.
Call me nomad
Rootlessness is my routine
From where I stand
space seems to beg for exploration
not occupation. Occupation of space
requires a military state of mind
Armies train for it. But individuals
grow dull and lethargic just occupying space
~~
There’s no substitute for dynamism
when facing space
When I stumble upon a new chunk
I like to engage it many times over
laying out alternate trajectories
bisecting circles
flying off on tangents
or just nosing around looking for
shortcuts
If the wind’s right you might catch me
boogalooing along an hypotenuse
or oscillating between the foci of an ellipse
I go at it from all angles by any means
For instance, I’ve found a trampoline’s
an great way to explore space:
up, down, up, down
Along similar lines (if you have the bucks)
a space shuttle’s good too:
up, down, up, down
~~
There are various ways to approach space
We can grid it off and tackle it one little block at a time
or go at it whole, working it as Jackson Pollock would a canvas
Our choice depends upon our depth of indoctrination
or personality disorder
Whatever our milieu, space can be an exhilarating place
–or is it places?
In fact space is full of surprises
(moving beyond bland Euclidean space that is;
the plainest of all geometries)
Still, you gotta hand it to the guy
Euclid’s space may be old hat,
but it’s a space that’s served us well over the years
Try getting from here to there without it
~~
But what really psyches me
are novel topologies of space
There’s nothing more exhilarating
then space that pushes the envelope
Consider the tasty appeal of a torus
(the deep-fried cuisine of cops),
the intriguing infinity of a Möbius strip,
or the warm and cozy feel
of a conversation-laced pub
Those are boundary-pushing spaces all, but
they’re nothing
up against the reality-bending possibilities
of warped space as given by Einstein
or the mystically tangled
theory of strings
Just the thought of Einsteinian space
trumps any sense of metaphysical claustrophobia
left over from grade-school catechism
under hard nuns
~~
Now?
I never miss the chance to savor space
With seven billion of us on the planet,
at our present rate of consumption,
you never know when
we might run out
Jim Culleny
June 2007
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Blink 