Solid – A meditation on states of Matter

Solid

A meditation on states of Matter

Viscosity – a qualifier for a liquid substance’s resistance to flow; a highly viscous substance may even appear solid.

Fluid motion, movement through space and time – this is the great concern of engineers, designers, planners, doctors, administrators, dreamers and lovers.

A substance has no more uniquely specific quality: its state of being – whether it be solid, liquid or gas – defines its place and purpose in the world.

Or at least that is what they told us in school when we were young and believed too much the truisms proffered by educators. Maybe it was easier for them to pass on a half-truth, a partial reality, than to try to explain the deeper mystery.

What we eventually come to see is that states of Matter are not constant. They change in reaction to forces that act upon them.

For examples:

• Pressure
• Heat/temperature changes
• Chemical reactions

Matter may mutate from one state to another and be nearly unidentifiable at the end from what it was in the beginning.

Everyone talks about H2O as the perfect example, but really – how boring. Sure, it can be a solid, a liquid and a gas but can it tell us anything about the complexity of carbon based matter?

Humans, plants, animals – all life is held together by the strong and principled bonds of carbon. It’s a beautiful thing.

We are intricately woven together and capable, in our multi-system organismic state to be all these at once. We are always, physically, solid, liquid…gas.

But “metaphysically” on a level so deep we only know of its existence when we experience it – humans in our insides, in our intricately woven relationships with each other, and in our concerted efforts to transform from an original state to a future (unknown, undefined) state. For better or worse, change must occur or death steps in to claim the matter and reallocate resources.

When a person increases in viscosity, and begins to harden, to solidify away from their fluid state it is an undeniable shift in inner matter. The soul mutates in response to forces which act upon it (pressure, heat, chemicals).

So that now I may say, after being buried underground and put through the fire, this person inside and out is not the same as the one who was.

So that now I may recognize that you, having been subject to trans formative events, having been catalyzed, are not the same as the one who was.

We have changed profoundly and life’s very nature demands we continue to react and transform until our final state is reached.

Quality Definitions

Love – the positive, primary experience that defines life as a reasonable and worthwhile pursuit

Hate - the negative, secondary experience that manifests from the absence or withdrawal of love; followed by deeper, more detailed feelings of agony, comtempt, bitterness etc.

Indifference – complete lack of interest in the welfare, feelings, experiences etc. of others

Integrity – a cultivated ability to make decisions and take actions that do not harm oneself or others; a conscious awareness of how and why to apply kindness and goodness to everyday life

Change – the principal phenomenon behind all existence, the Universe itself

Happiness – an elusive, but much sought after condition cobmining sensations of physical and psychological pleasure in a time and space where fear, pain and longing are either absent or at least suspended on the perimeter of experience

Unrequited Love’s Boldest Letter

Dear M,

If I have shown restraint it has been only out of a belief that you are the type of man who could never love a wild woman. And so I may have sublimated my natural urges for a modicum of disgrace, which does not fit a person of my caliber. In truth, I know myself to have a fiercely loyal and passionate heart, a thing in stark contrast to your stated “inability to love”. I am more than capable of loving, deeply, another human being. I have done it many times and in many ways. I have settled for love of you in the unrequited variety because I believe in and practice unconditional love, which requires no encouragement to grow. And I have turned over to this end exactly two years of my life.

I have opened up and swallowed the hardship of the last 10 months with a sincere hope for your recovery. I have not lost faith in your resilience and determination. I have however, been unable to detect even a shred of concern from you for my welfare. As of course, I have been trained to understand, the principle stress of your life must be for your own sobriety and that come hell or high waters you must stand your ground against any who would threaten such success. And so I have withdrawn, wounded but waiting, for any sign that a plateau had been reached on your end, and for an invitation to join you in a happy, loving relationship. There are times in my life when I have wanted a companion and you have not been there. And so I have spent so much time alone, in the fury of my isolation, because I could not imagine being with anyone else while my heart is tied to you.

My own naivete mocks me at times, but in similar circumstances there are few who would not fall into such a fallacious fantasy. If I have been pathetic in my wanting there is no shame for me, only the humiliation of having again guessed wrongly at the intentions and feelings of the object of my attentions and desire. If you feel no compassion, no obligation towards me then for heaven’s sake let me know of it!

Let me know that what I am holding onto in my heart and in my head is not real, that my make-believing abilities have carried me away from truth! Let me know so that I will not sit day after day expecting that eventually you will come back to me. Because if you do not intend it, if you do not want me then please pity me one last time and let me know, so that I can take the best of our time together for nostalgia and move on with my life.

May God’s Peace Protect You,
R

Thousand Things That Won’t Work

Fretting all night outside the walls like waking up scratching -

the itch – is on the inside;

And rollers on the heels of our feet

take us headlong into the crowd at Carnival.

She chooses not to turn up her hem at the beach

but to abandon dry, stationary things for the wild, wet mother

and be carried away once and forever by an unknown current

And who knows what hedonism is really or if pleasure may be

sustained or only touched triumphantly through a moment

hunted again and again

like the witches of days not so long gone -

redeemed only when they do not float

so their deaths take them as proof of rancid idiocy

Подо мной и растёт грусть

Подо мной и растёт грусть
Берега, сладость молчание
Вот стихи всё наизусть
Верит он как бы воспоминание

Радости нет, хоть вера есть
Прошло почти лет с тех пор,
Как он дейвстивельно здесь
И плачет то я за набор

(Rough translation follows)

Beneath me grief grows

The coast is sweetness,  silence

Here are verses by heart

He trusts, as a recollection

There is no joy, though there is faith

Almost a year has gone since

He was really here

And it is I crying for the set

I am become metaphor

I carry the clay pot

but it shatters in my arms,

spilling water everywhere

That is illusion becoming reality

Telling us, You cannot hold onto me

Myself, I transform to elude you

I fold my hand, sure of the others’ cards

Only to find I held the winners all along

if only… but there are no second chances

and I have not won when I have not risked the loss

Favoritism dances before me like a slick wire

skewering the best cuts of meat for the grill

I sit quietly ignored on the platter,

raw and undigestible

wishing to join my sisters in the fire

All the time I whither, stranded like a blossom on a stem

Who hopes the wind will come in time to blow

me open, and take my seeds to bed in the earth

Childhood

I can smell the damp pale light warming the earth

In between the ocean and towering mountains

My childhood home

was a wild place

With mud that would sink you to the knee, hidden

by deceptive moss covering

My childhood days:

surreal, in the body and in the brain

So that now I cannot remember the times

or the days or the events most children hold onto into adulthood

but only the smells, the sounds, the way it felt

to run with bare feet on soft ground and climb jungle trees

to swing like an animal, lost in the rhythm of being out of breath

and alone

wordless

in a vast landscape the color of envy and greed

Seeking Soul Mate

Best friend or bosom buddy wanted

A soul mate

To share the fragile spinning moments

We hold and hope never cease

Or set back broken bones, beaten apart

by apathy, time, constriction or comtempt

Soul mate sought

To share simple pleasures

Rock bottom despair

Dreams, mesmerizing and expansive

Find me here – on the front porch

Life living and free

Open and ready

For adventure inspired by fate’s meeting

Subtle Longing Beneath

I wonder little about great mysteries

And tend to get sewn up in the stitching,

Fingering with care the delicate underthings -

Like silk threads slipping up and over sleeping breasts

moments catch each other – the breathtaking joy of

looking into my daughter’s newborn eyes – reminds me

how rain smells coming back to wet dry days -

and these happinesses get caught on each other

and weave me into life.

But if joys create delicate stalkings, soft lavender colored

chamois and rhinestoned lace garters

Then biting losses fix the outer garments of hard, resilient

woolen smocks tied from the backs of beasts,

Primitive, ancient necessity that wraps the fragile self

And covers the gentle, subtle longing beneath.

They say go ahead and cry

They say go ahead and cry

let it out

so I do like a wound up hose

forcing it to come through

They so I’ll feel better

when I walk away

step outside the shell of grief

but the tightness wants to return

the long, smoothe vessel

only knows the course the water takes