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Sunday 23 August 2009

Wrong from the Start


.


File:Egg.jpg








The path of least resistance
is a straight line
but once you deviate
even slightly
the path of least
resistance becomes
that of greater
and greater
deviation








Thumbnail for version as of 14:08, 27 January 2007








Egg of Columbus
: photos by Jacper "Kangel" Aniolek, 2007

9 comments:

Mariana Soffer said...

But it is so hard to handle, to dominate, to lead ourselves that we tend to fall on that failure again and again.

Bowie Hagan said...

Tom,

I find it differently. If we are born flawed, is not our least resistance the only true path we are still allowed, the universe being (supposedly) perfect despite our defected view, and many errors?

Do I fail to grasp the poem's full meaning?

TC said...

It has dawned on one at times that there is a thing called "normal"--I think this is a social category.

Some make the cut, some don't, and for the ones who don't, it seems matters only get worse as time goes along.

If the universe be perfect, that may well be a kind of perfect that is not quite what we may personally mean by "perfect".

But what do I know?

By the by, in case anybody's wondering about how the universe might look from the point of view of the egg in the photos, that knotty problem at least can be solved, if we are to believe the photographer's word (and why would he lie, or is lying "normal"?).

He says he ate it ten minutes after he shot it.

If it were to become "normal" for everyone to have to eat everything they shot within ten minutes, I believe it would be a more perfect world. (What I mean is some shooters might have second thoughts before pulling the trigger... wouldn't that be merely "normal"?)

Anonymous said...

In praise of TC
a gentlemen who took "the path"
as Frost said, "less traveled",
and "it has made all the difference"
also since TC lives in California
normal may have another meaning
culturally speaking
Take the Hell's Angels, a California
phenomenon originally....part of
their motto as 1 percenters...
"The one percent who don't fit and
don't care"

TC said...

Anonymous,

I am humbled.

Yes. Perhaps Normal is in the Eye of the Beholder. Cultural Relativism of the Original American Independence strain is soothing to the Soul, like having a big Hog under you and a stretch of open road out ahead.

But then here they come--the Normals!

As a fellow patriot, let me share with you

A Piece of Americana

Zephirine said...

Fine egg, Tom, I hope he enjoyed it.

Personally I find it is true that the road less travelled goes on and on, and the other road can eventually no longer even be guessed at by gazing across to where it ought to be, even the roar of its traffic can no longer be heard. And the two roads will certainly never reach the same destination, though two sides of an egg will (until it's broken).

This poem also made me think of rivers meandering, where a small swerve to avoid a rock becomes a big loop, and then a loop back the other way, until avoiding hard places creates a thing of beauty...

TC said...

Zeph,

Lovely to think of it that way, the looping and meandering that one can see in the course of rivers like those of southern India on NASA satellite photos... life certainly feels more like that, from here anyway, than like a bullet train or an arrow-straight motorway.

About the road less travelled, yes certainly. What's ironic though for some of those left or lost at the margins, as for example us, is that the more travelled road, upon which one would not nor could ever travel, actually roars nonstop past the dilapidated homestead, so that there is no escape from the getting and spending even if it's other peoples'.

'Tis sometimes enough to make one withdraw into the contemplation of an egg...

Elmo St. Rose said...

Literal for me/I enjoyed
Hunter S. Thompson's
tribute to the Angels

but I also remember the
beating of the FAT Man
at Altamont with pool cues

Later Ken Kesey said, he loved
the FAT Man...tough love between
sugar cubes I guess

Dale said...

Tom, I used to meditate on this poem during your class in the room downstairs where the broadside hung by the bathroom. It instructed me then--as now. Thanks, D