ALL THINGS FLOW

Everything progresses from node to node, from note to note, from paragraph to paragraph, from above to below, always bound by the inevitable gravity of cause and effect. This, therefore that.
Q.E.D.

And because we know this, we trace it backwards, from where we are now to what once was, to what must have been, unless everything we know is only illusion. The mathemetician, the musician, the writer and the salmon returning to the place of its spawning--we are all bound in that inescapable flow. Or rather, not like the salmon at all, for we may never return to our beginning--only look back, and wonder.

For our reality is not merely IN flux, changing direction at will, but is itself Inevitable Flow, forever progressing, in one direction only, as inexorable as Time.

Or perhaps it IS Time, this fluidity which is our only reality.

It alone is common to us all, whether we marvel at the Great Matrix with the mathemeticians or revel in the Music of the Spheres. We know that all things flow down to us out of the ages, that we ride the wave of inevitability, that if there is order to our future, it perhaps lies in the patterns of the past.

But in this is our despair, for we also know that those patterns end, that every river has its source. We cannot conceive of the wellspring that birthed us, for All things Flow, and we know no other law.

Thus it is here that we stand utterly bewildered, faced with a choice that is no choice, that either reality is eternal and alone, as the ancients believed, or that it--that We--are not Real, that we are Finite, that we are trapped in a subordinate layer of causality, and that we cannot get out. In the shadows of the unplumbable past we see the Shade of our future. And we fear.

All things flow

But whence?

πάντα ῥεῖ

NUCLEAR NAPPIES

I know it's been forever since I posted, especially anything of substance. My apologies. In my defense, I did spend a while last week replacing the comments feature, and hence felt that I had dedicated the required attention to the blog. It's finals week now, so I don't really have time to post, but of course, since it's finals week, I'm procrastinating, and posting. If I were to go back in the archives and see how much I'd posted during finals weeks of semesters past, I would probably be deeply disturbed--shaken to the core about the flaws in my character, ya know--so I think I won't.

Instead I'll offer this link, courtesy of Mr. Danckaert, who unfortunately didn't blog it (since his blog is deader than mine of late, and he hasn't even fixed his comments), but told me about it in person. Therefore I don't feel guilty in stealing it.

It's all about how the explosive diapers of one man's young son bode ill for the denizens of Al Qaeda twenty years hence.

Enjoy.

FINALLY

I finished my worst incomplete ever. Due January 14, turned in May 9. Actually a more or less decent paper. Read it here.

HA HA PUNNY

My mother has recently been doing some geneological research into her family, and has come up with some tidbits which I find illuminating regarding my proclivities in regard to humor. Here is the tale.

My great-great-great grandfather was named Thomas Vincent. A native of Kentucky and a veteran of the Civil War, he had a son. A creative and unique soul, he decided to shun naming the boy after himself, and instead called him Ditto. Ditto Shadrach, to be precise.

This gets better. Ditto grew up, and came to be known as Dit. My mother once looked it up in an old phonebook, and indeed, there he was, Dit Vincent, her great-grandfather.

I assume that Dit was as unique in character as he was in name, for it seems that he decided to one-up his dad. So when he was finally blessed with a son, he completed a joke 40 years in the making, and named the boy Harry.

So yes, from that day on, every Tom, Dit and Harry in my family has been cursed with a quirky sense of humor.

At least I come by it honestly.