In the late 1990s, I worked as a machinist in Rochester, New York, where I operated a 1937 Brown & Sharpe No. 00 Automatic Screw Machine, fabricating precision parts for Xerox photocopiers. A setup for this type of machine is time-consuming, and the procedure of manually adjusting the tooling, spindle speed, feed rate, and timing wheels that will ultimately give form to a blueprint鈥檚 specifications is an art.
While a blueprint details a part鈥檚 ideal design, each target measurement has an associated (卤) tolerance specifying the acceptable dimensional variation for the part to function safely and efficiently once placed in situ and operating within the whole system. For scale, a human hair is roughly two to six thousandths of an inch in diameter. Typically, tolerances on the parts I ran were less than two thousandths of an inch above or below their target, which means you literally can鈥檛 be a hair鈥檚 breadth off in either direction.
Maintaining that degree of precision requires sustained patience and particular concentration. With dozens of machines running, the shop floor is extremely loud, hot, and dirty鈥攁 hellish smell of brimstone permeates the air (cutting oil contains an active sulfur compound that keeps the carbide tooling cool as it shapes the bar stock, while also chemically preventing the tool and work surface from welding together).
Both the speed of the stock rotating and feeding forward, as well as the rate of the tooling advancing into the workpiece, affect the temperature, which, if not harmonized correctly, will affect the dimensions, because parts that are made too fast and hot will initially measure correctly, yet fail once they stabilize at room temperature. Operating at high temperatures also runs the risk of burning, deforming, or compromising the structural integrity of the parts and tooling.
Once the machine is up and running, the 鈥淎utomatic鈥� part of the machine鈥檚 name pretty much holds true. Yet there is the soul of an object; any seasoned machinist will confirm no two machines of the same model will run alike, and, as a result, neither are the parts they produce, unless acute attention is given to monitor, tune, and work with the voice of each machine. All theory dissolves into practice, and the near-mystical side of things, the spooky action at a distance, begins to shine through.
The parts I was making required Cartesian coordinates鈥攛-horizontal (abscissa), y-vertical (ordinate), and z-depth (applicate)鈥攑lus a nonphysical fourth dimension of time. This suggested spacetime (x, y, z, t) as a way to discern literal and figurative variations in language. Fixity is supplanted by flux. A passage from C.G. Jung鈥檚 Memories, Dreams, Reflections, has always been dear to me: 鈥淲hat we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages, which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life.鈥�
A poem has no line-by-line reading (x) that yields a fixed sum of meaning (y), nor a historical record of readings (z) that remains constant over time (t). Though we often hear the whole is the sum of its parts, Aristotle reminded us, 鈥渢he whole is different from the sum of its parts.鈥� A poem is more of a quantum fractal where the parts contain the whole, and the whole contains the parts. 鈥淧hilosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry,鈥� Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in Culture and Value. He was warning that ordinary exposition (prose meant to define) can trap thought in a fixed frame, which is the very essence of reification, the concretization of abstract concepts.
Language resists stasis. After all, dictionaries are a mere photograph of a language at a moment in time, a chronicle of use rather than a definitive guide, just as physics has shown, the more precisely we measure a particle鈥檚 position, the less precisely we can know its momentum. The mystery at the heart of reality is that the world is fundamentally different from what we think it is. Attempting to pin down a poem鈥檚 meaning collapses its potential, just as focusing solely on a part鈥檚 dimensions can mask the subtle forces shaping it:
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still鈥�
鈥擳.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, 鈥淏urnt Norton鈥�
About the Author
Aaron Fagan is the author of four previous poetry collections, including Pretty Soon and A Better Place Is Hard to Find. His poems have appeared in 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚, GrantaThe New Republic, and other publications.