Hippie Shit

WHOA. Have any of you heard of the Omega Point. A lusciously eighties idea.
The very poetic science of the future.

Omega Point is a term created by Tulane University professor of mathematics Frank J. Tipler to describe a hypothetical cosmological scenario in the far future of the Universe. According to the Omega Point Theory, as the Universe comes to an end in a Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the Universe is capable of increasing at a sufficient rate that this computation rate is accelerating exponentially faster than time runs out. In principle, a simulation run on this Universe-computer can thus continue forever in its own terms, even though the external Universe lasts only a finite time. This theory assumes that certain cosmological variables prove that the universe will eventually contract, and that there will be intelligent civilizations in existence at the appropriate time to exploit the computational capacity of such an environment.



Tipler identifies this asymptotic state of infinite information capacity with God. The implication of this theory for present day humans is that this ultimate cosmic computer will essentially be able to resurrect everyone who has ever lived, by recreating all possible quantum brain states within the master simulation. This would be a Matrix-like simulated reality, except without the necessity for physical bodies in "reality". From the perspective of the inhabitant, the Omega Point represents an infinite duration afterlife, which could take any imaginable form due to its virtual nature. In this sense Tipler is attempting to scientifically validate heaven.



Recent observations suggesting an accelerating universe mean that the Big Crunch, on which the theory originally predicated, is now thought an unlikely scenario for this universe. However, Professor Tipler has recently amended his views to accommodate an accelerating universe. He proposes baryon tunnelling as a means of propelling interstellar spacecraft. If the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by this process, then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant, stopping the acceleration, and allowing the universe to collapse into the Omega Point.

From Wikipedia

diligence is to magic as progress is to flight

hi all!

since someone has to follow 'blue millions', i thought i might type up some of wcw's thoughts on george washington (from in the american grain), because what's more unimpeachable than a founding father?

"The surveying contract which took him to Duquesne and the wilderness thereabouts was, however, the other side of the question. In this he must have breathed a more serious air which cannot but have penetrated to the deepest parts of his nature. The thing is, however, that in his case it did not, as it might have done, win him permanently to that kind of an existence. There was in his nature a profound spirit of resignation before life's rich proposals which disarmed him. As he expressed it, to him it was always his "vine and figtree", home and quiet, for which he longed. Stress he could endure but peace and regularity pleased him better. There must have been within him a great country whose wild paths he alone knew and explored in secret and at his leisure.

Resistance was, I believe, his code. Encitadeled. A protector of the peace, or at least, keeper of the stillness within himself. He was too strong to want to evade anything. That's his reputation for truthtelling. It was a good scratching to him to take it on and see himself through. He knew he would come through."

should that be a song on the radio i would be dedicating it to catherine. love to all of you - let's talk soon -

BLUE MILLIONS, DEAD MILLIONS

-An Essay On Poetry-

Traveling
is an exercise in sense

is formless sky skies
'unger for a where

to settle ponderously
landing as midwinter

centers expectation
makes a convex awareness,

hope curved outward.

*

Tricks or masquerades
of attention.
Winter impulse
to make up new flowers,
To animate the tongue,
heal-all, love-in-idleness.
Dully along goes the sun
held aloft by the flower called
shadow-puppet-watcher
for its unique qualities
of devotion to the one
point in space that can
hold it's beautiful face
in place.

*

Concerning the products of visibility:

I love S.K.'s hat
and his first name.

Ahem, love is a by-product
of invisibility

Ahem, love is a cousin
to invisible forces,
threatening whales,

and true stories that begin
with the word "know.

*

I like statements.

Implicit persistence
makes poems.

Five unfinished masques
are the environs of poetry:

1) the wyrd sisters
2) Robinson Jeffers
3) Fingers
4) Seasons
5) political renunciations (and the death of A.D., poet)

How to challenge death
though it isn't the death of everything,
or even of the situation of everything:

"a mechanized generation to whom
Haphazard oracular grunts are profound wisdom"
Auden

You know what I want to hear.
We are in love with trying,
and have heard that some
can do, and do, and do,
when from their lives come
deathless grunts and
other to-die-fors:

fingering a deathless nose,
wild fennel
led us through the
marsh air into the
railroad right-of-way
behind the lumberyard
just to be in
smell's vicinity.

And the tusks of boars are polished,
shined with the sweat of beggars

*

Is there a difference between the nose
and the imagination?

No, both grow outward from the face.

the face a hermitage as evidenced by mirrors' grimaces.

Out
side

playing God's guitar
the little strings
rip holes in the universe's evasions,
perhaps there are eleven dimensions,
six of which are only perceived as smells.
That makes us so upset because it
isn't moral. Have you got a better idea?

Particular names are acceptance and
moral minstrelsy.

For instance, we call out to what Xrist meant
as much as we cry out to what
all good dead beings meant
Hope's dulcet expediency
a way of life if ever there is one,

but not a way of hope, which
is all about what will happen
when we're dead.
(forever, or to the particular moment here)

Pictures of alder saplings demand that we quiver.

*

Osric's phone is ringing.
I pick it up, and
my first impulse,
starting at the very
beginning of the other
noise of the voice,
(that is, before the word)
is to recall, like the
tail of an hideous erinye,
that most poetry sucks
and one should not say
so, because the older
poets made it so.


We are hysterically dead
and "go the fools among,"
flagellants of a fate
worse than censure:
casual disregard.

*
"Hysteron Proteron"

Will free
offenders sex up
plainly made
effects with cause ?

*

melisma

Quietude,
exercised like the twined reticence
of too much to know,

is a good protection
from despair,
a glib-sun-working-day
and conviction
which has no history.

How does the bell-like
clear-voiced
poet avoid mention

of a war?

Does his clarity avoid
genre in its purities

though the genres persist,
as we see,
in comedic human meat
still thrown to Thersites,

and his leprous misery
eats those poems of cafeteria
conversation

like proofs,
which pass,
in snickerdoodle time,
for a security badge
in fact, in fact.,

ending
in a marriage
of allegorical
figures

Suspicions Confirmed
and sweet Misanthropia

*
only the names remain.

*
"The Very Old Man Who
Knew Some Now Among
The Ranks of The Dead"

He just lived and lived,
and knew ones who died
who I wished I knew.
Knowing him
would not let me know
them better.
Their pages, which
I know to know (and also
to remain lost in my knowing
and grow old in it)
as one should, vast
places left to
undo forthwith.

What is the agenda of description?
Is the ground a floor
gone bad from too much
drinky drinky?
What is the agenda of metaphor?
To be caught out in the rain
and washed away gratefully;
old man, alluvial fan.

Dogs Like Us

theseus

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top
and mark the musical confusion
of hounds and echo in conjunction

hippolyta

i was with hercules and cadmus onces
when in a wood of crete they bayed the bear
with hounds of sparta. never did i hear
such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
the skies, the fountains, every region near
seemed all one mutual cry. i never heard
so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

(midsummer night's dream 4.1.108-117)

Shit

No. 3Other echoesInhabit the garden. Shall we follow?Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,Round the corner. Through the first gate, Into our first world, shall we followThe deception of the thrush? Into our first world.There they were, dignified, invisible, Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air, And the bird called, in response to The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery, And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

when i tried to paste the eliot bit up from cat's post it came out at prose. anyway, i want so badly to participate in the holderlin conversation right now, but i'm at school, so i don't have my books with me. i love all this talk about lines and poems and destinies of poems, and poems as real bits of ourselves. it's just so good to hear everyone's brains screeching together in melodious cacophony.

anyway, reading that bit of eliot really reminded me how much more important 'four quartets' is to my understanding of poetry. i was reminded of lauren's, er, synesthetic memories of holderlin. when i first read 'four quartets' it was springtime in berkeley, and i read the poem walking through the hills to class...it's quite a good walking poem actually. but all that stuff with the bird in the garden and all the talking children in the bushes, and especially the idea that there was some alternate time in the world, the "still point in the turning world" or whatever it says, oh how it hurt my mynde! God, I hope that quote is from eliot!

well, i like that there's German poetry in the air anyway. i'm still taking my time with faust, which has a similar kind of variability in the lines that steve was talking about. lauren, does this have something to do with the german interest in classical rhythms and all of that? i think i've read that they were much more influenced by, and capable of, writing in meters that were more closely able to mimic classical meters...

anyways, maybe i'll write some more about the topic at hand later today.
i had an argument with a student yesterday who emphatically insisted (3x) that 'atheism' did not mean 'denial of the existence of God.' it was so fun to be so right for once.

love you all, and i'm sorry i haven't written to you all enough recently. the business of america is business.

oops, i'm belated.

i just read the comments on steve's ammons post and realized that the unspooling sentence thing has been discussed. but i like the idea that we hope by means of attaching clauses. i guess we also temporize. hope + indicating direction + temporizing = floating + zig-zag + the new fun.

"This is no pasture. One must / stick to the beginning. But now / things are starting over as before."

hi! y'all are not only making me feel the pressure of my own silence, but steve is even luring me out of the underbrush with pieces of holderlin...

holderlin is very linked with the album "beatles for sale" for me, because i had to write my big holderlin paper for undergrad when i was in berlin living with a host family, and they had a huge collection of beatles cds. i would listen to "beatles for sale" over and over while trying to type. i would especially listen to 'honey don't' ("everything about you is so doggone sweet/you got that sand all over your feet"). also, reading holderlin was really the first thing that made me feel that i was writing poetry absolutely wrong - before that i more felt that i was on this path and just had to go on writing, writing, and eventually the little one by one poems would perfect themselves. or i would learn how to write the perfect poem in this one after another style. but reading holderlin i realized that was a need to jump off the path...because he was writing so long ago and he was so twisted!! steve, when you were writing about difficulty versus ease, i was thinking about restlessness....not just rambling after something new, but (in frustrating hopes of) something newly expressive.

"It's something else to be sure,

Distinctions are
good. Each
and every
Has its own."

but then i also think about reading spicer on how he realized that he didn't just have to write one perfect poem, that he could write lots of pieces that all propped each other up. that has been such a major puzzle piece to me in looking for sustainable work. then you are groping around in the dark a little closer to home - because you're progressing thinking about inches of progress, sentence chains that get thrown out and don't have to end. sentence fishing reels. that is ease!

so do i like things difficult or easy?

catherine, i love the poem parts. you've tricked me into reading something and we know that leads to reading more things and a return to general awareness.

"......And as
A load of logs upon
The shoulders, there is much
to bear in mind. But the paths
Are evil. For like horses,
The captive elements
And ancient laws
Of the earth go astray. Yet always
The longing to reach beyond bounds. But much
To be retained. And loyalty a must.
But we shall not look forward
Or back. Let ourselves rock, as
On a boat, lapped by the waves."