The Author, Karl William Anthony Zuelke, B.A., B.S., M.F.A., Ph.D., Playing an Emergent Meta-Natural 810-Step Strange-Looping Figure in Red:

Cosmology

“What the ?”
or
“Whats it all about?” and,
“That,” of course, “is the question.”
While Hamlet
precedes my friend Dirk Stratton
by a clean four centuries
and has garnered much of the credit—
usurping even the Greeks for phrasing
the question in terms having now captured
the popular English-speaking imagination—
Dirk, nevertheless, says it
(as he certainly must have)
best when he recapitulates a number
of meta-post/-structuralist post-
modern/modern post
whatever ontological
whatevers:
“What the...?”

Astrophysics

What it is is that
isn't there an end to the universe
where what is gives way to what isn't?

Starting close to the sun
in our Journey Across the Universe

(Astro barks:
RRI rron't rrow rranyrring
arrout rrhysics, Rrirk...)

Newton, as is reported in her recently unearthed diary by his amorous and frustrated scullery maid, Mehitabel Dopplet,
loved dried fruit,
especially dried plums and especially
apples

            Plums are great
            Apples good
            All he ate
            Was fruitful food.

“ But no dry fruit could loosen poor Newton,”
writes the good Miss Dopplet.

Einstein was a meat and potatoes man.
He relished a good matzoh ball
now and again and even a solid German
leberknüdel
centered like the sun in an orbiting
and liverish broth.

Despite all this
Einstein was relatively quick.

Geology

Tectonically speaking:
the Great Continents float
over the fluid and gelatinous
mantle like
broken Styrofoam in the creek.

“Fluid and gelatinous from a geological standpoint Earth's structures well may be,” Dirk tells us, “but when I fell down and cracked my head on this big old chunk of solid granite rock it sure did hurt like heck, telling me that either the Earth is hard rather than gelatinous or I'm relatively a flabby softy, which certainly may be the case, though I exercise strenuously from time to time.”

Africa once spooned South America
All his attention on the warm, moist
Mouth of the Amazon
And the tender pleasures waiting up
That deep, soft river.
Big Blue Marble.
Third Planet from Sun.
Home Sweet Home.

Ecology

The postmodern science, founded not
on essences but on relationships.,
Thethe term coined by Ernst Haekel in 1869
from the Greek roots
oikos (home) + logos (word).

In the B ginning was the logos,
and the logos was oikos.

God, I'm home.

When a butterfly flaps its wings in California
Will it start to rain in Peru?...
No...If a butterfly flaps its wings in California
It might rain in Peru...but...Peru has thousands of square miles of rain
forest, so it rains there all the time!
So...if a butterfly flaps its wings over California
Will it initiate a chain of events that cause it to rain in Phoenix?
But it hardly ever rains in Phoenix
and there are millions and millions
of butterflies flapping all over California
every day, so this doesn't seem likely...

Grass fixes CO₂in the presence of water and sunlight.
Grasshopper eats grass.
Praying mantis eats grasshopper.
Robin eats praying mantis.
Coyote eats robin.
Human shoots coyote with 12-gauge
Hangs its carcass on barbed wire fence.
Maggots eat coyote.

Zoology                      Botany
albatross                      acacia
ani                               adder's tongue
avocet                          agrimony
bittern                          alumroot
blackbird                      amaranth
bluebill                        amaryllis
bluebird                       anemone
bobolink                      arbutus
booby                          arrowheadaster
brant                            asterazalea
bulbul                          azaleabastard toadflax
bunting                        barberrybeardtongue
caracara                       bayberry
cardinal bastard toadflax
catbird bearberry
chachalaca beardtongue
chaffinch bedstraw
chat bee balm
chickadee                     beechdrops
coot                             beetleweed
cormorant                    bellflower
cowbird                       bellwort
crake                            bergamot
crane                            bittersweet
crossbill                       black-eyed Susan
crow                            bladderwort
cuckoo                         bleeding heart
curlew                         bloodroot
dickcissel                     bluebells
dovekie                        bluebonnet
dove                           blue-eyed grass
dowitcher                    blue-eyed Mary
duck                            bluestem
dunlin                          boneset
eagle                            bouncing Bet
egret                            broomrape
eider                            bugbane
falcon                          buttercup
finch                            butterwort
flamingo                      camas
flicker                          campion
flycatcher                    catchfly
gadwall                        catnip
gallinule                       celandine
garganey                      chamomile
gnatcatcher                  chickweed
goose                           chicory
goshawk                      chokecherry
grackle                         cinquefoil
grebe                            clover
greenshank                  cohosh
grosbeak                      coltsfoot
guillemot                     columbine
gyrfalcon                     daisy
harrier                          dandelion
hawk                           dock
heron                           dogbane
hummingbird               Dutchman's breeches
ibis                              elderberry
jacana                          everlasting
jackdaw                       eyebright
jaeger                           featherbells
junco                           figwort
kestrel                         fireweed
killdeer                       flax
kingbird                       foxtail
kinglet                         garlic
kite                              gentian
kittiwake                     geranium
knot                             gilia
lapwing                       ginseng
limpkin                        goldentseal
linnet                           haw
longspur                      henbit
loon                             hepatica
magpie                         horsemint
martin                          Indian paintbrush
merganser                    indigo
merlin                          Jack-in-the-pulpit
murre                           Jacob's ladder
noddy                          jessamine
nuthatch                      Joe-pye weed
oldsquaw                     ladies' tresses
oriole                           lady's slipper
osprey                         lamb's quarters
ovenbird                      lobelia
owl                              lungwort
oystercatcher              madder
partridge                      manroot
parula                          monkshood
pelican                         nettle
petrel                           nightshade
pewee                          orchis
phalarope                    parsnip
phoebe                        pennyroyal
pipit                            peppermint
plover                          phlox
pochard                       pipsissewa
ptarmigan                    plantain
puffin                          pogonia
pyrrhuloxia                 pokeweed
quail                            poppy
rail                               pussytoes
redpoll                         Queen Anne's Lace
redshanks                    ragweed
redstart                                    rattlebox
roadrunner                   rhodora
ruff                              rue
sanderling                    sarsaparilla
sandpiper                    sawbrier
sapsucker                    sea rocket
sawbill                         senna
scaup                           shinleaf
scoter                          shooting star
shearwater                   sicklepod
shoveler                       skullcap
shrike                          skunk cabbage
siskin                           smartweed
skimmer                      snakeroot
skua                             sneezeweed
smew                           snowberry
snipe                           Solomon's seal
sora                             sorrel
spindalis                      Spanish bayonet
spoonbill                     spatterdock
sprig                            speedwell
squealer                       spicebush
stilt                              spiderwort
stork                            spikenard
swallow                       spring beauty
swan                            spurge
swift                            stonecrop
tanager                         sumac
teal                              sunflower
tern                              sweetflag
thrasher                       tansy
thrush                          teasel
tit                                thistle
towhee                        tickseed
turkey                         trefoil
veery                           timothy
verdin                          toadflax
vireo                            trillium
vulture                         valerian
warbler                        verbena
waxwing                      vetch
wheatear                      violet
whimbrel                     wake-robin
whip-poor-will           watercress
whistler                       waterleaf
wigeon                         whitlow grass
woodcock                    wintergreen
woodpecker                witch hazel
wren                            wolfsbane
yellowlegs                   yarrow
yellowthroat               yucca
(these are just birds) (these are just flowers)

“THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG.”

Sponges—spongy.
Coelenterates—water bags.
Flatworms—flat.
Roundworms—round.
Segmented Worms
Annelids—segmented.
Arthropods—jointed.
Echinoderms—radially symmetric.
Mollusks—shelled. Some intelligent.
Chordates—Internally braced.

Physiology

Biophysics, Biochemistry

In the campus clinic, once,
admitted due to a serious case of flu,
delirious with fever,
Dirk felt he suddenly understood the origin of life:
It had something or other to do with cell membranes
and Radio City Music Hall—
long carbon molecules with hydrophilic heads
and hydrophobic tails arranged
like a double line of chorus girls, kicking
toward the waving, aqueous audience
who, given the chance, would most gladly, one at a time,
detach a single girl from the line
ionically escort her to his hotel room
and gently but insistently show her
the meaning of “hydrophilic.”
But the girls remain covalently bonded
arm in arm, living an entertaining life of their own.
Eventually, Dirk was released.
He totally forgot the origin of life
but wound up even more interested
in the means of originating a life.
Hydrophilic till he dies, baby!

Genetics

Peas porridge hot
Peas porridge cold
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old.
Peas porridge wrinkled
Peas porridge smooth
Peas porridge
Peas, peas, peas, peas,
Breeding Mendel's peas.
Goodness how recessive
Breeding Mendel's peas.
porridge
Enzymes split open the DNA molecule, forming a template for the construction of
mRNA.
mRNA migrates from the nucleus to the cytoplasm.
mRNA passes over the ribosomes, which direct the assembly of proteins by lining up
tRNA molecules along the mRNA template, each tRNA having an anticodon at one end and a specific amino acid attached at the other.
Amino acids line up to make enzymes.
Enzymes catalyze the formation of other proteins.
Proteins build tissues.
Tissues build organs.
Organs organize into organ systems.
Organ systems build the organism.
Organism becomes conscious.
Consciousness gives rise to spirituality and the ecstatic awareness of organism's
relationship with a loving, living God.
Organism rejects God in favor of pleasure, wealth and power.
Organism fights other organisms for more and more pleasure, wealth and power.
Organism develops weapons.
Weapons organize into weapon systems.
Weapon systems are used to kill all other organisms.
Great masses of non-living organisms decompose.
Biosphere reduces to unordered, irradiated chemical soup.
Return to BiophysicsBiochemistry and begin again.

Chemistry

“I have this chemical aversion to chemistry,”
Dirk tells us, possessing a language-based
and somewhat associative, as opposed to rational, linear,
cause-and-effect, mind.
“But I'll roll a doob now and then,” he adds
“and I do like cold beer,” showing that
Dirk understands at least something of chemistry
quite well regarding the linear chemical effects
of certain compounds on his central nervous system.

            Eenie meenie minee mo
            Catch an atom by his toe
            If ht hollers don't let go
            Eenie meenie minee mo
            My mother says that you are not it
            For this very next molecule.

Subatomic Particle Physics

Quarks and muons!
Top and gluons!
Somebody show me the eight-fold way.
Leptons, baryons, gravitons
Superstrings and Faraday!
Eleven dimensions now and counting
Particles, particles, numbers mounting...
Strange or charm!
Up or bottom!
Neutrinos and taus like fountains founting!

“This doesn't make any sense at all!”
Dirk laments. “There's nothing
Fundamental here at all.” “Like a Klein bottle,
Insides twisting seamlessly
Onto out, small-scale physics drops
Off the edge of formal knowledge
Back into cosmology” (Powers 88).

            Such wilt thou be to me, who must
            Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
           Thy firmness makes my circles just,
            And makes me end, where I begun.