Wondering why my breakfast cereal
wouldn’t make a good smoothie
and why wouldn’t a world
where everyone spoke the same tongue
be any more palatable
than a world where chess is played
on a plane of grey,
I consider
order and disorder
opposites
like the head and tail
of Ouroboros
or the top and bottom
of a Mobius strip.
They are different,
as different as the colour
of a spinning Newton’s disc of forced cosmopolitanism
is from the restful carte blanche of inert aculturalism.
Equality trades for identity;
And that’s why on some days I feel everyone
and on others I’m none.
They are as different from the rainbow
as each other,
for mix-appropriating all identities is
as good as having none —
what makes a rainbow vibrant
as much as the hues’ collection
is their separation.
They are different,
the way a broth with all ingredients
tastes as sensible as one with just none
and would fill one as good as
licking the empty cauldron
or the way a blank canvas makes as much
interpretive sense to the average me
as Pollock does.
They are different,
as different as the blurs
of things too far
and those too close
or as much as
the sound of infinite frequency
is from that of flat-pitched consistency.
They are as different
as the burden of eternal life
is from the bliss of oblivion
or the equanimity of the void
is from the insolent averaging of the infinite.
Order and Dis-Order —
The gap between them is vast
as much as that appears
between the blades
of a full-speed ceiling fan.
Their distinction is as perceptible
as that between
the visibilities of infrared and ultraviolet lights
or the audibilities of infrasonic and ultrasonic sounds.
They are as discernible
as the live screen of a television buzzing without signal
is from an unplugged one
or as much as the infinitely homogenous hum
of the chaos of the Cosmic Microwave Background
is from the perfect silence
of the void of space.
They are as distinct
as peace is from death
and chaos is from life
and they are in turn, from each other.
As unequal
as the level of boredom
of an omniscient
and that of the unbegotten.
They are as fun
respectively
as a game that has no rules
and as one that has no chance
as thrilling
as an adventure you cannot prepare for
and one you are fully prepared for.
For perfect order
is one with death —
the great equaliser
reduces all to dust,
fine-ground and interspersed,
in utter disarray,
disintegrated
into perfect
disorder.
For uniques combine
to give ordinaries
and commons are but
a juxtaposition
of a tad too many
extremes;
For all of the
‘One is All’ of order
is one with
the ‘All is One’ of disorder.
They are identified differently
for what identifies all
doesn’t identify anyone.
I thus reflect
in the spoon
of my cereal bowl
into the endless void
of the pupil of my own eye
a thousand times in each droplet
and in that Indra’s net, every facet of I
recognises every facet of me and
the fact that the uncanny lies
neither in the dispersion
nor in their union
but somewhere
in between
and that’s what I identify with.
Pitamber Kaushik is a writer, journalist, columnist, poet, verbal ability trainer, and independent researcher whose writings have appeared in over 160 leading publications across 50+ countries.