There are lines of force in this world
I feel them tangibly, imagining haptic feedback of the physical mind
A rumble pack is vibrating somewhere, slight, nestled in the folds of my brain
I am sure everyone can feel it too, all but like a winter's morning
The sun occluded, by the blankets of storms arguing amongst themselves
Snow drifts lazily here and there, sometimes granules of sugar, other times
Insulting flakes of immense size, alighting on everything like butterflies
Exhausted from their migration, the distance from the far off clouds to the bitter ground
Seeming all too far. But it followed a thread, a path, an invisible route
Dancing with happenstance and random outcome in a pattern unobservable
But it was a line… the flake followed the forces acting upon it
Both an outcome and an input, the flake is at once itself at formation
And still itself as it flutters to a stop on folded brown grass
I observe the ending, guess the beginning, and wonder the in-between.
Are we not only observation machines? A result of stimuli alone?
We are born, a machine without language, only biological imperatives
Systems relaying signals along nervous pathways to a simple box
The box converts noise to more noise, as the baby raises its voice
A mother comes running, stimuli causing milk to drop, concern to form
Worry written across a face that has seen programming from parents before
Through ancient timelines from the beginning and the world around
Nature versus nurture is the argument, the discourse obvious to the seasoned mind
Well of course, well of course, harrumph, harrumph, stimuli ergo response
But we are not just this crude thing of a black box that motivates itself
We are not only a miracle of adaptive self programming and outcomes of billions
Of years of adaptive biological replication and matter billions
Of years old, built in the forges of Gods in nebula billions
Of miles across, flying outwards ever further to a lonely hot rocky planet.
We are all these things, but yet, to linger on the disparity lying in plain view
We are not, there is something else to observe, to understand
We are more, each of us feels the strange contradiction within our core
We are both the Universe observing itself, and at the same time, we are our own
A microcosm of uniqueness, that cannot be reduced down
Humanity cannot be reductive, it is accretive in nature, wholly bound to reality
Yet simultaneously, we are a part of it and apart from it
Does the flake observe it's mother sky as it falls from her upcycling embraces?
Does the microcosm of fractal growth see itself from the storm of its nebula-born sisters?
We are both the line and the force, we follow and we create
Our paths are both at once birthed and yet already existing
We follow the lines of force around us, as they exert their stimuli
And we counter or accept, we twist or we break, we choose a happy heart
Or we melt away, to be ignored and never missed upon our deconstruction.
Touch. Hope. Realization. Each of us carries the forces within
Each of us follows these lines of force, and we can be thoughtful as we run
We can touch the arms of those around us, the faces, the interfaces
Of unique souls bound in matter, to each of us, the singular
We can each hope for a place better than we found it, acting in our belief
To guide each other ever forward, to improvement of all, the many
And we can carry realization of our self that is not alone in the universe
Finding others by their hands and their faces, witness their voices
Calling each other across the skies as we fall, as we alight where we land
Reaching for our sisters and brothers as they land before or after
The forces are our own, are they not?
The lines we follow our own, are they not?
Each of us must make the imperative choice to be in control of both
We are only truly acted upon by our self, ourselves collectively the inevitable response.