In myth, the Furies pursue the guilty. In this meditative poem, they do not chase or condemn, but pause—witnesses to memory, silence, and the uncertain balance between reckoning and reprieve. Beneath the yew, they wait—not gone, not appeased, but listening.
Vincent van Gogh, Trunk of an Old Yew Tree (1888) Oil on canvas, 91 × 71 cm London, Helly Nahmad Gallery
“Necdum illum aut trunca lustrauerat obuia taxo / Eumenis…” — Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10
“Nor yet had the Fury met him, bearing the lustral yew…” — Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10 (adapted translation)
As darkness descends and light abates, The Furies wake at the turning of fates. No horn is blown, no omen flies— Only the hush where judgment lies.
They come not crowned, but cloaked in ash, With broken names and eyes that flash. Not wrath alone, but what endures— The weight of memory that never cures.
They walk where silence used to sleep, Where secrets rot and letters bleed. The breath of dusk is cold and tight— A wound reopens in the night.
By yews they pause, where death takes root, In soil grown thick with ash and fruit. The bark is split with silent cries, The rings record what speech denies.
They do not speak, but still the trees Murmur of trespass in the breeze. The wind forgets its mournful tone— As if the world waits to atone.
A shadow stirs, but does not fall; A light withdraws, but leaves a call. No hand is raised, no doom is cast— And yet the pulse runs through the past.
The air is thick with what might be: A breaking, or a turning key. The Furies halt—but do not sleep. And from the yews, the silence… deep.
So still they stand beneath the yew— The Furies veiled in dusk’s soft hue. Its needles dark, its berries red, It shelters both the quick and dead.
They neither strike nor turn away, But hold the hush at break of day. Their eyes are dark, their purpose blurred— As if they wait to hear a word.
History shows that evil rarely marches under banners we immediately recognize. Too often, it comes draped in righteousness, purity, and fear. This piece is a lament for how easily we have been—and still can be—drawn into the machinery of cruelty.
My Friend, You Were There
My friend, When the Holy Catholic Church, seeking to preserve the Faith in all its radiant purity, instituted the Inquisition, you were there— not as a bystander, but as a willing voice.
You denounced the old widow, who lived alone with her cat. You whispered against the Jewish family— familiar, yet forever marked as other— and gave your assent to their undoing.
You crowded into the square to watch the trials. You sang hymns as the flames crowned their bodies with smoke. You wept tears of joy that the world was made purer that day.
My friend, When the ships came heavy with human cargo, and the auction blocks stained the soil, you were there.
You placed your bids. You weighed their flesh. You wrote the laws that chained their children.
You sang hymns on Sunday, and broke their backs on Monday. You called it providence. You called it order.
My friend, When the traders came with flags and rifles, when the rivers flowed with rubber and blood, you were there.
You signed the charters. You counted the profits. You sold the shackles and the scales.
You called it commerce. You called it destiny.
My friend, When the banners of the Reich unfurled, and the drums of destiny beat their hollow call, you were there.
You shouted with the crowds as glass shattered from shopfronts. You signed the letters, you cheered the laws, you raised your hand high in salute.
You bought the house, the shop, the art your neighbors were forced to leave behind.
You praised the strong hand that swept away the weak. You rejoiced as neighbors vanished, grateful that your streets were made clean.
My friend, When Stalin summoned the will of the people to root out the enemy within, you were there.
You reported the whispered doubts of your cousin, your friend, your brother.
You paraded with red flags while the trucks rumbled into the night. You filled the quotas. You seized the land. You counted the spoils as others disappeared.
You sang of the bright tomorrow as you cast your eyes down and stepped over the absent.
My friend, When Mao lifted the Little Red Book, and the children cried out against their fathers, you were there.
You led the chants. You scrawled denunciations across the walls. You struck the old professor who dared to hesitate. You cheered as the temples fell, and the old poems burned, convinced you were building a paradise on the bones of the past.
My friend, When Pol Pot promised that the fields would bloom with new life, you were there.
You marched the teachers into the paddies. You pointed the rifle. You praised the year zero that would erase the memory of all that came before.
You smiled as the world was reborn in silence.
My friend, When the generals rose in the name of order, when the prisons filled and the stadiums overflowed, you were there.
You nodded at the names. You counted the profits. You watched the blindfolded taken at night.
You called it security. You called it salvation.
My friend, You have always been there.
Only too late did you realize. Only too late did you doubt— but not much.
You fell silent, lest you betray your doubt. You looked away, lest you see.
You told yourself it would be different this time. You told yourself you had learned. But the signs are familiar. The words are familiar. The silence is familiar.
The unopened book, its spine uncreased, rests on the shelf, untouched by breath. No hand has turned its waiting leaves, no eye has met its silent depths.
The pages sleep in folded time, ink unmoved by thought or light— a universe uncalled to mind, a star unkindled in the night.
Who knows what worlds it might contain— a lover’s vow, a tyrant’s fall, a name that once was yours or mine, a deathless truth, a whispered call?
The story never yet begun is writ in ink that does not fade. Its fate, unlike the morning sun, has neither risen nor decayed.
And yet—another book lies bare, its binding worn, its chapters told. The margins smudged by time and care, its tale rehearsed a thousandfold.
We read, we skip, we turn again, we bookmark thoughts we dare not bind— then falter near the closing lines, no meaning fixed, no end designed.
A narrative half-read, half-lost, its final thought left unexpressed— the thread unwinds, the ink runs dry, the reader dozes, unconfessed.
Between the two—a paradox: the never read, the half-complete. Which holds the weight of what we are? Which better marks our own defeat?
Perhaps all books are mirrors dim, reflecting what we dare not see: the start we fear, the end we flee, the truths we touch but never free.
So let it lie, unopened still, or let it fall apart, well-worn— the soul is both the waiting page, and every word we leave unborn.
Because of my ongoing work on an essay tentatively titled Endless Horizons: Theories of the End of Time in a Multiverse of Block Universes, I woke early this morning with a question about the nature of memory and whether it, like physical systems, is subject to entropy. To deepen my understanding of this topic, I decided to engage ChatGPT in a research query. This also presented an opportunity to demonstrate how I ethically use ChatGPT as a research tool.
The experiment was straightforward: I formulated a fairly simple (complex?) philosophical and scientific question and asked ChatGPT for a response. ChatGPT, as previously instructed, provided authoritative sources to accompany its answer. This approach allowed me to gain immediate, well-rounded insights while ensuring I had reliable sources for further book research, should I choose to explore the topic more deeply. In addition to my own well-stocked library, I have access to resources through the local city and county libraries, as well as one of the local universities, where I am an alumnus. I also have access to other libraries associated with organizations of which I am a longstanding member. Moreover, through these libraries and their subscription databases, I have online access to a wide range of books and scholarly materials.
This process reflects my commitment to using AI as a tool to aid my scholarly inquiries—never as a replacement for rigorous research, but rather as a way to generate new questions, gather preliminary information, and identify potential sources for more thorough study.
Below is the question I posed and the response ChatGPT provided. It provides ample information for me to reflect upon and good sources for follow-up if I wanted to pursue the topic further.
My Question To ChatGPT:
Is memory merely the present attempting to retrieve the past, albeit fragmentally? This retrieval process, often redundant and incomplete, may not capture the same fragments of the past on each attempt. Alarmingly, the mind can create new memory fragments to bridge gaps, make sense of discontinuities, or even improve or alter alienating memories. However, might the past itself—the objective past we are striving to retrieve—be subject to its own form of deterioration or entropy over time, making it inherently more difficult to access as time flows forward?
ChatGPT’s Response:
The notion that memory is a fragmented, partial reconstruction of the past has long been recognized in cognitive science and philosophy. Memory, by its nature, is fallible, prone to alteration with each retrieval, and influenced by present emotions and experiences. As you rightly point out, the process of memory retrieval is often redundant, incomplete, and subject to creative interpolations by the mind to make sense of what is forgotten or unclear. This invites the deeper inquiry: Is the “objective past” itself subject to entropy, rendering it less retrievable over time?
To explore this question, we must examine both subjective memory—the internal representation of past events—and the objective past—the events themselves as they occurred in time.
Memory and Reconstruction:
Cognitive science has demonstrated that human memory is reconstructive rather than reproductive. Each retrieval is a dynamic process, during which the brain reassembles fragments of stored information to form a coherent narrative of the past. This phenomenon is supported by work from Elizabeth Loftus, a pioneer in the study of false memories, who demonstrated how suggestibility and the passage of time can alter or create new memories. Her research suggests that memory is not merely a passive storage but an active process subject to distortion (Loftus, 1997).
The brain’s capacity to fill gaps in memory, to “improve” or distort unpleasant recollections, can be seen as a kind of psychological entropy, where the once-clear memory of an event becomes increasingly disordered with each retrieval. As you suggest, this process can indeed make it difficult to capture the same fragment of the past with each attempt.
The Objective Past and Entropy:
Your inquiry into whether the “objective past” itself is subject to entropy requires an exploration of philosophical and scientific thought. In one sense, the past, as it existed in time, is immutable. It has occurred and is fixed in the timeline of the universe. This perspective aligns with the Block Universe theory in physics, where all points in time—past, present, and future—exist simultaneously in a four-dimensional spacetime continuum. Under this model, the past is not subject to degradation; it simply is (Callender, 2010).
However, while the objective past may remain fixed, our access to it is mediated by subjective memory, which is indeed subject to entropy. Neurological studies, such as those by Karl Lashley in his research on engrams, suggest that memory retrieval is dependent on the integrity of neural circuits. Over time, these circuits degrade due to aging, injury, or disease, making it more difficult to retrieve specific memories (Lashley, 1950).
This entropic degradation in the brain mirrors the second law of thermodynamics, which states that systems naturally progress toward disorder. Just as physical systems decay, so too do the biological systems that support memory, causing retrieval to become more fragmented, incomplete, and distorted over time.
Philosophical Considerations on Memory and Entropy:
Philosophically, the question of whether the past itself is subject to entropy touches on deep metaphysical issues. The philosopher Henri Bergson proposed that memory is not a simple retrieval of static information but an active synthesis of the past and present. Bergson argued that our experience of time is fluid, and memory plays an essential role in shaping that experience. As such, memory’s entropic decay may reflect our subjective relationship with time rather than any inherent deterioration in the past itself (Bergson, 1896).
In cognitive psychology, Daniel Schacter explored the “seven sins of memory,” one of which is transience—the natural decay of memory over time. Schacter’s work highlights how memories fade and distort as they become more distant from the present. While the events of the past remain fixed, our mental representation of them becomes increasingly subject to entropy, making retrieval more challenging as time passes (Schacter, 2001).
Conclusion:
In conclusion, while the objective past may remain untouched by time’s passage, existing as a fixed point in the spacetime continuum, our access to it through memory is undeniably subject to entropy. Neurological and cognitive processes that support memory deteriorate over time, rendering our recollections increasingly fragmentary, incomplete, and prone to distortion. Memory’s entropic nature reflects the broader theme of disorder and decay that governs all physical systems. Thus, while the past itself remains fixed, our ability to access it diminishes with time—a poignant reminder of the impermanence of human cognition.
References:
Bergson, H. (1896). Matter and Memory. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
Callender, C. (2010). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press.
Lashley, K. (1950). In Search of the Engram. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 15, 1-24.
Loftus, E. (1997). Creating False Memories. Scientific American, 277(3), 70-75.
Schacter, D. L. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Northcoast Antiquarian 