Sunday, May 31, 2015

Good Morning Jessicca...

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 31 May


Jessicca




The fountain looks like an erasure.  Isolating the faces from anything extraneous seemed more important.  Other oddities go on here, as well.  Attractive women and yet there are annoyances.  It’s not so much a battle of the sexes as it is two people making a commitment to live together forever.  That kind of arrangement requires a powerful elixir.   But, yes - sex is a powerful undertow.  We still don’t appreciate how much it directs our lives.




What are they doing?  There’s geometry everywhere but I’m wondering what’s happening atop that table.  The wheelchair provides the only circle.  It’s a workday downtown so I feel lucky to isolate all this severe black and white spread in a large public space.  He seems to be explaining while pointing at something; or is he scrolling his smart phone while the other guy reads the paper; maybe they’re just idly using their hands while talking.  I like the slabs stacked like dominoes.




The woman on the left is playing a harmonica as she marches her parents to the car.




I don’t care what you’re doing.  You’re going to be interesting.  It’s do-si-do when the traffic caller yells, “grab your partner and head upstream.”




You gotta love late afternoon light.  Here’s one of those tell it like it is conversations happening between these two.  The woman pushing the stroller is listening intent.  She’s hearing something she’s heard before but now she’s listening – a life experience has given what she hears new meaning.

Enjoy your youth.

Love,
          Dad



©  Tom Taylor     All Rights Reserved



Sunday, May 24, 2015

good morning justin

letter to my son
sunday, 24 may


justin



                          M
                          memorial day weekend

                                      saturday night
                                      dog acts frail
                                      gathering brake in fire pit
                                      details inside





                          Q
                         quite a social gathering

                                               ribs
                                           chicken
                                                   watermelon
                                                                           yum
                                             whats this blue moon beer all about
                                                        orange rind
                                            luke brings his girlfriend
                                                        yankee
                                                        from Albany
                                                        im terrible with names





                        A
                        asylum inmate

                                                       a known republican
                                                                   make crazy talk
                                                                   obama of course
                                                                   war will erupt in america
                                                                   im inoculated
                               




                              O
                              once again reality masked

                                                            some slight of hand
                                                            conversation about religion
                                                                       front porch
                                                                       great weather
                                                                       bernard and son with pamphlet
                                                                                    i picked
                                                                                    does god care
                                                                                              depends


love
          dad




©   Tom Taylor      All Rights Reserved



Sunday, May 17, 2015

Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 17 May



Jacob…



You've probably heard by now the theory that in a truly infinite universe there exists every possible variation of all things created – infinite variations of planet Earth, all possible combinations of historic events and all varieties of versions of you and me living every scenario of events during our life.  That’s one logical notion of infinite.





Of course, I have no awareness of any other variation of myself so I can’t really claim these people as me any more than Tom Taylor on Planet X can claim me on planet Earth as being him.  There are an infinite number of people claiming to be the genuine Tom Taylor and yet we are all the same while being different.  Now how does that work?  We each have our own separate consciousness so the only me is the one thinking precisely what this brain is concerned about right now.





I’m not losing sleep over this issue of identity.  It’s really no more than some philosophical mind game.  It’s like Descartes’ mental investigations in a way.  This guy, Rene, felt a personal freedom every time he said no to someone.  He figured that if there is any plausible reason that something isn’t true then he wasn’t going to believe it.  As it turns out the only thought he felt certain to be true was the fact of his own existence because he had consciousness.  You’ve heard it before - I think, therefore I am.  There is no certainty that anything else exists.  Your lover, your mother, the car you are riding in may actually have no existence.  We just decide on our own to go along and get along and be happy carrying out the ruse.  Even Descartes chose to be a lifelong practicing Catholic just in case his philosophy turned out to be off-base.  CYA.





This entire thought process seems irrelevant, having no bearing on what it is we face each day.  It doesn’t even seem beneficial.  Putting Cartesian Philosopher on your resume doesn’t help in landing a job.  And if you live your philosophy it is only a matter of time before you are placed in a mental ward for seventy-two hours of observation.  They rule you are not insane, just dysfunctional – a useless but harmless peg.





If I’m living in Bangladesh I feel blessed if I have a menial sixty hour a week job that pays next to nothing.  At least I eat and have a roof over my head.  Generally I can think any useless thoughts I want if I’m a citizen of the U.S. or Western Europe.  My society won’t let me starve.  It’s bad for moral.  I’m free to go where I want and do as I please so long as the opportunity doesn’t require money.  I can spend my days in the local library writing a blog discussing controversial issues such as how many angels really do fit on the head of a pin.   Here then is my chosen occupation.  Success in this career requires that I first imagine an impossible situation and then find the argument that reasonably describes what is unknowable.  If this doesn’t pan out my fallback position is to have a late night radio call-in program where we speculate who among us is not from this planet.

Love,
          Dad



© Tom Taylor    All Rights Reserved




Friday, May 15, 2015

action is foundation


I am God.  Anything goes. 



This is God speaking, not us.  The words spoken are indelible.  They bestow the power of existence upon a central concept – which is the nature of God, unknowable.  We, on the other hand, are human.  We are not a singularity as is the core of all creation.  We are humble before our vulnerabilities.  We think of need.  What need is there of God?  Can God feel need as we do?  God feels need in all its forms as we do because God created need but God has no need.

What need have we?  It is lonely not being loved.  It is more lonely having no one to love.  We are not content with our singularity as we might suspect God is in being simply one.  Yet, is it safe to say that all action requires a need?  What is it we do that is not an expression of need?  What need would God have in establishing creation?  What could God possibly be without fostering action?  This God may exist but without action there is nothing to know. 




Is a feeling a form of action?  Is thought an action?  Thoughts do not simply die.  They spawn new thoughts.  Moving from one thought to the next is action.  Some of these thoughts result in physical action – an object moving through space that requires a passage of time.  Each physical action behaves much like thoughts – they inspire another act, both physical and mental, which at some point produces a physical result.  Any physical act creates a change in physical existence.  The change may well be infinitesimal but, like thoughts, the course of existence is modified… if ever so slightly.  This imprint, slight as it may be, will result in producing further imprints.  An ant carrying a grain of sand across the beach leaves an impact too small to be detected by us.  The tiny piece of sand is loaded with microorganism whose prosperity is changed for better or worse.  Is its new home drier than before?  Is it shaded from direct sunlight?  Will it now be fed on by a burrowing worm?  If so, what is the fate of all those microorganisms? 

We can live our lives well without knowledge of atoms and their particles.  Yet, the actions of atoms impact our very survival as conscious objects of reality.  They also impact the nature of our consciousness.  We are dependent in all manners on the actions of billions of infinitesimals.   Because atoms are each a physical entity they each create a physical result that, in turn, influences a myriad other physical results.  Each action is the cause of other actions that grow new actions in a geometric progression.  No entity can possibly grasp the meaning of such events except for the entity we identify as God – who, incidentally, is beyond being an entity because God cannot be contained within our limited concepts.




Imagine a God having need?  What need is satisfied through the creation of existence?  Why did God choose to act as opposed to remaining an unknowable presiding over the most spectacular, absolute nothing?  The God of pure void reigns as nothing for eternity then, suddenly, a single action is taken and pell mell the action spawns two and two becomes four and four becomes sixteen and at such a rate existence explodes from nothingness to become the physical and consciousness realm of our reality within the space of an instant.  This realm is action and without action existence disappears.  Action is the basis of all that is knowable.  In this sense all Being is procured through action.  All that is is revealed by actions taken. 

The initial action spawned by God need not be resulting from need.  All actions taken subsequent to the first exist to fulfill a need.  Beneath every identifiable cause and effect exists a need.  Needs establish patterns.  Once we discover a similarity of need we label each similarity as a principle or rule that cannot be defied. 

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The net action on a body is equal to the product of its mass and its acceleration.

These are rules decreed by God that are more basic to the physical realm than are the Ten Commandments.  God is not beholden to such rules but does the nature of the physical realm reveal anything about the nature of God?  After all, natural facts express something of God’s chosen actions if not God’s intent.  In our sense of reasoning an entity’s actions says something about the nature of the entity.  Thus, existence expresses something of God’s nature.  If we were to say that all creation reflects God’s will then we are espousing human logic to gain our understanding.  This underestimates the problem of man understanding God.  The one rule of God is that God abides by no rule.  Nothing we can think about God strictly applies.  At best we have only intuitive inklings.  And what of this intuition?  We can say it is biology’s form of having an autopilot default setting that is molded by countless generations of evolutionary pressures.




We might even say intuition reflects a presence of the divine within each of us.  Consciousness itself may have first developed from intuition.  Consciousness reaches beyond biologically-based knowledge into new areas of learned understanding and appreciation.  The human consciousness acts as an agent of change to a human’s surroundings.  Humans exploit this power to manifest change reflecting human need.  We fashion our realm as we see fit.  Often we say we are acting out God’s will that we do so.  The truth of this has no meaning.  God enables us to know only as God chooses. 

Existence depends on actions.  There is nothing to define without action that is renewed only by new action.  What, then, is the basis of action?  For a realist with limited imagination actions are identifiable events that proceed through time in a chain of cause producing effect.  Absolutely rational – a human explanation for all events proceeding within our realm in a linear fashion.




To know beyond what reason reveals for us may require our dipping into the bewildering truth fashioned by the irrational.  Actions stemming from irrational thought make for often arbitrary results because effect does not logically follow cause.  What rules, if any, apply to a thought process deliberately irrational?  Irrational thought used to achieve rational goals is a mistaken thought process.  Irrational thinking best serves irrational goals.  What better irrational goal is there than taking action to achieve nothing or something of no good use?  Since it exists can we not say irrational actions serve to equally describe the nature of God as does actions of reason?

Let us end by concluding that every falsehood proves its own truth.  Such is the process of Godly thought.  It’s simply beyond us.


© Tom Taylor  All Rights Reserved



Sunday, May 10, 2015

good morning jack

letter to my son
sunday 
             10 may


morning jack…



                                first stop roy’s motel   
                                                                      a stone’s throw from amboy crater




                                                      run your fingers lightly over the day





                                                     turns out you’re lost in the clouds




                                                oh look      
                                                                  a rip ripping our landscape




                                            moment shared
                                                                          jack at the beach


love
          dad




©  Tom Taylor       All Rights Reserved




Sunday, May 3, 2015

Good Morning Jessicca

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 3 May


Jessicca...





Taking away the moments or adding to them.  What are we doing?




pine needles




sunset





roadway




facing home


Love,
          Dad




© Tom Taylor   All Rights Reserved