Magnetism in matter and mudflats

 I’ve noticed that whenever something is mysterious to me I write “in mathematics” and find some theory to grasp at the existential whodunit. 

Some expert tells me “Whether in the context of hairstyles, relationships, or parachute cords, one must be familiar with the notion of a braid.” In the braid group we don’t allow strands to turn back up, they are plaited down, fixed into their pattern. In braid theory you simply braid groups by tugging on the strands until the simple pattern emerges. Of course, the tugging is purely mental. Entanglement, disentanglement, I can’t decide which is more important to braid theory. 

The chain of islands in my dream resembled the ones on the map in that they could be travelled between at low tide. If you had water proof galoshes and a strong will to pull your feet free of the mud, you could travel between them at a slow speed. Birds nested in the boulders by the shore, they call to each other, remarking on my slow progress. 

A close relative of braid theory, knot theory, (inspired by knots which appear in daily life, such as those in shoelaces and rope), creates mathematical knots where the ends are joined so it cannot be undone, the simplest knot being a ring. The name for this simplest knot is unknot.

There is something strange in the tidal plane, shifting out below the waterline. The man in the stooped wood house over the water tells us, 'everything is common in the tidal plain.' My friend stands out on the pier, remarks how the sunset looks like a shark's back tonight. I can't shake it. The tender things are exposed twice daily, we will return later. 

Three notions (arrows) of time:

Hawking argued that the first two notions of time are the same. Our brains (or, computers) are made up of pairs of neurons. Memories are formed by these pairs of neurons orienting themselves in a particular way.  In order to create a memory, our body must expend energy, heating up just a bit; total entropy increases. ∴ our memory increases only when entropy increases, and so the first two arrows of time point in the same direction. The third arrow moves forward when the universe is an inflationary state and backward when the universe is in a deflationary state. That arrow is confused.

I move around the room sliding my feet across the floor, just to see how it sounds. I move in lines, up and down, across, to collect the sounds. Listen listen to the window the doorstop. Eventually you hear it all, I thought. Yesterday I heard the woodpecker against the telephone pole for the first time. Occasionally I wonder if I move through the world like a blank curtain, pulling silence behind.

The world abounds with singular sensations, cowlicks, fingerprints, storms. In the singularity of the cowlick the hair is confused, can't decide which way to grow. Singularities reflect nature’s attempt to resolve mismatches, to enforce continuity against all odds. Sometimes, disagreements become inevitable (hair directions, wind directions, skin), singularities attempt to herd those mismatches to the smallest space possible: a single point. Singularities are undying, unflinchingly, persistent. Your skull gets bigger but the cowlick stays. A whorl is a singularity that is composed of the fusion of two loops that have been squashed together so that their two inner endpoints coincide. A whorl is in each of your fingertips. 

Some mudflats are exposed not by tidal action but by the wind. Wind-action drives the water away from the shallows, the boddens, and out into the sea. You can take a large kite and some skis and let yourself be pulled out to where the water laps again, to the new rim of the sea. The cranes eat there and I talked to them once, they told me about long legs and white wings, about their brothers and mothers.

In all of the writing I am trying to explain myself. To make certain unidentifiable things understandable, the peripherals, edges, etc. Things are made distant or untrue in order to do so, to get at something shimmering at the lip. I end up the large cat on his page, circling the center. I end up cow licking around a singular point, crashing into a whorl, a confused arrow. 

 I will feel proud when I lift my face up to the clear blue sky and it claps me round the ears. On the spitted land we watched the biblical light, the split clouds, the giant rose bush. A section of the Bay set still by a rectangular pile of rocks, the blue was reflected there better; out past it, the white caps sunk the color to a deeper blue. Kept thinking of the wine red sea, can't stop saying that, wine red sea. That rose bush was the biggest either of us had seen, keep seeing things and saying WOW: Jupiter, the light, the lighthouse, the inside of my mouth brushing my teeth, the ring around the moon. I look up, and it falls on me like a bowl. I am curious why we travel on the late train. In the kitchen I am thinking about the mole in the middle of my body, right below the ribcage, dead center. We could be related by one degree.

In the early morning, in the early fidgeting hours I begin to theorize: we are not living a parallel languaged life. The same things, the same progress, the same sickness, the same sadness. It is not similar, a wind sock tunnels in the wind, we made a bird and flew it, I felt wild in the window. The willow cut back, no more heavy branches, no more sorrow. I am curious about the stilted awkward time, before everything becomes slugs, before we become slugs. Slugs related by one degree. 

This plant looks like a puppy. 

I Tethered

I open all the doors, flaying the car in its white line stall - it smells like it did many months ago, when I began working here.
So much of where and what I write has happened here.
How the geometry of the desolate office park has sunk into me → 
At first completely oppressive, mind the monkey flailing crashing in its cage. Then silent passage, most of a year in the parking lot, the eggshell bathroom, the water cooler. My mind palace begins to look like this office park, it’s a field a field. Feels like I’m in a field immersed in such banality, things become gorgeous in the parking lot. I lay in the backseat moving the sand dollar further and closer to my face, obscuring and revealing the line of sight. My hand looks incredibly old. I behave, am Gold. Earlier in the chair at the desk I believed I was having a stroke, I had 5 separate strange little feelings that didn’t correspond into any identifiable illness, so must be a stroke. I sleep easy in the back seat, with the roaring trucks. On the asphalt I am a soft shell-less creature rolling towards the glass door. Rolling. I imagine it as an arrow in my stomach - pushing from my spine out to my belly button. With the two doors open I dream of a gun, dream of I am perfect perfect perfect making an ugly face on the freeway home. Face like giant upturned bowl, reverse gravity pulling everything into an arc, mouth open like this shape  → 

In mathematics, logic, and probability, the upside-down U symbol represents the intersection of sets. It indicates the elements that two or more sets have in common. For example, if Set A and Set B are combined, A (upside down U) B represents only the overlapping elements. I listen to The Zoo and to something more profane, I look in the mirror across from my pillow and hope today I will be tethered. I drive to the spit, I drive with strangers, alone, with neighbors. I enter the lighthouse, I have always dreamed of entering the lighthouse. They have roped off the spiral stairs upward, can't stick my head in the heavy carved glass eye. I am upside down U in the wind and on the bright asphalt, I am I am. There is something cruel in this movement, something that is playing and knotting. Turning the fruit in my hand, turning turning the upside down U. I I I, I tethered. 

$$

Obituary for Iceberg B-15

Obituary for Iceberg b-15

The year I was born b15-A broke off and drifted away from Ross Island into Ross Sea
Heading north

Breaking into smaller pieces
Small knife shaped son, b-15k on the steady path further

Before reaching the ice tongue, b-15A got all stranded on a shallow seamount
Resting
Resuming
Northward

Breaking into the tip of the tongue
b-15A generated seismic signals, felt them out at the South Pole

The fishers saw smaller brothers, b-15p b-15m b-15n
Most icebergs do not last this far north

Speed of melt increased
Seen: South Georgia Island Antarctica South of Africa

Antarctic maps needed to be redrawn
Required a reassessment
A refusal

Penguin populations plummeted

The brothers encountered the end at the end of the world

Mariana Trench

Mariana Tench

arched and silent - down 

the brilliant column. 

HMS Courage found the floor, found 

the rip.

Out of the view port - are we landing on 

the soft sediment sea floor?

Or are we coming 

down on rocks.

A: I heard that Nero got to 9000

M: yeah but, the subs have got that long beat - they've seen it, 

the deep

A: it's strange to get down there and to see yourself across time 

M: along the perpendicular track, you mean? 

A: sure, along the perpendicular track 

M: what did it taste like on the abyssal plain?

A: like ham, deli ham 

Manifold

Each day ends up monumental. I lay in them as though in a mammoth footprint. On my back and shoulders something like Heavy. Like snow, though I wouldn't know about anything like that.

He stood over me, the yellow trees along the two-lane, barely cast a shadow.
There is a posture: the quilt on the bed, the white sheet, the delay. Where do the deer go in the rain? Where do the deer go in the rain?

The white flowers from the trees run ragged like styrofoam across the parking lot. I return to the day.

How does the dried dead snail cling to the curb like that. The corpse melted, melded, touched the concrete and understood that truth could be found in staying there, perpendicular to the sky and to the lot. The whole lot. In my shadow I see strands jump laterally like kite strings. 

Parabolas of movement - I saw a big pig, a black boar, on the side of the freeway. On the side of the fence where one must assume its death will be automized.

I've thought about what I would say if someone asked me what I was doing -

There is still a rhythm missing in most of it, though sometimes, I hit upon it and can hear it singing. 

I hold my head behind the ears to see what it might feel like for other hands - someone see what it feels like. I remove my coat and inspect the dander, run like styrofoam, like white flowers. I return to the room twice. The bed, the mirror, the deadened stain in the front room.

One fact about me is I like to sing in the car. 

People require silence now, no rotary chatter, no accent, no incident. 

The birds rest on the stones. The deer won't cross the fence line. He stood over me, hair the metal dish, wanting to see the deer and the clear free day.

Breg headstream

Breg headstream

You see:
the pennant flaps
yielding in the grey morning
Rabid against
the bugged frame

Not yet, 
the young chicken is thawed, raw
needing the week 

How it expands:
the change,
That Cunning change 

the snow caps turn quick
Will turn to tassels soon: 

In spring the Donau floods to get back to Volga in her drained basin.