Tag: meaning

Repetitions in Search of Meaning

On By Stephen WallerIn Poetry & ProseLeave a comment

Sprouts burst forth anew;

Leaves manifest from within to allow, once more, for there to be a thickening.

Where is it that we are destined?

            Will there be true rest again –

                        What about frivolities with friends?

Why do we bother so much with the questions of where does this train end when we spend most our time preparing, pretending, or digging our heels in defending against the march of time?

Always forward. Always moving toward, yet never arriving.

It’s doubtful that many of us care much about if/where time reaches its destination; instead, we’re more preoccupied with which timeslot our departure is booked for.

Some of us can become worked up into fits over the unknowns of this whole ordeal with time; it’s particularly fascinating when one’s worries about things of time reach a point where they’re unable to allow themselves sleep at night.

Of course, this makes some innate sense; after all, sleep punctuates our days by plunging us into the voidless unknown or the mysterious manifestations of the involuntary experiences of dreams – wouldn’t this experience be the most apt comparison to gain some sort of understanding of what the experience will be like when the clock’s hand finally moves to the top, and life as we know it either ceases and stops or continues in a peculiar fashion?

A Solemn Reflection on Humanity

On By Stephen WallerIn Poetry & ProseLeave a comment

Consumption and greed are how many feed.

Although there are those whose desire for might supersedes their own foresight.

Blessed be the right, for they know of no sleep tonight.

Rest be assured all of whom refuse to be allured.

Led down into the depths of deception,

Eyes blurred by the grandeur produced from a sense of righteousness.

Lest our souls never forget this, that we are but singularities.

Let our minds never become clouded to the point where we view despair with unyielding eyes,

Where are convictions of morality overlook actuality and meet human necessity with no degree of decency.

Work within to not succumb to those darker urges of rage nor resign to a state of callous indifference.

For then, what is anything for, if we know no more of one another;

And, instead, have found sustenance from believing we are above all others?

Flows and Fragments

On By Stephen WallerIn Philosophical Musings, Poetry & ProseLeave a comment

Celebrate with a drink! Cheers to good health with the consumption of a known toxin.
Mustn’t let yourself fret over such trivialities – let’s return to building our own reality.
Where to begin? Are you a friend or foe? Wait – regardless of what you say, how can I trust you?
The response would naturally then be: how can I trust anyone?

We are pressed often by pain; often driven or propelled by an internal pressure that combusts to sustain our inner flame.
The heat motivates, or rather, stirs us into motion. Fueled by an emotion at any given time sets our actions into motions.
Each presumably, and hopefully, preceded by a deliberation followed by a conscious decision. If we know the act was driven instinctually, in most cases, this being synonymous with the term unconscious, then we can conclude or redirect our initial inquiry.

If we know the actor of an action didn’t do so intentionally, i.e., remember not having thought prior to their action, then we can eliminate this channel of inquiry. This speaks nothing of the tenability of other channels. Particularly, we move to the group that can at least acknowledge the presence, even in retrospect, that the effect of their action emerged from some choice on some level of emotive (including somatic) and/or cognitive (e.g., linguistic) grounding.
To acknowledge a phenomena’s existence must precede the stage of naming such a thing – order of events is an important rule of thumb to help remember the principle of reversibility.

Still waters – why do we believe we strive for stillness? Because we’re so busy we are dying to rest? True. But this merely means that we need rest and not that we want to stay there. Sure. We may want to now, as we think of this as a future potentiality, but our minds would likely change upon the actualization of this desire. However, this speaks to reduction of tension not to an elimination of it altogether. Rather, this speaks to a wish for a temporary tensive reprieve.

As actors, we enjoy getting to act upon others. This of course requires there exists others upon whom we might be able to act. But their existence can be conjured in the imagination, if necessary, so we’ll make the assumption and conclude in the affirmative of this statement’s validity.

Next, to move as an actor onto another, there must exist some dimensional gradient; that is, an imbalance that functions like a slope allowing for flow to occur. This is juxtaposed to stagnation. That is to say that the actor and the acted upon must have some degree of difference (> 0). This needn’t be a categorical difference. It merely must be enough of a difference to allow for the bifurcation of identity, i.e., each receives its own identity. Some degree of sovereignty over our own machine; how’s that working out?

We spend time worrying about the various things that are going to or have the potential to kill us while overlooking the stronger likelihood that the culmination of stress, pain, fatigue, apathy, and chronic pain will somehow not ultimately be our killer. I believe we secretly wish this to be true because then we wager with the death toll collector about when, or at what age is our toll due, evading these types of contemplations through the inner games we play with ourselves to manipulate time.