Goodness

Goodness in a man comes in measures and portions. Each ounce a piecemeal attempt to balance his actions and deeds. What goodness apportioned him he loves till he can love it no more. And when love of it is lost he becomes an empty container, a vessel seeking a power of equal worth. But how can he gauge worth in something when he himself is bereft of all that is worthy? Yes, goodness is poured into a man, and he sups of himself because it is all that he has, in truth. In truth goodness—to be good—is so easily stolen, or so easily squandered. I would give away all my goodness just to feel nothing of its grace, to feel nothing of its guilt. Goodness becomes in a man a curse of his own making. Goodness becomes in a man a meaningless plaque and a bespoke commemoration so self-exalted that its ideal is a joke. Show me a man's goodness and I will show you a carafe that can never be filled.

"I went down to the river"

I went down to the river one afternoon, down to the waters cold as ice and old as time. I went to drink, and I went to know. Kneeling down I took a moment and I peered at the stream, and watched it course, ripple, bubble, turn and shift as it went. Cupping both hands I scooped a portion of its life and I drank. I drank and drank again. But nothing came to me. I looked at my hands, and just wondered at them. I scooped once more but this time I let the water seep through my fingers. I watched this, the waters freeing themselves of me, returning to stream. So it was that I realised that I came for the wrong reason. I had asked the wrong question. Instead, I realised at that moment that everything I held up to that point could not be held forever in my hands. And what I could keep indefinitely was not to be held but felt -- remembered -- loved. I was not meant to keep these things; I was not meant to think them mine. They were meant to course, ripple, bubble, turn and shift as they went. Just as I was meant to.

M.M.

The Scientist in Love

I am a man who thinks in very logical and reason-based terms, which is why for me science is a discipline in which I feel supremely comfortable. But as a consequence of this manner of thinking I continually struggle to understand or cope with characteristically irrational concepts such as love. This composition is about that very struggle.

"These are the better of days,

when it is science that keeps me up at night

and not love,"

he said to himself as he lay there in the dark.

The world for him was to be ordered and understood,

delineated neatly like the structure of snowflakes.

But neatly his struggle with love

certainly was not.

He could not measure the arcs and vectors

along which his emotions travelled when he thought

of Her.

The thunder, the pain, the longing,

the rain that kept falling—

in his heart there was chaos and unpredictability,

things he could not fathom in his usual way.

What rules were he to follow

in the game of love?

Where there rules even at all?

Follow one set

and he would be faced

with another.

No rules, it seemed, no order in this plane.

Why was it that he found himself

calm and collected

when tackling ideas and churning theory,

but

unsettled, unhinged and unable

to think when delving into his own heart?

And why was it that

She,

of all the people he knew, held such power over him?

He could not measure Her, could not deduce or infer

what manner of system She was.

She was a model who's every parameter just made his chest

...ache.

The logic of the universe was lost to him when his eyes

locked with Hers.

M.M. — 27-Mar-2016

"Sometimes I struggle"

Sometimes I struggle telling the difference between dream and reality.
Sometimes I am stuck in the nebulous realm between sleep and waking.
Moments when I find myself trapped in my dream-fantasies.
Especially when I dream of Her—I hold onto all that I desire of Her, all that I wish were true.
I cannot tell what is real and what is not when I am with Her,
in half-remembered memories or self-deceiving revelries.
Sometimes, in hypnopompic hallucination, I believe that She is finally mine,
that She has always been with me, without any measure of time to estimate how long.
And at these times I wish would never leave the dream, to never be ejected back into the world.

M.M. — 27-Mar-2016

The Stars and Time

When you next have a moment, take a look up at the night's sky, when it is clear and you can see the stars. And then think on this: The stars that you gaze at, those spheres of fire now long dead that are now but signatures of light streaming to our planet—those are the very same stars that everyone who lives or who has ever lived has gazed at at one point in their lives. Imagine that. What you see in your view is the same image that someone millennia before you once saw. Such perpetuity. We are but a moment of a moment in the cosmic thread of time. And of this you might think: "How small I am! How meaningless!" Because in the face of such an incomprehensible amount of time that is what any finite, self-aware being would think! But maybe it shouldn't be so terrifying. Maybe all it is is a matter of perspective. Yes, we are here, for the shortest of times, but we are here nonetheless! We are real and we exist! We are a speck in the vastness of the universe, but we are the universe! The universe as we know it simply would not be without every single speck that makes it up. And we are not meaningless. We think we are meaningless because our definition of meaning is scaled up to the level of time entire. But that doesn't make a lot of sense when everything we are and everything we know or will ever know is at the same scale as the thread of our own existence! Our definition of meaning is not at the level of the universe or of the entirety of time—our meaning is defined by the time we are alive and existent. And in that respect I think we matter quite a whole lot!

Depression (Iteration 3)

What falls in the rain
in the nighttime of the world?
I see the rain when shone by the street lamps,
each drop careering to the ground.

There are bodies hunched about themselves
rushing through the falling, with no sound but steps.
No words and no acknowledgement of me.
I cannot reach them.
I cannot connect with them. Not truly.
I do not seem to know how.
Never seemed to have known.
But I try, as they run past me.

We are all vessels I think, enclosed in ourselves.
The lucky are able to breach their shells,
to touch the faces of others.
But we who are not so fortunate
ever pick at the thickened walls
with whatever implements we come to fashion.
Hammering and picking away
with what little hope that has not yet been ruined.

Nothing but a hollowness within.

I think I know what falls in the rain:
I fall in the rain.

M.M. — 24-Mar-2016

The Scientist Dreaming

He dreamt of quantum mechanics.
Coursed down the rivulets of time and space.
In his palm there rested the sands formed in stars,
now long gone but alive in different forms.
His matter was loose within him,
though "within" lost its meaning.

In magic and momentum spun the tops of nuclei.
Every single one of them he admired in his wonder.

Diving into his own mind he found the hearth
of his soul, and the furnace of his being.
The smithy of all that churned and stirred within.
Metal or maybe electricity, perhaps a little of both.

The frames of thoughts were made known to him,
their physical bodies and their intricacies.
Their fleeting lifespans slowed to a millennium.
For through millennia upon millennia both he and they
were put together, according to nature's supreme pleasure.
What esoteric riddles were solved by him then were soon forgot.

And somewhere in the ocean of stars in the upper spheres
he caught the briefest of sights of other shapes and other forms.
Movements in the void, altering the great rhythm.
Phantoms that peered in, for but a moment.
Other minds? Other worlds? Just something other?

Bodiless at the end of his journey he found himself
somewhere warm, somewhere familiar and yet unknown.
Resting in the core of a sun he slept, or awoke, once again.

M.M. — 22-Mar-2016

On Understanding

I've been lying in my bed this Saturday morning thinking about how we come to understand a given idea, concept or phenomenon. For example, "the pursuit of happiness", where in the United States this is synonymous with the so-called American Dream. We can understand, in its whole, what it means to pursue happiness, what it means to desire it and why. But how do we come about to understand the details and nuances of such an idea? Some individuals appear to come to an understanding simply by being told or instructed of its meaning by others—whether these be parents, teachers, religious figures or the government. But that seems to me insufficient, inadequate and in some cases utterly incorrect if we want to have actual understanding about an idea. And I think the rationale behind this is sensible and straightforward: if one wants to understand the world, the world in which one exists, one must be able to define, appraise, critique and even seek to change the meaning of a given idea or phenomenon (as far as this would be possible). And in order to do these things one cannot rely on static and passive "understanding" imparted by others. One must have the ability to reason the meaning of a thing, and thereby to reason something into understanding.

How would you do this? What is meant by reasoning something into understanding? I think it really just means that you endeavour to think upon a thing from all possible perspectives, and to compare and contrast the factual and actual implications and consequences it has upon the world in which it exists. In the case of the pursuit of happiness, we can, for ourselves, define what is meant by it. But more importantly, we can come to understand what is meant by it by critically thinking about how it is sought, how realistic it is to achieve, the many manners in which it is achieved and the positive and negative consequences it has on ourselves, our peers and our society. This, I believe, is what is meant to understand.

M.M. — 19-Mar-2016

"In the early hours of the day"

In the early hours of the day, on a brisk autumn morning,
I sat on the steps leading up to the monument.
I sat and wondered at the world.
The minuteness of everything was so poignant.
A rustling of leaves, the whistling in the wind.
A father and daughter came into my view,
and at them too I wondered and pondered.
The little girl was so full of life and innocence,
the father visibly content and young as well.
What was their world like, I thought to myself?
Different from mine? The same? Something in between?
A microcosm of their own they had certainly.
I sat and watched and contemplated
on the unknown nuances of their unknown lives.
The breeze picked up a little as I sat there thinking,
reminding me that change is the only real constant in life.
How many changes had there been in my own short life?
How many of them I wished had never happened?
I did not know, but at this I wondered.
The day before, now a memory, was in itself
a moment in time distinct from all others.
Self-contained and self-defined.
A past and fleeting moment in time.
And today and tomorrow just the same.
Time, the king of all things.
Destroyer and creator.
There is nothing, really, to life but time and change.
Or so I figured, there on the steps, on a Sunday morning,
as I watched the world and it watched me.

M.M. — 18-Mar-2016

"There was a brief opening in the soul"

There was a brief opening in the soul
Lubricated by a little liquor
In I dove (or out I flew)
Up in the night's sky a canvas
One like a mirror, of reflection
The origin of all we know is ourselves
This then I came to know
Simply wayward comets careering
Trying to collide, but usually missing
I grant to you passage through an opening
But am just pierced, or passed through
Perhaps I am moved a little, but never enough
It is all but a repeated act, a dance
Today perhaps something or someone new
But tomorrow it will be just as before

M.M. — 17-Mar-2016