I never thought I'd feel compelled to write a poem on HN: There is this incredibly slow machine, analyzing everything relevant in these passing things...

I never thought I'd feel compelled to write a poem on HN: There is this incredibly slow machine, analyzing everything relevant in these passing things... arms moving and seeing. Seeing and slightly clutching some very few things with beings. Every instant, a thing goes dimmer, until slowly few remain. These are the harvest of this incredibly slow machine. I see the Mandelbrot as a surface on a much larger surface, and that surface on an even larger surface (and so on). It is an infinity that I cannot begin to comprehend, and at the end of it all... the best phrase I can think of to describe "the whole" is: an incredible slow machine. The Madelbrot is a virtualization and a sterilization -- it's a glimpse of something much grander, and that grander thing, that I called the incredible slow machine, permeates into reality and appears to determine the outcome of everything. Its arms stretch and grasp every little detail of every universe and we can see the evidence of its existence in the ferns as well as the galaxies. A hugeness that seems indifferent to our presence. Is it possible that our universe is much like the Mandelbrot set? That an infinite number of slight variations and radical variations of universes exist? From the very bottom, the numbers are calculated and fed back into the equation. The result is that we're an extension of a fractal finger. On an arm of the machine. An arm on an arm on an arm on an arm.... ---- Addendum: I'm still not satisfied with my answer for you, but I'm sure you can at least sense the unease some might feel. I can actually go on all day about this, and I would have to if I wanted to make any sense. So I have to stop myself because such energy needs to go into my writing. These days I'm pretty immune to existential dread. There was a long stretch of my life where I could not stop poking at this stuff. And, frankly, I think I've emerged slightly insane. It's part of the reason I stopped studying math; it got too much for me, and I've shifted my focus onto writing. Heh, but if you're a fan of GEB you know that you cant completely escape. That the strangeness still exists in writing.