The wages of work is cash. The wages of cash is want more cash. The wages of want more cash is vicious competition. The wages of vicious competition is—the world we live in.
The work-cash-want circle is the viciousest circle that ever turned men into fiends.
Earning a wage is a prison occupation and a wage-earner is a sort of gaol-bird. Earning a salary is a prison overseer's job, a gaoler instead of a gaol-bird.
Living on your income is strolling grandly outside the prison in terror lest you have to go in. And since the work-prison covers almost every scrap of the living earth, you stroll up and down on a narrow beat, about the same as a prisoner taking his exercise.
I was here from the moment of the beginning, and here I am still. And I shall remain here until the end of the world, For there is no ending to my grief-stricken being.
I roamed the infinite sky, and soared in the ideal world, and floated through the firmament. But here I am, prisoner of measurement.
I heard the teachings of Confucius; I listened to Brahma’s wisdom; I sat by Buddha under the Tree of Knowledge. Yet here I am, existing with ignorance and heresy.
I was on Sinai when Jehovah approached Moses; I saw the Nazarene’s miracles at the Jordan; I was in Medina when Mohammed visited. Yet here I am, prisoner of bewilderment.
Then I witnessed the might of Babylon; I learned of the glory of Egypt; I viewed the warring greatness of Rome. Yet my earlier teachings showed the weakness and sorrow of those achievements.
I conversed with the magicians of Ain Dour; I debated with the priests of Assyria; I gleaned depth from the prophets of Palestine. Yet, I am still seeking truth.
I gathered wisdom from quiet India; I probed the antiquity of Arabia; I heard all that can be heard. Yet, my heart is deaf and blind.
I suffered at the hands of despotic rulers; I suffered slavery under insane invaders; I suffered hunger imposed by tyranny; Yet, I still possess some inner power with which I struggle to greet each day.
My mind is filled, but my heart is empty; My body is old, but my heart is an infant. Perhaps in youth my heart will grow, But I pray to grow old and reach the moment of my return to God. Only then will my heart fill!
I was here from the moment of the beginning, and here I am still. And I shall remain here until the end of the world, For there is no ending to my grief-stricken being.
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Track 1
How this picture is made
What a fractal is
A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. The large form and the small form are the same kind of thing. A poem can be drawn that way. The shape of the whole comes from the shape of the lines.
Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.
How the boundary is drawn
The number under the picture is the poem constant. It is read from the build of the lines: their length, how uneven they are, the size of the stanzas, the share of vowels, and the way the lines end. A new word moves the number when it changes that build. The same poem always gives the same number.
Drawn on its own, that number sits in a quiet part of the plane, and most poems would look like the same soft disk. So the number is carried outward along its own direction until it meets the edge of the Mandelbrot set, where the shape turns sharp. The picture is the Julia set of that meeting place.
Each point on the canvas is folded again and again by one small rule. Points that stay near the rule form the dark interior. Points that rush away become the coloured bands. The hue comes from the poem constant, and the brightest bands turn toward gold. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.
What the branching signifies
Branching draws the poem as a tree. Each turn follows a line, and every smaller branch repeats that pattern. A longer line reaches farther. The letters at the start of a line bend the next turn. A higher share of vowels opens the branches wider.
The trunk takes its colour from the poem constant and warms toward gold at the tips. When the poem has more than one stanza, gold forks leave the trunk. Each fork is a stanza beyond the first, up to three. The tree divides where the poem divides. One stanza remains a single trunk.