A Few Words Written In the Hope for a Style More Gnomic

 I’d like to learn 

To speak naturally

As does the gnomon

By means of shadow

And in direct translation

Of the sun

On intimate terms

With time as well

Its passing duly noted

In every utterance

As each line falls

Upon dial or page

To grasp at words

As fleet as light

In mere passing

As they shoot

Through the air

Dream of the Apocalypse

The Apocalypse was not nearly as bad as everyone had expected and feared. The day after it happened, the President gave a reassuring speech from the Oval Office talking about American resilience and strength. Only a few days later, the NYSE reopened for trading – even the futures market – and while the insurance sector took a heavy beating, tech stocks rallied and other blue chips stabilized too. Soon enough restaurants began to reopen for take-out and most airlines resumed flights on their major routes. 

We went about business-as-usual wondering how to project revenues for next year. Reilly over in finance said at our Monday meeting the end of the world was no big deal, at most maybe a 10% decline in new orders. But I thought to myself, we really shouldn’t normalize this. How the hell can this be normalized? When the Queen Bee dies, the hive quickly falls into disrepair. So how can the worker bees continue to keep up with our routine? 

Time began to move backward. During Thursday’s planning meeting I sat and watched a stink bug crawl slowly back and forth across the top of my computer monitor. I got reissued a Blackberry which I hadn’t used in more than a dozen years. 

That night I flew to England with Dr. Portofino on the red eye where I was surprised to discover it was six hours earlier not later than New York. Portofino and I had dinner with two clients and after dinner we went for a walk around what used to be Trafalgar Square. It was only half an hour before curfew and the streets of London were filled with rubble, bricks and shards of glass, post-modern ruin lay everywhere. But a large passageway had been cleared through the rubble, and the Square felt lively, with hundreds of strollers out to enjoy the warm spring air. 

Civilization has a long fat tail, Portofino said, as he exhaled a thin trail of smoke from his panatela. 

One of the clients tapped me on the shoulder and said Look isn’t that Tom Petty and sure enough it was, which seemed strange because he’d been dead for more than half a dozen years.

We Have Met the Aliens ... And They May Be Us

This morning on my dog walk I listened to a not-so-recent episode of the Ezra Klein show in which two scientists heatedly debated the risks and rewards of human attempts to make contact with alien civilizations.  (You can listen for yourself here.) The nominal news hook for this show was last year's release of a Pentagon report that begrudgingly conceded the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation as evidenced by inexplicable supersonic beeps and blips showing up on Raytheon's most advanced detection systems. It's both interesting and comical to hear these two men of science go at each other, somewhat like watching Jane Curtain and Dan Akroyd on a rerun of Saturday Night Live, only with all of human civilization hanging in the balance; even when the experts talk, they can't help but project our best and worst fears onto the very notion of aliens. 

But listening to the debate, it occurred to me that there is an altogether different explanation for these military sightings of UFOs traveling at warp speed through our airspace.  What if the aliens showing up on the radar are simply human-made aircraft from the future?  If human civilization lasts long enough to undertake interstellar travel, then surely time travel might also be on the agenda.  And as anyone who grew up reading science fiction well knows, one of the first rules of time travel is not to interfere with events as they unfold in the past, for fear of upsetting the chain of causality that supports the eternal present.  This then would explain why the Pentagon finds it so difficult to make contact with these so-called aliens.  We have met the aliens ... and they are us.  Somehow we must find a way to convince our future selves that we mean them no harm and they can approach us at no risk to us or themselves.  Given the rapacious way in which we are despoiling the planet, this may not be an easy case to make.  But so much hangs in the balance if we ever hope to arrange a rendezvous with our future selves, more mindfulness in the present is surely the best possible route.

In other words, projection may be warranted, though somewhat misunderstood, as an altogether appropriate response to such alien sightings.

@ezraklein, in case you happen to stumble across this blogpost, I have a modest request: would you please ask the NYTimes advertising department to find a sponsor for your show other than Facebook?  Much as I have enjoyed listening to your podcast, you can't help but put your credibility at risk to the extent that Mark and Sheryl continue to subsidize your musings.

 

In the Springtime of Decay

In the springtime of decay

When petals still hold firm

And the citadel of green

Has yet to fall

Nature makes

This teasing promise

In the warm soft light

Of the October day

And I hear the flowers say

All this now shall be

Ours forevermore 

And when death comes

It will start easy like

A long term layaway plan

The Algorithms of Fate

 for Robert Bly

Eat your shadow as the poet says

And that's exactly what I did

But now my shadow's eating me

Night after night nibbling my ear

Whispering the strangest of dreams

Hand coloring local maps or so it seems

Until there's a blood red tide that laps

The shoreline of Weesuck Creek

And all night long I hear the strains

Of music playing softly beneath

The balcony - a serenade

Strummed on a six string guitar

By the cold hand of fear

The lyrics I remember 

But can no way explain

The path inward and outward

Is one and the same as we

Pass through the portal

Of ceaseless change 

Back and forth in accord

With our fate whose algorithm

We grasp when it’s only too late

Of the Subtle Body

Only dimly perceived

The subtle body resides

Deep within each heave 

Of the shuddering chest

No mere replica in miniature

Being made of something

Other than flesh

A body electric

Lacking fixture or frame

Nothing but a hollow cavity

Through which energy flows

To the subtlest mind it remains

Untouchable as it oscillates

Through peaks and valleys

Animating all the rest

Beyond All Poetry

I woke up this morning standing

In my neighbor's front yard

How I got there

I have no idea

But I was looking at my life

As my neighbor sees it

Stripped of the usual self-regard

And beyond all poetry

There was a barren ledge

Overlooking a vast plain

Already familiar to me

Having spent a long time there

Sitting attuned

To the rhythms

In the cycle of breath and

Listening to the long slow rattle

From the bottom of my chest

As if I was heaving up a bucket

From a deep dark well

But there are no metaphors

To explain where

I'm going next

The road sign ahead only 

Says sssshhhhhh!

An old man is sleeping 

Beyond poetry 

Is where I always intended to go

And finally I'm here