SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Gerritt Rosenthal
Tualatin, Oregon
Multiple Threads
by Gerritt Rosenthal
A graduate of Reed College, Gerritt Rosenthal holds a master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Minnesota, and a master’s degree in hydrology from Cornell University.
He currently serves as chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon’s
Platform and Resolutions Committee and works as environmental coordinator for Onward Oregon, an online network that connects political advocacy groups and which distributes “progressive action alerts and informational alerts regarding things of Oregon interest.”
I have spent my life among numbers
primes, medians, means
sigmas and standard deviations
bimodal and multimodal distributions
standard deviations and skewness
using numbers to guess a meaning of reality
using number theory
to define some hidden truth
I love higher mathematics in a way
that comes close to faith
I trust its ability to apply principles and rules to discover worlds we hadn’t guessed
I have lived among numbers and their authorities
as a peasant
barely understanding
the complex integrals that composite all experiences
into a common thread
or a single point of experience
hardly grasping infinitesimals and differentials
that predict the transient states of change
and the potential rates of change to change
I believe in numbers
and the logic that links them
I also believe in the ONENESS - writ large
the becoming and the being
which is beyond the doing
and is captured in the states of transcendence
of mysticism
or of psychedelic release
from the boundaries of rules
and structure.
I believe
in the breath of the cosmos
exhaled by infinity
and inhaled
in small breaths
by corporeal beings,
the intelemotional matrix
that is the particular of ME -
this breath
consisting of the stringy tendrils
of energy and information
that permeate us.
I believe in multiple realities
that cannot include each other
and so
what am I to do?
whom am I to becomes?
what arc of the heavens
can I aspire to see beyond?
8/29/2018