The Metaphysics of Matter

   

 Hello all, 

The poem that I wrote last week is included in the body of the material for this week’s blog. I didn’t plan it this way, it’s just how the creative process developed. Anyways… The Metaphysics of Matter starts below. 

Thanks for visiting my blog,

Noah Clawson

 THE METAPHYSICS OF MATTER

                            

Mandelbrot suddenly fell into sullen silence and the glen dimmed into an ashy hue. With foreboding solemnity, he took a deep draw from his pipe and puffed out an opaque globule of smoke. In a span of time that seemed both instantaneous and infinite, Hectic bore witness to the globule expanding into an ever-diversifying universe of wisps. When the wisps had rarefied to such a degree that they became indistinguishable from the ashy hue of the glen, Mandelbrot resumed speaking. At that point, the entire event contained within Mandlebrot's pause in speech vanished from Hectic's mind. He experienced the moment as if Mandelbrot had been speaking continuously and the glen had never dimmed.

"All matter is in motion,” said Mandelbrot. "Therefore, all things affect the things around them." Organisms are things in motion that affect the things around them." 

"Okay," said Hectic, "but that doesn't tell me how life differs from non-life."

Mandelbrot puffed on his pipe and produced a plume of smoke. With his quivering leaves, he shaped the smoke into an opaque gray square. He pointed at the square with one of his branches.

      "Look upon the canvas of smoke and I will show you." he said. "The entire screen filled with the image of a few small speckled eggs clustered in a nest. "I have found," said Mandelbrot, "that life differs from non-life in this respect. All living things use their environment to produce more life forms like themselves. 

      As he was speaking a gray rat jumped into the nest. The rat stood on his hind legs and used his front claws to position the egg with the narrower end facing his mouth. The rat then bit into the end of the egg and began eating the yoke. "This rat will –” 

"I just thought of something," Hectic blurted. Fire must be alive. "Flames breathe the air and eat material from their environment to make more flames." Mandelbrot gasped, and stilled his leaves. His face then fell into a faraway expression as the canvas began to dissipate. Only when the last wisp had rarefied into nothingness, did Mandelbrot begin to speak.  

Life be not that yellow beast

So, Fear the fire's futile feast

He always eats and always starves

Mosaic meals reduced to chars

Thus simplified 

he shrinks and dies

Life ramifies  

then creatures thrive

So complications do exist 

When and where life persists.

      Mandelbrot quivered his leaves and shaped another plume of smoke into a square. Again, he directed Hectic to focus on the canvas of smoke., “Let us start where we left off,”. With a subtle shift of leafy motions, he reconstituted the scene of the rat eating the egg upon the canvas. Those forms only lasted for a few moments before they receded into the grayness of the canvas. Then, new images quickly clarified out of the gray and remained still – like a painting. The canvas depicted a landscape from a cloud’s perspective. Hectic could make out the patchwork of forests, fields and lakes. 

“The canvas shows the creature conflagration,” said Mandelbrot, “but at a scale far slower than you can perceive. I will increase the flow of time within the canvas by a thousandfold. Then, you will see the creature conflagration burning.. Mandelbrot adjusted the angle of his branches and increased the rate at which he was quivering various leaves. A tiny gray globule appeared in the center of the canvas. Every so slowly, the globule began to grow and ruffle around the edges, Soon, other gray globules began to appear. They spread across the canvas, expanded and merged into each other. 

“What is that growing grayness?” asked Hectic.

“That is what happens when just one rat eats like fire.