The Mandelbear's Musings

It's 10:45pm, Ticia (see icon) is telling me it's past bedtime, and I thought of something to post about about an hour ago, but got distracted and forgot what it was. So this post is pure filler.

Here, have a haiku:

When I'm stuck for words I often fill in the blank with one more haiku.

NaBloPoMo stats:
   7978 words in 13 posts this month (average 613/post)
     81 words in 1 post today

In Your Arms

For Curio

When we first met, you looked like you needed a friend,
So I walked up and told you "Hi there.  I'm your cat."
I'm not sure you understood what I was saying, but I knew
You thought so too.
You picked me up and held me in your arms, and spoke to me
In a gentle voice that I loved as soon as I heard it,
And took me home.

You were always my Person, and I was your Pretty Boy.
At night you would pat the top of the box in the hall
And say -- "Up!".
I would jump up, and you would take me in your arms
And carry me up the stairs.  Sometimes I would run ahead,
But I would always wait for you so that we could go
Into our room together.

When I got sick I couldn't always come to you,
But you always found me and carried me upstairs,
Safe in your arms.
Sometimes I would hide in the closet or the bathroom
Instead of sleeping with you and Mommy, I think because
I didn't want you to worry.

On our last night together, you held me in your arms
Where I knew I was loved.
You stroked my fur, and scratched behind my ears,
And cried -- I'd never seen you cry before -- and said
I would be okay.

I fell asleep in your arms, and when I woke up
I wasn't sick any more.
There were stairs there, with a carpet like a rainbow,
So I jumped down and ran ahead, but when I looked back
You weren't there.

I'll wait for you.  Some day I'll hear you call my name
And come running downstairs to meet you.  My little bell
Will jingle for you,
And you'll pick me up and cuddle me again, and we'll go
Up the Rainbow Bridge together, with me safe and happy
In your arms.

I still want to write him a song, but first there was something he wanted to say.

[poem permalink]

There's that moment when everything changes,
But really it's just you,
Seeing things differently.

When you realize that the solid bench you're sitting on
Is mostly empty space between particles.
When you learn that even the particles
Aren't really particles, and that light isn't entirely waves either.

When you see the way special relativity views velocity
As simple rotation in four-space, 
And you study general relativity and realize
That it's geometry all the way down.

When you suddenly get recursion,
Reading the Algol 60 Report, with its crystalline prose
And elegantly compact rules.
When Goedel blows the top of your head off,
And you understand that some things simply can't be proved.
When you see how elegantly Turing applies the same trick.

When you realize that a little of the Unknowable
Isn't part of the Unknown anymore,
Because now you know why you can't know it.

First published in a comment in the October 2014 Crowdfunding Creative Jam, on the theme "Paradigm Shifting Without a Clutch."

This is entirely autobiographical, though the sequence has been messed with a little to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

Mirrored from steve.savitzky.net. My poetry there is in really rough shape; hopefully I'll get a little work done on it soon.

Also adopted by ysabetwordsmith as part of her Schrodinger's Heroes series, which makes it unintentionally canonical fanfic for an imaginary TV show. Talk about shifting without a clutch! At least it has synchromesh. Or was that synchrotron?

This was written for the Thirteenth Crowdfunding Creative Jam, on the topic of "portals", in response to a prompt by wyld_dandelyon.

    He logs in, writing the words
       With a long fingernail
          On the mirror's surface.

    Ripples
       Like a stone dropped into
          A pool of mercury.

    He steps through.

It's the first poem I've written in quite a while. I should get back into it; I'm not much good at telling stories, but capturing an image or a moment? That I can do.

For as long as I've known her, the flower_cat has been fond of quoting a couple of lines from a poem she heard as a child. It finally occurred to me to type one of the more distinctive lines into Google, which of course yielded the complete poem both by itself and in a blog post (which mentions that it appeared in The Golden Book of Poetry published in 1949), along with a discussion thread on The Mudcat Cafe. Apparently it has also been set to music at least once, and sung in a number of variously mangled versions.

Moon Song

Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon--
  Over the crinkling sea,
The moon man flings him a silvered net
  Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say when the net lies long
  And the midnight hour is ripe;
The moon man fishes for some old song
  That fell from a sailor's pipe.

And some folk say that he fishes the bars
  Down where the dead ships lie,
Looking for lost little baby stars
  That slid from the slippery sky.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
  And the nodding night wind blows,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
  Only the moon man knows.

Zoon, zoon, net of the moon
  Rides on the wrinkling sea;
Bright is the fret and shining wet,
  Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say when the great net gleams
  And the waves are dusky blue,
The moon man fishes for two little dreams
  He lost when the world was new.

And some folk say in the late night hours,
  While the long fin-shadows slide,
The moon man fishes for cold sea flowers
  Under the tumbling tide.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
  And the gray gulls dip and doze,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
  Only the moon man knows.

Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon--
  Over the crinkling sea,
The moon man flings him a silvered net
  Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say that he follows the flecks
  Down where the last light flows,
Fishing for two round gold-rimmed "specs"
  That blew from his button-like nose.

And some folk say while the salt sea foams
  And the silver net lines snare,
The moon man fishes for carven combs
  That float from the mermaids' hair.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
  And the nodding night wind blows,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
  Only the moon man knows.

                Mildred Plew Meigs, 1923