Introduction

Well here it is, a selected collection of my writing.


Some of the writing I am the most proud of is about mathematics and computer science. However, I am including only a few math articles here. Mathematics writing imposes a minimalist style. The more succinct, the better. This same principle applies in poetry. I find the two disciplines reinforce each other -- mathematics is the poetry of the mind, poetry the mathematics of the heart.

Most of the writing was inspired by life events. At first, I was surprised by the cathartic gift of expressing strong feelings in writing, better yet in rhyme. It seemed to give a certain relief, perspective, closure. I have now learned to look for the pen when moved and shaken. Writing, instead of an afterthought, has become a companion transforming both trauma and dreams into stories and rhyme. It lets me share and connect my private trauma with our common shared profound human journey.

Writing lets me relearn the constructive lessons of life’s tragedies and share my dreams. I wrote laughing and crying, I reread smiling and sighing -- and relearning life’s lessons. More than anything, writing has helped me tell my story.

There are four sections: Poetry, Stories, DNA, and Computer Science. I hope the poetry shakes you to the bone --- gets into your DNA. The stories are about a glorious childhood and the death of a longtime friend I knew since we were seven years old. In this section, I also revisit my alma mater after forty four years and describe giving a lecture on entrepreneurship.

The DNA section will be the introduction to a paper I hope will entice world-class mathematicians to codify the basic mechanism of the AIDS virus. The writing on a mathematical theory of the AIDS genome touches both mathematical and lyrical styles. The underlying genome DNA transcription mechanism is universal to all living creatures and has such mathematical regularity that it should seduce scientists and artists alike -- it embraces first soaring imaginative language and a tight rigorous mathematical description. With the DNA math, I hope it turns my dream into a scientific breakthrough dream come true that can change things for everyone. Included is just one paper about computer science, which I happen to be working on now -- isolation of computer viruses.

So here are poems and narration of my hopes, my dreams, and my story. Accompanied with my apology for the unstudied poetry and rough language is my acknowledgment of the haunting topics of cancer, death and, the most difficult topic of all, the death of my son Tim.


Writing these poems, stories, and science has helped me. I hope in some way it will do the same for you. Most of all, I hope it prompts you to tell your story.


Yours,
Thomas J McCabe

Section I Poems

Hope -- a 'tulip' poem about the struggle with hope and despair, they battle for mental terrain, see who wins.

Spring ---- written in the gray cold winter, about drinking and smelling and being in spring.


Loneliness ---- written in a lonely hotel in San Francisco before giving a speech.

The Ghosts of Hobbits Glen ----- true place, true story? So transforming I moved in.

Tim ---- the evolution of the incredible pain of losing my son Tim.

Linda ---- to my dear wife Linda.

A boy stargazing ---- biography by images.

Poem to Tim

To Kevin --- my grandson.

Thunderstorms ---- something you never knew about thunder and lightening.


To John and Greg .... John Rice, Greg Mort: our conversation about the tug to follow your dream. Sets context for the poem about following your dreams.

sleepy Dream to compelling Destiny ---- a sonnet about inescapable entrepreneurs' DNA

The Lesson and Gift of Cancer ---- tried to capture the experience of the scare. Narrative with poem at end.

Tuna and Turkey ---- erotic fantasy

Our Senior Team, the hope and dream ---- Casey at the bat, this time playing tennis.

Hope

Hope

but worries

no room for hope

can't forget all the worries

skirt from one worry to another

current obsession overrun by bigger ones

worry can't be solved by worry, replace just one

one, just one worry, needs to be replaced with a life force

just a little room...a laugh, a beautiful morning, a pretty girl

one more, haunting music, the birth of my child, childhood joy

let a bunch in, a joy for every worry, pair them up, couples

money margaritas, health herbal baths, mortgage mango

terrorism two step, retirement rumba, death daffodils, 

out of worries! what to pair with love, hope, life?

love creates life, and then life

needs hope

Hope

Spring

Spring

When sunshine feels warm,

 the winter blahs transform.

When dogwoods wear paisley-pink light skirts,

- with my Linda I want to flirt.

Spring's when days begin to linger long;

 a tarrying embrace is our song.

The magic of nature all around us;

 how we miss it in our blind fuss.

It's when hope rises again;

 youth renews, spirits enliven, love reigns,

when birds and bees pick it up again, the winter's chill forgotten,

 our fears turn misbegotten,

when just being suffices,

 in fact, exceeds the forced plan of our own devices.

Let me feel it, be part of it, exalt in its arrival and simplicity;

 and not be numbed by winter's worry demons with whom I have complicity.

Let me be reminded that the best in life is free: love, laughter, friends –

 when this is gone, life ends.

Let me be in tune with spring's moods;

 just as the animals, so simple yet more astute, pursue sex not grains for spring's foods.

Let me realize that hurt is only a winter season

– replaced by a loving spring where fear is blasphemy and treason.

Let me share this because of Linda, spring of my winterly life stroll,

 alignment of the seasons with my mate’s soul.

Let it last. Let my body and spirit have a spring of full measure,

 celebrating their temporary presence with Linda, my treasure.

Winter, April 2010

Winter

Winter is a thief:

lite on light, terse on time, chilling cheer, hijacking hope

Winter is a bully:

cowardly, cruel, crotchety cold, cripples cupid, clamoring cover

if sleep is death's second self

winter's the zodiac's purgatory

a forewarning of the coming dark abyss

a preview of the inexorable dark cold void

we start out with hopeful plans, enthusiasm for projects, enticing the muse

end up wanting to escape, muse muzzled, staring at walls

limp and lame

winter days are eventless, empty, evacuated. Life

cheated, chiseled, cuckolded,

by the Winter God

the sun God is adored

darkness of night is abhorred

the cold is glum

our spirit goes numb

She hijacks our spirit, imagination, initiative in a cold freeze

and when she leaves

our spirit has to be gently gradually thawed out,

like a holiday turkey with freezer burn

our defrosted damaged daemon reemerges

a frost bitten version of its former self

Loneliness, August 2002

Loneliness

A long distance runner’s apology

Traveling alone - people laughing, hugging,

Not husbands and wives burdened with responsibility lugging

But friends, newlyweds, lovers

Affection, excitement, warmth hovers

Sitting alone in a hotel lobby in San Francisco before giving a speech

Watching a longed-for life from my isolated perch

With three or four days alone, the loneliness becomes a friend

At first strange, distant, aloof, and of fear it did portend

After a while a comrade, not such a bad traveling mate

She gives me the space to create,

Which I value most, and always have    

I set on a course a long time ago, as solitary as a fox

The die is cast, and I've become the lonely trip, it has me in a lock

It used to be an unwelcome intruder, then it became me

It gave me fame and wealth, but the cost was love, you see

Like the long distance runner crossing the ribbon, the end of his race The race, entered with reluctance at first, turned me into the runner, the grit, the hurt, the parched mouth and spent soul,

But you, my dear blue ribbon, were the prize at the end of it all.

If I knew of the tender love the ribbon held, then the race would have been fled

Life’s focus was the race; its torment became my daily bread

And how the race made the prize all the more,

Song given to the mute, wings to worm, for a swimmer the shore

The race won, life can now unfold anew

Love rediscovered with an innocence postponed

Not wasted and abused by youth but

Love and passion valued as treasure and prize

Come celebrate with me.

The Ghosts of Hobbits Glen ---- August 2007

Prelude

The Hobbits Glen Tennis Club is in Columbia MD; it’s collocated with a golf club of the same name.  It has six clay courts that hosts many tennis leagues; all summer long there are ongoing competitive matches.  For more than twenty years the surroundings were seldom appreciated, during the day it is hot, dry, and dusty. It is a place of sweating and swearing, and a whole lot of complaining. It has a beauty that nobody noticed, until Sunday.

The Ghosts of Hobbits Glen

There’s a reason it’s called Hobbits. Like the magical little fun loving creatures of folklore this place named Hobbits Glen has a certain magic all its own.

What happened there Sunday night was no accident --- it was nature’s way of restoring the spiritual balance of a place, especially a place named Hobbits.  It was a mystical and holy passage restoring what American Indians know as ‘land spirit’.  Like what happened in the Dust Bowl to over-farmed land without crop rotation, this place lost its spirit and became sterile. Over many years the spirit of Hobbits became only the tortured grunts of competition, the sweaty curses of self centered over focused tennis warriors--- the only focus was the all important tennis score, which has no importance to the place, no importance to nurturing and caring for the land, and its beauty.  This behavior is very un Hobbit like.

Nature had an answer, as it always does. There’s a time when the hot dog days of August have a magical restorative power, it’s when dusk turns to dark and there’s a soft gentle rain. It was Sunday night there when that soothing light rain and primal dusk brought together two languishing lovesick lovers. It enveloped their naked bodies like a Japanese bath love-making ritual, equal parts holy and sensual. Two naked souls twisting, melding, laughing, loving in a primordial mix of misty dusk and soothing gentle rain – something changed, a regenesis, a rebirth. Nature’s power restored the inner child of two lovers and the place – all three now laugh, love, and play --- like Hobbits do.

It was Nature’s answer, Hobbit’s spirit restored. Nature renewed and rebalanced. After an event like this Hobbits is now hallowed ground.

Forever now linger two Hobbit Ghosts on that hallowed ground; they sing and whisper about nature’s restorative sweetness. The ghosts are not the competitive warriors of daylight; their time is late dusk, playing and laughing, like Hobbits laugh and play.

You can see them there.  You need to be there on a hot August night when dusk turns to darkness, and you need a soft gentle rain. You need to let it in – you need to let the rain caress your face and then smile. And then when you feel yourself let go, will appear two pale apparitions swooning in and out of view over the grassy knoll.  They dance, a dance of escape and renewal, laughing and playing and loving --- like Hobbits.

And if you do this it will restore your spirit too.

Tim, July 2007

Tim

gone, it hurts

can't bear the pain

trying to hide the stabbing hurt

it's a hole in my stomach I could fall through

I tell Tim's story, a love story of laughter, love, play, dreams

and I am told of Tim's story, I learn more of his spirit, dreams, adventures

and I carry the hurt, with Tim's love story, I cry, the memories, tears

it doesn't leave, the hurt, the stories, the memories, the love, but

when I see rainbows and mountain mist, I see it with Tim

I look for that same hole in my stomach

and add to Tim's and my story

Tim's not gone

Tim

Tim

To my dear wife Linda ---- August 2007

Linda


She was born in a tenement in Pawtucket
Gave the place class and made it seem like Nantucket


She was slim, pretty, and shy
It’s been many a year but she’s still quite spry


She was used to responsibility young
Succeeded beyond imagination; now has to learn how to have fun


She raised the kids, made the meals, ran a business, and managed a farm
Time now to enjoy life for she has many a charm


She leaned it all; family and business and all
Time to enjoy life; for many a people she still an enthrall


Time to dance, sing, laugh, and paint
The time is over to be a saint


She’d freely admit she enjoyed a good meal
Time to let go and enjoy life; she still has sex appeal

Tom, this is a sweet poem, a fun poem; it makes your reader smile. Just one thing to look at: you overuse the phrase "time to enjoy life." Three times in this short poem is just too much unless your are going to make it a really pointed refrain (as in, say, a jazz sonnet -- a form you would love to play around with). I colored the phrases green. I suggest keeping one and changing the others, finding another way to say, more creatively, what you are trying to say here.

A boy stargazing --- January 10

A boy stargazing, a man planning, an old man dreaming

Pull, Push, Pull

This is my story, it is best told by images, images that delimit my life chapters. It's a different form of autobiography, the story of images -- dreams pursued, aspirations. In mid-career it was still unfolding and I couldn't capture it until now in my late sixties. What strikes me is the strength of the early vision and how it played out over and over.

The current prevalent view of psychology and fate is that environment and genes determine all. This modern view tends to ignore inspiration and serendipity while disregarding adventure

Its tone is often reductionist.

Other older versions of psychology and fate drew a 'soul' or 'myth' orientation for the personal biography. Plato described a 'soul companion' one was born with that guided life. Likewise the Romans named it genius, the Greeks had their myths and talked of a person's daemon, the Christians have their guardian angel. Michangelo said he could see the heart of a subject he was painting.

This, my story, was guided by many versions of fate, of a vision, calling, a daemon. I felt the myth's presence and it guided my early direction as a companion. And the 'myth's vision' came true.

The story is about a dreamer and the lifecycle of a dream. It's about a dream followed and it's about the dream side of entrepreneurship. It's written for young men formulating dreams and for old men who have followed their dream. It's about the stages where the dream becomes materialized and then translated into a business. It's about the admixture of a lifelong dream and the pragmatics of the business bottom line -- -- the dream becoming the main ingredient and the business becoming its stabilizing ingredient, its expression.

This narrative introduction is intended to frame and give the background for a six-piece poem. The first section, stargazing, is about a young man's daydream and belief that he could make an impact and change the world. It's about study and mathematics with the motivation of not doing math but of seeing the world in a different way and going about changing it. It's falling in love with the image of opening up a fresh provocative way to view reality.

At this first formative stage, there was nothing by way of achievement or academic success that would even hint that such an aspiration could come true. An image of having a mathematical breakthrough took root even though there was no hint of how it would materialize. The image held a sense of adventure, excitement, transformation --- the image foretold the experience. It was the image of how I wanted life ---- all I had to do was fill in the breakthrough.

It's in that spirit the story and poetry is written, to persuade dreamers to keep dreaming. I hope these lyrics and rhymes become encouragement for those who dare to imagine big changes. It's about empowering sleepy images into operational mathematics, and then riding the strength of a dream. The story is about the power of a dream.

When I look back at my career it was indeed the images that drove it. Instead of a business plan or career highway it was more of a calling, a destiny, a path. It felt like my education and experience, instead of teaching me about career, were unfolding my inner drive that was there from the beginning. It was more like getting to know myself and what I should be truly doing. The six piece poem is organized in this spirit -- -- each section is titled by an image that was both driving me and guiding me.

The research and discovery phase took eleven years, working with very large complex software development projects and then developing a mathematical theory of the complexity of software. The actual hard-core mathematical research took two and a half years. And then there were several small demonstration projects, a publication, and a few lectures.

At this point the dream began to sprout wings and I would fly to various locations around the United States lecturing on this brand new mathematical theory of software complexity. The story unfolds into an international business from this point. The lyrics tell the great American dream -- -- selling the company at the optimal time and being 'self-beached' with an self-indulgent life of entertainment and leisure.

And then a surprise; a surprise that should serve as a cold warning to any dreamer. Read on.

Image One: " find a breakthrough, tell the world" ---- The learning, Graduate school in mathematics, a boy stargazing

Good students dropping out, everyone scratching to hold on

This my first solo, out of the box decision, had to make it work, only me to rely upon

Fully committed, half decision - half dream

Decision questioned by good students dropping out

Dream reinforced by getting it, beyond doubt

Took me much further than imagined I could go

More appreciated the beauty, grades not a KO

The purity, universality of the theory

The elegant reasoning was pure poetry

Was stunned by the beauty and felt an urge to share the magic

Not cold hard syllogisms, more joyous epiphany classic

Knew I would find a way to make this my life

An image while stargazing, a dream's midwife

More than a career, a calling, destiny set

Other interest on hold, no regret

My call, find a breakthrough, tell the world.

Image two: "found the breakthough: the complexity of algorithms" ----- Ten years later, The Breakthrough

Toiled twelve years in a shared project muck

six million lines of code of error prone software

Felt a dislocation stepping away

Left friends and a good development career

to develop an underlying theory to convey

Spent two years trying mathematical approaches, to a unifying theory

Cajoled and convinced bosses to give me the space, barely

'the complexity of algorithms' was the aim

mathematical rigor would change the software game

Tried two hundred approaches, none good enough

Then eureka, after months of no sleep and exhaustion and apparent rebuff

... it appeared, I knew I had it, was no ruse

Thought it way too good to be true

Put it down to reopen again and again, to double prove

and yes, it was with me, could not disprove

'the complexity of algorithms' based on pure mathematics, but how to explain ?

Image Three........ "Tell the world"

Started to tell the story, first conversational spars

Then conferences, then three day seminars

Grew to fifty two seminars per year, once a week for twenty five years

Had to hire others to help tell the story, it built careers

San Francisco, NY city, Denver, Dallas, Washington DC, Chicago ...

Paris, Rome, London, Stockholm, San Paulo ....

The stargazing boy still excited and telling the story

Wondered how long the dream would last, when started barely,

Twenty five years and still chugging, still magic

Image four: "follow the dream's wings"........... Build a company

The dream was bigger than me

Had worldwide appeal

Instead of following the dream the dream pulled me

I gave the dream wings and it had me grow wings

Needed company and a company to tell the story

One hundred and seventy five storytellers

Automated the math, could watch in real time

Bought by IBM, HP, Procter & Gamble, Nabisco, AT&T, Prime

Me on TV, in front of US Congress, esteem

Things are a-rockin, living the dream

Image Five: "thought I sold the company ...." ......The great American dream

The company has high value

Sold. Lingered as Chairman

Never have to work again.

Life of comfort and leisure

Tennis all day, Tequila all night, hollow pleasure

Went from commitment and burning the midnight oil

to dabbling dilettante, lifeless as a gargoyle

Comfort without challenge, no dream to pursue

Hollow, vacant, void; life turned blue

Thought I sold the company, turned out sold the dream

Image Six: "the story of dreaming"............. An Old man's dream, surprise

Had to rekindle the dream out of a life as hollow as bamboo

The dream's rebirth is the story of dreaming

And following it, giving it wings, and being given wings

It's back on the road again lecturing where my math is being used

This time to hear the dream's story and tell a new story, bemused

To Beijing, San Diego, Athens, Rome, Paris,.....

Surprise, the reward is

not comfort but challenge,

not complacency but commitment

not leisure, but labor --- of love

And to tell a new story

Of a boy with a stargaze.....

Of any boy with a stargaze.

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Only now can I understand --- how the myth guided my life. And it still does. I wrote my story backwards, backwards to understand and pay the myth its homage. I now read the story going forward, to honor and follow my dear companion.