Checking the Arithmetic
If life were a cool calculation
Where all of the numbers compute
Then one could sum all of creation
And reduce it all down to the root

But my mind is a multiplication
Of chance and illusion and doubt:
I'm confused and impatient
A fool at foundation
I never will figure it out

Am I just a mutation with a curious urge?
An endless vexation, a mistake that recurs?
A singular statistic, a product of the dice?
Checking the arithmetic, it's not quite right...

I questioned a mathematician:
My life is uncertain and strange
Tell me what of the human condition
Can the priesthood of science explain?
She said: life is a state of transition
A pattern of chaos and change:
Of loss and division
And love insufficient
To answer the problem of pain
Am I just a tangle of jumping nerves
Or a point on a line describing a curve
I'm baffled beyond logic
And searching for insight
Checking the arithmetic and it's not quite right...

If I only know what I am feeling
And can't prove the world outside
Then standing or kneeling
Or staring at the ceiling
You've gotta have faith as your guide

The world of sensation
Is a puzzling equation
A persistent hallucination
So you've gotta have faith as your eye...

Am I just an ache in a painful world
Dreaming awake in a reciprocal blur
Flickering in physics' cinema of sight?
Checking the arithmetic, it's not quite right....