Discrete Infinities

[Image: “Double Self-Portrait With Old Man,” by Tom Waterhouse — an old favorite. Found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!)]

From whiskey river:

Among the Multitudes

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.

I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from under another tree.

Nature’s wardrobe
holds a fair supply of costumes:
spider, seagull, field mouse.
Each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.

I didn’t get a choice either,
but I can’t complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
Someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape tousled by the wind.

Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.

A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.

A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.

A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.

What if I’d prompted only fear,
loathing,
or pity?

If I’d been born
in the wrong tribe,
with all roads closed before me?

Fate has been kind
to me thus far.

I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments.

My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.

I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is,
someone completely different.

(Wislawa Szymborska [source])

…and:

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there’s no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.

(Robert M. Pirsig [source])

…and:

On Meditating, Sort Of

Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?

Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place—half asleep—where the world,
spring, summer, autumn, winter—
flies through my mind in its
hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.

Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints—
all that glorious, temporary stuff.

(Mary Oliver [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Nurture

From a documentary on marsupials I learn
that a pillowcase makes a fine
substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo.

I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue.
They are warm in the throat. I suffer, the critic proclaims,
from an overabundance of maternal genes.

Bring me your fallen fledgling, your bummer lamb,

lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.
Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn.

And had there been a wild child—
filthy and fierce as a ferret, he is called
in one nineteenth-century account—

a wild child to love, it is safe to assume,
given my fireside inked with paw prints,
there would have been room.

Think of the language we two, same and not-same,
might have constructed from sign,
scratch, grimace, grunt, vowel:

Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl.

(Maxine Kumin [source])

…and:

Subject and object from the start are no different,
The myriad things nothing but images in the mirror.
Bright and refulgent, transcending both guest and host,
Complete and realized, all is permeated by the absolute.
A single form encompasses the multitude of dharmas,
All of which are interconnected within the net of Indra*.
Layer after layer there is no point at which it all ends,
Whether in motion or still, all is fully interpenetrating.

(Zhitong [source])

…and:

Modern physics has more than one theory of how the universe came to be, but one of the most popular ideas is that the big bang was followed by repeated bursts of ‘cosmic inflation’ which created an endless number of ‘pocket universes’ that are now scattered throughout space.

“The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes separated by an inflating ocean,” [Stephen] Hawking said last autumn.

But in the latest work, Hawking and [co-author Thomas] Hertog challenge that view. Instead of space being filled with pocket universes where radically different laws of physics apply, these alternate universes may not actually vary that much from one another.

While the consequences of the proposal may not be obvious, the theory may provide some comfort to physicists who wonder how, given all the hostile variations thought possible, we find ourselves in a universe well-suited to life.

“In the old theory there were all sorts of universes: some were empty, others were full of matter, some expanded too fast, others were too short-lived. There was huge variation,” said Hertog. “The mystery was why do we live in this special universe where everything is nicely balanced in order for complexity and life to emerge?”

“This paper takes one step towards explaining that mysterious fine tuning,” Hertog added. “It reduces the multiverse down to a more manageable set of universes which all look alike. Stephen would say that, theoretically, it’s almost like the universe had to be like this.”

(Ian Sample [source])