If you exist in this reality —
the one we all share — then
what is the cleat hitch
keeping you here?
They say you’re not your body.
Your body, just a vessel for your soul
or consciousness or mind, whatever.
Descartes’s whole thing stemmed
from being able to imagine himself as something else,
and you can too — yourself as
a stellar’s jay knocking seeds all over a porch,
a black bear lumbering over a log post-torpor —
your consciousness still there.
If you lose your foot, you may be
less of a body, but not less of a person.
They say you’re not your thoughts.
The echoes you hear are from someone else
who has no body (probably), lives somewhere
you cannot see, don’t have a name for.
Or, they’re just electric impulses, chemical reactions
from organs you don’t even control —
your body can’t trust you with them.
Sometimes, when you drive to work,
fold laundry, your mind leaves you anyway.
You can’t leave yourself; you’re stuck with yourself
until the battery runs out.
If you exist at all, maybe
you’re just a shadow in the fluid
around a ball of electric meat
inside a collagen cage.
Tag: philosophy
All Motions Seen, Illusions Done
A scholar, old and dead, once said that all is fire, in motion like a river’s flow. A thrown-out match ignites the undergrowth and trees to wrap the sky in ashen shawl. The wind will force the rising smoke to crawl and cover meadows with the sun’s dull glow. The soil is fed by fallen ash and snow. The molecules we live in do not stall. One must be warm if all is made of fire, but every moment is a photograph and time the thumbing through to make them run. To walk a yard, you must walk halfway prior, and half of that, and half, and half, and half… And so: all motions seen, illusions done.
But before that
Inevitably, the universe will end; electrons will no longer spin around nuclei, and everything will stop. But before that, the Milk Way will be consumed by the blackhole at its core, leaving only void in its wake. But before that, the sun will swallow Earth as it grows into a red giant and explodes. But before that, living on Earth will no longer be sustainable; temperatures and sea levels will rise beyond the point of any coping mechanisms. But before that, you will die; a small tragedy on the scale of things, but a tragedy nonetheless.
About the Future
Sometimes, when you think of the future, you see all the branches— all the if-thens— trunk to branch to stem. Sometimes, when you think of the future, all the branches look barren— no fruit or flower or leaf. Somewhere, in the temporal pathways, you breech the outer bark, prune branches. Somewhere, in the temporal pathways— if you squint— on the edge of the smallest lateral, a bud blooms.
A Reflection on Modal Realism
There's a possible world in which the same number of cars are in each lane. Some merge left, others right— no traffic. There's a possible world for every millisecond of your life in which you die. No angels have time to show you their aftermaths. There's a necessary world in which matter in connected through gravitational strings. No windows, no breaths to fog them.
M. Espinosa 