First consider: Why do I write poetry? Because I want to capture, preserve, andshare experiences that I treasure or think are significant. I try to give an honest,subjective portrayal of an experience, not an objective portrayal. That is what is soattractive about poetry, there is no right or wrong, just who I am and what […]
If you want to do itperfectlyit will never get done.There isNO standardof perfectionfor a painting,for a poem, a book, a job,a law, an animal, a theorem,a person, a belief, a religion,a day.Only in bowling is a300 game called perfect.Seeking perfectionis chasing a fantasy.Wasting time on perfectionis a detrimentto beingto being productive and authentic.
People, we, I are like the different states of matter. Sometimes it is good to act like aliquid, flowing past obstacles effortlessly. Sometimes to act like a solid, taking astand. Sometimes to act like a gas, ephemeral, filling the container, soft andcompressible. Being able to move from one state to another helps dealing with life’sopportunities, […]
We all have a notion of how things should be or look, and getting past our prejudicesis difficult. I used to teach an art course for grade schoolers, and would give them a“serious” task: draw a rabbit. They would work hard at attempts to make a detailedrepresentation of a rabbit, with uneven success, and with […]
Being creative in science, or in any field, is of great importance for success andinnovation, and is a challenge. How do scientists learn to be creative? In school,mathematics and science are generally taught as courses in which most everythingis known: the answers are in the back of the book or on the web. The role […]
When I wrote down poems often in the middle of the night, it was in my physicsresearch notebooks. Theoretical physics predominantly involves the lefthemisphere of the brain, which is believed to be responsible for realistic, logical,analytical and mathematical thought. Conversely the right hemisphere is believedto be responsible for creative, artistic, poetic, intuitive functions of the […]
Here I will share some ideas about poetry, about life, and the challenges we all face and how wedeal with them. I will be also writing about the intersection of life and science, which is a changing landscape. I wrote Transformations when I was working in Wisconsin, on our farm, doing physics research, mowing our […]