More Ramblings of a Restless Mind

By T. Beeth

Since the publication of my initial Ramblings in 2009, this supposedly restless mind did not suddenly acquire Zen-tranquility. It continued to be what it has been for long and here is another installment of occasional thoughts, versified. I use versified not in the strictly traditional sense because it gets a bit too restrictive for the license some of us think we have or claim to have.

These ramblings are mostly in a territory that is consciously kept apart from the areas of my professional interest. This territory involves governments, politics, nature, things and people -- people of faith, deep, shallow, desert-dry or fertile with pseudo-versions of Zen and Sufism. In this territory, the things that happen are often seen and considered in a somewhat different way, and the reactions felt and expressed, not always with due respect and reverence.

There is no conscious attempt to organize or sequester these thoughts into groups or categories, but if one finds any trend in this tumbling out of thoughts, it may perhaps be largely attributed to some kind of chronological, evolutionary randomness. And if in these wanderings, some hills and valleys begin to look familiar to those who may know, they could well be but, I hope, seen from a different angle, tangential to a path rather less-familiar, and offering a somewhat different view. No two sunsets over a familiar hill are ever the same to an eye or a heart that is never tired of sunsets; every wave leaves behind its own set of previously unseen gifts each time it sweeps over and recedes from a well-trodden beach.

Some of these ramblings have been offered before, quite extemporaneously, to informal gatherings but if anyone detects any tell-tale signs here, it would be either incidental or that my editorial revisions have not been as thorough as I had originally intended.


T. Beeth

November, 2013

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493155859

T. Beeth

Author is trained as a biomedical scientist, with professional stints starting in National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, and then in the US academia as a faculty member of major medical centers and universities. In addition, he has also been a Director of a scientifi c research consultancy. He writes and publishes poetry as T. Beeth.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by T. Beeth.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2013923326

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4931-5584-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4931-5583-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4931-5585-9

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Rev. date: 01/15/2014

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Contents

Acknowledgment

About The Author

Preface

Let 2009 In…

Poetry in Daily News

New Milestone, Old Battles

You Can’t Hurry Anything

Things Not That Forgettable

Sour Grapes

Waltzing in Vienna?

To Question or Not?

She and French Fries

Dear World

Miracle on the Hudson

(15 January 2009)

Hopes, I’ve a Few

Year of the Ox

No to How-To Books

No Economy Czar, Me

Subtext

Admitted Under Oath

I Live…

A Small English Town

Life Goes On…

Snow Day in London

Think, Plan, Construct

Economy

Science-Art Blur

Gods in the School Yard

You Are What You Are

I Live Because…

End of the World

Dubai Desert

February

Oblivion

My Mind or My Fingers

Ottawa/Iowa

Early Closing Bookstores

A Real First

Whirling World

Change Is Life

Do the Facts Remain Facts?

Thanks, Daedalus;

Thanks, Icarus

Slumdogs

My Music

My Coffee

I’ve My Limits

Our Chardonnay

Grandma and Grandpa

Not My Kind of Stores

Writ in Water

Then I Had a Thought

Life

Green, Green

Moth vs. Glowworm

Easy as Money

Ever-Shrinking Economic World

Something Still Makes Sense

To Err…

Some Things I Can’t Do

Invasion of Iraq:

March 20, 2003

Choices

Much of What I See

So Many Questions

Me and the World

Eternity: A Misnomer

When They Speak

Where’s S/He?

No Faux Pas

To Touch or Not to Touch

Love Is…

Silence Outside

A Sunset for Me

Hearts Beating

The Ides of April

Astigmatic Views

Gravity Works, Not Always

Live-In Nag

Heart Reigns Supreme

Holier-Than-Thou Smugness

We, a Rainbow

Without Eyeglasses

Think Flowers

I Live Today

A Baby Cry

Digital Age

Eurydice

Communication Problem

My World

Words

Why Angels Don’t Walk

A Flower, a Rose

No Beginning?

Telephone Menus

100 Days

Waiting for Godot

A Dog Named Bo

Boot, RIP

Life Is Life

My Thoughts

Doors and Windows

You Can Have It All (Almost)

Keep Off the Grass

No Horizon

Maybe

C’est la Vie

Dreamless Night

No End of the Day

Glass Half Full

Ivory Tower

Dream

Poets

My Ideas vs. My Bagel

Green with Envy, Hollywood

Air France Tragedy

Rules and Loopholes

When in Egypt

Their Beaches

Never Again

Not Normandy

Science, Not Just Data

Yogurt and Yoga

Rose-Colored Glasses

Omar and Ahmadinejad

Cool Heads, Warm Hearts

Money on Trees

Lord of the World and the Weather

Democracy (Not by the

Thames or the Potomac)

Self-Denial

Less Than Less Traveled

Neda, RIP

My World

The Future

Tramps for Eternity

On the Contrary

Heart vs. Mind

Words

No Average Joe

Global Warming

What I See

Polite Disagreement

Love

Sun

Truth: Yours and Mine

This Fashionista

Taliban

Instead of Apple

Darwin

A Heart That Thinks

Life Goes On

The Other Side

Waste of Time

Tooth to Teeth

One-Tooth Bandits

How Hip!

History

A Little Chablis

Moon Landing (Forty Years Ago)

Ruling the World

Mandela

Life Is Life

Facts Sometimes Don’t Matter

Whither Weather?

Summer Dawn

Less Is More

My Choices; My Failures

I Need No Wings

Cautiously Grateful

Cycles Are Cycles

Pharaoh Beeth?

Another Monet, Rodin?

Moth and Candle

Life Must Reclaim Art

Sunrise

No Charge for This Rx

Things Misplaced

Miscellaneous File

Old Wine

The Meaning of Life

Madrassah Teaching

Lockerbie, 21 December 1988; Glasgow, 20 August 2009

A Ménage à Trois

My Pound of Flesh

Truth, De Jure

Insomnia, Love It or Read about It

Dreams; Destiny

Smeared Camelot

That Shimmering Red

Dream Shall Never Die

Multilingual Me

Inequality

A Kind Man

Destiny

Life Is…

Images and Reality

My Dreams

Three Sides to a Coin

Yoga during Spacewalk

Seeing and Imagining

Endless Physics

Chinese Menu

Cat

Entropy Is Me

Gandhi

Different Beat

Fall’s Almost Here!

Progress

Fewer and Fewer Surprises

Regrets and Fears

Plan B First

Inspiration

My Atlas

Kumbaya

Regardless of Weather

Why Bother?

Complicated as Is

Truth Is Not Facts

New Year in the Fall

Life Without Guilt

Much of What I Think

Peace and Tranquility

Heart Overrules

Needs No Word

Still No Time

Nothing Like Sunset

Memory

When You’re In Love

Bookstores in Afghanistan

Weekend

Surviving Without Help

They in My World

Ideas Edited

Back to Point A

Economy: I Don’t

Know Squat About

Miracle

Sleeved Blanket

What Counts

Brandenburg Gate and

the Berlin Wall

A Tired Mind

Unlearning

Forbidden Apple

Thanksgiving Day

Holiday Shopping

Stray but Useless Thoughts

Too Early

Full Moon

Bedside Reading Material

Last Leaf

Some Ends

World Economy

Economy Tips

With-Without

Early Snow

Merry Christmas

Other Things in a Mall

The Year It Was…

Too Much Thinking

Soul

New Year Day

The Joneses

Uncle Lou

This Too Shall Pass

Soaring Beyond Infinity

Mind and Heart

Haiti Earthquake

Those Children

Smile

Against All Odds

Apples and Oranges

Snow

With MSG or Without!

Coffee

Politics

Why Be Reasonable

They Never Die

Remember or Forget

Happiness Is…

Don’t Let the Dead Die Again

Rereading Villette

Science

They

Life, a Sunset

A Revolving Door

Love Is…

Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell

Words; Actions

Wine Tasting

Shovel Ready for Snowy Sidewalk

Adamant Anachronism

Cat People

Choices

Snow Sports

Phony

Insomnia

Why Things Don’t Bother Me?

Imperfect Art of Apology

Chardonnay and Cabernet

Things That Don’t Seem to Exist

Look Where You’re Going

Flower, Not a Bouquet

Democracy

An Opinion and a Pen

Dinos and Me

Geometry

Wheels

Things That Bother

Seasons

Without Coffee

Interminable Gray

Monotony

Needless Confusion

Smiling Eyes

Also-rans

Money

Making Sense

Dream: Rearranged Reality

Monotony, Not Life

Silence

Flower

Long Lines

Earth

All-Seeing Eyes

Blank Page

Passover and Seder

Dealing with the World

The More I Know

Grandma and Copernicus

Written Word

Iceland’s Volcanic Ashes

An Awkward Antonym

Look, See

Causa Sui

Last Night

The Haves and the Have-Nots

Fragile Beauty

Sense of Humor

Nothing Forgettable

Big City Dawn

Joie de Vivre

Different World

Choice We Have

People

Love Is Sharing; Sharing Is Love

Rumi, et al.

Lot of Questions

Life, a Book

Words Fail

Exceptions

Early-to-Bed Baloney

That Was Then

Life, Not So Normal

May, the Month

Spring’s Here

Things That Don’t Matter

No End of Civilization

With or Without

Darkness, Not Ignorance

Zen by Default

Green, the New Black

Build What?

Really Live

Forget the Silver Lining

The Muse and Brick Layer

Reality Unborn

Pythia, a Delphic Oracle

Vuvuzela

Rocks and Bricks

I Am No Rumi

Life (That’s the Way It Is)

Betwixt and Between

Not Easy Being a Fact

Perfect Imperfect

Not an Epiphany

A Small World

No Effort Is Unsuccessful

Summer, 2010

Future Unauthorized

Guilty as Charged

Each Poet, His Own Poet

I Am No Matisse

Entropy, Not Confusion

Flower

A Mathematician, a Poet?

Old and New

Dreams Denied

Smell of Words

Rock, Stone, Pebble

Summer Sunset

Hamlet-Othello

End of a Debate

Some Unworthy Days

Age and Wisdom

Trouble with Time Zones

No Perfect Pillow, Yet

Let It…

Keep an Open Mind

Life Ain’t Ephemeral

(What I Told a Survivor)

Wine, a Prism

Tell Me with That Smile

Rules Are Rules

Apples and Oranges

The Moving Finger

No Blue Seas across the Table

Milton’s Rose

Let Them Know

In My World

Global Warming

Cats

Different Worlds

Things

Tango

Two Plus Two

Progress

A Dying Candle

Love

Roaches and Their Maker

Life Moves On

Dust Unto Dust

Worlds Apart

The Teen Years

Burning Books

Some Memories

Define Yourself

Life Has to Be Somewhere

Thinking, Not Good

for Your Heath

Autumn Nights

Reality

No Longer Trapped

Window Lets In

Cradled in the Pacific

Poor Mind

A Sigh Is a Sigh

Candlelight

Distance

Interminable Present

Ask Not What I Feel and Why

Tomorrow and Day After

A Kiss and a Hug

Life Is So Personal

Horizon

Memory

Rush Hour

Nothing Is Free

Beauty, No Beholder

Give Einstein a Rest

Plain Talk

Flowers Don’t Die

Poetry

A Pot Is Not a Pot, Unless…

Accommodating a World

Translating Poetry

Apology

Advancing Autumn

Point B Onward

Wednesday, Not Weekend

Memory Lane

The World I Live In

Life Is (Not Quite) Elsewhere

Midterm Elections 2010

With Caution

Nothing But Pen

Do Things Recur?

Happiness in a Can

Desert Flower

Excuse Is Not Reason

Rules Are Rules

Dreams Don’t Die

Join the Glogg Party

What You Remember

November Sun

A Torture

Eilean Donan

Euphemized Reality

Beyond the Horizon

Mediator vs. Interpreter

Time and Tide

Software Updates

Hamlet or Othello

November Gray

Not What We Ordered

More than One Life

Happiness

Truth’s Armor

Things You Need Fixed

Global Village

World Without Dreams

Memories

To Share

The Hereafter

Diplomacy

Life Is Where?

Chef Beeth

Not a Bed of Roses

A Bliss?

Black Friday

Dear Narcissus

Life Without Secrets

Don’t Blame Me

My World

Status Quo

Forever

Wish I Knew

Running the Tab…

Typing at Ten

Under Musical Influence

December Mood

Jack Frost

Year-End Reviews

My Holiday Gift

Falling Snow

Does Forever Mean Forever?

Time, No Friend

Nothing Prettier

New Year, New World

Dreams and Checkbook

Tie, an Appendage

Music Language

A Charitable Lot We Are

Before the Year Is Drummed Out

Year-End

Life, Constantly Recycled

Nothing Sacred

New Doesn’t Stay New

Ever-Lengthening Past

Lost Stays Lost

Nothing New So Far…

In Vienna

A Glass Always Half Full

Post-Holiday Reality

One’s Own Drummer

Bribing Me with Snowflakes?

A Truth, the Truth

Wishes

Sun on a Sabbatical?

Beethoven at Night

Early Moon

Life Goes On

Music for Heart and Mind

Faulty Fingers

Heraclitus Path

Things I Feel

Gabby Giffords

Things That Make No Sense

Don’t Blame Me

Some Things Need No Visa

Heart and Mind Feuds

Dreams, Not Just Dreams

Life Survey

Overnight

Life Hijacked

Takes Longer

Life and Death

A Certain Smile

An Endless Sunset

Tomorrow’s Reality

Not on NASA’s Radar

Another World

Dream, Not Reality

Tomorrow May Disown Today

Dream a Different World

The World at Night

The 3:00 a.m. Calls

Living in the Past

Demolishing the Day

Heart Transcends

Congress on Vacation

If the World Were Any Simpler

Reality Mellowed

No Verdict, Final

Physics, No Help

Statistician-Artist

Friend and Me

Niece and Nephews

Handful of Dust

I Am Lost

Craziness

Around Midnight

Overnight Castles

Alter Ego

Ever So Inscrutable

Yorkshire Moors

Silhouettes of Memory

Memories

I’m No Einstein

Ich bin ein Berliner

The Collages, I Understand

Why Torture Yourself?

Mars Landing

Oases

My Problems

Live

Highway to Happiness

Compromised Neurons

Love Is Keats

Endnotes

In loving memory of my parents.

Acknowledgment

For their interest, encouragement, and support of this project, I am grateful to my family.

About The Author

T. Beeth is the pen name of a biomedical scientist, who worked initially at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, and then as a faculty member of two major university medical centers in the United States. In addition, he has also been a director of a scientific research consultancy.

Apart from professional scientific activity, he has also been interested in poetry. Part 1 of Ramblings of a Restless Mind was published in 2009 (ISBN: 978-1-4415-3367-8, hardcover; 978-1-4415-3366-1, softcover).

Preface

Since the publication of my initial ramblings in 2009, this supposedly restless mind did not suddenly acquire Zen tranquility. It continued to be what it has been for long, and here is another installment of occasional thoughts, versified. I use versified not in the strictly traditional sense because it gets a bit too restrictive for the license some of us think we have or claim to have.

These ramblings are mostly in a territory that is consciously kept apart from the areas of my professional interest. This territory involves governments, politics, nature, things, and people—people of faith, deep, shallow, desert dry, or fertile with pseudoversions of Zen and Sufism. In this territory, the things that happen are often seen and considered in a somewhat different way, and the reactions felt and expressed, not always with due respect and reverence.

There is no conscious attempt to organize or sequester these thoughts into groups or categories, but if one finds any trend in this tumbling out of thoughts, it may perhaps be largely attributed to some kind of chronological, evolutionary randomness. And if in these wanderings, some hills and valleys begin to look familiar to those who may know, they could well be but, I hope, seen from a different angle, tangential to a path rather less familiar, and offering a somewhat different view. No two sunsets over a familiar hill are ever the same to an eye or a heart that is never tired of sunsets; every wave leaves behind its own set of previously unseen gifts each time it sweeps over and recedes from a well-trodden beach.

Some of these ramblings have been offered before, quite extemporaneously, to informal gatherings, but if anyone detects any telltale signs here, it would be either incidental or, that, my editorial revisions have not been as thorough as I had originally intended.

T. Beeth

November 2013

Let 2009 In…

The year I wanted to forget

everyone insists on recalling,

reviewing

all week long.

GWB is history now

so are the continuing attempts

to rewrite that.

Osama is still at large,

Iraq, a foolish distraction,

Uncle Sam sucked almost dry,

and looking to China and India,

for help.

That’s the way it has been.

If you find me knocking at your door,

it wouldn’t be for basmati rice and curry

or for kung pao chicken—

Number 5 on your menu,

with or without MSG.

What I am after are

a few billion yens and rupees—

for things you think we should

do all over the world.

Poetry in Daily News

Trying to get daily news

from poetry is, for me,

like hoping to extract

Confucius from

simple Mandarin

in New York City streets.

"It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably

every day

for lack

of what is found there."*

I can tell you

what happened where, when, and how

but I know not why and

you think my music comes not from

the throbbing strings you hear and

you don’t care for my piped piper

or his attitude.

Poems are not news or

the pundits commenting on it.

You don’t go to a bookstore

looking for grocery.

Poems reflect the heart,

the mind, and the soul,

not what happened yesterday

in Washington, DC,

just blocks off the White House,