must we become that we attempt to outcompete?

(I can take credit for neither words nor paint nor this suggested soundtrack.
just the plumbing that connects them.)

so much time
sigil a candle burning down
50 years of practice, 1000 hours

integrative stitching always returning shrinking loosening converging but growing a tangle ball growing out and tightening in

60s
politics
ache

too quick to forget to believe
in progress
not settling
and therefore being
unsettled

calm and
humility

voice ^ sing
to support themself
each other
in page of new hymn ^ sing
have only direction ^ sing
together

a house warmed by guests
steaming
bread
conversations and
temporary tattoos
of fractals
the massage table is
busy
and earlier today I
basically just ranted at a guy
about "cyborg design" aka "centaurachitecture"
and he said I had a good mind my
ego boost for the day
before that I'm introducing
two incredible professors
helping the rolling transfer
of e.e. to course 2
(labs are
essential)
and now in quiet on floor pillows
hear
"
the desk is
I arrange it in a certain
way
and when I arrange it
when I feel that space
that's when I
work
"
and I haven't  worked at a desk
since gosh
but sometimes

as hollow ice holds water

under their organizing gaze

maybe as Wolfram said ^
all is cellular automata
that act according to their neighbors
A New Kind of Politics:
autonomous cells with global communication
and social media
we cluster them with k-means for a chosen k of 2 ^
politician opinions converging hopefully
to the average of their weighted constituents:
The New (kind of) Left ^

call this polarization
but why should k be two?
why not
divide it up further
structure ourselves at the small scale
with intent
with an eye to the emergent patterns

how could we make bureaucracy
grow like a fern?
fractal but with
an overall elegance
each part a part
of the whole makes
participation
more resistant
to multinational weather
(like when
one early Ghana morning
we were woken and moved outside
to avoid earthquake rumors spread
by cellular messaging
across the nation and its neighbors)

can we grow from
small neighborly rules
which cannot be surrounded
and create radical autonomy
in this existential Game? ^

know that Kronos' sublimation
will cause you to wake late:

so expect surprises, especially
old friends
whose warmth is remembered immediately
(though their names may take hours
to recolesce).

today a humming Mercury
plays Chance with winds:
avoid crossing your own path.

and prepare to get lost, twice
you will encircle the town
like a settling dog,
repeating a melody
of street intersections.

this morning comes early
the assistance of break-beat brass is enlisted ^
to get out of bed
roll downstairs
make some tea
skip upstairs turn on Glitch Mob ^
find (IKEA wrapping) paper pencil begin pset
helicopters bicycles a discrete jitter
(in me as well with this teafast)
and oh yeah a picnic lunch today to set up and remind of
everything happens in sequence and simultaneity

yesterday awaking felt like
solving a system of linear equations
(and it felt great, everything simple and maximizable
under the right combination of stretch and yawn)

today's a bit more nonlinear
situations arrive to meet
solutions arisen before awareness
groceries gotten whilst MATLAB installs
I'll make it to that seminar after all
and name this poem after it

this morning feels early
like a clock set ahead of the day

absentmindedly ask a student
about the aesthetic qualities of a waveform
she's more a fan of the sine wave
"a classicist! I see how it is"
she returns later to turn in an assignment
carrying as well a drawing from the student art lottery
inscribed in stilted block letters with
"could we not admire their strange colors?"
(or something to that effect)
the drawing is all gray
an upside down dark gray ufo floating / falling
in billowing sheets of light gray solid wind
but the words bring it color.


later, tired
at a fossil fuel divestment meeting
get caught up in the idea
of embodied artifacts of futures successful / unsuccesful
in dealing with global warming

like: a plaque in front of dead grass
describing the (quite real) plant that dies
in the presence of landmines
unsettling, or at least curious;

or, a series of plaques
for a tour of an underwater MIT
describing particularly picturesque invasive species
for touring divers

or, a stack of pamphlets
celebrating the 50th reunion of the class of 2011
with maps showing a flooded MIT
and a tour of Killian Pond at 1pm Monday
(bring anti-malarials, and
watch out for alligators)

in each of our micro cultures, hypocritical
and all of our (macro) culture, inertial
speculative futures may be gray
but maybe words can bring us color.

it seems a seal's whiskers
curl so as to be unmoved by rushing water
but twitch behind the vortices of a fleeing fish
(so says a serendipitously met friend
who has become a Doctor on the subject)

earlier, another chance encounter
a freshman student, now a senior
doing well, still
seems so young
but also more clearly defined
and present
but I "literally have to run"

and, running late
(as ever this day)
change and jog backwards
hoping to collide with-
-ah, there they are-
a professor of thoughts elegant and integrative
plus another student
we run, and they speak of
how a robot sees objects
in their pose - position and orientation
and we talk about how
cameras might see an object move
and guess its internal motions
which I rather want to call
its poise
but can't figure how
calves still sore
from doing this Thursday
(this prof once
ran 18 miles
accidentally in a day;
this is his commute;
)
I spin
mental gears
on other
projects
or
(tired)
cease



fast forward
remove the seal
of time
at home
recover
from the images of the day
the bright flickers and fireworks with
enough vortices to twitch any seal's mustache
unwind and
slack
the paid out line of sleep
let it pull
this wave returns
to the sea
with sore calves

but never mind, just grab a handful of colors
and play

interstitial
barren gold
obliteration
by incorporation

in this cyborgean variety show
old todays
retroreflect

within the courtyard
a cheetahrobot
now it jogs
but whoops
a tumble
neck goes down
snaps

the grad students seem
a little disappointed
set it back up
it runs headless
but whoops
a divot
front feet go in,
push
off the ground
into a front flip
rolled on the shoulder
they seem more worried now
I head inside

it's strange how
being settled
is less restive
than traveling
one

thinks:
being in place
allows habits to
accrete
systems to build up
and perhaps this will be
true

in time but now things go so fast with
new and old friends systems responsibilities and

perspective is gained
on the road's deceptive speed
intentionality is
what is remembered
those

phone calls from the wilderness
and long books on the highway
that

small script which took
achingly long to write
as long as Nebraska
used today for ten seconds
to assign recitations by preference
which felt as long as
those three rest-stop hours
then

is the speed of the world
as it is felt
just the tug of tasks at
the back of one's mind
like the drag of the wind

or might it be counted
as the rate of moments
which will be
remembered

the chattering birds of
this Beaver Island State
Park have too much
energy for
my tired eyes

which relax
on the bridge
painted as
verdigris
and are held by
greens
of the grass and trees

the lushness here does bespeak
a different kind of thought
than utah and wyoming's red hills
as raucous geese vee overhead
it is an untidy environment;
so different from
Maria Montessori's schoolroom
where she made ritual silence
organized a plain
and usable tidy environment
to change the relation
between Adult and Child
in start-of-century City with its
oppositions clashing on busy streets
its dialectics
but here inside a fecund emerald
hybridization is preferred
for synthesis

perhaps in classrooms
the child becomes more adult
and the adult more child, or

the learner more certain
the teacher less
at first

on seeing
the Niagaras
fall

they
were lit in
red, blue
faded white

while
around me waved
bright colors
semiconducted
to saturation

the waters seemed amused
careless as they dashed
passing identity upward

and in a moment of sublime
focus sharpened, all made sense
in diorama:
those waters
these barnacle buildings
we

spontaneities
arise
passers by
are an overstimulating
garden

of eyes

a festival

jazz
serendipitous
one song minimalist
of beauty unafraid
to seem awkward
at first


conversation reductivist
with a loved friend
who'd tax by the head
and prefer votes for
those of Capital

which is one way to see
each part of the garden
in the same way
we move inside
by his request

for this Self Made man
environment serves only
aesthetic purpose
it does little to
create ability
or perpetuate
repression

(with the exception
of huge inheritance
on which
we agree:
outrageous

though I consider
the transition of
favoured labour
to faster-growing rentier
problematic
even within a lifetime
and hence favour
taxing wealth
outside of death)

later we
share jokes and work
laugh freely
and find strange
synchronicities
in our humours
and research

left unargued for
is the
possibility
(necessity)
of the hitherto
unrealized
of apparent
spontaneity

serendipity as a
confusion
of the 'individual'
and the 'environment'
and we
as tools of luck

in wyoming
the familiar wild leaf
proved tangy,
as in california
and in gratitude for the tastes
and smells and sights,
I offered the forest a goldsworthy:
a nestling
of curved fallen branches
pleasing to my eye.
this of course
was an obvious arrogance
but (I hoped)
also a kind of humility
since all artifice might be seen
as goldsworthies,
as patterns
learnt from leaf and branch.

then last
night stuck
in a ditch
its mud so
soft

stuck well

I slept
(nothing to be done)
slept on
the slope

slept well

and 6am awoke to see
a farmer passing
with a wry smile
and a chain

a ways on
I break fast
and see
that the car has acquired
a perfect
grassy
goatee

and it seems that the ditch
has made a goldsworthy of me

and the crickets leap
off cracked asphalt
over an emerging pattern
of plants

insects call
over passing cars
both are thick in this air,
so I spent the night
beside a farm field
willing each of the
(half-
dozen)
automobiles
not to stop curiously
and rouse me
and make me put a shirt on
(water
is thick in this air
the insect calls and humidity
complete each other

let me tell you:
yesterday when the clouds burst
and visibility dropped
to a couple of highway-seconds
it was the sky hugging us to the earth

until it cleared up, then drenched again
unpredictably for hours; an
eager amnesiac hugger, perhaps

anyway:
you can understand why I was shirtless)
where were we? oh yes
now here
all present
some with large accounts
(although,
according to Piketty

half of Westerners
since the 18th century
have been without wealth
failing their duties
as citizens qua capitalists)
we are distracted
from our dynastic tendencies
and the smile of ownership
(which comes in
three sizes)
by the grin of exploration

the air in Medicine Bow forest is sharp
one breathes through the nose, deeply
when sitting low
on a burnt log

on second glance
not burnt, but darkly lichened

nearby
is Massacre Trail
and suddenly the notion
of landscape as memory seems shallow
because of course the earth remembers
even if we don't

we are as soil
plant in us and we may grow;
plant beans, and they will release nutrients
to the microorganisms of thought
fed upon by other tiny things
which obtain in turn as
conscious Nitrogren
in our ecology of mind

perhaps we only change ourselves
by changing our environment;
let us reintroduce wildlife
let us think outside ourselves
that our thoughts may breed, die
and become compost;

shall we fix the air we breathe
into our branches
and our fruit?

a red-bodied cicada
passes on the left
(or is it a
cricket?)

lines of silt deposits
and red sloping hills
make the same shape

what
would it be like
to be of this place?

(to have grown up here,
formed by these contours)

do thoughts have a place?
are they shaped by
childhood locations
existing on some sloping hillside
beneath an emerging rock
there, in the darkness!

isn't that
a desire to be dwarfed by one's surroundings?
and there, next to it
a memory of a relationship
that felt like the hills
warm with absorbed sunshine.