I think that I shall never see

a poem as lovely as dee-why dee-zee.

This Poem Not Tested on Animals

Ideas are powerless mice
with the heart
of jelly-filled donuts.
Gooey, they stick
to the walls of the mind
like children cling
to the walls of a slide,
too scared to fall
low

through

the maze of synapses
they must leap across,
tunneling like horses,
tragically scarred
by the fraying logic
behind false fire alarms
and the wisdom devoid
from treadmill runs.

(Our mazes attempt to link work
with reward. While the amazing
universe unjust
laughs in her lab coat,
weighing a proton
as heavier than a thousand
electrons.)

Between

those leaps, we become lost
in our efforts to trace
the infinite gap
(there is no cross-
walk) from what we know
and what we are certain
is built on a substant
uncertainty.

Thus all our ideas
reach dead-ends,
when set
to explain how they
themselves came about,

but despite this defection of data,
they run
the wheel, until their tails slouch.
(And if that
were their last squeak, then
the data could be trimmed
and arrayed,

we’d write careful notes
on the side: Short-lived,
but cute
in their own little way.

But, no
like sobbing trick candles, they burn
out and have
the untactful gall
to return.)

/

and so I fall.

…

Where will I go?

means I'll never know:

To be at peace

to simply let go;

That is my purpose,

my path is not;

My goal is set

above all of this:

What I've learned

will cost so much;

What I'll become

matters not;

Where I'll go,

it makes me doubt;

The wind is cold,

but it only deceives;

My body is weak,

(or so I thought);

I was prepared,

my goal was not;

My path was set,

…

And so I climbed:

\

The Planet U

I float on the surface of the planet U. There is no one here except for me, so when I say you I mean myself. Only me here on U. You try climbing up the sides of the planet U, but the edges are too steep for me, so I dig beneath the planet U. The deeper I get the darker U gets. U eventually collapses on top of me and I can no longer breath. I am part of U now. U equals me.

Look

When we look up,

ancient light permeates our atmosphere,
penetrating our gaze,
taunting the most basic instincts of man.
The inconceivable complexity of time and space.
Laid bare in numbers.
Infinite as the atoms
they donated to compose
the symphony of our existence;
a concerto of our own
admiration,
awe,
gratitude,
and curiosity,
at the existence of our own composer.
The infinite complexity we call home.

Sprawled across the sky,
the notes are arranged
in absolute chaos
with absolute precision.
Scribbling a symphony
so perfect that the human mind,
no matter how driven,
could never hope to behold or understand.

To be present during the show,
the galactic orchestra that paints
pictures of the past,
portraits of the infinite,
diagrams of an impossible existence,
is to experience a renaissance of consciousness.
The realization that the only thing we know
is nothing at all.

With opening eyes,
opening ears,
as children we are born to infinitesimal speck,
hopelessly crossing vast stretches too unknown to describe,
desperate to learn
at the advent of opening minds.

Whether stowaways on a great voyage,
or entities instrumental,
our existence is just another speck;
another note in the sky.
To discover our origins,
our place in the sky,
our importance in the eternal workings of creation,
there is no obstacle too great, nor sacrifice too precious.
Movement begets movement.

To spend a lifetime
in a quest for knowledge
is to give in to curiosity;
a search for truth.
A pathetic, desperate, suicidal struggle
to understand
what we are looking at
when we look up.

Decision Variables

Maximize[{what you can do,
constraint, constraint, constraint, constraint},
{what you have,
what you've been given}]

            “I want you to write something before we talk next,” Becca said.

            “Is it for the blog?”

            “It’s for science!!  I want you to be the first.”

            “What if I screw it up?” I asked.

            And there’s my relationship with Becca.  It’s not the most perfect example conversation we’ve had or will have, but it’s apt.  She pushes me towards what I wish I were, I know what she means without her using the words, we’re over-the-top nerds/enthusiasts of knowledge, and I’m a bundle of insecurities (Becca might be, too, but it was my line in the conversation).

            My usual writing style is very stream-of-consciousness, which describes how I think, but doesn’t usually impress me.  I prefer to read my academic writing.  The more grammatically sophisticated, educated, fancy papers.  They still have very Kaleigh touches—unique turns of phrase, a tendency to make odd connections, and a general sense of humor about them.  Again, a good description of my relationship with Becca.

            I play some Brett Dennen (because he’s near the top of my list of stations on pandora.com and this is too serious for Britney Spears).  I almost open Word, but I hunt down a notebook instead because I learned in college that I prefer to handwrite first drafts.  It helps the words stick better in my head.  It helps me organize my thoughts better.  Which is mildly pointless if I choose to stick with stream-of-consciousness.  But I might change my mind.  It’s not uncommon for me to write two versions of something in different styles, then agonize over which to use, refine, submit for as long as it took me to write the drafts.

            Choosing is the worst.  Like going to the bathroom when it’s too cold.  I hate seeing the other options cut off to wither and die, abandoned.  Least loved.  I notice that I’m writing a bit more like Becca than I usually do (though she might not see that).  Not choosing is making a choice, too, though.  Do I use this draft?

            I have been incomparably blessed in my choices.  I chose the right college, nerdy science summer camps and archaeology activities, major, roommates, grad program, high school and “adult” friends (I’m making lots of lists, as I’m wont to do, and adding a lot of parenthetical comments, as I’m wont to do, and being very meta, as I’m wont to do).  I chose to sign up for water quality monitoring in sixth grade, which led to the President’s Environmental Youth Award; which led to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Sciences and National Youth Science Camp; which led to Ohio Wesleyan University, which led to Emily (who chose me), Megan, Natalie, and Neill.  I chose chemistry and Young Life, which led to the Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowship and Shannon and swing dancing as a community and Becca and Brandon.  I didn’t choose the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Agricultural Science or zoology, science grad school, or a non-percussive instrument.  So many choices.

            I come from a long line of my big and small choices and an infinite string of others’ decisions.  (I make that sentence the first of a new paragraph with a “¶“ symbol on my handwritten copy).  My sister Maggie begged me not to skip eighth grade (I did anyway; we finally started getting along because she showed she actually liked me).  My sister Kari called me at 12:30 AM, the middle of my night, to sob that her foot was broken halfway through her performance in Hello, Dolly! (I cried with her; we finally started getting along because she showed she actually liked me).  Emily intentionally pursued me freshman year.  Barry and Barb and Andy and Dez chose me for nerdy science camps.  My mom didn’t abort me (which sounds cliché, which I love and hate, but several people told her to).  Becca asked me to write between one and seven hundred words.  For science!  I wrote about myself in choppy sentences and fragments.  (What happened to my beloved complex compound sentences?)  I didn’t advance science or the English language.  But I hope I wrote something Becca will like because she is brilliant with her mathaphors and insight and hilarity and confidence and brokenness, and she honors me with her friendship and her request for one to seven hundred words.

            And I probably won’t edit this much, unless I scrap it for a different approach entirely when I decide that the “choppy confessional meta thing” isn’t good enough, because late Victorians hate the earnestness of the earlier Victorians and filling an entry with inside jokes and references doesn’t seem like a good way to start a blog.

For Science!

The following is a collection of compositions from the notebooks of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, dedicated to keeping rigorous notes on their experiments in the human experience.