Ovi Magazine : "Ephemera" by Jan Sand

Newsletter

Contact

WordsPlease - Inspiring the young to learn

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

BBC News : -

"Ephemera"
by Jan Sand
2008-11-29 10:19:30

Print - Comment - Send to a Friend - More from this Author

Things wear. Cloth frays
Holding out small strands
Like begging hands.
Shoe leather abrades to slivers
Until a hole
Demands a new sole.
Time's assault delivers
All solidity
To nothingness. A melt
To liquidity.
It's a mystery
How we coagulate
From history.
We stooge around,
Hold our ground,
Then, quickly,
We dissipate,
Turn sickly,
Deteriorate.
Spark fear.
Disappear.

Poetry

Print - Comment - Send to a Friend - More from this Author


Comments(16)
Get it off your chest
Name:
Comment:
(comments policy)

Emanuel Paparella	2008-11-29 14:44:27
Everything is ephemeral; and yet light has no age as Mr. Hawking teaches us. One wonders if that also intimates to him something about eternity and immortality as it did to great poets such as Coleridge and Wordsworth.


Sand	2008-11-29 16:19:40
This incessant and meaningless assertion that light has no age is a very strange obsession. I wonder what it's supposed to signify. It's encouraging, anyway, that Mr.P. is paying close attention to Mr.Hawking.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-11-29 16:33:12
What you on the other hand need to pay attention to is Coleridge and Wordsworth to learn from them what art and poetry is all about. But I am afraid that they too have been duly pigenholed in your deterministic rationalistic scheme of things. They are and remain great poets nevertheless.


Sand	2008-11-29 17:25:14
Whatever you and I think of Coleridge or Wordsworth I still haven't heard what all this business of the agelessness of light has to do with things. Or perhaps you figured it was just a catchy idea with no relevance to anything in particular. (Or am I a bully for trying to find out?)


Emanuel Paparella	2008-11-29 18:10:43
Surely as an "enlightened" person up on the latest scientific discoveries, you can figure that one out. Here are some helpful hints: In 1905 Albert Einstein rattled the cages of the scientific academy with the theory of Special Relativity. While most people associate Einstein’s theory with the relative nature of time, the foundation of relativity is the constancy of light: for all observers in all frames of reference, the speed of light will be measured as 186,000 miles per sec. This makes light an ideal measurement standard with several profound characteristics. Because the speed of light will be measured the same by all observers, regardless of their speed, their measurement of time must vary. For the extreme case of an explorer blitzing through the cosmos at the speed of light, time will stop—he will not only become ageless, he will become omnipresent, for as he goes from point “A” to point “B”, he will experience both locations, and every place in-between, as they were when he set out on his journey…even if his departure point and destination are separated by ten billion light-years! This is undoubtedly a source of illumination, revelation, life. An ideal Measure; constant, ageless, omnipresent. Astonishing! Thousands of years before Einstein, the apostle John used a metaphor for Jesus the Christ that could only be fully appreciated at the advent of modern physics: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Indeed, Shakespeare had it on target: there are more things in the world that your rationalistic materialistic philosophy can even dream of.


Sand	2008-11-29 18:24:29
As usual you have demonstrated the ability to go off half cocked. It is impossible to attain the speed of light since mass also increases with an increase in velocity and it becomes infinite at the speed of light. But your linguistic confusion of the nature of light with whatever theistic knowledge you feel is worthwhile disseminating is typical of idiotic philosophers mixing up unrelated terminologies. That your Biblical character should be aware of Einstein's conception of time and space is beyond ludicrous. It is positively psychopathic.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-11-29 18:32:19
True to form, it all ends with insults and vituperations for the man who says that 2+2=5 simply because he says so, so much the worse for Einstein's scientific discoveries. And now I dare you to add your last word, which will surely not be the last word on the nature of light, despite what your visiting voices may suggest.


Sand	2008-11-29 18:46:07
Of course I'll take the last word since your comprehension of Einstein is totally idiotic. All you have replied with is nonsense and insults. To assume that Einstein's theory was understood by an untutored religious fanatic two thousand years ago is obviously material for Monty Python.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-11-29 22:15:29
http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/ArticleDetail/tabid/68/id/7886/Default.aspx Moreover, the reader who may be interested in the nexus between the spiritual and the material, usually given short shrifts my materialists and rationalists, the above link will take him/her to an enlightening article on the subject by an eminent scientist.


Sand	2008-11-29 23:09:05
Very ungracious of you, Mr. P, to offer me the last word and then withdraw your offer, but typical of your whole approach to comments.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-11-30 00:37:57
No need to play the aggrieved victim once again. So that you don't have to cry yourself to sleep tonight, let me point out what you obviously missed (which is not unusual either): the comments were not addressed to you, who prefers ignorance and once biased opinions on the matter, but to interested readers. So, rest assured, you had the last word and therefore you won the debate. You may call your sycophants and offer high fives and guffows all around.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-11-30 01:43:21
P.S. "Eppur si muove"


Sand	2008-11-30 02:15:04
Which reader did you dare to add the last word?


AP	2008-11-30 03:13:28
Thank you, Sand. For the poem. It's exactly like that - something that fades away. And when we understand that something is both priceless and insignificant, all vanities disappear. An instant blaze, a dying puff - and that's who we ALL are. Hard to aknowledge? Maybe. But quite a start.


AP	2008-11-30 03:18:07
errata - acknowledge ps - Mr. P., you didn't go to the movies yet? Fascinating ageless lights over there.


AP	2008-11-30 03:32:08
We're equal in our insignificance, and death is a fantastic reminder of that. Who invented it? I don't care, unless when it's a murder. Death exists for you, dictator and slaughterer, self-conceited person, pedophile or white-collar criminal, jealous and bitter person, arrogant bastard, cruel idiot to remember once in a while - you're just as insignificant as those you think are less worthy of living than yourself. Ahah What a great invention.