№ 879: Really?

EREWHON (June 15) —

What if it’s already over?

What if we’re already dead?

What if reality’s all an illusion

and never happened instead

of happening here, in the now,

wherever that happens to be,

what if, in fact, everything's fiction,

a make-believe story, not actuality?

What if all you thought ever happened

happened in somebody's head?

What if you are a throwaway character

in a short story composed for a course 

taught by an alcoholic failed writer

(whose unfaithful spouse just filed for divorce)

at a for-profit college named for Betsy DeVos?

What if, in a world falling to tatters,

those were facts? Would it change matters

if the foregoing was what was real

and not Donnie's foul and floundering “deal”?

№ 794: Some Perspective

Are We Living in a Simulated World? (Paywall)

Probably not, but the idea is just crazy enough to be worth taking seriously.

MAYBE (February 17) —

If
ALL THIS is
is a simulation
and nothing 
REALLY
exists,
why care at all about
Donald J. Trump?
(Or any other 
toxic prognosis?)

Why care at all about border walls?
Whether he rises, whether he falls?
Is divinely inspired or devil's spawn?
A beginning, THE END, or denouement?

Were Donnie to vanish, as if by magic,
if the gods hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete,
if the system rebooted, would it better suit us
if Donnie were turned into dead meat?

Some “winners” would “lose”,
some “losers” would “win”
as LIFE requires.
(Even for viruses.)

№ 637: The Basics

EVERYWHERE (July 11)

Political prisoners don't discuss physics.
Neither do hunter-gatherers.
When every day your life's on the line
you have no time for blatherers
debating reality, space, time and quanta.
Surviving the moment is all that you want.
You have no reason for discussing things
as esoteric as theories of strings.
Though strings may be fundamentally real,
in your day-by-day that is not how it feels.

№ 610: Relative Reality — A Physics Perspective (or emcee squared equals really not much at all)

TIMEANDSPACE, June 4

Most of the universe is empty space.
Nothing is everywhere, emptiness everyplace.
Matter is energy and energy's matter,
Einstein informs us the former's the latter.
Eleven dimensions with Latin declensions
give rise to us masses' incomprehensions.

If all that exists is groupings of atoms,
what is the purpose of scheming and stratagems?
What is the point of “conquer we must”
if in the end we're not even dust?
Merely a wave of fixed behavior —
an indefinite article? Perhaps, a particle?
Or some things, equational “strings”,
combined and condensed into a mass?
Given time, this too shall pass.

Everything everywhere's a knock-on effect
of which we're neither subject nor object.
We glorious, god-like, would-be supreme beings
are less than extras in cosmic crowd scenes.
If our dimension is viewed from afar
would it be seen that we even are?

Coda
From deep space and time observing this dump
would anything notice Donald J. Trump?

№ 606: Get Real

IMAGINE, May 29

Given a choice, we ignore fact and pick fiction to an excessive extent.

That people prefer James Bond to George Smiley is not an accident.

Granted, of course, neither James nor George actually ever existed.

The point that I'd make: our preference for fake means reality is always resisted.

No. 198: W[h]ither W[e]e Ghost

Evolution's competing

is self-defeating.
Despite short-term “success”,
“progress” is a mess.