How does the universe create a rock out of sunlight?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know those holograms you can stick your hand into, those laser projections you see at those science exhibits that I mentioned in an earlier post?  What if you could flesh out holograms and make them “physical,” like your toaster?   That’s sort of what nature (the cosmos, your Self) is doing way down inside your atoms, somehow or other turning an electronic light show into flesh and blood.  How about that!?   What a magic act!

If that doesn’t blow your mind, you could reflect on one atom in the nail of your little finger. What’s going on in that package of stuff you call your body?  I recommend you  write down your reflections.  That usually turns the trick.

But if your view is still kind of ordinary, here’s handful of intimations to reflect on.  You’ll have to give each one a chance to blossom.

And then try to connect them to each other and make a nice package.

And then, to make it better and better, reflect on the intimations of other postings here in the Realms of Gold.

Have a nice day.  A nice life?

• In the San Francisco Chronicle the other day I noticed a documentary is coming out, “A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet.”  The title came from Aldo Leopold who became an environmentalist after killing a wolf and seeing in her eyes a fierce green fire.  I made a little poem out of that:

Awakening

In the dying
wolf’s eyes,
a fierce
green fire.

• First Connection:

Immediately some lines in a song, “Guantanamera,” that Pete Seeger sings – a poem by  the Cuban poet  Jose Marti, who died in the revolution – popped into my conscious mind :

Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma
Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmin encendido

Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul
My verses are light green
But they are also crimson red

We’re talking fire here, GREEN fire, CRIMSON fire.  Atomic fire.  Something visible in those eyes, something in that poet’s soul.

•  Next connection:

And right away, Dylan Thomas:

 The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age . . .

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood . . .

How can I not connect those lines, lines that have been stored in my mind, body, Self, soul, for decades? What force would that be, Mr. Thomas?  The force that makes toasters?

•  Next Connection:

Tumbling into my consciousness – of course! – Gerard Manly Hopkins’ “The Windhover” that I put into my  February 15 post.   In fact, I just now looked it over and that entire post fits gorgeously with this one.

 AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
[Hopkins addresses this entire poem to Christ.]
. . . and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Gold vermillion, my, my, my!

• Last – for now – Connection

This one’s from William Blake, whom I’ve quoted in other posts.

THE TIGER

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies           
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?     
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp     
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?    

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?