Category Archives: Musings

A Satirical Trumpian Fairy Tale, Twice Removed

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Trumpets please!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, we present this sort of satirically sordid tale for your amusement and entertainment.  It may or may not be based on fact, that’s a matter of perspective, and the names may or may not have been changed to protect the innocent.  Or the guilty.  Once again, a matter of perspective.

Let’s begin:

Deius Clandestinius Amorphus, the eighty seventh of that designation in his dynasty, glanced languidly at his twenty seventh consort, soon to be his eighth wife, junior grade, at least for the time being.  Time would tell how high she rose or how far she fell.  Hard to predict at the moment as she had just turned twelve (or so she claimed, she looked much closer to fifty) and he was just short of eighty-three.  He was not an emperor, or a king, or a prince, or even a duke.  Rather, he was an ascendant file clerk at the small law firm of Blathers & Associates.  Small but successful, a boutique firm specializing in electoral manipulation.  Sly, as he preferred to be called given all the syllables and numbers in his name, was the eighth cousin, thrice removed, of Yackoff Stanton, the senior associate in the firm to whom he owed his position with its attendant salary and more importantly, its fringe benefits.  Yackoff, in turn, was aspiring and constantly plotting to ascend to the position of most junior partner, a position long unfilled as the firm was bereft of any partners at all, Mrs. Blather not being keen on having to share her authority with anyone else, not since she had attained her current position upon the death of her husband, Slayton Armington Blathers, the great grandson thrice removed of the firm’s founder. 

Like Kamala (that was the impending bride’s name), Mrs. Blathers had once also been a consort but had ascended to the role of junior wife from which she had clawed and seduced her way to senior wife-once-removed, further ascending to senior wife when her predecessor succumbed to a strange and inexplicable stomached ailment after tea and crumpets or some such dainty brought to her by her ladies in waiting, the current Mrs. Blathers among them, … perhaps fortuitously.  The current widow Blathers did not care for tea or crumpets or for any other such dainties, perhaps because her own husband had suffered a fate similar to that suffered by her own predecessor soon after the dowager Blathers had become senior wife.  Some considered it interesting that the latest Mrs. Blathers first name was Lucretia, … but that’s another story.

Sly was a diligent and dedicated employee whose principle responsibility involved the destruction of electoral records (or what for a brief instant in time had passed as electoral records), before their authenticity could be verified, which he did in coordination with numerous county clerks’ and electoral supervisors’ offices in what had once been the State of California (in what had once been a federal republic of sorts).  That’s what made him such a catch and explained his numerous concubines and wives, that and the fact that he was the youngest elder in the Reformed Orthodox California Church of All Saints and Assorted Personages, Nancy Pelosi chapter.  Nancy Pelosi had long been Lucretia’s favorite saint. 

Because of the sinecure involved, Sly had never aspired to become even the most junior deputy associate twice removed, much less a partner.  He not only knew on which side his bread was buttered, but also where the jam and honey and peanut butter and cream cheese were hidden.  Sly had no children, none at all, but he did have quite a few cousins in varying degrees of consanguinity.  Nor did he plan on ever having any children if he could help it.  He did, however, have one cat, a very old and very cranky cat, one who mainly slept and ate nowadays, or perhaps, she always had.  And snarled, snarled a lot, definitely snarled.  He had, for reasons unknown or at least never admitted, named her Hillary.

Lucretia liked neither Hillary nor Kamala, being, for some reason, of a very suspicious nature, nor did she like Yackoff although he was her stepsister’s great grandson, nor did she like Sly but Sly managed to remain largely unnoticed.  Truth be told, except for her admiration for St. Nancy, Lucretia did not seem to like anyone, anyone at all.  And Lucretia kept no pets, she was suspicious of animals as well.  She just sort of kept to herself, counting her ever increasing virtual mountains of bitcoins, a sort of female Scrooge McDuck but without that billionaire avian’s sense of adventure.  She had once been eerily beautiful but now, despite numerous facelifts and other aesthetic procedures, people who somehow or other managed to navigate the complex labyrinth of security in which she was ensconced all too frequently mistook her for a rare pallid walking and talking prune (although the talking was mainly limited to “who the Hell are you and how did you get in here!!!”).  Still, she was a competent albeit not a creative administrator and the firm prospered, although there were those who nervously whispered, mainly to themselves, that the firm ran itself.  That, of course, was not true, it was run by a virtual artificial intelligence project, a joint project really, one referred to as “AG Holder” by those who knew of it.  A joint project devised by a cabal of former intelligence agency leaders and former presidents of what had once been a federal republic.

It was ironic that given the reality that with the demise of that once-upon-a-time federal republic, elections had no meaning and thus, there was really no need to manipulate them, but the firm’s success had been deemed a work of art and a natural treasure (in California), and thus, elections continued to be held and, as sure as the fact that the sun was likely to both rise and set, even though it could rarely be seen through the California smog, electoral results were artfully delayed for longer and longer periods of time, time during which Sly and his coterie of county clerks and electoral “supervisors” danced their dance of many veils.

As the nuptials for Sly and Kamala approached, Oprah, Sly’s current senior wife fretted.  She always fretted concerning her weight which seemed involved in a mysterious game of give and take, but now she fretted about Kamala, until recently her latest “bestest” friend.  A “bestest” friend who certainly paid well for being befriended. 

“What if for some reason or other the wedding was called off”?  How, wondered Oprah, would that affect their blossoming relationship?  

Elsewhere, similar thoughts were occurring to Kamala.

_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Misplaced Optimism. … Perhaps

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He had a tendency to confuse aesthetics for love,
at least at first,
at least for a while,

especially when it was laced with scents of obsession.

It usually did not end well,
or, ….
well, at least it never had. 

…. Not yet.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Syncretic Evolutionary Accretion in Human Spirituality

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I recently commented on an academic colleague’s article contrasting Christian and Jewish perspectives concerning the disgraced apostle Judas Iscariot, perhaps unfairly criticizing her observations based on the Jewish Toledot Yeshu as shallow[1].  The article described Christian attitudes with respect to Judas as reflecting the most extreme example of evil and betrayal possible, an attitude indeed shared by many, but not one universally shared among more modern Christians, especially in light of twentieth century efforts to rehabilitate Judas and ameliorate the perception of the Jewish role in the arrest, torture and execution of Yešu[2], given the climactic horrors of antisemitism during the Second World War seeking to treat both in a more neutral manner. 

The Jewish attitude towards Judas, as reflected in the Toledot Yeshu (as well as in both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud), predictably regard him as a hero, albeit as a hero without ethical boundaries, and as the savior of Judaism in the face of encroachment by Yešu-inspired heretics (not yet misnamed “Christians” by Saul of Tarsus[3]).  My point in criticizing (too strong a word really) the authors’ description of related Christian perceptions concerning Judas was that, to an increasing number of Christians, rather than an arch-villain, Judas Iscariot is a tragically complex figure who faced irresolvable conflicts of interest between his aspirations seeking a messianic Jewish liberator and the otherworldly idealism attributed to the victim of his betrayal, a conflict complicated by the reality that, at any rate, he was irrevocably bound to the fate decreed for him by the always strange Abrahamic deity which both he and Yešu believed they served. 

For some reason, the forgoing led me to reflect on the accretive nature of Abrahamic religions and then, to reflect on the reality that most if not all religions seem accretive.  A strange leap but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Consider:

The roots of all Abrahamic religions lie in the city of Uruk in ancient Sumer.  They all start with a certain Sumerian, ironically given subsequent beliefs, the son of an idol maker.  That Sumerian’s original name was phonetically Abiramu but has reached us as Abraham.  Based on the foregoing it seems clear that most of the stories in the Hebrew Book of Genesis, e.g., the Garden, the Flood, etc., have Sumerian roots, but as Abiramu and his sister-wife Sarai and their descendants fled though Egypt into Canaan, and Judaism slowly evolved as a religion, cultural borrowing was heavy and included Akhenaton’s monotheism, the Midian religion wholesale, and from Canaan, its divinity, YHWH, one of the seventy sons of the chief Canaanite god, El.  Somewhere along the line however, for reasons unknown, Judaism shed its female deities, the numerous wives of YHWH including Anat-Yahu, Aholah and Aholibah , Asherah, Anatha of the Lions and Ashima of the Doves, not to mention the Shekinah, a process largely rejected for centuries by the common people until Hebrew women were reduced to objects bereft of rights and a religious, civic and social patriarchy, purportedly divinely ordained, was established, history having been reformulated and recorded, as necessary.  Of course, all of the foregoing also forms the predicate for both Christianity and Islam, although Christianity added a number of Hellenic religious and philosophical concepts via Saul of Tarsus (Islam has always been much closer to Orthodox Judaism, ironic given today’s genocidal antipathies).  Wow!!!  What a journey in every sense.

Syncretism is a term used to describe the dialectic process through which accretion leads to religious evolution and it was certainly evident among the religions of the country the ancient Hebrews referred to as “Mizraim” (which we call Egypt) where gods from diverse regions were added to a growing common pantheon where they eventually tended to meld.  The same seems true with respect to divinities and their respective cults in the Indian subcontinent and to the divinities prominent in ancient Greece and Rome.  It may well be true of religions in the Americas as well. 

As a young academic many, many decades ago, I taught a course on comparative religions which I elected to divide into three major segments, the first dealt with primitive spiritual concepts such as animism and totems, the second with mythologies which my students denominated “other peoples’ religions” and finally, to the enormous diaspora of spiritual and religious concepts that have become prevalent during the past three millennia.  Through it all I sensed a fount of religious instincts sprouting from somewhere in central Asia, perhaps somewhere in what is today modern day Mongolia, the place from which, periodically, waves upon waves of refugees turned invaders seemed to erupt, waves that included the Huns, the Mongols and those to whom we refer as Indo-European, Hindus, Achaeans, Aryans, etc.  I visualized the foregoing as a crescendo of peoples and beliefs, perhaps sharing a common origin, then diffracting and subsequently reassembling in differing configurations.  However, all too soon, as tends to occur, the young academic I once was found his academic pursuits deflected into first history, then political science, then law, and my quest for “a unified theory of socio-spiritual evolution” returned to the ether from which it had apparently once sprung, … until recently.  Until when, after semi-retiring to pursue personal interests and research, I returned to old roots exploring the “legends” of Gilgamesh and the origins of YWHW and of the myriad faces of Yešu, which, somehow or other, after reading the article by Ora Limor and Israel Jacob Yuval (“Judas Iscariot: Revealer of the Hidden Truth”), led me back to this introspective reflection concerning the diametrically opposed perspectives concerning both Judas Iscariot and Yešu that have subtlety but profoundly impacted our history during the past two millennia, and that has led me to reflect on how much our socio-religious perspectives are changing as time goes by, as our values change and as our memories evolve. And of how long-held traditional religious beliefs are being considered by some among our new generations as mere myths, a sort of inversion of how the students in my class on comparative religion once considered mythology, while others seem willing to accept and espouse new hypotheses concerning intergalactic aliens as the sources of our civilizations and even, of the possibility that our remote biological ancestors from the Mesozoic Era, the dinosaurs, in fact survived and merely went underground, literally, where they await in their own civilizations for a chance to return to the surface once, in our arrogance, we arrange for our own extinction.

Chaos to me is not a negative but rather, the primal state where once upon a time everything at all was a possibility and contradictions comfortably cohabited as compliments.  Strangely, modern theories of physics involving both minimalist quantic phenomena and omniversal string theories seem filled with echoes of that primordial chaos, the chaos that seems to have existed before the Big Bang or the divine seven days of creation, take your pick. 

Today, as I write, confusion appears to reign, happily enthroned and smiling, as we impatiently seek to untangle the confused webs we’ve woven and somewhere perhaps, echoes from Elphaba Thropp’s refrain at the conclusion of the 1930’s movie, the Wizard of Oz, as she slowly melted, laid low by water, “… what a world, what a world” happily resonate, and perhaps, somewhere outside the bounds of time and space, Yešu and Judas dispassionately debate.

_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Limor, Ora and Israel Jacob Yuval (2011): “Judas Iscariot: Revealer of the Hidden Truth” in Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch, eds., Toledot Yeshu (The Life Story of Jesus) Revisited: A Princeton Conference; pp. 197-220; Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen available at https://www.academia.edu/43624042/Ora_Limor_and_Israel_Jacob_Yuval_Judas_Iscariot_Revealer_of_the_Hidden_Truth_in_Peter_Sch%C3%A4fer_Michael_Meerson_and_Yaacov_Deutsch_eds_Toledot_Yeshu_The_Life_Story_of_Jesus_Revisited_A_Princeton_Conference_T%C3%BCbingen_Mohr_Siebeck_2011_197_220.

[2] “Yešu” is the correct Aramaic phonetic pronunciation of the Hellenized name of the principle protagonist of the diverse Christian faiths usually referred to as “Jesus”.

[3] According to some versions of the Toledot Yeshu, Saul of Tarsus whose Roman name was Paulus and who is referred to by Christians as St. Paul, was really a Jewish infiltrator into the evolving Yešu heresy whose role it was to sunder the movement from Judaism in order to decelerate and minimize conversion.

Our Other World

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Volition free.  Dreams.  Kaleidoscopes which almost all share but in unique and individual manners regardless of the efforts of others to invade or intrude upon them.  Our other world.  The one most closely linked to us but which we can’t understand, although we frequently try to and sometimes believe that we succeed. 

The world others seek to invade as well; in order to seek to define us.  The battlefield Sigmund Freud and others long before human history unsuccessfully tried to conquer by insisting on interpreting it and, in seeking to do so merely muddled the world of the woke as did Inanna’s sister in-law Geshtin-anna with respect to a certain dream involving her brother Dumuzi’s exile to the realm ruled by Inanna’s sister, Ereshkigal.  One wonders though if that mightn’t be where old dreams go after they’ve expired.

Logic is replaced in our other world by an analog all its own, one just as powerful but concurrently lacking in power as it has in the lands of the woke.  An ephemeral and ever changing version with traces left like landmines to explode when we least expect them, sometimes exploding unacknowledged, their consequences deftly swathed in mysterious consequences. A place where natural laws, physical laws cannot bind us, although its own undecipherable laws have their own rules, rules we lack the means to understand.

Volition free delight as well as terror drifting free, like manic wills o’ the wisp or dandelions, or perhaps lucid dragons or just poorly fried eggs.  Primordial chaos resting comfortably free of the restraints imposed by selfish order.

Our other world.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Humans: The Aberrant Species

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Of all the species that share our planet, humans may well be the most aberrant. Aberrant in the willful rejection of nature’s guideposts. In part that’s because we’ve developed ethical and moral imperatives at odds with nature’s survival and improvement mechanisms. Thus, rather than discard the weak as inefficient, we protect and cherish them, at least on some level. Rather than propagation through biological natural selection so that the human race is constantly physically improving, our breeding selection criteria have become largely incoherent. No other life form that we know of does that on a consistent basis. We have counterintuitive dominant emotional motivational instincts such as love and mercy which lead us to react in manners different from other biological variants.

On the other hand, no other life form is as compulsively selfish and greedy as are humans who seem to have developed a manic addiction to accumulation, thus the majority of humans are deprived so that a very few can, not only gorge themselves, but hoard even what they cannot ever use. Mere survival has become inadequate to quench our thirst for things and power. We are perhaps the only species that values individualism above the collective good and we have moved from instinctively acting to assure our survival as a species and from survival of our diverse personal biological lines towards immediate gratification of whims. In that light, we are the only species that places a “moral” value on the ability to terminate the gestative life of healthy progeny. However, like many species, we have ingrained territorial instincts that make us as aggressive as any other species in the waging of war, something we do from tiny individual battles through battles between huge groups of states seeking hegemony.

What accounts for such anomalous tendencies?

I posit that it may involve a phenomenon described by atheist advocate Richard Dawkins as “memes” and, in operative combinations, as “memeplexes”.  Memes are akin to biological “genes”. Genes are the primary blueprints and building blocks for life based on the information they carry, perpetuate and share and through which they provide other genes and enzymes, etc., with orders that are usually carried out. When they are not, mutations occur with mutation also being an evolutionary tool seeking, through trial and error, to accomplish biological improvements. Memes perform similar functions but in a less direct biological context and, apparently, without an exterior guiding principal. They are the most basic units serving as a carriers of non-biological information.  While combinations of genes result in biological lifeforms ranging from amoeba to humans, combinations of memes form cultural quasi-life forms such as belief systems, philosophies, religions, nations, perhaps even history, etc., all of which share common elements associated with life forms such as birth, evolution, growth, instincts towards self-preservation, mutation, propagation, self-defense and aggression.

What seems to have occurred is that memeplexes have mutated into nature’s antagonists, into opponents of nature’s tendencies within us and, currently, memes and memeplexes seem to have proven dominant over genes, perhaps even reprograming genes and complexes of genes. In a fascinating albeit disturbing manner, memes and memeplexes use the human brain as their primary operational echanisms, both on an individual basis and collectively. In essence, memes hijack our brains and direct, or at least significantly impact our conduct through manipulation of our emotional reactions including our disposition and predisposition towards accepting things as accurate and true notwithstanding contrary physical and biological realities. Thus memes have converted truth from an absolute to a relative concept. They operate as a cancer infecting reality.

As we enter the age of what is termed “artificial intelligence”, really a complex series of programmed reactions used for both evaluative purposes and as mechanisms to impact our responses to diverse stimula, memeplexes become more and more controlling over the “rules” established through trial and error by evolutive nature and we become less and less a compound complex part of nature’s scheme seeking instead to bend nature to our memetic will.

If the religious concept of an antichrist or malevolent satanic figure applied to nature, then it seems reasonable to at least hypothesize that such “force” would be memetic based. Memes first conquered humans and then, using humans, memes have evolved as the antithesis to nature.

One wonders if a synthesis between nature and the bizarrely cancerous virtual world evolved through memes is possible, and if so, what it would be like.

It seems fascinating that Richard Dawkins, a bitter rival of anything associated with religion, was so prominent in sensing the basis for the subversion of nature.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Futile Expatiation

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Author Anonymous

He wrote in the third person when he sought to obfuscate about whom he was writing, all too frequently himself, and in that manner, he sought to both assuage his guilt, if guilt was involved and appropriate, while somehow reducing the karmic burden involved. 

It is likely, as Mahasamatman would have pointed out were he aware of him or cared what he did or why, that his exercise was in all probability futile, like masturbation in the hope of engendering a descendant.

Then again, ….
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Shadowy Echoes of Immortality

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Purportedly, according to the current understanding of the “conventions” governing mainstream physics, “energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another”.  It appears that matter in its various states is treated, for purposes of such convention as merely a form of energy, a very concentrated form of energy.  Thus there has, for some time, been a pragmatic agreement in physics to treat the universal sum of energy and matter as a constant, at least until evidence to the contrary becomes available and is demonstrably more probable than the converse.

“Convention” is the term crafted by philosopher David Hume to describe the pragmatic agreements we arrive at to treat unproven or unprovable concepts as accurate, because they work, or seem to work, or have worked so far. That is the nature of knowledge to which we humans are privy, an agreement to treat things which function as true, until a more efficient truth appears to us.  That is why the conventions we treat as truths are relative, which is not to state that truth, absolute truth is inexistent.  We just have no way to establish it, at least not yet.  At least not permanently.  Given that nothing yet appears ultimately provable, but according to the so called “scientific method”, only disprovable, “conventions are all we have.  But we treat them so emphatically as truths that we are willing to kill and die to defend them.  We humans are a strange, illogical and incoherent lot.

Still, within the context of “conventions” in modern physics, concepts consistently being challenged and modified, as they should be, there are interesting questions that straddle the spheres of science and parascience.  One may involve the above referenced convention concerning the permanent nature of the energy-matter continuum.  The convention concerning the conservation of energy, including mass as a concentrated form of energy, raises for me a question as to the nature of life at all levels.  Life seems to involve a form of energy, at least in the form of temporarily self-perpetuating and constantly mutating electrical impulses which generate motion as well as: (1) reaction, (2) perception and (3), at least the illusion of creation.  My question, questions really, involve what happens to those electrical impulses that manifest as life.  Where do they go?  How do they dissipate or to what other forms of energy do they convert.

Perhaps into shadowy echoes of immortality resonating in infinity.

Something about which physicists and paraphysicists should perhaps ponder and argue.

_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Terminally Flummoxed, … or something like that

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“I’m here to disembody you” she’d said.  She was extremely beautiful, in fact, she seemed to embody an ephemerally ethereal beauty, or perhaps, ethereally ephemeral.  They were very different things although, under the circumstances, very strong contradictions seemed essential.

The term “disembody” seemed unpleasant at best, regardless of the fact that she was impossibly beautiful, so he’d said, “disembody seems a rather unpleasant thing, is it anything like death?”  To which she’d answered, predictably, “yes and no”.  Then she’d tried to explain.

“Death is understood, or perhaps, more clearly, misunderstood, as a permanent state.  Something unique as it only occurs once, at least on a personal basis.  Disembodiment is clearly different.  Confusing it with death, it’s understood by most, or more clearly, misunderstood, as something irrevocable.  The mistake is understandable given how poorly ‘time’ is understood.  And not just by mortals (who don’t really exist) but even by most immortals, … who do, … Do exist I mean.  Or perhaps not.”

“So” he’d replied, unable to think of anything else to say, “… disembodied?”

“Yes” she’d replied, seeming happy, an even more beautiful smile on her even more beautiful face, “exactly so”.

“So, are you ready?” she’d asked, we really need to begin the process”.

“Process” he’d asked, again a bit flummoxed?  “And which process exactly would that be?”

She seemed a bit impatient then, what with looking at her watch every couple of seconds, a worried expression on her even more beautiful face, and had replied “well, your disembodiment of course”.  Then she’d smiled, again looking even more beautiful, as if that were possible, and said:  “You needn’t worry, it won’t hurt at all although it’s admittedly a bit tedious at times, … well … usually.”

For some he reason, he’d wondered how the word “flummoxed” was spelled.  For some reason, it had seemed vitally important.  And it was.  Or perhaps it wasn’t.  He usually didn’t have a problem in making up his mind, indeed, if anything, he tended to be too impulsive.  That may have been why he’d found himself in the state he was in, the word “state” seeming much more accurate than the word “place, for some reason.  Then, for some reason, he’d become fascinated with the nature, meaning and use of the term “so”, which they’d both been bantering around.  It seemed quite bereft of meaning albeit not of importance.  At the moment, its importance had seemed transcendental and he’d had a strong impulse to use it again, but he hadn’t wanted to seem inarticulate.

Still, he just hadn’t been able to think of anything else to say, except perhaps, for the word, or perhaps the term, “disembodied”, but that term had (in that particular now) made him quite nervous.

The exquisitely ephemerally, ethereally beautiful, or perhaps, ethereally ephemerally beautiful woman had stood staring at him, tapping her left foot on the ground, definitely impatiently, and had exasperatedly said “well?”  Or perhaps, more accurately, had asked “well”, and he hadn’t had the slightest clue as to how to reply.  Actually, he hadn’t really wanted to reply, he’d just wanted to stare at her.  But he’d known that staring was not polite, regardless of how impossibly beautiful someone might be, so he’d picked up his courage, and in spite of his fear, he’d said, or perhaps asked is a better term: “so, hmmm, disembodied?”

“Yes” she’d said.  Then, kindly, as if she’d grasped the state in which he found himself, she’d continued “let me explain, you seem confused.  Most people are.  About everything.  Almost always, but especially with respect to just what ‘disembodiment’ implies, or perhaps, what the term ‘disembodiment’ expresses would be more accurate”.  Evidently, linguistic accuracy was very important to her, and yes, she’d again become even more impossibly beautiful.

“So, disembodiment” he’d repeated.  “Okay, ‘shoot’!”  Then he’d almost immediately, perhaps immediately, rejected his choice of metaphors (shoot) but it was too late, there was no way he could have taken it back without calling unpleasant attention to his dilemma.  He’d liked metaphors, liked them even better than he’d liked similes, but, he’d always realized he really didn’t understand allegories though he hadn’t a clue as to why allegories had any relevance to what he’d just been thinking.  He’d wondered how and why he’d become sidetracked in that direction, but just for a second.  She’d continued talking and he’d lost his concentration and had no idea what she’d said, but again, she’d been getting more and more beautiful, so much so that he’d been getting dizzy, and in fact, now that he’d thought about it, he’d been feeling a bit faint, quite a bit faint in fact.

“And so” she’d concluded ….  That damned “so” again he’d thought, just what the hell did it mean, then he’d immediately regretted his choice of the metaphor “hell”, even if he’d only thought it, or at least he thought he’d only thought it, he’d certainly hoped so.  …. bodies are temporally permanent vessels” she’d continued, although words hadn’t seemed to matter to him anymore “… vessels which we transients occupy collectively with others, not permanently of course, rather, only for a time, and our departure does not necessarily imply the termination of the vessel.  Others enter it and assume experiential occupation for the time period allotted to them to do so, while those departing move on to other vessels, sometimes in concert, although rarely so, usually becoming parts of different experiential collectives.”

He’d looked puzzled but, amazingly, even though he didn’t seem quite conscious, he’d seemed to understand.  He was not really dying, he was just moving on, his term completed.  Kind of like graduating from elementary school and entering middle school but not quite high school or college, and certainly not graduate school.  Then a flood of questions seemed to have entered his mind, entered it on their own volition, entered his mind or whatever it was, all at the same time, questions such as:  “will I retain my current gender, will I have a gender, will I become one of those transsexuals or non-binary people, whatever that was?  Will I be old, young, rich, poor, Caucasian, indigenous (well, everyone was some sort of indigenous or other), or Asian, or Black.  Will I be human, or even animal he’d wondered, or “what if I enter a plant, or a rock”.

He’d sort of looked around, seeking the … whatever she was, or whatever she’d been, but she was no longer there, and then, he’d realized he was in a sort of dream state, he wasn’t there either, wherever there was or had been.  He wasn’t anywhere.  But he didn’t know if it was because he was in bodily transition or because he was just having a weird dream.  But she’d vanished and strangely, even though he’d recalled the “increasing beauty phenomenon”, he hadn’t, for the life of him, been able to remember what she’d looked like, or was it “for the life of ‘himself’”, then he’d again regretted his choice of metaphors, that time with respect to the phrase, “the life of” (he tended to second guess himself quite a lot as you may have noticed), and he’d wondered just what the “hell” life was and, again upset at his choice of metaphors, and totally, completely and irretrievably flummoxed, he’d ….
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, an intermittent commentator on radio and television, and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The Lavender Rose

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A single lavender rose, braving the snow, surviving despite the bitter cold, clinging tenaciously to life had invaded his dreams during a difficult night and its memory insistently clung to him after he woke, so much so that he immediately researched it meaning, something he did not frequently do as, while spiritual and curious, he had little faith in the symbolic interpretations of others, too many of whom seemed charlatans looking to exploit the gullible and naïve.  That morning, somewhat amused at himself and his foibles, he found himself among them.

The symbolic dream meanings for a lavender rose that he found that morning after brief and superficial research claimed that it represented a variant of innocent and instantaneous love, perhaps but not necessarily romantic, but he sensed that was not what it had meant in his dream.  In his dream, the lavender rose had been somewhat sentient and able to communicate indirectly, perhaps, emotively, initially fleeing from him as he tried to acquire it, the pot in which it had been planted falling and shattering and the flower portion disappearing.  But, as he had gathered the shards of the pot in which it had been planted and which had fallen, and the stalk and leaves and seeds with which it had been raised, it had, albeit damaged and with most of its petals lost, suddenly appeared and asked to return, promising to generate new buds.

Now that seemed symbolic and he wished, not for the first time, that he had the psychic gift or talent of mystic interpretation, or that he trusted in someone who did, which he did not.  Thus not only the lavender rose but the dream sequence in which he and she had met (it seemed feminine to him) remained an enigma.  An important enigma as it seemed important to discern the dream’s meaning, and perhaps, the role that lavender roses might someday play in his life, or in the lives of someone among those he loved.

He’d just have to wait and see, not only the usual occurrence in his life but perhaps of life in general, and perhaps that was its message.

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, an intermittent commentator on radio and television, and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Gardening in Eden

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“Paradise; … boring???”

Well yes, but, … well, not at first no, but time was strange there, everything seemed endlessly repetitive.  Well, … at least until the end. 

Then boredom ceased being an issue.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.