The Tick-Tock Tractatus (subtitled Speaking of Time: The Poetic Investigations, Part 1) is an ongoing, 285-page digital "WebBook" compiled by poet and philosopher Michael Peter Garofalo. First published in 2010 and updated through 2026, the work is an intellectual and poetic exploration of duration, temporality, and the past-present-future continuum.
Rather than a dense, systematic academic treatise, Garofalo
describes it as a "walk through one man's cultivated mind-garden"—a
highly structured but fluid collection of poems, philosophical remarks, and
aphorisms.
Here is a summary of its core components, structure, and
themes:
1. Structure and Style
- The
Quintain Form: The primary poetic engine of the book is the quintain (five-line
poem). Garofalo curated these verses from his massive multi-volume
poetry project, Bundled Up.
- The
"Onions": Interspersed among the poems are short,
sharp, one-liner insights, quips, and gardening-themed aphorisms that
Garofalo calls "Onions".
- 16
Topical Portals: The text does not follow a linear
narrative. Instead, it organizes its reflections into 16 distinct
thematic categories (or "portals"), including Time,
Past, Present, Future, Passing, Psychology, Language, Silence, Beauty,
Social, Philosophy, and Eternity.
- The
Wittgenstein Connection: The title is a playful, lyrical nod to
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. However,
whereas Wittgenstein's Tractatus focused on logic and
bypassed the concept of time, Garofalo’s Tractatus deals
exclusively with temporality, using a similar decimal-style numbering
system (e.g., 1.1, 1.1.1) to catalog his thoughts.
2. Key Philosophical Themes
Space, Motion, and Science
Garofalo continuously contrasts the mechanical tracking of
time against the cosmos. He juxtaposes the rigid, ticking grid of human
clocks and calendars against the fluid physics of thermodynamics (entropy), the
rotation of the Earth, and quantum considerations.
"Time requires Energy." (BU3186)
The Zen of the "Now"
Deeply influenced by Daoist and Zen philosophies, the text
repeatedly returns to the concept of the present moment (the Now). Garofalo
treats the present as the only coordinate that requires no compass. He
emphasizes finding eternity within immediate sensory experiences—such as
walking in the woods, watching bees, or gardening.
The Illusion of Permanence & Aging
A central emotional anchor of the book is human mortality
and the physical reality of aging. Garofalo balances cosmic vastness
against the finite, fragile nature of human life. He reflects on the
steady, eroding march of time on the human body, the fading of memory, and the
inevitability of death, viewing time as a force that "eats
everything".
Language and "Silence"
Garofalo investigates how words construct our sense of
time. He suggests that while language allows us to map the past and plan
the future, it is ultimately limited. The book heavily values silence—not
as an absence of thought, but as a deliberate hesitation to absorb the
wordless, raw reality of "Being".
3. The Central Metaphor: The Garden
As a lifelong gardener, Garofalo uses the garden as his
ultimate laboratory for understanding time. Soil, seeds, seasonal decay,
and springtime renewal serve as practical evidence of temporal change. In
his view, "gardeners learn to live in worm time, bee time, and seed
time"—aligning human awareness away from the artificial "tick-tock"
of the clock and back toward natural, cyclical duration.
The Tick-Tock Tractatus: Speaking of Time by Michael Peter Garofalo is a large, freely available webbook that investigates the idea of time through poetry, philosophy, quotations, and short reflective prose. It is organized in a style loosely inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus, but instead of presenting a strict logical system, it gathers hundreds of observations and quintain poems from many perspectives.
Its central themes include:
- Time as lived experience: Time is treated not merely as something measured by clocks, but as something experienced through memory, anticipation, aging, movement, work, seasons, and everyday life.
- Many perspectives: The book explores time through sixteen broad topics, including the past, present, future, psychology, language, silence, beauty, ethics, history, and eternity. Rather than arguing for one theory, it accumulates many viewpoints.
- Poetry as inquiry: Garofalo uses his characteristic five-line quintains as philosophical examples. The poems are intended to illustrate ideas and evoke reflection rather than prove conclusions.
- Language and philosophy: Influenced by Wittgenstein, the work emphasizes that how we talk about time shapes how we understand it. Many sections examine the meanings, metaphors, and everyday uses of time-related language.
- Interdisciplinary approach: The book draws on philosophy, physics, psychology, literature, Taoism, Buddhism, and scientific writings on time, weaving these together with original poems and extensive references.
Overall, The Tick-Tock Tractatus is best understood as a lyrical philosophical exploration of time. Rather than presenting a single doctrine, it invites readers to think about time from many angles through poetry, aphorisms, quotations, and philosophical reflection.
