Technological Bafflement

“What you’ve got here, really, are two realities, one of immediate artistic appearance and one of underlying scientific explaination, and they don’t match and they don’t fit and they don’t really have much of anything to do with one another. That’s quite a situation.” — Robert M. Pirsig, ZAMM


Silence, a solitude. Absense of life.
A gelid alloy, shaved to perfection,
Ignites that which was comatose
And brings roaring life forthwith.
A continuous song it hums
Under the painted steal
Until, that fateful moment when
A twist of hand, is then still.
Simple movements, a turn of hand,
A depression of rubber and metal
With one extending extremity of physique,
Slight bending of limbs to cause
A destination to be come to
Within the allottment desired.
If all goes well, contemplation ends thus,
As no need to ponder the how arises.

But: if the organ of mystery
Defunct, inanimate there remains,
Ignorance no longer a forgotten fact
An impertinent curse becometh.
Essential, it seems, to master
The rudements previously unknown
To the mind of the unlearned.
Too great a detail, superfluous;
Too little, a state of anti-Buddhist.
Enlightenment is attainable
Through knowledge of reasons thrice:
The liquid that burns is present,
Following indeed that it is caught,
Adequately contained, and warmed to taste.
If the purr refuses to then resound,
There’s larger problems to be found.

The visage of the churning,
Countless fragments flying, organized, 
Not flinging without purpose or aim,
Synchronous with modern air
To one of the soul’s soothing friends;
The steadily varying melodic tones,
That when by certain waves is brought
To it’s listeners’ ear, can mend
Even the most burdened of hearts.
Together are placed to explain what is lost
And is to the masses a conundrum,
In ignorance was believed simplicity
Now in need, without doubt, an enigma.
The item of import is comprehension,
And a disallowance of fear to prevent it—
Phaedrus and his other self would agree.