Philosophy

You've got disillusionment seeping out of the cracks in your pores
Because hope floats and doubt sinks
Like marbles to the bottom of Polycarp's¹ fishbowl
You like to tell jokes no one understands
And weave plays with the words in our universe

Your philosophy professor called you an ontologist
Stacking dusty hardcovers on imitation wood
And reciting to you the thoughts of men that died before you were born
And unwove rainbows² and threw arrows at God and sank like stones in dark rivers
Because they couldn't handle floating above fathoms of briny sea³

And you tell him that you carve the words of poets into your spotted flesh
And that sometimes you believe that God's breath touches the back of your neck
And that Pythagoras⁴ was wrong, because love stitches together dark matter
And mass and atoms and gravitational pulls
That attract you to broken men with half-formed smiles and half-empty hearts

But the grounded resent the soaring and cast stones of uncertainty, of objective truth
So now blood and disappointment and sadness empty from your skin
They killed you in the end, you know
It kills you in the end

(Today I read parts of the Quran, Wisdom of Solomon, and Clement of Alexandria. And I thought about truth, about reality, about the meaning underlying this stark visible world. Too many thoughts rattle in my brain, I think)

Allusions:


1. One of he Ante-Nicene Fathers;also carp=type of fish
2. Poet John Keats to Isaac Newton for his light experiments that undermined, he felt, the beauty of our universe
3. Kierkegaard, on faith, as floating above 70,000 fathoms of sea and still being content
4. Ancient Greek philosopher, believed that math underlay the foundations of our world


Addendum: I heard this song again this morning. And all of these uncertainties came rushing back. But the opposite of faith isn't doubt. It's certainty. And God, music is powerful enough to make my heart feel tiny and my mind even more so.

These musicians are spectacular. And they have all their music online for free. I believe everyone should download them. Everyone.