She was getting all metaphysical on me
lying on her back in the grass,
skirt falling away from the most perfectly formed
buttery thigh.
She scratched at a scab on her shin:
“I mean,
why are we here?
What does it all mean?
Why is there something rather than nothing?”
I couldn’t let her get away with that, so I said:
“What – you mean how a collection of random physical processes in an expanding universe has culminated in the evolution of localised, self-replicating, anti-entropy machines with the illusion of consciousness and free will?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, sort of.
That kind of thing.
Except I was thinking mostly about bottle caps.”
I tracked the arc from scab to thigh,
then back up to her face.
“Bottle caps,” I repeated.
“Well, all sorts of disposables really.
But sometimes it's circuses. And clowns.
Oh! And you know those little dogs wearing neckerchiefs?
What’re they all about?”
lying on her back in the grass,
skirt falling away from the most perfectly formed
buttery thigh.
She scratched at a scab on her shin:
“I mean,
why are we here?
What does it all mean?
Why is there something rather than nothing?”
I couldn’t let her get away with that, so I said:
“What – you mean how a collection of random physical processes in an expanding universe has culminated in the evolution of localised, self-replicating, anti-entropy machines with the illusion of consciousness and free will?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, sort of.
That kind of thing.
Except I was thinking mostly about bottle caps.”
I tracked the arc from scab to thigh,
then back up to her face.
“Bottle caps,” I repeated.
“Well, all sorts of disposables really.
But sometimes it's circuses. And clowns.
Oh! And you know those little dogs wearing neckerchiefs?
What’re they all about?”