Thursday, November 5, 2009

A Splash Quite Unnoticed:

Establishing that the self exists--"cogito, ergo sum", though "I am" is sufficient--establishes the dichotomy between the self and the non-self, which subsequently establishes the reality of the self: the self and the non-self, combined; from there, it's a matter of examining that reality via the hypothetico-deductive model. Questioning the self instantiates the self, thereby providing the requisite consequence for the theory that the self exists; that is, instantiation satisfies the hypothetico-deductive model, providing the consequence required by the proposition. In short, a perfect logical system is established.

William Carlos Williams, "Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus"

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
I turn twenty-one in January; I'd like to begin bottling dandelion wine in the spring. I'm finished with thoughts of any consequence; my notebooks are gone--only the preceding paragraph remains, a splash quite unnoticed.

2 comments:

  1. I may have had such deep thoughts at your age, though they are now long lost in the corridors of various residence halls. What I did not have was your gift for expressing them.

    Concerning dandelion wine, have you read the Ray Bradbury book by the same name? I would highly recommend it to you if you haven't.

    Also, thanks for choosing a William Carlos Williams poem that is not "The Red Wheelbarrow." A lovely poem, but grossly misunderstood by most poets who try to emulate it, and hated by me when I was younger (now, I know better).

    ReplyDelete
  2. That book is what brought the wine to my attention, actually.

    ReplyDelete

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