Rorschach - A Poetic Reflection on Perception, Reality and Imagination

“What do you really see when you look up at all those clouds and their fun shapes?”

Sharing a poem today that I wrote back in 2024 as part of the Fire & Earth collection.

The poem is called “Rorschach”, and explores the difference between base reality and perceived reality.

We each see the world in our own way. Sometimes what we see and believe to be true are in fact figments of imagination that become augmented atop the real world.

Be careful not to skew the truth too much, at the cost of lying to not only others around you, but to yourself as well.

That said, also be careful not to limit your imagination. If you imagine something with vivid detail and consistent effort, then there’s a strong chance that you will manifest what you believe to be true into base reality.

Enjoy and let me know what you see. I’ll start to add more featured poetry into the weekly newsletter mix.

Thanks and love to all -

---

Rorschach

From Fire & Earth: A ThoughPose Poetry Collection | 3/17/2024

There aren’t even words

Anymore, just patterns

To pick out and rip apart,

Or subtle differences

That may tell small tales,

About where one starts

And the other ends

Passed out to interpret

As if a hidden meaning‘s

Name may be called

What do you really see

When you look up

At all those clouds

And their fun shapes?

Something tricking your

Brain to tell the truth

Break through derangement

All from some black marks

And the false premise

That anything can be known

If you linger on it long enough

Thoughts like tourist travelers,

Grouping up, passing by

And then splitting off again

The wings of a dead bat

The face of an old man

A pair of dancing bears

Spilled ink on white paper

---

One short note every week or two. No pressure. No noise. Unsubscribe anytime.

"Look Again at That Dot."

Earth from Saturn, as captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in April of 2017

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us." - Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Take a moment to observe one of the many now-famous images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in which Earth was wondrously captured as the only source of light between the acting frame of Saturn's rings.

While this image may prompt thoughts of our sheer insignificance in the grand scheme of things, challenge yourself to examine this photograph from a different angle.

Consider just some of the many, many factors needed to sustain life on a planet, amidst the desolate and violent conditions of space: being the right distance from the sun to allow for water to melt, being in the “habitable zone” of the galaxy to avoid deadly radiation, having a near-perfect circular orbit to maintain consistent warmth and light, having a moon that creates tides, and so on. And, by the way, it doesn’t hurt to have “gas giant” neighbors, like Saturn, to attract asteroids and comets, often preventing them from reaching us.

As it seems, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Whether by luck, by fate, or perhaps by something we do not yet understand, behold life.

From the first microorganisms to the ~8 million species that now reside here, life on Earth has evolved over the years. Us humans, the luckiest of the bunch, have even grown to possess a heightened state of consciousness, for better or worse. That is to say we have the ability to do extraordinary things like imagine, perceive, and love.

Let this image of Earth pose a thought, not on insignificance, but on what can become of being in the right place at the right time. Whether by luck, by fate, or perhaps by something we do not yet understand, behold.