Halloween 2024

"All politics is apotropaic

Ritual aimed at averting evils."*

Like the skeletons in the garden,

It works by begging Satan’s pardon.

Imagined sins rouse real devils

Costumed to undo the quick—

These horrors medicate the sick!

In their wake this Halloween

Get set to sing a civic scream,

Hoping that it's all a dream.

* Anon. “Greek apotrópaios . . derivation of apotrépein ‘to turn away from, turn aside, avert.’” —Webster’s.

October 30, 2024

Role-Playing

“Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.” ― Will Rogers

I am a minor character in my life.

There’s no protagonist as yet.

I fear that one may suddenly appear

And shift the apple cart into high gear.

We minor characters don’t have much to say.

I think we’re better off that way!

Tears

On est grand, très grand par l’amour

et on est plus grand par les pleurs,

par les pleurs!—

Jacques Offenbach, Les contes d’Hoffmann (1880), Epilogue

“Love makes us great—very great—

And greater yet, weeping, by our tears!”

Here Offenbach's last libretto ends,

Celebrating the poet Hoffmann and his drunken friends.

Snowflakes pile up, and avalanches slide,

Thoughts through innumerable synapses glide,

Birds flock, starlings murmurate at dusk, fish swim in schools,

And countless seeds float freely on the breeze.

"They" is life's exponential rule.

Better thus not hold back those tears,

Love is one, and they are many:

The cosmos runs on multiplicity.*

But taught not to be a crybaby as a boy,

I learned the lesson and reject such fears!

*Charlie Wood, "Why 'Many' Is Displacing 'Small' as the Hottest Frontier in Physics," Quanta Magazine, citing P. W. Anderson, “More Is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Science,” Science 177, no. 4047 (August 4, 1972), https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_different_PWA.pdf?mc_cid=3146b89807&mc_eid=ad6a8f5ad8