Wednesday July 21st, 2010

The exercise:

The topic today: patterns.

Had our second restaurant delivery this morning, and it was bigger than any we did last summer. Things on the farm side have been going really well so far... now I just have to find time to do some longer writing and I'll be all set.

Damned work/life balance...

Mine:

There is a method to the madness,
A composition in the chaos,
If one only knows where to look.

It cannot be taught,
It cannot be photographed,
Nor is it written in a book.

It is unique to all of us,
But it takes a journey -
Are you ready to begin?

Find a quiet place,
Close your eyes,
And look within.

3 comments:

Greg said...

Congratulations on the farm delivery, sounds like you're fast becoming a farmer! Hehe, and I see that the writing is still taking a back seat :) I did suspect that farming would take up more of your day than you were expecting when you first described your plans.
However, if you can get the farm blog up and running then that'll increase the amount of 'mandatory' writing each week, and that may help.

Your poem has a very meditative quality to it, I could imagine it being used to by a teacher or as a way to settle your mind down. It's quite beautiful.

Patterns

The men who used to stare at goats,
Now stare at petri dishes,
Hunting for significance in the patterns,
Of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.
Unbalanced by microscopic forces,
Buffeted by Brownian motion;
The patterns have a steady regularity,
That is... desirable
To shape society; Using the skills
That they learned when staring at goats,
To superimpose a regularity of pattern
That makes people predictable,
Is their long term aim.
The B-Z spirals twist and turn,
Entrapping the eye, bemusing the mind,
Sometimes they never return.

Zhongming said...

Marc - It’s good to hear that your farm is doing well so far. I’m really looking forward to your farm blog and I wonder what the contents are. Yeah, hopefully you can find that work/life balance. Good luck!

I like your first two lines, it just fit together nicely. I agree with Greg about your poem being meditative. Yours certainly settles my confused mind whether to write or not. :)

Greg - I like your last second line :)

Your poem is showing it's complex pattern. I am thinking of hunters speaking from the bottom of their hearts.

These are just some of the thoughts that came out of me while travelling in the blue train. I hope i didn't embarrass myself. :)

Mine:

Flipping pages after pages
And I couldn’t grasp
that unusual pattern
I am getting confused
The more I read about it
Feeling cold and blue
While listening to hot blues
In that lovely blue train
Pictures of pattern
Still resides in my brain

Marc said...

Greg - love the closing sequence of your poem. And thanks for the kind words on mine :)

Zhongming - thank you! And never worry about embarrassing yourself, we're all just here for practice :)

Your poem reminded me of studying for calculus in university. And computer science.

I think you captured the feeling very well :)