MTG Salvation

Moving on

Inopportune was the moment she left me;
you see because I had been drinking,
and the way her backside looked flinging
open the door then pausing, then

Running out the house away from me,
from my sweaty character flaws,
my oily temper and odorous self pity,
well, you can't blame a girl for that.

She was on fire and I was so much ash,
lifeless, head in hands, groveling to her
please stay, please stay, please...
though it might have been a wordless whimper

Inopportune because as she left
all I could see was her,
so that when she was gone I was blind
and until she comes back I don't mind.

A/N: Just forcing myself to put something down... It is somewhat religious, so hopefully not too many of you are turned off.

Gestalt

Umpteen lines across a page
That set a paper's rule,
Constrain my pen's intrinsic shapes,
Bound to rotting pulp and wood

Umpteen years from now
I fear that I will waste away,
My soul no longer bound to flesh
My spirit freed from dermal mesh

Umpteen sleepless nights I've spent
To come to simple truths
That all I cannot say or write or be or do,
I leave to You.

Haha, yes it's "wooden."

9. Lega
Climbing up the old gravel path
above the clouds waiting for sunrise,
a good fatigue rooted in the legs
finds my mouth in a lax yawn,
I find a bank of flowers falling down
the side of the mountain,
and further still I hope to find
pleasurable springs and an old man looking for me,
singing a song from the heart and
drinking to health and to contentment,
singing wordlessly taking big breaths and
drinking until the morning light finds him on the mountaintop.

Pining

We talked much but said little
she on her pedestal and I
somewhere far away watching her
drawing tiny hearts in the sand
with a woody stick two stars crossing
in front of each other each blinded by the other's
light; I once thought it was enough to be loved
damn the timing. It was enough to be loved.
For I have been loved a few times before,
and I took from each
a small satisfaction.
Damn the timing.

A/N: Still pretty personal...

Pining

An inchoate veneer: a
diary that seals your lips
but not your eyes, they
beckon childishly and with
abandon, forcing me to
stupor, pinning me against
my mattress in a state of
paralytic craving, and fervor.

All your thoughts are
locked within the binding
of that book; my curiosity has
overwhelmed me, and I peruse
the only thing that's left to me,
seek to understand the light I
see reflecting from your eyes,
the light that glances off a
boiling water.

A/N: Very personal...

1.
In deep green velvet and
comfortably warm thoughts of
all that swallow me whole
the paralysis of that which is
too foreign too base too
erotic with an imperceptible
shake of the head I sink
further still

2.
I would have liked to meet
the very first abuser of
ad hominem; his cherub-like
face but for a permanently chiseled
smirk of condescension,
Ten great horns sprouting from his ribcage--
two springing forth from his temples
most profane, the neck of a
hippopotamus with great tiger
stripes etched down his broad back
and a single olive branch in his grotesque hands.
He would call me names,
I imagine.

3.
In China I once saw an act of terrible
violence in the morning stillness a
cart of vegetables overturned so long ago
the insects were feasting on them and
the sprouts covered in dust a man
sobbing sighing bleeding lay
so still beside the cart and all my heart
went out to him his life so plainly rotting
his pain embarassingly clear
so many more would see him
we his guardians we who would protect him
(and yet I never offered him any help)
and that night the stars would
cast an indifferent gaze upon his putrid vegetables
and flesh; how little we knew
How little we knew
How much I want to know

4.
Headed toward the clearing
the blind abbot and his horse the horse
whimpering softly and the abbot
talking him down the abbot stroking
the horse and with the other hand
feeding him hazelnuts talking so softly
the birds fly in closer to hear the
words of the abbot the horse slowing
eyes drooping the abbot feeling along the
underbrush searching for light in his
sightless eyes searching for the clearing
The horse's mane glistening catching the sun
setting slowly over the clearing the abbot
urging the horse closer to the clearing the
birds watching quietly the abbot and his horse
none chirping the woods leaning closer bringing
the underbrush closer and darkness gathering
the clearing close by

5.
We fall to rise
and fall to rise again
for rising is most important through air
bogged down sodden and fallow where
are the sweet mounds of cinnamon bread
in the oven where are the crassly colored
helium balloons for a birthday where is growing
that I may take some small measure of comfort
in the ease that those and that which we admire
say hello and add unto us
and later slip from us
and never say goodbye

6.
stuffed animals line the dusty shelves
of my childhood
and they are many, and each has their story
and each carries the expression I had when
I received them, in one way or another
whether by gift or circus prize
or perhaps store-bought
a small baby panda with a shoot of bamboo
in its mouth
glares tired next
to an old couple

7.
He lived half a life too long
and lived it quickly, rushing from
vacation to vacation and leaving up
the Christmas tree even through July

He tried to hand-smooth his personality
and grind it down to something he could manage
He strived to make himself predictable
and he vowed to take me flying to east Jiangsu

where the world expo opens in only a few months
in Shanghai, where the heat is oppressive
I knew better than to tell him I wanted to go
His words were best taken in silence

8.
An inchoate veneer: a
diary that seals your lips
but not your eyes, they
beckon childishly and with
abandon, forcing me to
stupor, pinning me against
my mattress in a state of
paralytic craving, and fervor.

All your thoughts are
locked within the binding
of that book; my curiosity has
overwhelmed me, and I peruse
the only thing that's left to me,
seek to understand the light I
see reflecting from your eyes,
the light that glances off a
boiling water.

9.
Climbing up the old gravel path
above the clouds waiting for sunrise,
a good fatigue rooted in the legs
finds my mouth in a lax yawn,
I find a bank of flowers falling down
the side of the mountain,
and further still I hope to find
pleasurable springs and an old man looking for me,
singing a song from the heart and
drinking to health and to contentment,
singing wordlessly taking big breaths and
drinking until the morning light finds him on the mountaintop.

Doesn't matter, expected value calculations don't need to take into account dependence.

9.
Climbing up the old gravel path
above the clouds waiting for sunrise,
a good fatigue rooted in the legs
finds my mouth in a lax yawn,
I find a bank of flowers falling down
the side of the mountain,
and further still I hope to find
pleasurable springs and an old man looking for me,
singing a song from the heart and
drinking to health and to contentment,
singing wordlessly taking big breaths and
drinking until the morning light finds him on the mountaintop.

Curiosity

Rising up again out of
the dead of winter
and night it comes so
ferociously wisping
darting past your eyes and
settling in the soul
Reaching for it I brush
hair from your face
and innocence from your eyes
and hold your gaze for
so long and often
that we forget space
Space that holds our forms
to brave our fools'
intentions
Space that gives us precious
freedom anonymity
and hope
Space that forces my hand
into yours

A/N: Probably should put this one in the next contest...

Yes, I am that ☺☺☺☺ing *****

I hear sudden shouts at my windowsill
And answer ringing phones tired weary,
Listening to declarations of love and penance
For things I would never have apologized for

Like the vagaries of fate, I am melancholy dreary
as I blink away sleep in a coral nightgown
And stand in the doorway with you at the door
Standing politely then shutting it as firmly

As my confidence might allow,
I am his when you are not around.
Unable to perform these calculations smartly
One I must choose to disavow.


A/N: With all likelihood the title will be censored.

EDIT: 'Tis true.

Another concept which you may be unfamiliar with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

But that's also slightly off-topic. The main takeaway from indistinguishability is that if you "took an electron" in China and "switched" it with "an electron" here in the US, nothing physically happened. You didn't switch it. Nothing was there to be switched, anyway. It was all just a mathematical model that happened to resolve itself in the moment such that you could see two electrons (one in China and one in the US).


JANKYFLY:
I'll just state something really quick: subjective experiences are material... When I say subjective, I just mean that you or I or someone is doing the experiencing.

Other than that, I can't really respond at all except to say that your dichotomy is not at all clear to me. Everything you are saying is not at all clear to me.

Again:
When you die, the physical representation of atoms is in a certain state.

That physical representation of atoms will occur sometime in the future. You will not experience death, and instead of never experiencing anything again, you will experience the next moment in space-time that happens to contain the physical representation of atoms at the time of your death.

Then your argument amounts to nothing more than the tautology that if two states are indistinguishable then they're indistinguishable.

Yes! The result is completely intuitive when you give up your human and evolutionary concepts!




JANKY:

"subjective experience" doesn't refer to anything in the material world.

It refers to the arrangement of matter that gives rise to it...

I mean, you have subjective experience. That much should be plain. Now, what will happen to that subjective experience when you die, given an infinite universe and statistical entropy? You don't answer this question, instead indulging in some other discussion that, while confusing, is not as interesting to me.

It's a nonsense term unless you assume there to be an extra-physical relationship between "you, one millisecond ago", "you, now", and "you, a billion years from now".

I'm not assuming any extra-physical relationship...

Also, please don't use the word "it" when you're posting. It's complicated enough to follow what you're saying without having to constantly think about what you're referring to.

How are you not getting this? Indistinguishability does not imply sameness. Two things can be indistinguishable without being the same thing. If an electron is annihilated, it is not valid to then grab some other electron and declare it to "really" be the same electron as that which was previously annihilated; it's a different electron which is, yes, completely indistinguishable from the other.

You're using the human concept of "sameness" again...

There really is no way for the universe to tell the difference! If you have one electron here and one electron there... but wait, you don't have two electrons. You have a probability distribution that resolves whenever you take a measurement! Switching the two electrons doesn't mean anything. Destroying the electron and "grabbing" another doesn't mean anything. The reality of the universe defies your attempts to fit the human concept of "sameness" to it.

The metaphysics must cohere to the experimental results!

No physical measurement to be made that we know or are currently capable of. To assert that something in principle cannot be measured is a very bold assertion indeed, quite distinct from saying that we are simply incapable of measuring it now.

I'd put in on the same level as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Why should I believe we've discovered this "irreducible existence, without substructure", that we've finally stopped tumbling down the rabbit hole?

You don't have to believe that we've gotten to the irreducible existence of things to believe indistinguishability... There could be something else (although I'm not too sure about the "something else") which makes up even more fundamental particles, but those fundamental particles would make up larger particles that are indistinguishable.

Macromolecules are also indistinguishable. That's the whole point. Everything from quarks up are indistinguishable.

What do you mean by this? That the individuality of particles is an illusion? How did quantum mechanics come to such a conclusion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles

The indistinguishability of particles even explains certain otherwise inexplicable results!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_paradox

Why should I believe that individual particles can be "the same" as each other, while simultaneously asserting that the individuality of particles is an illusion? If "individuality" does not apply to the nature of particles, shouldn't it be nonsensical to assert that two particles are "the same", which at some level requires that a structure of individuality be present within each particle for the comparison to take place at all?

Exactly. This is why I told you it isn't useful to think in the way that you're thinking.



JANKY:
I'm not sure where you stand on anything...

Let's focus on what really happens in our subjective experience. Talking about "true reality" doesn't really get us very far.