RI DAILY

Manhattan's little, quieter island and beyond

Stories that matter, from the heart of the East River.

RI DAILY

Manhattan's little, quieter island and beyond

Reporting Roosevelt Island since sunrise.

Life is a mystery…? A Poem About Figuring It Out

Life is a mystery, they say. Is it? There’s an answer in verse. God’s face is everywhereRoosevelt Island has plenty of official explanations. Occasionally, one even explains something. The Lighthouse follows the questions, bargains and inconvenient details shaping what happens...

Poetry

Life is a mystery, they say. Is it? There’s an answer in verse.

Life's a mystery, an illusion of perceptions.
“God’s face is everywhere…”

God’s face is everywhere

His expression

My mother swelling with joy

remembering goofy things we did, decades before

He came to me in the wild grass

one Saturday morning in Pennsylvania

He shouted, “I am here,”

to wake me up.

In the end, it’s like Saul Bellow said,

That is the truth of it, God,

that we know, that we know

we know, we know.

There is no mystery.

See also…

In the wake of controversy over the possible discovery of arsenic-eating life last week — a finding that could expand the bounds of what scientists think life is capable of — a basic question perhaps deserves revisiting:
Just what, exactly, is life?
“We don’t have a very good definition of life,” said researcher Christopher Voigt of the University of California, San Francisco, who works on synthetic biology. “It’s a very abstract thing, what we call life, and at what point we say something doesn’t have the necessary components versus it does, it just becomes way too murky.”
The question of what constitutes life has dogged scientists since the early days.

Clara Moskowitz
LiveScience
Before the Door Closed

Before the Door Closed

In one meeting, RIOC showed that procedure could be used to bless a contested appointment, and then used again to keep a resident-safety resolution from reaching the floor.

The May 14 RIOC board meeting began with public concern over the steam plant and ended with two votes that revealed more than any report could. Some meetings announce themselves by what is said. This one announced itself by what the room permitted to move and what it stopped before it could breathe.

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