On Truth

Let us consider for a moment how we know what we know. It can hardly be denied that what we experience is not static. We experience change, and can interact with existence as we perceive it. At least, we can interact with the physical parts of existence. The mental and ethereal portions of reality as we know them, things like numbers and happiness, can be understood by us, but we can't really change anything about them. Or can we?

Well, let's take numbers. What is "3?" It's more than 2 and less than 4. Any child who knows how to count could tell you that. The fact is that when you take an object, another object, and then a final object, and put them together, you have 3 objects. We just can't deny that. Numbers don't seem to be things we can influence. We can understand and use numbers, but no matter how hard we try, we couldn't change the essence of what "3" represents.

This seems to indicate that there is truth. A trio of objects contains three different objects, and no other number of objects. 3 is always 3, never more, never less.

What other things are undeniably true? What if you were sitting across the table from me, and I told you that I was going to throw my drink on the ground? You might just sit there, and then after a few seconds, I would prove myself truthful by throwing my drink on the ground. But what if something stopped me from doing that? What if I reached for my cup, and then a bus smashed through the wall and ran me over? That would make my previous statement about throwing my drink to be untrue.

If someone tells you they're going to do something, you don't know whether what they say is true or not until they do it. Until then, things may happen that prevent them from being truthful. So when I tell you that I'm going to throw my drink on the ground, is there any way to know whether I'm lying until I actually throw it? Is my statement both true and false at the same time because we don't know what the result is going to be? I would say that my statement has the potential to be either true or false, but isn't both true and false at the same time.

So what about God? He knows everything, so he surely knows whether the things I say I'm about to do are true or not. So when I tell you I'm going to throw my drink on the ground, he already knows whether I throw the drink or not, right? Say God knows that I'm going to throw my drink, that makes my statement true. Does this apply with all statements?

It seems that everything we say, or predict, is about to happen, is unarguably true or false, because God knows the eventual outcome, and this foreknowledge causes all human predictions to be irrevocably true or false.

Even Song Escapes Us

Say we had no daylight,

Say all we had was song,

Would simple music get us by?

Would we even get along?

The sun gone, disappeared,

Out of thought and gone from memory.

The stars composed of minor chords,

A soft, auditory chemistry.

What if it wasn’t music?

What if all we had was sound?

Forget coherence and harmony,

Forget the rhythmic playground.

Soon notes and fragments of,

Would gently waft away.

Our mouths would function noiselessly,

There’d be nothing left to say.

Sunlight

The sun, how violent it is! Angry, hot, illuminating and intrusive!

See that building, and see the golden wash of sun that paints it. I see a tree, it's body blackened by the sun behind it, streaming through the bare branches, causing the plant to tremble and breathe, absorbing the soothing glow. The mundane surface of this room I'm trapped in suddenly comes to life with yellow reflections. Light stimulates the walls and makes the chairs gleam and smile.

The words on a page crawl off their two dimensional reality and spill onto the desk. A pool of sunlight sweeps them away, pinching and prodding at their serifs, blowing them into a cloud of language, billowing up in a sunbeam.

The sun gets everywhere. It encourages me, and blunts my mood when it leaves. I seek the sun, trying to match it's descent with my eyes, as if knowing where it's going will lengthen the time it takes to get there.

I don't want to chase after it, but I know it's important. Should I wait somewhere, baiting my breathe, eagerly hoping that it'll return tomorrow? It should be here. It's always here. Do I really matter? I can't change the sun. I love the sun, but that changes nothing. All I can do is remain here, anticipating the daily scour of the sunlight, insignificantly appreciating something so many times greater than me.

The Machine is My Mother

Spawned of the gearbox, foul mesh of metal
Rusted sprockets, leaking faucets,
And the shrill ring of the kettle

Tromp down the hallway of average achievements
Wake up, move along, rinse your hair with a liquid song
Chewing a foul mix of caffeine and mint

Cog'ged legs harshly scrape to a halt
Body twixt the gears, nothing left to fear
Mortal flesh gives way to the cold iron assault

If the throat paused and harkened to emotion
See it in the eyes, a scream would rise
From the tears long since lost in the ocean

Coasting on the coast of a kinaesthetic theatre
Unable to reject, negligible effect
The most noble, epitomal repeater

Rain

Imagine you're on a street. A quaint street somewhere in Europe. A small town. Quiet. It's raining. Gently raining, but enough that all you hear is the sound of water. Water dripping, bubbling, flowing down drains. There's violin music coming from somewhere. The sky is cloudy, overcast, full of fat, lazy clouds all squished together in a big atmospheric traffic jam.

The street makes you think of a library. It's slow, complicated, and lined with odd bangles and stories to explore. The cobbled stone your shoes click off of look back up at you, sighing their stories of old. They remember when times were better, when times were worse, when time flowed without the strain that it endures now.

So lonely. Low-key. Flimsy yellow light glints off the water drops, as the only working street lamp struggles to uphold it's charge. Somehow things seem blue. Not black, but blue. The calm, gritty darkness creeps around the corners, curling up your legs, coating the puddles and the crannies in the walls with a wash of navy.

A sign, hanging over a a closed pub, swings softly to and fro. The faded picture of a goblet and a thick book slump in their colour, almost as if they were joining the rest of the town in sleep.

Again, you hear the snap of heel hitting the walkway. And again. You slow. The steps ease off. Around you, the squished buildings rise up, overlooking and guarding this innermost of urban roads. It feels so safe. the rain covers all, the light does it's best, and wobbling sign smiles at you. Again, you shift. You're soaking wet. The footsteps have stopped. the only sound is rain. All there is must be made of rain.

A little girl peeks out her curtains, watching the road below. Her eyes sagging, she forgets that she ever heard footsteps. The rain soaks her thoughts, and she drifts back into sleep.

1 O'clock Thoughts

What indeed causes my heart to cool?
How now do I falter in my step?
What complexities plot my hinderance?
Why is it that my faith has left?

Indecision, and the boulder in my way
Render my compromises moot
Yet neither could I surely navigate
If they did not block my route

It is confirmed: I do not know
How I got here or where I must go

Whether my love will melt with the snow
Or what to make of the seeds I will sow

How is it then, that I continue to be
In this twilight state of confusion
Like the song that begins with a ponderous form
And gets lost midst it's own allusion

I like to think that I know the play,
The author, and how the story must be
But if my life is seen as example,
The one least informed is me

Let this be my prayer in the darkness
When doubt seems all that I know

I know that I'm filled to be emptied again
The seed I've received I will sow

NOTE: I got the last four lines of this poem from Desert Song by Hillsong United

The Bad Guys

It has recently occurred to me that most ongoing storylines record the successes of the antagonists nearly as often as those of the heroes.

I'm sure you've noticed the cyclical nature of such tales. Take most ongoing comics, or movie series', or nearly any story dealing with some sort of good-verses-evil struggle. What tends to happen is that there is a protagonist, or sometimes an anti-hero, who the reader/viewer/listener is conditioned to cheer for. The hero will experience some sort of problem, such as a victory of his enemy, before rallying and ultimately emerging victorious at the end. But what if the order of such sagas were reversed?

Take Batman. His arch-nemesis is the Joker. In the comics that involve the two, usually the Joker hatches some plot, kidnaps some politician, blows something up, etc. Then Batman foils the Joker's plan, beats up all his flunkies and saves the day. And in the following comic, the same thing happens; Joker does something nasty, but Batman eventually wins. And in the next comic; repeat. But what if the order was swapped?

Let me try and explain. So in Issue #1, Joker wins, then Batman wins. In Issue #2, Joker wins, then Batman wins. But what if they released a comic which contained the last half of issue #1, and the first half of Issue #2? Then it would seem as though Batman defeats the Joker, but in the end, the Joker pulls ahead and emerges victorious. Either way, the same events are happening, and it turns out that the only reason Batman always wins is because that's the segment of time that the author chose to depict in his comic.

In reality, both parties tend to succeed just as often as not; the Joker wins just as often as the Batman. For without this back and forth conflict, what would they use to fill the comic book pages?