Tabula rasa

But really how blank is the "slate" at birth? I would think the slate itself determines what and what cannot be inscribed upon it. What at birth is a most pliable computer, depending heavily upon the more primitive parts of the brain that are not blank (but have written within all that evolutionary "memory" that we call instinct), slowly by the sensed interaction with the outer world goes from generalist to a less pliable specialist. And that specialization is determined by nurture and nature: parent/family/tribe/society and environment. So I would think that a "good-natured" fellow born in America would have been a "good-natured" fellow born in India. And isn't that what causes humans the most grief, when born with a "nature" that doesn't match up with the "nurture"?  

Tree of Life

A tree
in my mind
a tall redwood tree
I imagine 
with eyes closed
limbs 
touching
the blue sky
roots 
grasping the earth
like fingers 
holding 
on for dear life
a loved one 
in grief
in need 
of comfort
yet another blink
the tall redwood
tree 
and the sky
gone 
and replaced 
by another
thought

 
 

Awaking

When  
I
turn from  
Me
then self 
dwells without doubt 
that
We
and soon 
They
are what 
it is
all
about.

Back ahead

Rooster crows
eyes blink
heart beats
clock ticks
sun rises
out of bed
another day
to look back
to see ahead

Laws of nature

Behind the laws of nature, lawlessness.

Atoms and Eve

The "personal God"
is within
each atom
that plays out
in the constructions
as expression
of that which
creates.

The "personal God"
is mystery that we
seek to understand
with but voice
and desire
and knowledge
that we too
are atoms
yet
alive!

Stones

Corbelled dry-stone building
cairns
one stone
at a time
placed
before taken away
by
time

Doubtlessness

Knowing is doubtlessness
in times of plenty
but when
all
is
slipping
away
we no longer know
with certainty
what will come
as well as
what is now but fading
m e m o r y

Time as a concept of the mind

For a moment I'll consider a Creator-less universe, and in that universe nothing has a relationship to anything else. Each change (and all is ongoing change) transpires locally -- microscopically locally, subatomic locally -- interactions without past or future. A comet has not an orbit, a planet not a revolution, a star neither a birth nor death. For without an intelligence, be it large (God) or small (thinking lifeforms), all takes place in the present, for it is a mind (big or small) that connects the dots, that creates past and future, that conjures an ongoing reality with spinning objects and revolutions, of objects and minds. Does mind (large or little) too create time?

God of creations

I, the Creator, look down
onto my creations
but alas
that last one
the only one
that knows
ME
thinks my 
creations
less than
their God-given
imaginations

White lab coat

Science marches on
with civilization clinging
tightly
to the trailing 
white
lab
coat

Tools of the trade, the trade of life

One or another
We seek to uncover
God or Nature
By science
We discover

The Temple

Since the human mind made that transformation from observer of "all that which is out there" to muser of "all that which is in here" (index finger touching temple). We have by imagination sought to project what is inside our mind (temple) to all that which is outside our mind. We label, we name, we anthropomorphise all that outside the temple of the mind, and we have been doing it since the transformation. This unknown universe has become known, uniquely, in human minds.

Ordinary

A personable fellow
is he
that made you and me
yet some deny
and decry
that ordinary is
why

Ode to Christopher Hitchens

And yet without intelligence within or without
cells do amazing things
again and again

countless times,
millions of years

and seek (without actually seeking),
to know

to finally know,
that what has happened

over time,
did happen.

And to think that we alone know.

Know our lineage.

From no-thing, to some-thing.

And we did it our way.

All by ourselves.

So clever we are.

We think.

We are.

The sound of silence

When all is quiet, perhaps the silence you hear is the sound of atoms, within and without -- you, the sun, the avocado tree, the aluminum and plastic lawn chair, the glass of iced tea, the clouds -- all the universe abuzz in invisible motion, electrons whirling around protons, silently making their music, everywhere.

The whole kit and caboodle -- the expanded version

EVERYTHING just waiting to happen, everything possible that can be built was built from those bare-bone basic building blocks of physics -- chemistry, biology, and all the rest. Built because it had to be built, "it" had no other choice. And built in only one way, the only way, for the building blocks would and will have it no other way.

Using a Tinkertoy set as an analogy for the building blocks of the universe, and as all assemblages like Tinkertoys, they have a kindness that reflects the building blocks themselves. If you view any toy built from Tinkertoys, you can immediately see that Tinkertoys are the underlying structure. It is obvious. And so too when one views an assemblage of the elements of the Periodic table, it is obvious. Too obvious. So obvious that one misses the forest because of the trees ... or maybe misses the trees because of the forest!  
 
A hundred-some tinkers to toy with and you (and me and everyone) have the entire universe and all that fits inside. Mind boggling that so few elements (118 at last count) can and are assembled into billions of different combinations -- stars and rivers and moons and mountains and people too, for every variation of every DNA coded instruction for life forms are constructed from just five elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorous. Billions of atoms in DNA, yet constructed from just five basic building blocks!

In the universe the look and the size and the form of ALL could be none other than what is, of course variation in the assemblage could have been this way or that way -- and is this way and that way -- but it is all within the limits of the most unlimited few building blocks. And the results will always have the look of the building blocks used in the construction so that the look of the universe as you and I see and dwell within it is what it is, for it could be no other way.

The whole kit and caboodle, and the universe too!

Isn't it interesting, EVERYTHING just waiting to happen, everything possible that can be built was built from those bare-bone basic building blocks of physics. Chemistry, biology, and all the rest. Built because it had to be built, "it" had no other choice. And built in only one way, the only way, for the building blocks would and will have it no other way. Interesting.

The first laugh?

Yes, God made it all, a creation without good or bad -- until inside the minds of humans evolved value judgment -- then, and only then, could we laugh, at others, and even at ourselves.

How to build a universe

No matter the bigness of the universe, it is all composed of the same "tiny" building blocks, be it a galaxy or my tiny brain, more building blocks, not larger building blocks, that is serious business. Silence may be a tribute to holiness, but it is the tiny bit of complex coordination between mind and matter that manipulates sound waves into codes that all the bigness is ignorant of, yet other tiny brains grasp and decode and too, think and wonder.


With each blink of the eyes
the mind constructs anew
in darkness and silence
the ever changing haiku