The Meanings of Life

What is the meaning of life
Meaning, as in the definition of a term
Life here meaning human existence
Definition of a term, as in what I mean when I say it
When I say human existence I mean the state in which people find themselves
Everyone who lives, lived, will live
The way in which they live
Some happy, some unhappy
Mostly miserable most of the time but with enough ecstasy and joy to make them glad they exist
To make them continue to exist

The meaning of life
Life, as in sequence of chemical reactions involving namely carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen resulting in deoxyribonucleic acid and the means for it to propagate itself
Meaning, as in significance
The transformation of much of the earth’s surface into the waste products of deoxyribonucleic acid’s meanings of propagation, carbon-based organisms
The propagation as such over all of the earth’s surface
Deep into its oceans and earth and high into its atmosphere
The construction of dwellings from non-carbon materials by the most advanced propagator of deoxyribonucleic acid
Permanently altering the shape of the world
The use of such non-carbon materials to carry deoxyribonucleic acid into the void beyond the atmosphere
Perhaps someday to other heavenly bodies
To reduce their stone to earth and to make carbon soup of their seas

The meaning of life, as in a phrase containing a significance wholly apart from that contained in ‘meaning’ and that contained in ‘life’
Something to do with why people exist
A projection of the process of human reasoning, of reason, onto the inhuman world
Often involving consideration of human-like entities, who variably create, control and interact with the human and inhuman world
Why people exist, to please such entities, to serve such entities, to love such entities, to defy such entities, to be the whim of such entities
Alternately, such entities exist to satisfy the projection of reason onto the unknowable, the unreasonable

Why people exist
Why, for what purpose
People, plural of person
Exist, be, possess form
Purpose, the ad hoc construct of human reasoning, variable as human reasoning, relative to the speaker, thinker, reasoner
Dependent upon a reasoner
Why, because of what
People exist because person cannot
Person dies, person ceases to exist
People die, growth ratio of people shrinks, slightly
Existence, measured by the human ability to detect
Subjective to the human ability to detect
People exist because they detect themselves
People continue to exist because upon detecting themselves they do not destroy themselves
Surprising at times
Humans have not yet, but may ultimately, through the manipulation of certain non-carbon materials, namely sulfur, uranium, plutonium, and hydrogen, destroy themselves
Most likely without the intent to destroy themselves, or rather all of themselves
People, upon occasion, in singularities, destroy themselves
With intent to destroy themselves
Such people detect themselves, but do not wish to continue to detect themselves
Do not wish to continue to exist, for a variety of reasons, as a result of a variety of reason
Why people exist, because such people never constitute all of, or all but one of, or all but any number of one sex of, all people
People exist because of a variety of reason

Meaning, the definition of the term
Life, everyone who lives, lived, will live
Mankind
Practical definition of mankind
The world, as it is and has become, product of gravity, nuclear energy, and deoxyribonucleic acid
Carbon based life living life with meanings
Why, because they can

Assorted Microprose on the Sea

The Dead Sea Lion
There lay at my feet a dead Sea Lion, bloated and burst. Putrid beyond even the taste of a scavenger, gathered to only by flies and sand flees. Either gases or barnacled stone had torn out its chest, ribs exposed and behind them the cavity of its once being. All through the day I heard its kind bellowing their will out on the reefs and isles I was forbidden to approach. Far out of sight their roars carried yet all that we saw of them was this stinking carcass. Approaching upwind I hardly noticed it, lying like another rotting and infested log, dark and worn by the sea, yet to be bleached sol’s whiteness. The sea threw this one back, this and no other. These lustrous beasts make their home in the waves but the sea remembers its betrayers. Those foolish souls that wandered ashore. This lion but died, it is on us that Poseidon exacts his vengeance, upon out paltry flounderings and thrashing about that the might of the ocean is known.

North Atlantic
A white, glimmering cloudscape for which we have not words, plains and mountains and canyons of vaporous solidity.
I marvel that no poet has put this spectacle to lines, to decry this fleeting wonder I am the first. This then is perhaps the last unfixable beauty, ever-shifting storms forever re-forming this panorama.
It is a thing unbound and eternally becoming, no men can ever inhabit this airy paradise. These bodiless lands will never fall into the machinations of realm and fief.
Beneath it and through it the vast ocean shines, ripples blue and capped with white until they crash unto the icebound cliffs of nordic legend. Dark and glaciated mountains chiseled by rime and gail descending into a frigid desert, cracked where wind has worn to the ice the fields and hills of snow.
High above sea and cloud we fly, spanning seas that once seemed to border the very earth. They once said that at the edge of this ocean was a mighty precipice, waters churning into the void. And now we soar over it without a thought to its power, these swells and currents that once girded the lives of men.

No Such Compass
I heard once in a bawdy tale of a compass that points to whatever one wants most. And into my mind came crowding issues of the nature of possession and objective states and the desires of dead wood and the composition of objects but all of this was soon realized to be void for there was no such device, and so its depths cannot be queried. And then from the hours spent in knowing futility, in restless laxity, came another thought. In my core there must be a deepest desire, though I cannot seem to know it. If any such compass came into my hands I would follow it, fix its course by map and divine what I could be seeking and pursue it with all vigor. Neither mountain nor man nor even the chasmic seas would halt me.
But I know not this course for I have not that compass for there is no such earthly field to guide it. Were this even not true I somehow doubt such a device’s analytic powers, if I am so unearthly blank how could iron delineate my being? And thus I am lost. Adrift. Plying my fears and my wares until Ragnarök unbinds the world.

The Boy and the Petrel

There once was a child born in the verdancy of a warm and gentle earth. And he slept on the shore of the sea. There came a time when he awoke and saw that all was askew, tasted that the water was salty and felt that the stones were rough. So did he flee into the woods and vales and dwelt among the people there, who lived their world a simple and unaltering path. He grew fat on their fare, sick with their drink, for he had not been born among them, though in the end of it they too could not stomach their being. So did he flee to the sea, to its wild ferocity and earthgrinding power. And into it he leapt and he swam until he came to a rock and there he rested and looked to the shore and saw that he had gone only a little way, and could have but waited for the tide to bring up a bridge of stone to his promontory. And he was cold and hungry and thirsty and above all else he was afraid, for he did not know where to go.
Seeing him there, so lonely and windblown, Ulmo, lord of the seas, sent to him a petrel, who alighted on the rock and spoke to him,
“Why are you here all alone?” it asked and he answered,
“None of the men of the valley would come.”
“And why was that?” the petrel asked again.
“Because they were cowards, they saw the sea and were afraid.”
“And you were not afraid?”
“I am, but I mastered my fear.”
“The why do you sit and weep?” At this the boy was angry, but he saw the lies of his soul. And he petrel spoke again,
“Did you think them utter fools, and yourself above them that you should search out what they fear? Do you know why they fear the sea? For it is why you too have not strayed from this rock”
And again the boy was angry and he answered,
“I stay only because I have not yet decided in which direction to swim.” To this the petrel said,
“The ocean is trackless, there are no paths for you to follow, swim north, west, south or east and you will either drown or be washed again upon this shore. You, who are young, should not scorn the paths of the forest men, for they live and pass their blood unto the generations to come and fear with good cause the deep waters of the world. you may live among them, or among others, but Ulmo may not spare you again if you cast yourself into the waves.”
And upon hearing this the boy wept one final time and took himself up and walked back to the forest and lived and died among the men of the wood.
And the petrel took flight and soared high above the stormy shore until it could see the light of Arien upon its dark feathers.

London Poems

Westminster Crypt

Gothic halls and pilastered colonnades,
chapels cluttered with the tombs of vile Anglo kings.
Visages engraved in stone,
Latin blessings for the tyrants of the centuries.
And through it,
among ancient buttresses and underneath high rib vaulting,
sunlit by high clerestory windows,
a murmuring unholy mob,
faithless and faceless as the moldering.
Blaspheming this place as the dead stone pagans never could.

Cloisters where once walked Benedictines in their meditations
now lined with laymen fat and blabbering,
in whose sight this temple - a mausoleum.
Monument to a dead god and his slaughtered son,
to an age of dim ceremony and rituals whispered from sacred texts.
To a time and a place long since fallen into the earth,
so that this dwelling place of god is made a dripping crypt


Cathedral Light

The land here is flat,
far to the horizon without mountain or sea;
as if for not but the cloud wall my eyes could peer into infinity.

From high atop this byzantine spire I see all the paths of man,
cutting across the earth and sky.
And again, ringed by storms approaching,
sun swallowed up by that grey Olympus above the earth,
unto me there comes a hope.

Some divine love in the dim and reeking chambers,
searching me out and undoing all my barred gates.

That here he should come to me again,
that in this place should I see that by which the world is righted.
Mind and soul rent open and poured into the stone gutter
The sodden candle I was so desperately attempting to light
washed beyond Styx in a bloody flood.

New York – Idiocy, Luck and Caution

Upon arriving in New York I was greeted by the twisting labyrinth of Penn Station. It turns out that two stories up from the platform, in a corner that seems disproportionally small, is the baggage claim. In my defense I’m fairly sure I was not the only one confused. After another 20 minutes of wandering I managed to locate the subway and after only another 10 minutes I managed to purchase a metro card. This was the beginning of my battle with public transportation, which I have proved remarkably obtuse and unobservant in understanding, fortunately I have also been cautious, lucky and well planned, kudos to Google Maps and it’s public transportation function. On the not-so-lovely side my hostel turned out to be right in the middle Harlem, I’m believe at least 40% of the people I passed were laughing at me, my backpack looked pretty ridiculous. On guy I passed asked me how I was doing, seemed incredulous that I was fine, then said something about “we will overcome”, I’m not sure how my New York experience could have been made any more stereotypical.
New York Hostel 99 was very clearly three apartments that had been crudely retrofitted to serve as a hotel; meaning that they threw a bunch of cheap bunk beds is every available room, taped signs all over, turned the closets into “lockers” that appeared as though they had been broken open several times. Pros include the presence of a bed and free breakfast the next morning, cons include the water tasting like chlorine, the rooms being too hot, snoring roommates, having the top bunk, and breakfast not be served until 9:00. Because of the above factors, as well as my bed being slightly too short, I did not go to sleep until about 2:00.
The following events are rather muddled, and several theories will be presented. Sometime after 3:00 I woke up and managed to go back to sleep, to what extent I was asleep is debatable, as I was in a state I would normally associate with having a high fever. At 4:15 I woke up with my sinuses in agony, which faded when I got up and then finally disappeared after I left. My immediate thought was that I was allergic to something in the room, it did smell rather odd and the pain seemed to worsen when I was coved with the blankets, another theory, one which accounts for the hallucinatory dreams I was having earlier, is that I have caught some of the flu Emily and my father had before I left. On the train I considered the same ailment when I felt like complete crap the first morning, which would imply that whatever I’m fighting off I am less able to do so after only a couple hours of sleep.
Regardless of all of this after I left and began to walk downtown toward the Museum of Modern Art I started feeling much better. After a brief moment of panic when it that appeared like I might not be able to check my backpack I proceeded to explore the MoMA for approximately 2.5 hours, I don’t think that I did it justice, but by the end I was very tired of standing up (I had walked 5 miles from the hostel) and was nervous about reaching the airport on time, which I did, as in I reaching it 3 hours before my flight was going to depart. Just as I was thinking that I had finally gotten through security without issue they detected a highly suspect unidentified (soon to be) flying object in my carry-on backpack, which turned out to be my laptop cord and converter/surge protector thing.
My conclusions from the New York experience are as such, I am bad at figuring out new, transportation-related, scenarios, however, I can combat this effectively my giving myself plenty of time, allowing me to indulge my impulse to be overly cautious without undue stress. Also it appears that walking is far more enjoyable and stress-free than public transportation, what I have plenty of is time and that is the only real difference

Unpillared

please note that the line spacing is specific to the word document and thus some elements of the poem bellow are not as they were intended to be.

Unpillared

Within some great ox of industry rumbling through the land,
as an earthquake the sleeping forest-

In the night the mountains are black;
men sling lights from their lintels,
attempting to throw sight into the moorless voiding darkness.
These yellowed pools shudder past in a haste,
island ages gone nearly afore they can be sorted from the brightness

Dawn comes a sudden misting glow
Mounds of stone passing in and out of fog as morning dreams of a mind long awake.
Hills settling unto a Teton steppe

Trees dryly twisted and dark as if charred by the unfettered sun in that empty expanse.
Dry grass and sage and crisply browning aspen.
All things etched and cracked,
the chilling wind has leached out their every verdancy.

Eroded ziggurats rise out of the prairie, stained with the blood of the gods of this scrubland.
A metallic groundstone scent.
Dry-rot town in arrested decay.
Heaps of railway slag rusting.
Brackish and muddy seeps cutting - greyly - through the sod and clay.

Salt blight.
Dimming light.
Horizon sky.
Plains open and unpillared far away north until bound by tundra and glacier and sea

Amtrak: Across North America at 79 mph

Current Location: New York Hostel 99
I'm not going to post my entire trip log for the time i was on the train because it is rather mundane. it's a train, you sit there and stare out the window. the following is a summary.
it's hard to sleep on a train. it's hard to sleep when upset. it's hard to sleep when nervous. it's hard to sleep while some stupid redneck is bitching about his job four seats up. i got maybe 3 hours of sleep the first night, never for more than 45 minutes at a time.
Cities of the Plain was unusual and unexpected, Candide was hilarious, Thus Spake Zarathustra continues to blow my mind.
total number of words spoken on the train, not including returning a phone call, could not have been more than 20.