LVI

56 years commemorated with cake.
Candles blown, a wish formed
unbidden in the dark.

I am dying to know
whether some plan predates my path
Or is my next, my last, my every step uncharted?

Cruising along, the air is still and stifling.
Signposts and landmarks liquefy
above the simmering roadway.

"D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous"
hangs on a wall in Boston.  The artist sought answers,
but settled for arsenic.

56?  Are there any living truths buried in numbers?
56 Holes of Aubrey, 56 Minor Arcana, 56 layers in Aristotle's Universe.
But Truth does not lie, even in numbers.

Some mathematicians would still make sock-puppets of philosophy.
Neo-Fregean Ontology and Epistemic Structuralism.
Just so many algorithmic angels dancing on my dura.

Perhaps I am descended from Cimmerians.
That might explain why Wisdom watches wordlessly
from the wings, never thinking to join me on stage.


Note 1: The painting mentioned as hanging in Boston was painted by Paul Gauguin in 1897. He tried to commit suicide after finishing it by poisoning himself with arsenic. He did not succeed. In English, the title translates as "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?"  It hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

Note 2: The Cimmerians, as described by Homer, are a race of people who dwelt beyond the Ocean Streams in a land of perpetual fog and darkness.

Written on March 17, 2013, my 56th birthday