Beetle Juice

Cucumber Beetle rides the Zinnia.

Not sure if its a Cucumber Beetle because of what it eats or its general color, though it looks kind of like a Gentlemanbug, in complimentary attire.

Ps.  Starting Oct 1, look for a pic a day, here an on Flickr.



Harvest Moon and Jupiter.

Historic Event in need of photo!

I hear this was an historic event --  Harvest Moon, falling on the last day of summer as equal day and equal night (eqinox) trade out to greater night.   Beyond that, the moon and Jupiter rode the sky real close, and  -- If I have my facts right, both closer to us than normal.   If you look real close you can see the rings.

Ps.  I have a tool that shows what people are searching for when Google sent them here.  Now I imagine the odd looks for all those looking for Harvest Moon/Jupiter.



Zinnia Down

For friends of the Mighty Works Project.

Starting October 1, You should get a picture and line or two of poetry per day.  Turns out I have joined a Flickr group, consisting of Arkansas Photographers, who have committed to posting a picture a day.  I'd like to do the same with poetry, and hope to scratch and catch something each day.

The Moving Garden

Broken Poem 9/18/2001

Lord

Don’t hear me wrong:

But how do You hold humming birds

aloft, or blow

feathered clouds

across the azure skies –

Even as the panther pounces

Even as a baby bounces – in his little bounce machine

Even as -- 200 feet of flying tube

frays into

a deafening array

of steel and boiled blood?

Again

         And again,

                                         And again.

I would have thought

the Universe should flicker

Like a drain upon the sun,

I would have thought the birds would drop

like tar from the sky –

I would have thought to hear each

voice,

lag behind the mouth with tape d e l a y.

And,  I shouldn’t have been shaken

if electrons died.

But Lord

this ability of yours

the hear one mother giving birth

with joy,

then watch

another broken in a smash of glass and heat

600 mph to 2, in a blink

Is break-

ing me.

I know this feeling can’t be new,

Moms have pulled their sons

by the tons from ovens, cars, and rivers

or this foul aftermath of war ..

And yet the flowers bloom.

And lovers kiss a world away,

in the heat of your blessing.

And stupid children laugh.

I have played these games before.

Once there were too many stars

     for my local God.

Ten-thousand stars is one thing,

         but what about ten billion

in my cluster, with some billion clusters more.

I doubted You, but found

You grew bigger than my doubts,

And I swooned beneath the breadth of Your enormity.

But Lord, do you mean to stretch

my mind, till there is nothing left to stretch?

I like my lines of pleasure, clean

against the evil world –

But they are swirled and jabbed and glued

and I must close down now

Or find You bigger still, till

I have no place

left to hold You …

So will you please hold me?

911 Trilogy (original post 9/11/03)

Not even a sparrow falls...

be it blown

from the sky –

Unknown.

Not a single hair remains...

be it thrown

to the wind

of oblivion and flame

Un numbered.

Not a single hurt...

or heart
or missing voice

Unheard –

Indeed...

Not ever a drop did fall,
Nor did someone heed the call,

be it not KNOWN

before the Throne

and

remembered.

----------

For more poems by Kirk see

http://startledbyexistence.squarespace.com

(911 - hOLE IN THE wORLD)

(written Sept 12/13-2001)



A totally inadequate poem

So, here we have it. I want to share with you a world. I want to tell you that the world is at once an unapproachable glory, the outlands of heaven in our midst. I want to tell you that the world is alive with ongoing miracle and that the trees are like hard seaweed on the bottom of the Numa Sea . (Where did that come from?) I want too, to tell you that the thing is broken, the world has veered, and the code has been rewritten. I want you to sell your car or house, Finally, I want them to tear down the World Trade Centers… or better yet, convert them into apartments for the poor, or if not that, build some huge barn between them and make them into the front spires of a very grand cathedral.  
From the Journals of the Kirk--Why do I take pictures 1985

I’ll admit,
this thought isn’t safe
or a thing I say too loud (but hear me out.)


I have seen them with a foreign eye
like turrets on a godless-church,
silvereen, and soaring high
But missing the cathedral --


Testimonies to the arrogance of man
against every rule of nature,
TALL with vertigo and force,
streaming upward like
welded boxcars --


Two silver fists
in the face of God:
Like spikes in a rotted apple.

But today, I weep
and if you will, let me
with imagination

bleed.

(a Google image)

Bleed for pagans

and believers,

the bearded business men, the

brokers and the broken,

the silent mimes and firemen,

sisters, daughters, mothers, fathers, and

these ever-feuding sons of Abraham --

Indeed,


Father Abraham
has many sons --
those who walk in faith and seek
a city
made by God;
But don't we weep to see
Faith twisted into obscene forms.


---


Today,
I see with different eyes,
and I repent .. for wearing monocles.


Could it be
that a THING might be
MORE
than any ONE thing
at once?


Today, I see what were


twin trumpets,
Blasting out a tune to
to the majesty of man.


I see
two trees
mightier than redwoods,
brushing stars
and brushed
in lemon light
like a sky-house hotel
for Leprechauns.


I see
mighty rivers decked
in vivid commerce;


Old-world villages
replete with jugglers and silk –
boats on ropes whizzing up the ditches
laden with exotic wares from foreign lands
like some grand-market
tipped upward.


I see twin
Towers,
like thin lanes of light,
Bars of gold, beacons on the rim --
shining out a tale of
industry and might
and incomprehensible blessing --
leading a parade.




I see within,
and on each floor
(stacked above each other like coins)
a little town from Arkansas
complete
with hatted men
and football teams,
the smiling bells (now wearing jeans)
and the bee-hive ladies yakking
at the hair salon.
I see faith in the 24the century.


Indeed,
We saw a universe
with fifty-thousand centers
anchored in a common block.


We heard the twine of beating hearts
like a ten-thousand drums, then
the lull,
and now, the tortured
patter of the few,

And we felt within ourselves
the stuff of horror.

Veins, and brains
and towers like slit arteries
collapsing into bloody dust
before our eyes.

..


They say, on the radio today
that this is a different country.
And we believe it.
We will never feel the same.
We are all new Yorkers, wearing black.



***

Once there were two towers
Tall as titans
Full of grace
She wore the moon within her hair,
He wore the sun upon his face,


and they walked with the I-AM
in the garden
without shame.


Then some devil of a serpent
slashed the air,


One tower fell, and then…
 
 
 

Floaty Line Oplusion

Well, I know it’s not much of a picture, but this optical illusion makes it look as if the white stripe is hovering over the asphalt. Truth is, both the white line and darker parking line are painted directly on the ground, side by side. (The zoom of the lens during exposure intensifies the effect.) As is, I have seen this same thing done with people and oil spots, but I came by my picture purely. It was a pure accident.  I only saw the op-pop afterward.

Questions for Steve

This is an odd place to post, but news of Stephen Hawking's book - The Grand Design -  in which he argues for the spontaneous generation of the cosmos, got me to to thinking...about stuff I've written in the past.  This content below is something I wrote some 10 years ago as a book idea for my kids (which in turn, is in need of radical edit.)   Not sure I would ever want to get in a tangle with Stephen, but I think my questions near the end are worthy of his consideration.  

Chapter 5.5  (From the Peacock's Feather KSJ)

Chicken or the Egg

By now in science class you have learned about the things we call matter and energy. Matter is a pretty big word, and comes close to meaning “stuff” but it also includes a lot of stuff we can’t see. And for sake of this discussion, it includes energy as well. Truth is matter and energy are somewhat interchangeable. The physics of all this is way beyond me, but I understand that matter can be converted into energy (that happens when we burn a tree and the tree then becomes the stuff of ash and light and heat. Or on the converse, energy can be made in matter. That happens when the energy released by the sun interacts with chlorophyll and creates new matter. In either case we are speaking the language of movement. We speak of source and end, or CAUSE AND EFFECT,

Today, Sun energy is diminishing – even as the matter on earth gets bigger!

But before I go any farther here, I want to entertain a question you may have heard before.

What came first – the chicken or the egg?

Have you heard it?

So which did come first?

As is, there are probably several solutions to this problem.

The first (which nobody has ever suggested) is that chickens and eggs arrived on the scene by totally divergent paths. Chickens arrived on the scene, without the benefit of any precedent eggs, while eggs arrived at the same time, without any precedent chickens. The two just got together and formed a symbiotic relationship and have been working together since.

A second solution – also seldom advanced – it that chickens and eggs -- As chickens and eggs, are eternal. There has never been a time when the chicken/egg were not.

the third or fourth possible solutions are a little easier.

Either

3) the Chicken came first, or

4) The egg.

Now of course, the solution to this riddle wasn’t meant to be as easy as those answers. Metaphysical questions don’t persist by having easy answers. What is really being asked is a larger question about things with starts.

But first, lets go back to reconsider the basic problem.

Both the chicken and the egg as things, represent a “cause.” -- And a cause is something that gives birth to effect – In fact, a cause without an effect would not be a cause, an so, while cause precedes effect, it can not be divorced from effect. The two notions occur as a unit- spread across time.

Likewise, both the chicken and egg are an effect; That is, by virtue of their existence and activity, we ascertain precedent cause.

Furthermore, it would appear that that Chicken and egg exist in a circular relationship with each other, both being for one another a cause and an effect. BUT THIS ILLUSION, or ERROR – unless we speak of chicken-kind and egg-kind as opposed to individuals. For no chicken has ever laid the egg that gave birth to itself, and no egg has ever become the chicken that should lay it.

So, the thing which appears at first a riddle is less so – what we have here is not an eternal circle with no start – but a slinky.

So now – the real question. Does the slinky that is chicken and egg – have a start!

A true materialist will probably say no (thought he might fudge and talk about the big bang as if it were the start.)

In fact, cosmic-gradualists would have the chicken-egg relationship as just one of the latter and more advanced manifestations of what is at the very core of reality: An ever advancing machine in which the total energy and mass that informs the system has always been in the system. In other words, chickens and eggs ARE eternal – however, they have not always looked like chicken/eggs. At one time they looked more like stars, or a thick place in space. or (if we go back beyond the bang, maybe even chicken/eggs in the universe before the last great condense.)

On a smaller level, before you ever get to chickens or eggs, you must first come up with things like slime and water and calcium and bugs and corn and dinosaurs and dinosaurs that jump off of cliffs (including some that survive the leap for the flaps on their sides) and DNA and such.

And before that, you must first come up with stuff.

Which puts us at the very start of the problem.

Is it possible to have stuff without a start?

Or, To say it another way, which came first … Nothing, or an eternal something?

If everything came from something that preceded it, then we would assume that cause (in some form or another) is eternal.

On the other hand, if everything that is came from absolute nothingness, then we must be prepared to abandon, in TOTAL the concept of cause and effect. Make that reason as well.

For the most part, though, when anybody speaks about the moment before the big bang … they always begin with a something. It may –be pre-matter, or pre energy … it may be anti-matter … it may even be a reversal in time in which the thing which exists one billionth of a second reaches backwards into time to give itself the energy to create itself (something like that) but there is always a something. A movement, a spark, a wink, a infinitesimal bit smaller than an atom on a fleas wing …a deepening within the void, but .. always … a something. (or Everything)

And that something, as a something simply takes us back to the start of the problem … either that something had a precedent cause, or it simply IS. Something from something, or something from nothing.

Someone may object, and say that these problems are not owned by naturalistic evolution. In fact, the creation model that I advocate posits something of both difficult ideas. Something is eternal (namely God) AND, nature has “popped into being” out of nothingness … albeit by the will of God.

The difference in a theistic system and a naturalistic system begins with a distinction in the character of the eternal “essence.” We are left with a sub-rational, or a super-rational idea: either, 1) that nature is self existing and its own cause, or 2) the ever living and infinite God who is above nature in every way, may initiate in nature, an effect without any precedent NATURAL cause.

Some questions for matter-ists who affirm general reason.

Some folks, when they talk of “the big bang” think of it as a providing some kind of start. but I can’t see how it would suggest anything (at best) but a temporal-pool, or a point in history. SO …

If things with starts must have something in them that starts (or must be eternally started) what shall we call the stuff that was, some unthinkable fraction before the big bang. I don't know enough about physics or the terms implied in this discussion to know if scientist have given a name to the eternal something that precedes the universe as we know it, so I shall simply refer to it as ESS (Eternal Starter Stuff)

Questions:

Does Essential Starter Stuff exist in time? If so, what qualities of or about the ESS would give meaning to time? (In my mind, time appears to be a function of movement)

Does ESS possess, or initiate motion?

If ESS initiates motion, has ESS always possessed the quality of motion?

If ESS posses the quality of motion, is the motion constant, or does in vary in speed or duration.

If the motion in ESS varies, what qualities would help define that variation.

If the ESS knows variation within itself, is the cause for that variation within itself or without.

(If the cause for the variation is within itself, is all cause that shapes the "cause" within the cause … ad infinitum.

Or, if the cause for the variation is outside of the system, how shall we explain the origin of this cause?

Does the ESS posses the attribute of size or location.

If the ESS possesses the attribute of dimension, what other quality or variable would the ESS be measured against to define its size or location.

Is ESS Simple, or complex?

If simple, has ESS been eternally simple.

If complex, has ESS been eternally complex.

Does the ESS posses the quality of differentiation.

If so, has ESS always possessed "internal" differentiation?

If ESS has always possessed internal differentiation, has that differentiation been subject to change.

Has ESS ever changed … what would be the impetus behind that change?

If The ESS knows change (on any level, of any kind) what precedent cause would account for the change?

Here of course we have encountered an unending circle.)

Does ESS possess the quality of growth? If so, what scale or item of comparison would allow us to measure it?

Does the ESS in anyway posses any a pre-quality of any of these attributes?

Design,

Imagination

Purpose

Life

Intelligence

Order

Beauty

Pleasure

Does the ESS contain all (by way of a pooling of cause) that will go into the effects that are ourselves.

Does the ESS contain (in some form) all that will go into our history, our lives, our likes, our passions, our morals, our art, our religion – etc.

Does the ESS contain the sum total of energy or matter that will be the Cosmos?

*If not, we are back to the problem of effect (the existence of energy) without precedent cause.

Are we to say:

The "stuff" which preceded our universe in eternal. This “something” contains the sum total of energy that will be expressed in the universe. It is differentiated, and knows movement in itself, and has these attributes apart from any cause other than itself. The ESS contains all CAUSE for every thing that ever was, is, or will be.

The ESS is, and was, and WIZ.

There is only ESS.

--

Now at this point – it looks like we have something that is close (but far) from God.

An eternal something, that has in it the potential for all that should be realized in time (given the mechanics chance and necessity) is .. more like God, than nothing.

The only question now is – can this dead but eternal machine, apart from any will or design be made into what it has become? And here my science falls apart. For I understand that the universe as I now know it, is not a single expression of effect … but

Myriad upon myriad of effects – Is it possible to boil the all these (including the rules that should govern development) down into “one” effect –

Namely “Bang”?

--

Some folks have stated that if we can envision that God, is eternal, why not matter? And I guess, expressed that way, neither is real thinkable .. both confound us … but when it comes to being loved, and being in love – or knowing that I am special, or even affirming that I am self aware – the idea that that which is without knowledge, that which is without life, or purpose, or plan, or dream … That which is without the simple act of being self aware – that which is without anything but what it is becoming … is utterly and absolutely unthinkable to me. Even an evolving god, of which I and my fellow strivers, are its most recent incarnation -- dishes out the prospect that I alone am worthy of my praise – for no other being shall hear it and care.

On the other side of this great chasm, is an idea (or a revelation) that the cause behind the universe is not less than (or equal to) the universe – but greater than the universe in everyway.

Greater by virtue of power, and knowing, and presence and personality and goodness and beauty.

Henceforth,

Personality gives birth to personality.

The infinite gives form, to multiple effects (or causes).

Beyond that, the answer for Effect, that is found in CREATION, has about it certain simplicity. Chickens were created as chickens, or eggs as eggs. They came together – like a spring loaded trap, both ready to give birth to one another. The core idea behind creation is that God is larger than the system that operates under Him. The system contains power -- God is ALL POWERFUL The system contains information – God is ALL KNOWING. The system exists in space and time. God is larger than both.. Furthermore, God is FREE. He is not conditioned or forced to create. He does so most freely, apart from any cause other than that His own desire. Finally, As the First and Last, He is able to create multiple – almost infinite effects, without any precedent NATURAL cause.