Peeling Potatoes (Quantum Song)

Nov 11

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PEELING POTATOES (QUANTUM SONG)
……………………………………………………………………………………………Inspired by Ani DiFranco’s “The Atom”
I’m already enjoying these potatoes
And I’m still only preparing them

As I listen to Stockhausen
Scrape the knife against the surface
In contact
The moment poised
The universe, breath held
And each tiny epiphenomenon
With a full dance card
A winsome smile
And a secret dream of consummation
After the ball

A moment poised
Echoing off down the ages
With a come hither eyelash
And little in mind but to shimmer without resolution
As the unspoken exclamation shifts
From “what a phenomenon!”
To “what a sensation!”
While with a flick of the wrist
And a slip of the lip
The magician in you melts away

Ach, these twice blind wallflowers
Rather than ever dip their toe in the glass
They declare it divine
Or mundane
Each way certainty of losing their birthright
By giving themselves airs
And distancing themselves
From the humble potato
With their taxonomy and understanding
Their cluttered appendices and flaccid hearts

A fool’s wager, to be sure
If I should back science or evolution
To play the golden calf
Though God knows when Moses will ever reappear
From up that blessed mountain
Or whether anyone will hear him
When he says there’s more
To these potato chappies than you think
Though never of course
More than you imagine

But now let me slip the little beauties into the pan
I haven’t even started to enjoy them yet


…..
…..

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Another repost, I’m afraid, but once again I have added some videos. The second may not be to everyone’s taste, but the first one is close to essential as background to the inspiration. 🙂

About Ben Naga

The Spirit that graces me with its passing has no name and stems not from thoughts and words, though it gathers them up as it flows, but from feeling.

Posted on November 11, 2014, in Poetry and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. 30 Comments.

  1. slpmartin | November 11, 2014 at 4:33 pm

    I just love DiFranco….love the verse you penned.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  2. silentlyheardonce | November 11, 2014 at 8:57 pm

    This is a wonderful piece.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. the secret keeper | November 11, 2014 at 11:00 pm

    Will it be now soon or is it an echo?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. Thomas Davis | December 4, 2014 at 3:26 pm

    Ben Naga, because of past experiences I am first going to try to reply, then I’ll give you a full reply if it works.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  6. Thomas Davis | December 4, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    Inside the god particle is the universe:
    “I’m already enjoying these potatoes
    And I’m still only preparing them”
    no matter what the physicists say.
    The aural ideas of Stockhausen, as they “Scrape the knife against the surface
    In contact
    The moment,” reaching for a spirituality of mathematical spontaneity, “The universe, breath held
    And each tiny epiphenomenon
    With a full dance card
    A winsome smile
    And a secret dream of consummation
    After the ball…”
    becomes a moment that is “off down the ages
    With a come hither eyelash
    And little in mind but to shimmer without resolution
    As the unspoken exclamation shift,”
    realizing the fractals of that which is.
    “Ach,” indeed, “Ach, these twice blind wallflowers”
    who “Rather than ever dip their toe in the glass…
    …”declare it divine
    Or mundane
    Each way certainty of losing their birthright
    By giving themselves airs
    And distancing themselves
    From the humble potato
    With their taxonomy and understanding.”
    Of course, who can dip their toe on glass? Unless they expand into a shrinking violet who shoots between quarks with all the dissonance of being and becomes what they are while denying the substance of their corporealness? Ah, so many realities to contemplate! Who can really understand a potato anyway?
    “A fool’s wager, to be sure…”
    Playing the golden calf inside Stockhausen’s knife scraping, getting entangled in the mathematical certainty of science while Moses is missing from the sacred mountain, but may, or may not, reappear, there is still
    more
    “To these potato chappies than you think
    Though never of course
    More than you imagine…”
    And, of course, as I smile in my imagination, that is, after all, a fractal of reality, a science and a Moses,
    …” let me slip the little beauties into the pan
    I haven’t even started to enjoy them yet”
    And what else does Ben Naga think we should have for dinner tonight? The surface of glass that is as insubstantial as a quark’s whizz?

    Liked by 2 people

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    • Ben Naga | December 9, 2014 at 3:51 pm

      For me, the pivot point of the poem is

      ‘As the unspoken exclamation shifts
      From “what a phenomenon!”
      To “what a sensation!”’

      The existential moment when we melt from the brain/thinking/phenomenal realm into the heart/feeling/sensational realm; when we dip our toe in the glass (i e mirror) that divides the inner and outer; where whatever we see reflects back rather than allowing us to unite and immerse ourselves in the (sur)real. The magician who conjures up the 3-D mirage of “reality” melts away.

      Compare this to https://bennaga.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/puzzles/

      The wallflowers, too timid to join the dance, are twice blind because they not only fail to see but do not even see they do not see or that there is anything to see, and prefer to console themselves with the comforting myths of Science or Religion.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply
  7. Dilip | December 16, 2014 at 8:34 am

    Beautiful and creative!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  8. Betty Hayes Albright | August 16, 2017 at 9:20 pm

    Ben, thank you for the link to this. Both your wonderful poem and the DiFranco song gave me goosebumps. Literally! I need to print out your poem and also the song lyrics to read off line. Thank you again!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Ben Naga | July 2, 2018 at 8:15 pm

      Not a hundred miles from the aloo phujia recipe I usually follow these days. (Though with more easily acquired ingredients. 🙂 ) I can’t recall what I was concocting when I was preparing the potatoes later used as background to this poem.

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      Reply

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