“Freedom is responsibility, which is probably the core of existentialist thinking.” Esther Perel (last sentence in her “On Being” Podcast Interview)
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“Freedom is responsibility, which is probably the core of existentialist thinking.” Esther Perel (last sentence in her “On Being” Podcast Interview)
"I"....by...Edgar Whitman Wilde
..in anguish it tears from within...... binding my flesh like ropes upon a mainsail...screams like the ebbing of the tide and weeps in perpetual choirs of creative impulse.....and its arrival of always goes everywhere.......:) Edgar
Silence among the lime trees...by...Edgar Whitman Wilde
Pleasure, oh pleasure sitting in silence Among the lime trees The silence of delight A perfect pardon Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees No hurry, no hurry To go anywhere While strangers offer smiles Such perfect smiles Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Magic a specialisation A practical specialisation Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees People of all kinds Come streaming by Pilot people Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees People passing with such power Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees All power is violence Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Pleasure, oh pleasure Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees No power is needed here Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Only truth and justice Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees No grievous ache remains a mystery Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees That purple mass made clear Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees An aroma here Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees An exuding stupefying aroma Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees That startles the sparrows Identical sparrows Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Other silence is unequal Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees A quivering tenor of silence Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Gilded silence that flashes Hazily across the vision Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Frenzied silence, irresistible silence Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Silence split into fragments Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Fragments that remain intact Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Silence that vanishes from sight Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees A severed silence That remains infused Golden and deceptive Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Like split up bandits On the run Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Who race up two Different boulevards Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees A day return silence Always nervous and irritable Sitting her in silence Among the lime trees A softening handsome Lilac colored silence Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Regal in its resonance Of romance Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees A silence of scarlet kerchiefs Wears a tail coat Has black raven hair Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Trying to catch spiders Rats, little devils and dogs Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Day breaks Inexorably in silence Over the poet Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees The unstoppable Silence of silence Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Such silence once started Is unstoppable Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Such as the strange silence One finds in snow Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Silence in a deserted shout Sitting here in silence Among the lime trees Oh such silent noise Such silent noise Silent noise, silent
A Contemplative Note About The Universe- and Trees
Ever think about just how ridiculously complex and complicated everything is just to exist? I had a profound moment today where I considered the depth to every conceivable thing, and it was honestly somewhat overwhelming. There is absolutely nothing that is simple, and everything that seems to be only seems that way becasue of other complicated processes making it possible.
Allow me to introduce yourself:
This is you.
Inside that oh-so-important skull of yours is the culmination of your entire being. An incredibly complex system of firing neurons and pattern recognition; A naturally occurring, biological computer. I don't know how similar an individual's mind is naturally formed to another's- but it doesn't matter. As soon as you become conscious you start to experience everything in an absolutely unique perspective that will never be replicated or even fully understood by others. Of course there's a similar template to all of them, but only on a basic level- and even then people's thought processes are still inheirently different from each other's in a vast variety of ways. But I digress.
Your brain is your every thought, feeling, sight, smell, touch, and sound. Time is completely dependent on your perception of it and the speed of your thoughts at any given moment. Otherwise it's just a conceptualization of measurement between relative movement of numerous sources (more on that another time). Scientifically speaking there is nothing about you that would continue should it cease to function.
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Think of your body as a big mech suit. And your brain is Heero Yuy.
So there you are, doing whatever it is that you do. And you are one of billions of these biological computers being supported by incredibly complex systems that serve functions all across both macro and microscopic scales. One incredibly complex organism that just happened to defeat all other odds just to exist among the other billions that also just barely managed to be brought into existence.
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BILLIONS.
We live on a planet that just happens to have everything we need. A HUGE organized mess of interweaving checks and balances. Mosquitos, ants, beavers, H2O, oxygen, salt, volcanoes, fire, clouds, storms- everything that you can think of has a direct impact on constantly overlapping status-quos, and it always comes about through constant one-in-a-million chance. Let's take the forest, full of all sorts creatures that keep our balanced ecosystem so nice and ecosystem-y. Of course the most prominent part is the trees.
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Trees. They're kind of simple, right?
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Well, I guess that is fairly complicated...
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The inside of a leaf. _ Microscopic wood photograph.
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So now lets's zoom out real fast. That single tree, full of individual leaves, each flawlessly doing a job that makes it possible for itself and other things to exist. It's one out of approximately 39,386,4182,497 trees in the world.
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There are estimated to be 60 trees per person. That's nearly forty TRILLION!
Now let's zoom out more:
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Further.
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Bingo.
Of course it doesn't even end there.
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We're still zooming out.And then it gets to be a whole lot of this. Forever.
Now let's try it the other way, starting with people. Remember:
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BILLIONS.
So let's learn about what makes you work:
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This is a cross section of a temporal lobe in the brain.This is what the inside of your cerebral cortex looks like on a microscopic scale.
And finally:
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This is a single neuron.
That is a single neuron. One of countless that are constantly firing in your brain, working through the synapsis like an uber complex binary code system (but conceivably exponentially more complicated).
Of course we all know when we think about these individual things that they are all constructed of exacting systems, always with the ability to examine deeper. But how often have you associated all of it with each other at the same time?
As I've said before, it can be somewhat overwhelming. At least I begin to feel that way when I begin to seriously contemplate it- not that I don't enjoy it. Alas, I am tired. I hope if you've read this that you at least found it interesting, I'm sure I'll be touching back up on the subject again some day soon...
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Phoenix Godwin
3-21-2011