Читать книгу The Skin of Meaning - Keith Flynn - Страница 24

If, before the Bang, there was nothing, and if all energy since then

is expended in the manner best suited to return the world to that state,

then all seemingly random permutations of energy dispersal must be

attempts to accelerate the return to chaos. —David Mamet

The entire universe, the size of a marble,

exploded and is still expanding,

water moving from high energy to low,

seeks the bottom, and every being follows it.

Lincoln believed that all nations must shed

their energy, and that wealth accrued from

slavery would be dispersed through war,

downstream from the dreams of the Constitution.

True human nature is dissipation, the release

of stored light into chaos. The good old bad

old days are always in the past, blockading Cuba,

or bombing Nagasaki, humans joined at the neck

with machines. The rule book of diffusion directs

us to make treaties with the Native Americans,

because to live like Falstaff requires tremendous

amounts of fuel. Entropy never sneezes, does not

like magic or crocodiles or penicillin, hiccups only

if the planets stop orbiting around their Sun.

We want our designs to articulate a meaning

beyond function. We want to own an experience

we have not felt, just as Foucault wanted to turn

his life into a work of art. We embrace the guilt,

and arrange our chips in a manner that will affect

the outcome of the football game. We accept

the superstition’s fetish and believe by eating

the organic apple, and stacking the plastic bottles,

we will hold back the erosion of the glaciers.

We tell ourselves we’re doing our part and keep

our fair practice good coffee karma intact.

The Starbucks logo features a double-tailed

mermaid that is swimming in neither direction.

The enlightened consumer is in pursuit of happiness,

hedonism disguised as spiritual freedom, paradise

purchased one cup of coffee at a time, like a bird

repeatedly attacking its reflection on the window.

Not the thing itself, but the representation.

Coca-Cola was a tonic, but Coke is iconic,

a brand inseparable from our cultural experience,

like a print taken from a finger, lingering less.

Let’s forget, for a second, the syrupy effervescence,

or the grand imitations, Pepsi, Pepper, Pibb.

Just as we do not practice the pronouncement

of our neighbor’s names; we know them by their Prius.

Our language is alive and cannot designate reality,

but becomes a beacon, or signal, of our relation,

ghost isotopes that build a memory from the alphabet

and provide a trail for the sale, like the mystery

of Coke, the more you drink, the more you want.

Some stars catching our worried gaze have

already ceased to exist, so far away only their light

is left, disappearing in the cold static space.

Those quiet mornings alone, or in fading twilight,

when the mind wanders backward on its tracks,

cirrus clouds thinning on the scarred horizon,

dolphins plowing together in the near surf,

or insects chirring atop the gently trembling trees,

each given significance as markers for a life.

A bone-encased pocketknife, peacock earrings,

an uncle’s dragon scarf folded out of Saigon’s

final chaos, slowly lose their luster, or complicated

memory, as the generations stand at attention

in the roll call of deplorable time.

The clusters of music, whose muscles cannot

outlast the marathon of styles, are layered

era upon era, sparkling melodies recycled

by attentive geologists digging through

the stacked boxes in the attic or the basement.

Let the wan night, even when wintered,

fight the gauze of nostalgia and give refuge

to every fire, the future freshened,

and hard run sharpened against

the only path found, signpost labeled

what is to come, what is to come, what is to come.

If it takes the lives of twelve bees to make

a teaspoon of honey, why is it so absurd to believe

that our bodies are composed entirely of light?