.

That such and such is the case
May piss me off for all the day
Why should it be this damn way?

Next month, such and such will not be the case.
I will be very pleased come that day.

Time Explained: Experience, Consciousness and Relativity.
By Alan Bennett, 2026.

Emotions cluster around Immediacy.
Distant futures lack emotional density.
We feel very little about 2222 CE.
Few have any passion for far distant unrealities.
We lust after, say, Hot SEX Today! Fuck the Future!

Travel light
Even yesterday is a heavy backpack.
Travel slowly
Even tomorrow can wait---
Move on, don't hesitate.

Things that look the same
are often really different---
in a web of new respects as to usage
in a web of words wedded meanings
in a different place in space/time.

The time sauntered by
invisibly, casually, punctually...
I barely noticed.
so busy with pressing deeds---
time flew by in a gentle breeze.

"... time is not a linear flow, as we think it is,
into past, present, and future. Time is an
indivisible whole, a great pool in which all
events are eternally embodied and still have
their meaningful flash of super-normal or
extra-sensory perception, and a glimpse of
something that happened long ago in our
linear time."
- Frank Waters, Mountain Dialogues, 1981

Keep me on a course line
send me some signs
become conscious at times...
freedom may a fiction be
controlled by unknown destinies.

Bring the Unconscious,
Sub-Conscious, ego, and Id,
Collective Unconscious figured in—
Over the waves of Consciousness
the flotsam of Unknowns are adrift.

My experiences at times
have not damaged or broken me;
     but, indeed,
     have bent and twisted
          my identity.

The Id is only Present Tense Alive,
focused on immediate needs
and drives flowing bodily, incessantly,
facing only nowness craving sensuality---
The Super-Ego, Conscience, has future schemes.

Past-positive: In the good old days...
Past-negative: My childhood was painful...
Present-hedonistic: I want some fun now...
Present-fatalistic: Que Sera, Sera
Future-options: Here is the schedule for tomorrow...
Transcendental-future: We want to go to Heaven...

Time is an idea about
how objects/things interact,
move from place to place,
appear and disappear untraced,
are at our hands for work and play.

Our naive perceptions of Time,
Sequenced cause-effect Directionality,
Time headed south for sleepy entropy--
Was this merely my subjective Kantian processing;
or is it true of Nature's own activities?

Kant holds that we can't have any experience
unmediated by our internal mental temporal
modes of being and understanding. Time is
constructed by our minds.

The ticking of the metronome:
It's a lie told by a machine.
My heartbeat
is a truth
told by my body.

"I am that which I am" and
I am that, in some ways, what I am now,
Partly what I was just yesterday, and
Likely what, in many ways, what I will later become.
I am many states of things in time.

Not being a divine being,
I'm sort of out of my league.
But I still play first base in loosing games.

When my earthly mind thinks
about the Divine, by which,
I, via my auto-habit-mind,
Automatically ASSUME ?assume?
that the Divine Homeland MEANS

to live in a somber spiritual sacred ?sillyless?
supernatural stupendous superlative ?without bees?
sovereign, supposedly: quasi-eternal, ?or eternal?,
Special, Sublime, So and So Land. ?without trees?

Live Now in this moment
Cultivate presence within Today.
But, unwise to act exclusively
Within pleasures only of today---
Deferment of pleasure... time to delay.

In the distance
flowering almonds in bright sun
warming earth coming on
clearing away winter's glum---
Springtime travels with the sun.

"Waking up this morning, I smile,
Twenty four brand new hours are before me
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion."

     I didn't think
I would live this long
     What a unqualified surprise
          to be standing tall
on the shores of Lake Quinault.

Tasting Death someday
will end all your strife
but, it is much more Important
to really Taste Life
all along the way.

Showing its past,
Showing its present;
Showing its back
Showing its front---
A falling oak leaf.

We ourselves immersed in the Facts
Working our way from first to last,
Living each day, not our last...
Surviving here and there, in somewhere cast,
No choice in our decades, or our spatial trap.

Reality is me immersed in Reality.
Can't divest my Inter-Being
As is directly manifested in time for me.
A wondrous amalgamation of destiny.
Can't explain --- Just Let It Be.

"We can hold back neither
the coming of the flowers nor
the downward rush of the stream;
sooner or later,
everything comes to its fruition."

- Loy Ching-Yuen

We are in the middle of time.
We can exit time, at any time.
We sense-feel-think to pass time.
We pass our time in the middle of days.
Essentially, we are a living time.

Time shows it sense
In everything we know and sense.
Time ain't true or false
Winter comes on time, never faults---
My old photographs fade over time.

What is time? What do we mean by 'time'?
A noun or a verb?
Absolute or relative?
Static or changing?

Our speed is measured
Our departures clocked
Our arrivals scheduled
Our travels were planned---
We tourists took our time.

The lastingness of Mount Ranier
Fixed still aside the Salish Sea
Nature's monuments of indestructibility
Those seemingly forever lasting Things
That mark the geography of our destiny.

Time flows at different speeds
Time passed slowly for me
Time opened the future for us at dusk
Time marched to some unknown---
Is this just fantasy, or is it reality?

Time
might best be compared
to 'Folding In',
rather than spilling away---
integrating over loosing.

second by second
hour after hour
week by week
month after month---
longevity adds up

"The bad news is time flies.
The good news is you're the pilot."
- Michael Althsuler

Oftentimes,
a serious difficulty:
Is knowing when and
to then actually
come to a complete Stop.

We want to escape
the clutches of time
the body's decline
the impertinence of time---
"No Way. Your Mine." Says Indifferent Time!

Spontaneity is craved by many
not constrained by propriety,
hypocritical phony morality, false modesty...
Sensation seeking, endless stimulating TV,
Willy-Nilly buck ass free, existential triviality.

I told the Black Clouds to Run.
I asked the Deep Fog to Lift.
I questioned the Demons in the still sea.

Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment.
By Charles Taylor, 2024

Our notions of time and time-games,
hang on the changing vocabularies
we/I/you/us choose to use
in a strong logic of description-depiction
of the actual flow of time under our shoes.

Some lingering
around discussions about some
     philosophical matters
now appeared pointless these days:
false, outdated, outlandish, nonsensical,
fictions, laughable, power trips ...
      often useless to me and many.
Poetry loves to rock climb
      on the Edges of Nonsense.

Elementary propositions about time
Are often more intermediate in difficulty.
Sometimes statements of staggering complexity.
Give me an example:

"I have written down all these thoughts
as remarks, short paragraphs, sometimes
in longer chains about the same
subject, sometimes jumping,
in a sudden change, from
one area to another."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Preface i

"A Man may make a Remark---
In itself---
A quiet thing
That may furnish
The Fuse unto a Spark

In dormant nature--- lain ---
Let us deport --- with skill ---
Let us discourse --- with care ---
Powder exists in Charcoal ---
Before it exists in Fire."

Here is my method:
poetically inductive,
not a logic proof,
lyrical examples here,
not one case to make a case.

Giving instances,
examples that illustrate,
metaphors that play,
quintains that articulate,
showing time in different ways.

Like a choral group's
song in decent harmony,
and resonating,
these poems jog memories.
Pointing to Time's complexity.

"My goal is to take a broader approach, tackling the
enigma of time from several different directions,
each with its own perspective and insights --- and its
own track record of successes and frustrations."
- Dan Falk, In Search of Time

"ma ma" in two seconds of time
"Hey Jude" in three seconds of time.
"Run fast away from the serious danger now"
Needs more processing time;
More time for breaking meaning down.

Spoken works have a special flow in time.
Dangerous events can slow or stop a mind's time.

"The "now", the moment, has temporal
duration--- of around three second segments."

Time is not some thing
among other things;
It is a word
floating on vocabularies
speaking of changing things.

You can add up time
You can squander time
You can divide up time
You can wait for the right time
Does not really make sense at times.

A game: choose at random
five of my TTT quintains or one-liners,
read them slow or fast as you pace desires,
do they resonate together, do they amplify,
do they shed a spotlight on a touch of time.

The little selected batch of Remarks,
like a Tarot spread insightful,
maybe or maybe not they show---
a clarity, a transparency, a linguistic density,
and echoes of resonances enriching the whole.

"What is Time?"
For Wittgenstein:
An unsolvable question,
Complex nonsense,
A muddled up mess.

How many uses
can you
think about for the word 'time'.
Teach me how to use time-words.
Take your time. I have a lifetime.

Time, Way         Year, Day
Thing, Day         Person, Man
Person, Man      Thing, Hand
Year, World       World Time
Life, Hand          Life, Way

                  Life, Way
                 Year, Day
                This, Hand
                Person, Man
               World Time

"i before e, except after c' = Rule.
before now
now after before
later after now
now before later

Many have hung their philosophy
On the sober or silly rack of poetry
Proselyting their opinions on morality
Providing profound snapshots of reality
Encouraging our gratitude for vibrant vitality.

In the beginning was
not the Logos-Word.
In the beginning was
the body and brain.
Words hitched a ride and came.

What can be written:
was written
is being written
will be written---
the limits of our languages can be stretched!

Objects are Intertwined:
Inter-breeding like space and time
Inter-acting like brain and mind
Inter-relating like the drummer and the band
Inter-locking like fingers and hand

     Time is Objectified:
Counted, tallied, recorded, traded;
     Clock hands moving, telling time;
     Carrion bells singing hours at nine---
Time eats everything; Objects dissolve.

     Time is Personified:
Grim Reaper, Stork Baby, Dorian Gray;
     Talking Time Machines, Killer Shark AI;
Old man with a crooked gray cane;
     Eternal Goddess in a perfectly lazy Sky.

     We travel via Time:
All the time, consistently, logically,
Relentlessly, unavoidably, inexorably...
     But, realistically--- Entropy ---
     Closes the Past with a slap!

Words, thankfully, are Free
To thumb their noses at reality
To toss time-places-people randomly a'round
To invent a Supreme Fiction for us to See---
To create a timeless Heaven for Eternity.

Soil, sea, sun, time, rain, sky ...
Five Elements embracing,
Intertwined in mind.
Unfathomable Matrix;
Scaffolds on scaffolds

Grounded in Otherness.
Below sky, gardener, time, bees, soil,
seeds, leaves, stems, roots, water...
Below wet cells embraced,
Below atoms dancing on Time's Energy...

Deeper and deeper below
Into What? beyond Time...
A Plenitude, a sacredness.
Emptiness in full bloom.

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor,
summer an oil painting and autumn a
mosaic of them all."
- Stanley Horowitz

Can the bell sing
before it is struck?
Can infants think
before they can talk?
Think before you Speak!

Seeing a red apple
increases the likelihood
that ravens are colored black.
A poet said
"All poets are liars."

Bundled Up, Volume 1
Wakas, Quintillas, Tankas, Quintets
Quintain Poems 1 - 1,000

Bundled Up, Volume 2
Gogyohkas, Limericks, Wakas
Rhymes, Remarks, Listenings, Insights
Quintain Poems 1,000 - 1,500

Bundled Up, Volume 5
Quintain Sonnets, Time, TextArt, Koans, Remarks
Quintain Poems 2,500 - 3,000

Bundled Up, Volume 6
Quintain Sonnets, Time, Language, Delight
Quintain Poems 3,000 - 3,500

Bundled Up, Volume 7
Quintains, Delight, Nature, Remarks, Tankas
Quintain Poems 3,500 - 4,000

Whereof you cannot speak; don't be surprised.
Some will be silent, and plenty will speak.

Words might communicate, work might communicate,
music might communicate, painting might communicate.
Silence might say a little or a lot--- occasionally.

"Be silent," mystics advise
They have no information to provide.
No facts to confirm or verify.
No perfect picture to open our eyes---
They ought to be silent; but they tell poetic lies.

Listen to the silence
it says nothing now,
not a peep of timeless words,
no past vocabulary to intervene---
silence, finally, wordless Being.

"To obtain the valuE
of a Sound, a movemenT A bird flies.
measurE from ZERo.
Pay attention to wHAT
IT Is, just aS IT iS."

In Wonder our sense of time is uncovered,
and its tangled roots of Being are by the
Logos-Words exposed.

The numinous was nearby
As close as my skin fully alive
And an intense profoundness was realized
And a peace infused my soul revived---
What to say? Silence hardly tried.

Reality is me immersed in Reality.
Can't divest my Inter-Being
As is directly manifested in time for me.
A wondrous amalgamation of destiny.
Can't explain --- Just Let It Be.

Remembering is time, forgetting is time.
Black lines of scripture tell times,
Great and small doubts reveal time,
Hungry ghosts and naked demons are time,
Newborn Gods were conceived in time.

Death is time, and conception is time.
Vulgar time, broken time,
Our time, space-time, in time,
The Right time, before time, Sublime time,
Standard time, beyond time, past time.

Dream Time of a still body-mind is time.
Time and Time again,
Explaining All and not
explaining any-thing.

Proceeding upstream
From here-now to way back when
Looking for causes
Tracking etymologies
Answering authentically.

The Claws of the Enigmatic
Pried open my ho hum soul
Showed me mystical realms of being.
Granted me, for hours, blissful ecstasy.
Opened my mind, for months, to alternative realities.

That, truly, deeply affected me.
I, truly, treasured such fond memories.
But, truly, it's my ordinary daily living, you see,
The worldly life, strange, passing, odd, oblique...
Reality wears the Enigmatic Time Brand.

The Epiphany, the excitement, the Flash
Came to me like metallic lightening:
Instantly, Directly, Momentarily, Intimately, Timely.
Unasked for wonder filling me---
The Mystical showed itself willingly.

I've experienced rapture
dozens of times.
The world never changed,
life remained the same,
the rapture was in my mind.

Happenings together
Where my Now and Where are tethered,
Making me where and how I am---
By living in our world Now
In my times in this strange land.

The radical astonishment
At what now Is
In the open clearing of givenness
Present in changing totalities
Real things in the sunshine of life.

Standing at the Mysterious Pass
Centered in the Eternal Now,
Balanced in Body and Open in Mind,
Rooted into the Sacred Space,
Motionless as the Golden Mountain

Fingers around the Primeval Sphere.
Dragons and Tigers are still dreaming
Ready for Rebirth.
I breathe in, the World Breathes Out.
The Gate of Space opens

Heaven moves and Yang is born.
The hands move out, embracing the One.
The mind settles and is clear.
The Dragon Howls,
Ravens fill the Vast Cauldron

Mind forms melt like mercury,
Spirit rises in the Clouds of Eternity.
Yin appears like the moon at dusk.
I breathe out, the World Breathes In.
The Doors of Emptiness close

Earth quiets and Yin is born.
The hands move in, entering the One.
The body settles and becomes whole.
The Tiger Roars,
The Great Ox is nourished by the Valley Spirit

Substances spark from flaming furnaces,
Essence roots in the Watery Flesh.
Yang appears like the sun at dawn.
Dragons and Tigers
Transformed within the Mysterious Pass

Opening bell
echoes from the canyon walls---
raindrops on the river.
The sounds of rocks bouncing off rocks;
the shadows of trees traced on trees.

I sit, still.
The canyon river chants,
moving mountains.
The sermon spun on the still point:
dropping off eternity, picking up time;

Affecting all the molecules in me
the pull of the moon and sea
feeling the call to walk the shore
Smiled, opened the door

Tides and time sent signals to me
to step nimbly over epiphanies
seen flipped over in the turning sands
Surprised, opened my hands

Waiting for nobody but me
a fleck of cold fire
flung out on this fleck of space
Sang out, loved this place

Shore pines paint a background scene
short stubby crooked trees
swaying gently in the salty breeze
Unruffled, I found tranquility

Stunned by the crisp clean colors
savoring the scents of the sea
enchanted by the incessant singing surf
Awakened, calming reveries

Pointing to the ineffable realization of
insights known to me alone
erupted up from our sensory realities
Profound, not foreknown

Such awakenings come and go
sometimes fast or sometimes slow
unpredictable visions playing peekaboo
Pausing, not thinking too

Slogging up and down the dunes
breathing hard on que
one step up, a half-step back
Stopping, beautiful view

A romantic couple passes me
by on the thin path through sea grass;
we nod, mumble "hello", step aside,
Thinking, will love last

What I see is painted by me
created for free in a brain for me
suckled from the breasts of reality
Pondering, reality or illusory

I practiced outside today
the Practice of the Outside Way
I figured a a few things out
Understanding, what Place's say

Tip toeing over bull kelp strands
stepping on broken shells
avoiding the driftwood piles ever moving
Listening, a virtual foghorn knells

A friendly dog off-leash comes to me
seeking a gentle pat and pet
desiring a kind human face to see
Laughing, she was wet

My grand daughter and I once walked
beside an Oregon dune
not very long ago it seemed to us
Remembering, gone too soon

"But because truly being here is so much;
because everything here apparently needs us,
this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more.
And we too, just once. And never again.
But to have been this once, completely,
even if only once: to have been at one
with the earth, seems beyond undoing."

An artwork makes space for spaciousness, opens up,
elevates, takes time away from the mundane.

A decade can define a new 'Style.'
A Era's style can expand or contract; by definition.

Art is a way of imagining the future, reimagining the past,
and revitalizing the present.

"Music depicts certain outlines of Being---
Its ebb and flow, its growth, its upheavals,
its turbulence." - Maurice Merleau-Ponty

A shredded snake skin
on my shelf with shells,
stones, feathers, and bones,
some fancy trilobite fossils
200 million years old.

     book unopened
          hidden potential
covered insights
closed ideas
     Waiting...

The Chariot in Tarot lore,
On Plato's model of Self-Control;
The Charioteer, Reason, holding the reigns
Controlling, balancing, now and future Two
Steeds pulling correctly to their destiny.

Saying the same old things
about the same old past things, is
like installing a clock above the door, or
like bragging about trivial deeds---
Not turning on the road to Contemporary Creativity.

An eager face staring into the Rich Silence
Of mirrored space devoid of mind;
Not projecting or connecting, but reflecting.
Supreme non-fictions, Things
Naked as they are, as they are.

Inevitably, as sunshine blares on stones,
Green erupts from Brown.
Curiosity Swings across the Mind
past junkyards of ideas, peeling metaphors,
rusting rhymes, and concrete cliches,

Into the Center of Imagination City!
We are as we are:
Twofolds, Fourfolds, Eightfolds of
Realities and Possibilities.
Pushing on. Pushing on!

The totality of facts
not things
meant truth to him
philosophically—
that is, pictorially.

The past is like a heavy wet wool jacket,
beautiful to look at, but
difficult to move in.

My son and I
on the White Mountains west side
hiking amongst
stunted Bristlecone Pines and the
Methuselah tree: 4,857 years old.

My wife is 78. I am 80.
As of March 17, 2026: St. Patrick's Day.
We have been married for 59 years.

Beauty appeared
before my eyes
suddenly
when my mind
payed attention differently

Beauty is best savored s l o w l y
not in the bustle of simultaneous
multiplicities overstimulating me,
drowning me in raging streams images and banalities---
I want more time for less harried complexity.

When people often read, they change.
When people pay close attention, they change.
When people practice mindfulness, they change.
When people step back and carefully observe, they change.
When we are changed, the artful life emerges.

Keep a little distance
from everyday eyes, less practicality,
a psychic distance, aloofness,
and objects will emerge as art
producing new insights and surprises.

Our changing experiences
Overlaid with organic meaning fine
Art in your everyday experiences
Enriching our unfolding lives---
Music invites us to Dance.

Works of art have a thingly nature in time:
The are exchanged for decades between galleries and museums.
They hang on walls for years along with trophies and clocks.
They are sounds from current CDs and MP3s of musical history.
When do we know they are "art"?

"There is something stony in a work of architecture,
wooden in a carving, colored in a painting, spoken
in a linguistic work, sonorous in a musical composition."

Speaking of Time: The Poetic Investigations, Part 2
Another Crop of Gardening Thoughts
A Gardener's Sutra on Time, Part 2.1

A garden recreates itself daily; we seldom
     step into the same garden thrice.
We don't erase the past, we just build more
     and bigger blackboards.
The present is made from the past.
Time creeps, walks, runs and flies---
     it is all about moving things.
Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.

How can gardening be considered
     a "leisure time" activity?
Always leave extra time for unraveling the hose.
Gardeners turn into the soil their lifetime.
Time may wait for no man,
     but seems to muddle and poke
     quite slowly for gardeners.
Springtime for birth, Summertime for growth;
     and all Seasons for dying.

Put the right plant in the right place at the right time in
     the right way - and you won't go wrong.
Winter does not turn into Summer; ash does not turn
     into firewood - on the chopping block of time.
A garden flourishes in the mind's time of last season,
     next season, and now.
Gardening requires no commuting time.
In the right place at the right time,
     tomato worms on tomato vines.

The Onion Garden, a concrete poem by .m.p.g.

Your pocket knife will be its dullest at just the right time.
Gardening is the right sport for a lifetime of pleasures.
Gardening sometimes takes a few hours of a day,
but adds weeks of pleasure to your life.
The time you have wasted on your garden
is what makes it priceless.
One purpose of a garden is to stop time in one place.

Annuals disappear, shrubs perish, trees die, and
     gardeners are buried; death is the flower of time.
In an instant there is nothing - Time produces Nature.
By the time you peel off five layers of reality,
     it's hard to recall the first.
It's a long time between my garden
     and the Pacific Ocean.
Time will tell, but we often fail to listen.

The "eternal truths" are sometimes clearly false.
Gardening teaches us to take our time, slow down,
     and wait in peace.
Gardeners learn to live in worm time,
     bee time, and seed time.
Time will not pass you, but it will follow
     very close behind you.
Preparation and follow up take up
     more time than doing the deed.

Springtime flows in our veins.
Silence - never misquoted, sometimes misunderstood,
     often meaningful.
Leave enough time for some pointless behavior
     to reveal your deeper desires.
The seed idea for "God" is springtime.
Things always go downhill, fall apart, wear out...
     the arrow of Time pierces everything.

Time prevents too much from happening at once.
A million years and a second have the same
     feeling for the dead gardener.
All metaphors aside - only living beings rise up in the Springtime;
     dead beings stay quite lie down dead.
Any gardener who is not using the scientific method
     will waste time and money.
Take the time to melt into the Details.

Time is rooted in Place.
Most of the time, we just borrow from the past.
Sometimes the present alters our interpretation of the past;
most often the past surrounds and infects the present.
Time is on your side when you are young.
Leisure can open a window to the breezes of insights,
and a clear view of the Trees of Time.

Harvesting Onions 2006
Red Bluff, California
.m.p.g.

We get things done when there is little time left.
Our cash limits and time constraints both prune our gardens.
The second hand of time ticks on---
measuring our past, time after time.
Beings are Becomings---for the time-being.

Perfection can be the opponent of betterment.
Without vagueness we are bored with literalness.
Borderline cases are where events become really interesting.
I may not be able to precisely define religious nonsense,
but I know it when I hear it.

A coastline may be impossible to measure,
     but is still beautiful.
You can’t slowly boil the frog unless
     it can’t jump out of the pot.
A “heap” of something desired becomes an issue
     when the price is discussed.
Gratefully, shit happens!
The ten thousand things are more enchanting
     than the Silent One.

Walking needs earth, space, and the walker.
Sometimes, just one 'thing' is critical
because twenty other 'things' are just so.
Gardening is a kind of deadheading---
keeping us from going to seed.
Don't interfere, be still, and listen to the litanies of bees.

Tooth and nail, and the stench of a dead animal on the wind.
When life gives you onions, it stinks.
A rake is spaces held together by steel.
In the student's mind there are few possibilities,
in the teacher's mind there are many;
but only time to realize very few.

Mother Nature is always pregnant.
Time creeps, walks, runs and flies -
it is all about moving things.
Dogmatists are less useful than dogs.
Take life with a grain of salt, and a icy margarita.
The best things in life are more expensive than you think.

Rather than "love mankind," I'd rather admire a few good people.
Some flourish when crowded together, others don't.
Garbage In, Compost Out.
It is more about You and Now, rather than Them and Back Then.

While gardening the borders between work
and play become blurred.
When gardening, look up more often.
Just the right words can be worth more
than a thousand pictures.
Death's door is always unlocked.
A flower needs roots; beauty a society of minds.

A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.
A working hypothesis is far better than a belief.
Only two percent of all insects are harmful.
Why are they all in my garden?
Create your own garden, the god's certainly won't.
That something is eternal is unverifiable.

Most laws of Gardening are merely local ordinances.

Too save some time, don’t let them get a foot in the door.
Some slippery slopes are actually improvements or fun.
Butterflies and bees flapping their wings don’t actually
create hurricanes, but we are very thankful they facilitate
the emergence of fruits in the billions.
Without metaphors we can barely speak.

Just because you reject the big request, don’t be
     fooled into accepting the smaller request.
Finding a middle ground for agreement may
     be just half of a solution, and the wrong solution.
Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd is quite unwise and unfair.

Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.

Failures, disorder and death are the
     Grim Reaper of Entropy at work.
Somehow, someway, everything gets eaten up, someday.
The meaning is lost in the saying - a nature mystic's dilemma.
Vigorous gardening might help more than a psychiatrist's couch.
A gardener is no farmer, he is much too impractical.

No garden lasts for long - neither will you.

Shade, in the summer, is as precious as a glass of water.
A wise gardener knows when to stop.
Gardens are demanding pets.
Unclench your fist to give a hand.
The little choices day after day are the biggest issue.

Gardening is but one battle against Chaos.
When life gives you onions, you ain't making lemonade.
Many friendships are sustained by a mutual
hatred of another person or group.
Read until you go to seed.
What you see depends on when you look.

Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener her slave.

One's "true self" is changing and elusive.
A little of this and a little of that, and some exceptions -
these are the facts.
Does a plum tree with no fruit have Buddha Nature? Whack!

Pulling Onions by Mike Garofalo
Over 1,000 random quips, one-liners, aphroisms, sayings,
bullets, onions, and "insights" from an old gardener.

Speaking of Time: The Poetic Investigations, Part 2

13. Social: ethics, morality, will, manners,
economics, fate, freedom, work, good

Time is money--- cash or credit.
Time is money--- early or late.
Money is a working tool of time.

When we cannot forgive those who hurt us
way back when; forgetting about them
is our future improved.

He forgot what time it was
And arrived to late to catch the train
To join his wife in Bellingham.
Lateness screwed up his day, he had more to pay, and
He was late for meetings later that day.

"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it,
but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can
spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back."
- Harvey MacKay

Outside as distinct
from Inside;
Others as distinct
from Self?
Inter-being Compromise.

Freedom of the will is constrained
by sensible knowledge of the future
by using antecedent causes and reasons for
Finding ways for your family to survive---
Don't pretend to not know your future.

Reality does not "just happen"
like snow in Vermont, or
like sunshine in Death Valley---
It spills from our stupidity; from
Our selfish mendacity.

Time creates emotions.
Setting things in motion.
Stopping beings from more commotion.
Opening up strong or weak emotions---
Waiting is an emotion.

I was raised in different times.
Not these over-paced, too thin, too restless,
Overworked daily utter grinds.

Instead I favor a gentler pace, rain, sunshine,
And patient bees busy at the critical times.

"A man who dares to waste time has not
discovered the value of life."
- Charles Darwin

Always keeping your mind
Fixed on the Future; or,
Always keeping your mind
Fixed on the Present...
Either way tarnishes the quality of life.

The real test of your freedom
Is not doing whatever
You want to do now; but,
Doing what you don't want to do later.
True freedom demands saying "No! to Now"

"Life is all about timing - the unreachable becomes
reachable, the unavailable becomes available and
attainable. Have the patience, and wait it out.
It's all about timing."
- Stacey Charter

Caring is the urge to help
     To protect those and what I value most
     To engage with others to create our time
     To share with others so WE survive
          To show I really care in hard times

He became more efficient
Using less time to get more tasks done
Working smarter and faster
Saving time and money for the company...
And his pay stayed the same.

14. Philosophy: ethics, history, analysis,
arguments, logic, rhetoric, Being/beings,
things, metaphysics

Being is the flux of becoming.
Somethings changing every day.
Nothing static, fixed, just the same.

Time is a non-symbolic beingness
Signifying what it is, what Is
Beyond its misnamed Names.
Pointing to Change, Motion, Acts, Facts.
Being integral to birth and death.

Fleeting attributes slip, don't stick,
It nature is not nondescript,
It comes and goes like scheduled planes
Slips by my tongue, rules my brain,
It turns pages in the Book of Life.

Enchanting more than understanding
Time teases with new possibilities
All creations are divisions of past things
A splitting up of Reality into Temporarily
The fiction of the Now stabilizes Being.

Not using certainty
As a functional criterion;
Frees us to find
Reliable solutions to our
Time Related Problems at hand.

Logical analysis and systematic visions,
Dominate our scientific sense of precision,
Objective, observable, repeatable deeds,
Lead us down narrow Knowing Streets;
This limits the scope of philosophy, artistically.

Does our alloted time
determine our reality?
Or, does reality
determine our allotted time?
Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

"To live is so startling it leaves
little time for anything else."
- Emily Dickinson

Things tell time
Time is revealed in things
Things embody time.
Without things is timelessness
Things matter all the time

The lavender Wisteria blossoms say it's April.
Sunlit porch tell you it's an overcast morning.
Old man, 75, sits in a chair.
A book can only be read now.
Book = Moshe Feldenkrais, The Potent Self, 1985

"It is like clouds rising in the sky: suddenly there,
gone without a trace. And it is like drawing a pattern
on water: it is neither born nor passes away. This is
cosmic peace and eternal rest. When it is enclosed,
it is called the matrix of the realization of suchness;
When it emerges from the enclosure, it is called
the cosmic body of reality."
- Ma-tsu

What is the meaning (Sinn)
Of Being (Sein)? I inquired.
The earth was our holy homeground,
For our limited time; history engulfed us,
we acted entangled in our daily life.

Was the topic
the being of Being, or
the Being of beings?
Or, the time of Time, or
the Time of times?

Time-Being intertwined
The timing of Time conceptualized
The Being of beings in lives alive
the times of our lives wherein Being thrives
beings here and now realized.

The theology of the Being of beings
Is muddled, strange, a thicket of thoughts;
impenetrable, trivial, clunky, or false.
The philosophy of the being of Beings,
Likewise, needs a whole new language game.

That subtle isness and whatness
That deep Quidity of a real being,
A unique presence revealed to me,
Slowly over long periods of time,
Areness implicit in changing scenes.

wood chairs hug the table
never choosing to move
content with calm motionlessness,
always still in simple pure Satori---
Unsuffering, even with a repaired broken leg.

Yes, I am a thing:
mostly made of water moving,
calcium essents keeping my bones in place,
a bloody mass of nerves for a brain.
Beyond all these --- a human being.

Gold Star = gardening, walking, working,
listening, eating, loving, thinking, silence,
helping, uplifting, supporting, etc.

Silver Star = saying, poetic, musical, artistic,
sensitive, humorous, metaphorical,
figurative, creative, uplifting

Bronze Star = clear, verifiable, logical,
definite, declarative, decidable, literal,
descriptive, factual, reality

A specified/defined event
occurred on Friday
but not on Sunday;
But not at the same time
on the same Tuesday.
(E v ~E) Today
(E ^ ~E) This Week

P It was the case that______ 1
F It will be the case that______2
G It will always be the case that______3
H It always was the case that______4

1. the water was polluted
2. "what?", examples?? It will very likely be the case that___.
3. 2+2=4
4. oxygen and hydrogen made water

Facts about things are useful indeed
"Facts" are said by both who and when
"Truths about time" became falsehoods now.
The Thing-Totality of Our World
Is Shown, not said; but translated by "facts."

The world I know
Is present for me:
in memories, feelings, body, brain;
in pictures, letter, notes, names;
in my blunders for which I'm ashamed.

Is nothing the case?
Seems a mistake.
Like a reductio ad absurdam clam bake,
When nobody came,
early or late.

Or, it's not the case that the world
is everything that is the case.
What? Strange? A fly buzzing in a bottle.
That "Fish fly to Seattle" is not the case
still tells us something about the world we make.

Or, is it that not everything
in the world is the case.
That suggestion
that's leaning towards truth
in some comforting familiar manner...

Appeals to my communal action words, and
My idiosyncratic individual voice in time.
!! No, Resist, this is not the useful path. !!

Was it:
Was it the case once in the past or not?
Is it now th case or not?
Will it ever be the case or not?
Was everything ever the case? Ever?

We enjoyed those playful games:
wrestling with hypothetical cases,
to find a imaginary treasure chest,
watching the film detective solve the case,
Until he broke the lock on her case.

The fly was coached/coaxed
Out of the bottle;
The mind was coached
Out of useless tendencies.
Occasionally, Wittgenstein's methods worked.

Presentism time theory
General Block time theory
Moving Spotlight time theory
Ordinary Realistic time theory
What theory next? Next year?

Perdurantism
A four-dimensional moving Worm;
Not wholly present at any one moment in time
And extended in space-time.
Like sleeping by a river in the wintertime.

Did Schopenhauer play the flute at ten?
Did Kant walk everyday at noon?
Did Socrates wrestle for fun at nine?
Was Marcus Aurelius an Emperor?
Was Martin Heidegger a Nazi stooge?

Bad karma bleeding
over centuries of hate
a heartless eye for a blind eye
a toothless scream for another
fate, fate, fate...

By this year, 2026, Israelis
have killed 40,000 Palestinians.
Whats New? Just Old Terrible News!
Hutis killed 600,000 Tutsis in 1994.
Nazis killed 2,000,000 Jews in 1942.

My dad was a fact of my life,
For 50 years a fact of reality.
He died, time moved on,
His fixed factuality grew dim.
Once his case back when, not his case Now;
And not everything remained the same.

My wife is 78. I am 80.
As of March 17, 2026: St. Patrick's Day.
We have been married for 59 years.

I do contain multitudes
of memories, facts, and clues.
Multitudes of histories
lived by me and you.
Multitudes of forgotten news.

How did Infinity fit in the palm of your hand?
Mathematics and physics had a new plan.
How did Biology grow in time?
Darwin connected changes aligned.
A Paradigm shift quickly began.

Forever is time with no end.
One Infinity = Eternity, Sempiternity, Forever, Timeless...

Death and eternity are co-existing realities.
Do the dead exist in the nothingness of eternity.?

What was God doing
before he made the Earth, or
before he made Heaven or Hell?
How in hell can anyone answer sensibly?
Speculation is pure fantasy.

          I am not convinced that
     I will be conscious after I die.
Surviving forever is a lie.
     And eternity 'no-where' an enigma.
     A riddle outside our space and time.

"If mind departs, its loyal comrade, spirit,
Follows at once, vanished into air,
And leaves the cold limbs in the chill of death,
You need to know that mind and spirit both
Are born in living creatures, and are mortal."

I belong to infinity
intimately every day
Inside a Milky Way Galaxy
where Gravity with space-time plays...
Infinity in instants, that's me.

I must see the Sea again;
A mystery; I don't know why.
I see a Vastness, wide as Time;
Before my surprised eyes!
A glimpse of Free Eternity.

Can you smell the cathedral
Can you see the past
Can you feel the invisible
Can you taste the future
Can you hear the call of Wonder

"But at my back
I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity."

The skulls and bones filled the walls,
Whole skeletons of children were hung askew,
The bony fingers of women decorated the altar...
And words were etched into the tile wall,
A message for the living, it called:

# 9, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 61, 295, 332, 361, 494, 523
# 609, 629, 659, 725, 748, 794, 832, 875, 891, 898
# 918, 929, 940, 978, 988, 1027, 1046, 1057, 1061, 1070, 1138
# 1149, 1168, 1216, 1246, 1274, 1295, 1503, 2459, 2504
# 2505, 2509, 2513, 2516, 2522, 2547, 2561, 2563, 2583
# 2590, 2597, 2617, 2622, 2623, 2643, 2648, 2649
# 2652, 2663,2685, 2727, 2728, 2733, 2739, 2757
# 2767, 2768, 2769, 2831, 2858, 2864, 2866, 2872, 2890
# 2891, 2892, 2918, 2932, 2933, 2934, 2935, 2943
# 2945, 2988, 2995, 3007, 3010, 3012, 3013, 3073
# 3102, 3103, 3120, 3127, 3131, 3137, 3142, 3145, 3146, 3151
# 3152, 3154, 3155, 3179, 3182, 3187, 3192, 3198, 3206
# 3219, 3228, 3233, 3239, 3244, 3247, 3250, 3251
# 3252, 3254, 3255, 3259, 3260, 3261, 3263, 3264
# 3265, 3266, 3267, 3269, 3273, 3283
# 3303, 3316, 3323, 3325, 3328, 3337, 3338
# 3340, 3343, 3345, 3347, 3348, 3349, 3353, 3354
# 3355, 3365, 3367, 3371, 3374, 3385
# 3391, 3407, 3418, 3425, 3431, 3438, 3441, 3499, 3450
# 3451, 3452, 3481, 3496, 3497, 3498, 3498, 3500
# 3501, 3505, 3506, 3507, 3509, 3511, 3513
# 3516, 3517, 3518, 3519, 3528, 3600, 3663, 3671, 3697
# 3698, 3722

#154, 155, 160, 233, 544, 846, 854, 1294, 1665, 1714, 2178
# 2427, 2501, 2643, 2645, 2654, 2675, 2687, 2688, 2723, 2730
# 2733, 2735, 2760, 2751, 2757, 2788, 2793, 2796, 2800, 2806
# 2808, 2854, 2850, 2855, 2863, 2864, 2876, 2920,
# 2928, 2935, 2983, 2989, 3517, 3519,