Poems

I hope you like my poems that I wrote in 2005.

 

2005

Daphni's Robe

The robe of her covers all the nations,

it drapes around all peoples, and covers

them.  Her robe is herself manifested in her world. 

Her robe reaches all corners of our earth.

The robe of the Princess is regal, as it is the robe

of our Queen.  The robe I can imagine as a deep ruby 

red, touching all corners of the earth.

There is nothing that she cannot do; she alone 

has the robe, and every living thing feels its 

influence.  Also, the robe covers every material 

of the earth.   The robe it stands for every living 

and non-living thing on the earth.  Also, the robe 

stands for her creation.  It touches on everything,

encompasses all, and is the wide swath of all things.  See how

pleasantly true her lustrous red robe is and its 

sparkling, unblemished color and how it is ever new and 

self-sustaining.  Oh, the majesty of her who wears the 

robe.  I say all honor to Daphni's everlasting robe!

Rose

The rose finds the time when it wants to bloom.
Hopefully, no beetles will destroy it.
Roses come in many colors: red, pink, yellow, and white among others.
Roses are the princes of the flowers.
They need a lot of watering and upkeep to keep them healthy as humans do.
They are becoming scarce these days, not enough people have them in their yards, which is a shame.
Roses like the sun and the shade; they bloom in the late summer.
Without the sun and shade, where would roses be? There would be none without the sun.

Age

Surely, life is not meant to be wasted.
When I am old, I want to feel that I have taken
every opportunity, always have been productive,
never have wasted a moment. That is why I live in
the "Now." I never want to be idle, I want to often,
"Be on the go." I want to get as much as I can out

of life.  Now I have more wisdom though doing less, which I got

in the natural process of aging.

I think that age just brings wisdom, if we will
only let it. I mean we must not ruin this wisdom
by doing things ill to our health. We must let
this wisdom come naturally and embrace it
without ruining it through destructive behavior.
We do seem to evolve through the years, though
in another sense we are always the same selves.
It is funny how active we are in childhood, and
our growing healthily and naturally ages us
wonderfully and beautifully, and we revel with joy in life.

The Blue Sky

Today the sky was as deep a blue as
the bluejay. All across the heavens
was a deep blue with no clouds in sight.
One can get lost in a sky so blue.
The blue was bright but not blinding
Everywhere was blue. Below this ocean
of blue, I was walking, and the snow
covered the yards of houses.
A stream of white under an ocean of blue
yet somehow with me walking under this
immense sky. I did not feel small or puny.
The sky was right at home with me. I was
in awe of the sky, but it did not insult me by
making me feel insignificant. Instead it held
out a fiery hand to me, and I shook it in
greeting, and this greeting is an everlasting
friendship coined between us.
This sky must be so pure; it was an unalloyed blue
with no clouds in sight. There was nothing wrong
with sky; it was perfect in its magnificence. The sea
of blue was so serene that it made me serene in turn.
It is also comforting to know that a blanket of
sky covers the atmosphere of this wonderful planet,
which can cover me both when I am outside and
later at night when I think internally and then
come outside myself once again with a quick
glance on a freezing winter night up at the
now black sky with millions of fiery beacons
called stars that compliment outer space.
This alternation of daytime blue and nighttime
black mirrors so much in nature in the sense
of constant changing. I would not be secure
with the sky being blue day and night, though.
I hear in the poles it is daytime almost the entire
day. So, all credit to the beautiful blue sky
I witnessed on my walk today.

Nietzsche

This man is a paradox. A self-styled monster, he is one of the most humane men I know. He has a bad reputation I know, but one has to get beyond a surface opinion about him by reading all his books to get a good overall picture of him. Sometimes he can admittedly get kind of harsh, but he is a kind humane man (a modern Socrates though not so wise). He tends to rejoice in his own wickedness at times, which is the bad thing about him (see the ending of one of his books, Beyond Good and Evil, thinking of wickedness). He can be kind of conceited, also, thinking he is from a Polish noble stock. Also, thinking too highly of himself in Ecce Homo. Too bad about his having lost his almost most important friend in Richard Wagner, which must have disappointed him a lot. I do not think Thus Spoke Zarathustra is necessarily his best book. He is brave for writing through his migraine headaches, which might have prevented him from writing more fluidly and more systematically.
I think Nietzsche was a man of contradiction because his humane character was not reflected in his writings taken separately but can only be seen in them as a whole. One has to read all his books to find this humane character that thus gradually comes through.

Ideas for a book:

on Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Hegel (maybe), Kant, Kierkegaard, Plato, and some Aristotle.

Take ideas from each philosopher that interested me. Maybe take notes from various texts. Nietzsche and Plato are the ones I read furthest back in my life, ideas partially less clear in relation to them (very general). Could compare the different philosophical texts. Could write either a fluid whole or a book of separate paragraphs a la Nietzsche or Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Could even include poets like Holderlin and more. Could do a book on, say, each of the philosophers' books like one on the Tractatus, though not each one of Nietzsche's (it would be better to take Nietzsche as a whole). Or could write a book of my own philosophical reflections.
I cannot remember too much about Nietzsche though I remember the tightrope in Zarathustra very well. There is a tightrope between man and the superman. I bet the comic book character Superman is named after Nietzsche. In Wittgenstein's Tractatus I remember the end vividly, where one has the ladder to go on to higher things. The Tractatus is a success because it provides this ladder to mystical thought. So in a way the Tractatus is superior logic in that it provides a ladder to get beyond the traditional logic. I guess Wittgenstein himself said he read little or none of Aristotle (who of course has the famous works of logic under the title Organon). Wittgenstein is also good at mindgames. He has an acute psychological sense in Philosophical Investigations. I like his rabbit diagram, representing to the mind two pictures at once. I also like his picture theory of language in the Tractatus where, say, the word table is like a picture or a snapshot of the actual entity table.
This pictures theory greatly affected me; it is very powerful to the mind, which is why it has stuck with me. Also, how everything in the natural world is the case, which is in the beginning of the book. I guess most of Nietzsche's books are full of "aphorisms," not paragraphs really. Well, they are called "aphorisms." I liked the Frege book; it made a big positive impression on me. I remember of all Nietzsche's books Zarathustra best, and it was also the first book of his that I was exposed to.
At one point Zarathustra comes down from his mountain solitude to teach the people, but they reject him not because Zarathustra is inferior, but it is because the people are inferior. They do not want to learn from him, they do not have the requisite good curiosity to learn from this enlightened one who only wants to teach them. If Zarathustra existed these days, he would be in a mental asylum! 

System of Philosophy

What is philosophy? A system of thought passed down through the ages. There has been philosophy ever since man became self-conscious. At least ever since there has been language. I can see how a first question would be, "Why?" This is not a statement but a question. I wonder what came first, statements or questions. A statement answers a question, or a statement comes after the statement.
The first philosophers likely had a problem with language, with proper communications. They lacked the proper language, which made things difficult. 
I would love to return to the Greeks and Romans and to the time of the 17th to 19th centuries, being key times in the development of modern philosophy. In my view, the Middle Ages produced little philosophical merit, and the times between Aristotle and "modern philosophy" I view as a Dark Age of philosophy.
I think that the question of why life is how it is, is an important question. I wonder myself why the universe is how it is, why humans are given this precise form and are put in the material world that we are put in. I do not know, for example, why there is the ocean or the sun and the moon. I like to think, though, that they are there to make people happy. Otherwise, why else would they be so beautiful? It is too bad in a way that we have forgotten to appreciate the beauty of natural objects such as trees and rivers, foolishly instead having a vacuousness with the poor-quality computers and cellphones.
What is truth? Is it what we believe or what is commonly agreed upon or neither? Can we even know what truth is? Do we even have a true notion of what truth is? Surely the very fact that we are self-conscious entitles us to some portion of the truth. Do we even have a true definition of what truth is? What exactly do we know? It would appear to me that the true is the good. The highest amount of knowledge us humans have is the true and the good. So this is why people with more knowledge are more perfect and are more part of the higher good that they know than ignorant people. I do not, however, equate knowledge with book knowledge necessarily, as bookworms can be utterly one-sided and ignorant about the true, crystalline facets of life.

2013

5K Race

 

He had his first race.  At the starting line, the man said, “Runners set;” then the gun went off and so did the runners.  He wanted to keep an even pace throughout.  He started a bit fast, and some of the other runners passed him, but he didn’t let that get him down, and he tried to keep up his pace.  The course for the race was nice, with grand buildings around him.  The day was nice, not cold, but warm, and the sun bright.  The competition was fierce- he tried to stay in front of the pack.  All his training came down to this race, all his hard work boiled down to this performance.  He had on his college colors on his Trinity shirt.  This was his time in life, it was at this moment he was meant to shine.  He had looked forward to running here a while, and this run meant a lot to him, and the race was going well so far.  See how he runs fast and fights to keep up his quick pace!  Not to be intimidated by the other runners and most of all he is doing great staying positive.  He thinks optimistically.  He is trying his best.  At the end of the race he still has juice for a finishing blast of a sprint, and he ends the 5K race in 18:34!

 

Brass Choir

 

He went to tryouts for the orchestra.  He made the orchestra!  His conductor did the tryout.  His instructor was very knowledgeable and very kind.  His name was Stephen Bonta.  His orchestra rehersals were going well, and the orchestra was working on Handel’s Water Music.  The first trumpet player was skilled, and she liked playing the piece.  He was second trumpet.  The passages were fun.   He liked being in a band and playing his own unique part in it.  The rehersals were about an hour long on each day on weekdays.  He had a break halfway through each rehersale where he would go to the nearby student center to get some snacks with his friends.  He liked the musicians he played with and quickly became friends with them.  He looked forward to the break and hanging out with his friends before being ready to get back down to business once the week ended.  Then there was the concert at the end of the semester.  It was fun playing Water Music, and the band did a good job with a rousing applause: he was victorious!

Ping-Pong 

I hit a forehand smash "Bang!' goes the ball, hitting the table quickly on the other side of the net.  Popee returns it well with his backhand, and the pin-pong ball is lobbed over the table... "Slam!" goes the ball as I hit a backhand smash down the line, but Popee gets that, too, with a lob over the net.  "Slam!"  I laugh and hit a forehand smash, but it hits the net, and the table falls harmlessly to the table.  I go to the middle of the table to the net and pick up the ball.  Then it's my turn to serve.  I decide to try my successful backhand spin serve.  I say the score "9-15" and serve.  The ball goes low over the net- a good serve.  It has some good spin, and Popee hits it into the net, and now it is 10-15.  Time to switch over to his serve.  He has a good fast serve.  He taught me how to play ping-pong, and I went from inexperienced to a pretty good player.  He used to beat me almost every time when we played.  I got better, and our games got more intense- I improved well under his watchful eyes.  He won the game, but it was close (18-21).