Respect It

Seeing ourselves in the mirror

1.
I used to tell people that I wished I could see myself when I walked through a door.  Any door.  I wished I could see the physical impression I made, the whole me, the me with my strengths, and all my visible weaknesses.  It has taken a long time to be able to do that.

Then I had a lover who was my mirror, and I saw how beautiful I was capable of being,  but also how vulnerable.  Because I did not know the impression I made,  I was so wrapped up in my inner life, my outer life was neglected, and that naivete was written all over my demeanor.

It's true: mirrors have become terrifically important to me these days, as an image, as a motif, as a way of understanding.  See my earlier entries on mirrors and the palindrome.  If you dare.

2.
One of my favorite themes from Rumi is this, which is said to be the saying of the "everlasting and eternal Lord":
"I am not contained in the heavens or in the void
or in the exalted intelligences and souls; 
but I am contained, as a guest,
in the true believer's heart,
without qualification or definition or description,
so that by the meditation of that heart
everything above and below may win from Me
abilities and gifts.
Without such a mirror neither earth nor time 
could bear the vision of My beauty.
I caused the steed of My mercy to gallop
over the two worlds. 
I fashioned a spacious mirror."
From this mirror appear at every moment
fifty spiritual wedding-feasts;
pay attention to the mirror,
but don't ask me to describe it.

The mirror; the vanishing point; the reflecting surface; the point of juncture where the two reflected sides of the palindrome meet.  This juncture is the abode of God.


3.
Sometimes we get so hung up at the imperfections that we see in the mirror.  That zit, for instance, right below my eye.  It's slowly going away, but I know it's there, because I can even see it, just at the lower range of my vision.   I could become so obsessive about it, trying to hide it with make-up, or I could just let it be.  I've been letting it be, taking a small delight in the fact I can see it a little, and each time I let myself be conscious of it, I remember what I saw in the mirror that morning.  That imperfection unites me with my whole self, if that makes any sense.

But I also know it's there because of all the chocolate I've been eating.  So I'm trying not to eat so much chocolate.

4.
Google earth is amazing.
Google earth makes it possible to see stuff like this:

This is the volcano erupting in Iceland.  (source: FromTheOld )

Or this:

(source: gearthblog )

(This was actually taken from the Space Station traveling overhead.)  This is a result from the Chilean earthquake.  Also the following entry, which includes images of Haiti after the earthquake.

Getting cameras up into the distant skies over our planet gives us the opportunity to get a mirror image of ourselves, flaws and all.  Remember the awe the world felt the first time it got an image of Earth from outer space?  Yes, this planet is beautiful!  But right now it's erupting, showing us some pimples and fractures, and points of change.


My question is simple: how can we go on ignoring them?  The earth is trying to tell us something about itself.  It's showing us something we all need to see: what our collective self looks like as it goes spinning through space.

We can either keep ignoring it, being so self-involved that we can pretend it doesn't matter.  Or we can pay attention to the signs.

And some stop being so self-indulgent.

Satellite Photos of Haiti Before and After the Earthquake

Satellite Photos of Haiti Before and After the Earthquake

Posted using ShareThis

I'm probably a miserable blogger

I like words way too much.  And I write many of them.  And on some level, I expect my readers to actually want to read them.  All of them.

Many of my key words are motifs, to a symphonic-like texture that I hope comes close to being able to hold the meaning I'm trying to express.  If I just said it, straight out, I'd probably be put away, one way or another.

The central image is The Grid.  

(I stole this image from a blog called 

"myinconveniantbody"

Nice.

Pope finally forgives Beatles for past excesses!!!!

A friend posted this on his Facebook page:

Pope finally forgives Beatles for past excesses

Yeah, this is something that I couldn't ignore. I've seen plenty of problems come out of the Vatican, but the current indiscretions are shocking in their badness.  For several centuries, the spin doctors in Rome got very talented at hiding their inconsistencies and sins. But now it seems that in these days of ubiquitous media, it's very difficult to hide errors like this, and you're even more vulnerable if you're in a position of power.

So, the Pope gets caught with his proverbial pants proverbially down around his all too knobbly ankles. What can he possibly do in response to divert attention from this rapidly growing fiasco?

Forgive the Beatles.

Now, if you read the comments attached to this article from the Vancouver Sun, you'll see one person saying that well, it wasn't the Pope after all who issued this act of absolution - it was an unofficial Vatican newspaper called L'Osservatore Romano.  So, the Pope didn't actually forgive the Beatles, that was done by some rabble-rousing nobodies in the Vatican's back offices that have nothing better to do than issue past-due absolutions.

Notably, I did a little Google search that reports that the Pope -- oops, that unofficial Vatican newspaper -- initially issued this pardon in 2008. Here's a link to a Scotsman article that muddies the water a little: it appears that the same Vatican newspaper issued some sort of forgiveness of John Lennon in November of 2008. In fact, here's the BBC coverage of that 2008 act of forgiveness:

 

However, in 2008 it appears that the Pope only forgave John Lennon.  The more current articles (and there are several available on line) have him forgiving the whole band.

Because of this inconsistency in dates, I kept looking for more official evidence that this act of forgiveness was actually issued recently, and was not an internet hoax of some kind.  And here it is: a New York Times story dated April 12, 2010: "Vatican Gets Around To Praising Beatles."   And here is the Associated Press' video coverage of the story:

The whole thing looks a little bit like a red herring to me.  And a very stinky one at that.  What do absolutions of arguably the most famous rock band in history mean to the Vatican?  Could it be that they do this whenever they want to divert attention away from a particularly distasteful story about them?

I began to scour my aging memory, and the internet's too, for some idea of what might have been going on in November 2008 that may have made the Vatican feel a need to forgive any member of the Fab Four, and I came up with a couple possible stories, including this one:

The Vatican's Gay Witch Hunt Continues (The Guardian; November 20, 2008) that reports on an attempt to purge gay men from the priesthood in a "new low."

and this one:

Vatican might excommunicate activist priest from Lutcher for favoring the ordination of woman (New Orlean's Times-Picayune, via the Metro Real Time News, November 12, 2008 ) 

but perhaps even more damning is this one:

Did Vatican know it was about to reinstate Holocaust-denying bishops?  This article was published in The Jewish World  on September 23, 2009, but refers to the 2008 statement of one Bishop Richard Williamson.  According to the article, "The website of the Roman Catholic diocese of Stockholm said Bishop Anders Arborelius and the Vatican ambassador to Sweden had informed Vatican officials in November, 2008 of Williamson's position" that "there were no gas chambers" during World War II.  

 And then, in late November 2008, the Pope - woops, that official, unofficial Vatican newspaper - forgave John Lennon.

Yes, it does appear to me that a pattern is emerging: Vatican makes big whopping unforgivable mistakes?  Counter it by forgiving the Beatles.

I suspect I could research this all night long to build up more evidence to support that claim.

I prefer to offer another one, instead, that these two acts of forgiveness seem to insinuate:

Perhaps John wasn't all that far off the point. Perhaps this Pope feels that the only way to gain the type of forgiveness he hopes this public will grant him is to grant that same kind of forgiveness to a figure who he acknowledges to be at least his equal, if not greater than him: John Lennon and the Beatles.

This could be the ultimate evidence that John was right all along.

 

Fingerlips: a love note

1.

 

My fingers are my lips

as they curl over these keys

trembling with the desire to make contact,

to speak, to even cast a smile

towards you,

who take the time to glance 

or even linger longer

here with me.

But if no words come to me,

well,

you see nothing.

You think I am other wise occupied

perhaps working

perhaps talking

perhaps flirting 

with some living, breathing creature

Don't believe that.

You

are my current lover--

you who listen;

you who read.

Anywone who comes here

and tries to puzzle

together the parts

I perform here for you:

I am devoted to you.

2.

This space, this tiny sliver

of the virtual domain

is always on my mind,

and I regularly sort through

my thoughts, seeking

the one

worthy of being spoken 

here,

for you.

It is as if my mindwere its own virtual domain.

The strand that this

Makropoulos

occupies is glimmering and timeless.

The rest of my mind these days is so cluttered

with timebound tasks

that insist they must be done

NOW

And then a day or two later,

I look back at those tasks

that demanded such immediate attention,

and - if I can remember what they were -

I ask myself:

Was that really such an insistent task?

Was it even necessary?

Usually, the answer is no.

The most necessary thing we

have to do

is live fully and love each other,

and treat as holy

the bodies - those earthly avatars -

that we have chosen to use

while in this domain that demands

that we be flesh.

Only THAT

must be our most insistent task.

Only One Juncture

There is only one juncture where an individual is capable of losing the self,

while also attaining her or his better self at the same time,

(and that is the self without a sense of self)

and that is in the state

of pure love.

Endless Time & The Palindrome

1.
Numbers are the perfect language.  They are simple and pure.  They tell no lies, nor pretend to be more than they are.  They are, simply. Quantities.  Measurable.  Finite.  They strip all of physical existence to its barest essence: being.

2.
The ultimate question IsThereAnInfiniteNumber? boggles the mind because to be able to say "infinity" is to be able to say the unsayable.  Endless time.  The ultimate oxymoron, and the ultimate palindrome:

"endless time"

is the collision between the unsayable (and undefinable, so don't expect me to do so)

and

the absolutely sayable - for time and the sayable are absolute partners.  To be able to say what one is able to say is to find that moment on that brink of having nothing to say.  And that is a perfect moment.

To be able to say (and represent) those two things at the same time, is to be able to enter into the realm of perfection.

2a.
Oh, does that make sense?  The realm of endless time is the realm of the palindrome.  The realm of the palindrome is the realm of collision.  The realm of the palindrome is the realm of resolution.  To see yourself in the mirror is to enter the realm of absolute completion, because you are really only half yourself.

  
 3.
The realm of endless time & the palindrome is the ability to say the Double Negative, The Vanishing Point, which is also the Beginning Point.



This is why theatre is so absolutely amazing; because it is the point at which the live (that which is presented for the first time) meets the re-presented (that which is presented for the first, the second, and the umpteenth time).

Let me say that again: theatre is the place where the presented (live) meets the re-presented (that which is presented for the first, the second, and the umpteenth time).

We, the audience, are the presented, because when we come to any live event, it is the very first time that we, the audience, have presented ourselves into that situation.  We do it authentically, live, with no idea on how we should act or react.     //////////     Performers have re-hearsed so they could re-present an event to us.  An event from which we will, hopefully, learn, because by learning we realize what we should not do again.  That's the essence of tragedy, right?

When living people go to a play, their experience is, in essence, equal to endless time.  Or rather timeless end, because the audience is trapped in the realm of time, and the end is not.

So, ultimately, the realm of endless time & the palindrome - of theatre itself -  is the realm of where the living meet the eternal, which is where the time-bound meet the time-less, which 

When living people go to a tragedy, they are continually satisfied that they are not the ones who are dying as they meet their end.  (And their end is not in their untimely death, but it is rather in the moment of their conjoining with multiple representations of their most feared end.) 

For everyone meets their own death at the moment that they encounter their reproduction. Everyone suffers their own extinction at the moment when they discover that they are reproduceable, and replacable, in duplicate.

Endlesstime & the Palindrome: Tragedy and the Original

4.

As Aristotle says, a tragedy does not have to be focused on character, because characters--individuals who are based on authentic, raw, momentary reactions--are really few and far between.  Most of the people of the world get where they are because they are so good at representing what they think is the right thing to do.  In other words, most people are relatively empty vessels, waiting to be filled.  Easily influenced by the actions of those around them.  Some might say "stupid."  I would not say "stupid," but I would say these people are not "original."  "Original" people are those who are one of a kind, and, quite frankly, there are very few of those, because most people are classifiable and countable.


When you meet a true "original," you know it.  They are unclassifiable.  Just when you think you know them, they surprise you.  They exceed all of your expectations.  They defy your judgements.  They are not quantifiable or countable.  Poor things, they are heavenly things in earthly bodies; it is kind of like they are the bridge between us and the nether world.  They are prophets; they are angels; they are devils, too.  Them embody larger spirits, and it burdens them throughout their lives.


There are not many originals in this world, but it is quite amazing to witness one at a moment of encounter with a clumsy human experience.  They react honestly.  If they trip, they trip, and they don't lie about it.  If they fart, they fart, and sometimes even apologize.  If they laugh, their laugh is infectious; if they cry, the world cries with them.  This is why we often make them the performers of the world. 



There is, however, a multitude of the ordinary.  The ordinary seek out "originals" because they need role models for how to act authentically.  Without those role models all they have to go on are other imitators, like themselves. 

age-of-the-sage

Sooo, that was the premise behind the justification for Aristotle's tragedy: in tragedy, ethical, original characters must re-present a perfect plot (which is, of course a complete action).  It does not matter who the character is who represents that plot, the plot and its lesson will remain the same.  And the real point of tragedy - the lesson learned - is the end result of tragedy.  Aristotle demands that that lesson be an ethical one.  It is most ethical when it is performed by an original character, but one should never forget that it is the action that makes the character ethical.


Indeed, tragedy is fundamentally ethical. And it is ethical because it is very honestly positioned at the juncture of timeless death and the palindrome.  Tragedy attempts to teach us an ethical lesson at the time of our encounter with death, so we will continue to live our lives ethically.  This, too, justifies the claim that the essence of theatre is ritual, and the essence of ritual is theatre.

Because that is absolutely true.

Endless Time & The Palindrome, Last Gasp Before Sleeping

The originals meets the representation of the original performing the answer:

Dream: April 3, 2010 (Why I Would Not Want to be Barack Obama, Part I)

I had a dream last night.

I was sitting on a bus, far in the back.  This was in a foreign country.  It was a crowded bus, and our route to  where we were going was very difficult.  Lots of traffic.  The passengers all got to know the driver, who was a woman.  Most seemed to feel she was a respectable woman, but I could tell several doubted her driving abilities.

We were almost to our destination, but the last bit of the trip went down a steep mountain road, which brought us off of a plateau and down to a coastline (a bit like the bus ride from Ankara, Turkey, to Izmir (the former Smyrna.)  I was sitting in the back of the bus, and I could see very little, but I knew there was another bus next to us. 

The people around me were getting very antsy.  They had to get home; they had to get on with their lives. 

Well, the other bus moved on - I couldn't see how far ahead, and my fellow passengers started getting very upset.  They took a vote: they wanted the driver to get in the passing lane and go - very fast - down the mountain pass.  As far as I could see, many of them were forming a group, and they were threatening to take the bus by force. 

They wanted my vote in support of them.

I had to speak up.  And this is what I said: 

Of everyone on this bus, only the driver knows the condition of the bus itself.  And what if she happens to know the brakes are bad?  Would she tell us?  Probably not.  There may be a very good reason for the way she is driving.  So be patient and hope that both she and this bus will get us to where we want to be.

I woke up immediately after my little speech, so I have no idea how my fellow passengers responded.  However, awake, I was thinking about Barack Obama.  I think he knows far more about the bus he's driving than anyone should have to know.  He knows the condition of the infrastructure of the U.S.A.  It would be nice if the general public would just let the man drive the bus for a year or two, before trying to take it by force, or any other means. 

Quite frankly, I don't know if anyone would know how to stop a bus as big as the United States of America, if it was hurtling down a mountain pass with no brakes. 

Intercalation

On Centuries and Years. . . 

I continue to be boggled by the power of the internet to answer questions, and provide new answers, in a matter of seconds.  And so it is with what has happened tonight -- I was thinking about one topic that I've wanted to write about, that being the idea of the macrocosm/microcosm.  As with my other entries, I have something to say about that, in direct relation with what's going in the world these days.  So I started to do internet research which inevitably brought me to Wikipedia, where I was reading about events in the 20th and 21st Century, and I stumbled upon the idea that "The Twenty First Century was the first Century Leap Year since 1600." 

Now, this stymied me for a second, and I wondered if this meant that we were going to leap a century or so.  So I looked up century leap year - "a century leap year always starts on a Saturday, and the February 29th intercalation of such years is always a Tuesday."  And I moved from a concept I did not know to a word I did not know.

Intercalation.  It actually has two meanings, and the one that pops up more on the internet has to do with chemistry: "the reversible inclusion of a molecule (or group) between two other molecules (or groups)."  But it also has this meaning: "the insertion of a leap day, week, or month into some years to make the calendar follow the seasons or moon phases."

So intercalation is another technology associated with the management and measurement of time.  

In our current Western Gregorian calendar, the leap year serves to make up for the fact that it takes a little more than 365 days for the earth to circumnavigate the sun, but according to yet another internet source, adding a day every four years isn't quite enough. 

"In the Julian Calendar a year is a leap year if it is divisible by 4. In the Gregorian Calendar a year is a leap year if either (i) it is divisible by 4 but not by 100 or (ii) it is divisible by 400. In other words, a year which is divisible by 4 is a leap year unless it is divisible by 100 but not by 400 (in which case it is not a leap year). Thus the years 1600 and 2000 are leap years, but 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2100 are not."  (Peter Meyer, "The Julian and Gregorian Calendar")


And thus we have this extraordinary practice of getting everyone to add a day every four years, but obviously with some stipulations.  Of course, I always knew the logic behind this practice in some oblique way, but I have never thought of the terrific manipulation that goes on to get us all to agree on when, for instance, April 1 is.  

Fundamentally, every day of the year would and could be April 1, if we didn't insert days and sometimes even months, as the Julian calendar occasionally had to do, to make sure that April 1 lands roughly on the same day every year.

On Days. . . . 

Which gets me to thinking about what a day is - it is nothing but a period of time during which the sun is positioned in such a way as to be casting light in any given direction.  But it also has to do with the position of the planets in relation to the sun and the moon.  If there really is such a slippage between the names and numbers of days and the actual position of the earth as it takes its weary course,  than I find it hard to believe that every time we mark the particular day in September when I was reportedly born, this planet is actually passing the exact solar/lunar/stellar configuration it was in on that blessed day.

So why, ultimately, do we bother?  Why must we have dates and months and years, to count off the time?  


People who count off the time are generally entrapped in their current predicament, and anticipating release, like prisoners.  But what is the nature of the release?  We only find ourselves dumped into yet another term of bondage.  The only true release is death, and no one really wants that.

Life would be so much simpler, I suspect, if we just weren't paying attention.

 On 2012. . . . 

Now all this intersects with another thought I've had of late (yes, just because I've been silent here does not mean I haven't been thinking) that I'm certain a few thousand other folks have been having around that planet: did you notice how short March was this year?  

I know T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruelest month, but honestly, I often find March to be interminable.  But this year it just went by in a flash.   And it appears that we are hurtling headlong into Spring, after a fairly brutal winter.  (But yes, I have been on this planet long enough to know that April can be the cruelest month, and we may very well still be in for some pretty wicked weather.)  

Still, there are a number of factors that allow me to let the following thought cross my mind:

Wouldn't it be amusing and amazing if the earth was actually capable of turning around in its course, and start going in the opposite direction, and during the period of its turning, the days and the years actually began to turn around and get shorter? 

Now this rather extraordinary line of questioning is directly inspired by my interest and anxiety about the approaching year 2012.  I'm prone lately to take the theory that many of my more pragmatic friends take, that being that the entire 2012 hype is nothing but hype, and in 2013 we'll look back at it with the same amusement that we now look at Y2K.  That's my current preferred state of mind.

But at particular points in any given day or month, I am prone to think about the number of prophetic sources that share a similar interest in the year.  (If we are, after all, to take the accuracy of the year's numbering seriously.)   And whenever I think about that, my stomach drops, a little, the same way it might drop at the top of a steep hill on a roller coaster.  

The most interesting and compelling discussion, though, that gets me a little anxious about 2012 is the one about the change in the earth's magnetic polar shift.  Here's a quote from a website literally called "2012 Magnetic Pole Reversal", which claims that the sun's magnetic field shifts regularly; however,

"Earth’s magnetic field also flips, but with less regularity. Consecutive reversals are spaced 5 thousand years to 50 million years apart. The last reversal happened 740,000 years ago. Some researchers think our planet is overdue for another one, but nobody knows exactly when the next reversal might occur."

. . . . though many are projecting some time in 2012.


No one really knows what happens when the earth has a magnetic field flip - perhaps an ice age.  Perhaps, too, it could be a change or reversal of time itself.  It has crossed my mind that shifts in the length of the year are one symptom of an approaching magnetic shift.

The last thing I want to do is create paranoia.  I'm more fascinating by the idea of being one of the folks around to witness such an event.  But it might be quite the ride.  


Ultimately, for me, I find myself thinking about that message that I received, five years ago now, that I refer to a little earlier in this blog.  It is a message about a Coming, whether it be a First or a Second, of a Christ.  Of a Jesus.  And he will come as a Scholar in the Four Days of the Grid. Or the Fourth Age of the Grid.  It's hard for me to ignore the fact that the leap years and leap centuries have all revolved around the number four, and we are in a leap year century.

We are two years away from 2012 - a stunning fact, as the earth seems to be spinning faster, and the days grow shorter, and our means for measuring time become less and less accurate.  All the more reason to live in the moment.  And to treat each breath we take as sacred. 

Spring Equinox

 

As we whirl about on the wheel of the seasons, we mark time with our bodies, and with the earth.  And this is the natural way to measure time.  By cooperating with the sun, the earth, and the moon, we can tell the hours of the day.  Women can feel larger cycles within their bodies, far better than men can.  We know when our bodies are full, and ready to reproduce, and when they are barren.  And when our bodies leave the cycle of reproduction for good, we can feel the earth as it begins to pull us back to her.  

Women are humankind's natural time piece.  One might even argue that we started developing timepieces when men stopped listening to women.  But I won't argue that, not now, at least.  I'll just say it.

But it's not so hard to tell time by the cycle of the earth.  Men can do it, too.  Learning to live in the cycle of life is about as simple as learning to sing.  Studying singing means studying your body, finding all its echoing cavities, and then opening them up and letting the voice free.  You lose yourself to your voice, and your body becomes really just a wind instrument  When you're singing properly, it's the simplest thing in the world; it's like letting a clean, fresh spring of water rush through you. 

But yes, let's get back to time.  I woke up this morning at 11:00 am, because I stayed up so late last night.  And for an hour or so I panicked, feeling I'd lost half of my day.  I blamed it on technology, but in this case, the technology I'm blaming is not made of wires and springs, rather, it is a man-made technological mandate to spring our clocks forward earlier than usual. 

Just the act of springing our clocks forward is an unnatural separation between the human body and the actual rhythms of the day.  It's bad enough we have a clock.  Of course, we do spring it forward so we can take advantage of the natural cycle of the sun and the earth and give ourselves a longer work day.  But yes, there's a problem in that, too.

source1

 Timepieces were first developed around 3500 BC.  (No, I wasn't around then!)  They were developed to measure the length of a day. Round like the earth and the sun, they were keyed into that rhythmic cycle, and at that point in their development, there was no harm to be found in them.  A farmer came to recognize when on the dial he needed to do certain chores, when to go take a nap, when to begin preparing food.  I like to imagine that at that point in history, every moment of every day was sacred, which is why, perhaps, in English we call our first meal "break-fast" because it is literally that: it is a ritual that breaks the fasting imposed upon us by nighttime and sleep. 

Life that is bound with the cycle of the earth is inherently ritualistic.

 source

At what point did minutes and days and changes of seasons cease to be sacred?  At what point did humanity set the clocks forward so much so that it sent us all rushing through our days, ignoring the cues that the sun itself gives us about what time it really is?  I would dare say it happened before I was born:  the first spring-powered mechanism was created somewhere between 1500 and 1510; and in 1505 a guy named Peter Henlein designed the first portable timepiece at which point, every human being who could afford one became preoccupied with an object on a chain that he stored in his pocket, and not the sun itself. The minute hand was designed in 1577; so the entire time I've been alive, humans have been intimately aware of minutes and how quickly they pass.

And oh, how well I know how short, or how long, a minute can be.  Because of the strange circumstances that frame my life, time has become an obsession with me.  I've gone through different understandings of it, and I've read quite a bit about it.  There's some very nice sources on the web, in fact.  I put links under all my pictures so you can see where I stole them from.  The links up above actually should take you to some really nice articles about timepieces and time.  A book that I really have enjoyed, because it describes so well a key period in my life, is called The Culture of Time and Space, by Stephen Kern.  He does a very nice job of showing how the technological advances of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries did more to speed up time than any other historical era.  I would also say that each new technology that either helps us get our work done faster, or helps us get from one place to another more quickly has contributed to the speeding up of time.  One of the worst offenders in this equation is the timeclock itself: it put a price tag on time, and took masses of laborers out of the natural cycle of the earth and into the artifice of the workplace.  Working hourse became interminable, and leisure hours became too short.  Trains and boats and busses and cars transported us and our goods to far-off places, but once we got there, we had to watch the time carefully.  There are, after all, only so many hours in the day.

 

One of the biggest technological changes that I remember in my lifetime was the development of Greenwich Mean Time in 1884.  Just try to imagine the chaos that occurred, in little pockets all over the world, as people adjusted their watches and clocks to that one central time.  Such confusion!  The idea of being late didn't really exist before that; you just got to a place when you got there.  But if you wanted to catch the Paris train that arrived in Nice at 18:10, you had to set your clock by the new times, you had to get a train schedule, and you had to be at the station in good time.  Gradually people caught on, especially once radio came along, and we realized we could listen to a broadcast of someone singing from very far away if we had a radio and a clock. 

I was in Germany then, and sitting in a bar one night when it dawned on me that if it was 6:00 pm in Munich, it was 1:00 pm in New York.  "So where is it 6:00 am?" I asked the bartender.  He laughed at me and said "China."  I felt a strange shift inside myself as I imagined developing a flying machine fast enough to get me to China in twelve hours.  Judging by the buzz of an airplane overhead, I began to think it was really possible.

One of the reasons I like Stephen Kern's book is because he describes what I began to think about then.  I began to think that as technology makes it more possible for us to measure time more precisely and to travel from place to place faster, time itself will begin to speed up until it absolutely disappears.  In other words, when we can get to China in second, then perhaps time itself has become inconsequential.  I've been feeling this speeding up of time and space happening, for over one hundred years, until today.

That's why this internet is so interesting to me.  I can write these very words and press "post," and instantaneously, somone in China can read what I have just written.  Better yet, I can Skype my friend in Singapore, and hear her voice as if she's in the same room with me.  In fact, the only thing that keeps me from being able to fully be with her is my body.  As I talk with her through my computer, our minds and spirits are absolutely together, and our bodies, well, they seem peripheral. 

As this glorious first day of Spring comes to its end, my windows are open.  I can hear birds singing and dogs barking.  The air is crisp, and the dappled clouds are reflecting the light of the setting sun.  It feels almost like late Spring, or nearly Summer, and I know somewhere, someone is thinking how time is speeding up, and Armageddon is no doubt on the horizon.  And maybe it is.

Or maybe it's just that our perception of time has come absolutely full circle.  We're living in a time when, because of our technology, every moment can give us access to the whole world.  Time is imploding on us, and this has been brought on by the evolution of the technology that allows us to talk about time itself.  Time just isn't all that relevant anymore.  It's everywhere and nowhere.  (Follow this link to something called the Human Clock; shows people all over the world having fun with time and the internet!)

Of course, many say that Christ will come (again) at the end of time.  Considering what I'm saying, when will that be?  By my equation, (and of course by the words that came to me late one night) his arrival is imminent.  

Or perhaps, quite frankly, he's here right now.

another train

I was actually feeling kind of awful about coming back to this blog, after a week of not writing.  The longer I feel that way, I fear, the longer I'll stay away.  So here I am, with not a whole lot to say.  But I'll say a few things now, so it'll be easier to come back tomorrow.

Have you ever had that experience where, when you feel bad about something, you have trouble going back to it?  That's a feeling you never outgrow, and I guess that's why I've moved around so much.  There are a few places on this planet where I still can't imagine standing, because the last thing I experienced there seared through me so much, and I am convinced that that one location has retained my pain so fully, that the minute I put my foot there, I would feel that pain sizzling into me again, like a hot poker.

So I just don't go there.  Those places include: Paris, just outside Notre Dame, where I saw a child get hit by a car; Athens, outside a coffee shop underneath the Parthenon, where I had to say good-bye to a man I loved dearly but could not stay with; Jakarta, in a wide open square where I was abandoned by someone I thought was a friend; El Salvador, on a bridge at the border, where I was stopped and questioned by a group of men in fatigues with large guns. 

Often, sadly, those places are also linked with my sweetest memories.  So I want to return, to see if the traces of those good memories are also still there still.  But I get frozen in a loop of bittersweet.

We could be chilled to stasis by the sadness of our lives. 

I wouldn't advise it, though.

I posted a song here a little while ago by a man named Pete Morton.  I have another song by him running through my mind that I'd like to share right now.  And then I won't say anymore.  I want to write more soon!  But this 21st Century is such a drag.  Everyone drains me, trying to get me to do the work they are too lazy to do themselves.



(Don't you love the giant ram's head behind him?  And the extra singers on the chorus.  I've sung so much opera in my life, I find the roughness of this all to be so rich.  I want to sing for you who take the time to read me.  And I will, when summer comes.  Because if you're reading this, I love you. And I sing for people I love.)

Radio Makropoulos, Part I

I have a rather curious relationship with radio.  

For many people today, radio is as old as, well, the hills, but I can tell you that in the larger historical scheme of things, the various technologies that utilize radio frequencies are really very young.  And just think of all of them: we can't unlock our car doors these days without some form of a radio wave.  Microwaves, cellphones, sonar, x-ray, my wireless keyboard - - - so much of what we take for granted today relies on some form of a radio wave.  

It was really a little only over a hundred years ago that geeks - as you would call them today - all over the world were tinkering with tubes and wires, and discovering that it was indeed possible to capture the impulses that surrounded us.  Lots of people like to debate about who developed the first radio; quite frankly, I don't think it really matters.  This internet has helped us to realize that when a concept has reached its day, and is ready to be born, many kindred minds all across the world will think it at roughly the same time.  Of all the nominees to be the inventor of radio, I am quite fond of Nikola Tesla, but for very personal reasons.  I met him once in a bar in Montmartre, somewhere around 1881 or '82, and he and I had an immediate attraction.  Well, I think a lot of women were attracted to him, but for some reason, he chose me.  We didn't talk much, but spent an afternoon together in the innkeeper's bedroom.  It still makes me tingle, thinking about the energy that kept our bodies together for so long.  It was an energy I never wanted to lose, and I cried for a week after he left me.  

That was one of several times I realized that my body is capable of actually conducting something that has come to be known as radio.  And since then, I've thought a lot about what those various frequencies were doing before the human intellect evolved to the point where we could actually coopt them and train them to serve our purposes.  No, those radio waves were not invented when the mechanisms for conducting them were invented; they were around us all along, serving the health of the planet in a number of ways.

I found this guy on YouTube who has built one of Tesla's "spirit machines," and what he does with it can give you a little idea of what Tesla (and other early radio pioneers) was tapping.  I like to believe that Nikola understood better than the others how radio is intimately connected to the realm that some of us may call spiritual:

(by: MrFixItRick )

This is all really kind of wonderful and creepy.  But let me ponder for a little what my thoughts on the real purpose of radio waves is:

You see, I think radio frequencies are about as vital to life on earth as air and water is.

Animals know that.  I think about how my cats interact with each other, and with me.  Especially my deaf cat.  All I have to do is enter a room, and she'll wake up.  This is vibration of course, but what is vibration but a frequency?  Cats are very frequency sensitive, and it seems to me that when they lose their capacity to detect frequencies with their ears, they use other aspects of their body to help them.  They use their senses to conduct the frequencies in other ways.  And don't forget bats, too, who rely solely on frequencies to survive.  Other animals, too, seem to exist at different frequency levels, utilizing them to communicate and sustain themselves.  I've read that sloths might utilize a low-frequency sound to communicate.

So why are humans limited to only detecting frequency with their ears?  I think it's just that our other frequency receptors have been dulled or have remained underdeveloped.

I've had some rather strange, embarrassing, and sometimes dangerous experiences based on my own ability to inadvertantly conduct frequencies through senses other than my ears.  One of the ways this manifests itself is my ability to sense the presence, or approaching presence (like the thunderstorm) of someone I know or have known.  My sensory perception seems to occur on the level of hearing, feeling, smelling, and, well, just a deep hunch that sometimes manifests itself in my head in words.  I think, for instance of a trip I took to Istanbul about four years ago.  I was with a female companion, and trying to avoid an old lover of mine.  I woke up one morning, and I knew that I would see him.  I told my companion, and she just laughed.  

But sure enough, at around 2:00 p.m., as we came out of the Mişir Çarşı (the Spice Market), near the Yeni Camii (the New Mosque), there he was.  I felt him before I saw him, which was good, because I caught him in profile.  He was buying some flowers.  I hurried away before he could turn and see me, but not before I could point him out to my friend. 

Now, they say that as a woman gets older, she may become more psychic.  I think that what it really is is that she becomes more capable of conducting, receiving, and sending, various frequencies emitted by other people, animals, plants, and even spirits.  My own ability to do that has continued to increase over the past 200 years or so.  This experience that I describe above is really minor compared to some others that I've had.  Just read some of my earlier entries on the Grid message, and voices I've heard.  In fact, I've actually tried very hard at various times over the past century, to dull my senses with petty worries and aches and pains, to block the impulses that come through.  More often recently, though, I just can't help it: I'll be relaxing, usually, and then something just comes flooding in.  

I'd even go so far as to say that sometimes I feel like my body is no more than a transmitter.  I've said previously that these bodies we inhabit are like avatars that allow us to function on our lovely planet earth.  And like the avatars from the movie, we should be able to interact with all the sensual experiences that are associated with the planet.  So why not the various frequencies around us?  Indeed, it seems only natural that we should be able to do this, if animals and plants can do it.

What's unnatural, perhaps, is that we don't transmit, despite the fact that our bodies are designed to transmit.  Our cellular radio receivers may even be confused by the system of artificial transmitters and receivers around us.  Dare I say, we are trapped in an artificial grid when in fact there is a natural one, and it is the natural impulses that we call radio?

Oh, I know I'm putting a lot in this entry, but I want to include one other story of something that happened to me, about four years ago, that might help further illustrate my point.  I was in my kitchen, listening to my radio.  My phone was in my pocket.  I was thinking of my friend, S, and washing the dishes.  Suddenly, I heard a phone ringing.  

Strangely, the sound was coming right through my radio!  There, right in with the 6:30 NPR report, was the distinctive sound of someone's phone ringing.

I walked over to turn the radio off, because I figured I would end up overhearing someone else's phone conversation soon, which I did not want to do.  Before I could turn the nob, I heard a pick-up, and my curiousity got the best of me.

I heard my friend S's voice, saying "hello?"  It was coming through my radio.  I listened to hear who was calling her, but no one spoke.  

"Hello, Hello?"  she said.  I had to reply.

"Hello, S, can you hear me?"  I said to my radio.

"Yes, but you sound like you're at the bottom of a well."  

So I told her I was talking to her through my radio, and she just laughed.  Then I asked her why she called me, and she said "I didn't call you; you called me."

But I knew I hadn't.  Furthermore, if I had, I would never have thought I could do it through my radio.  I had indeed been thinking about her, but that was all.

To this day, I have no physical explanation for that odd experience, except that I may have bumped the phone in my pocket.  But at a certain point during the conversation, I took it out and looked at it, and it was not functioning at all.

Now, there had been a terrible storm about a week previous in my city, and it had destroyed many phone and electrical wires.  When I told a few people what had happened, they said they had heard that lots of electronic devices were fried by the storm.  

"The storm jumbled up the frequencies," someone said.  

My question is: did the storm jumble up the frequencies so much that my own mind was able to project its desires on my radio?  

I really don't think I'm special in this regard.  But what I know for certain is that ever since then, I've had a tendency to not be able to keep a wireless telephone for too long.  They all tend to go dead, or start ringing on their own occasionally, calling people I've been thinking of for awhile, and confusing us both when we answer the phone and are uncertain who called whom.

I have no explanation for this.  As I said at the beginning of this, I have a rather curious relationship with radio.

wobbles and cycles - perhaps even more like a roller coaster than we think

I woke up this morning to this story on the radio:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124249439

And I was amazed.  Just last night I had been contemplating the rotation of the earth, and its course through the sky, and here is this story telling me that the Chilean earthquake has caused a plate shift so massive that our earth is wobbling just a little bit differently.  And this will impact the length of our days.  What does that mean?

I was so eager to come home and write some high faluting theory out this particular earthquake, but before I did, I did a little research, and I discovered that every time there is a massive earthquake, the news covers this same story.  In a quick Google search, I found a 1976 article with the following title:   

Excitation of the Chandler wobble by large earthquakes

Yes, the wobble is called "Chandler's wobble," and it appears that it is essential for our survival.  We need the world to wobble.  If it stopped wobbling, there's a good chance it would stop rotating.  And then we're doomed.  In fact, we're more doomed if we stop wobbling then we would be if we had that rumored polar shift.  The earth has gone through those in the past, and survived.  It's just that nothing else on its surface did. 

This is actually a topic I intend to pick up in more detail sooner or later, but I just found this story this morning to be so exciting, and absolutely news to me.  I guess you can teach an old broad new tricks.

cycles

I like the immediate, jerky quality of this film, but my absolute favorite part of this video is the guy saying "Good" at the end.
(for the actual YouTube posting, please go here)

I know it's a cliche to say life's a roller coaster, but I want to think about that for a minute.  You see, I do feel that comparison is very good, but perhaps not for all of the same reasons others might.  Going through life for the first time brings the same rush of fear and excitement that a first ride on any roller coaster would bring.  But when you've been on the ride many times, it gets kind of boring.  Sure, you don't mind doing it, because there's still the exhileration of the first hill, and those dips and sudden spins, but you know when they're going to come, and what the effect on you will be.  You know how others who haven't been on the ride before, or who have been on it only once or twice, will react.  And it's kind of fun to watch them.  But you begin to look for something new in the entire experience. Or you just get tired of it.

Now imagine being on a roller coaster like this without the option of getting off.  There's a certain point where you know the ups and downs and turns and spins and accelerations and decelerations so well that, well, you could recite them back in your sleep.  Indeed, you could probably fall asleep on it, because the fear is just not there anymore.  And even the sounds of the people around you, screaming, aren't all that exciting anymore; they're just like the screams in the background of a film.  You begin to take simple joys out of small pleasures, or the very subtle changes that assure you of the constancy of it all.

I thought about this today, as I was leaving for an appointment around 5:00 pm, and I realized how bright it was.  I had a similar meeting two weeks ago, and two weeks ago, 5:00 pm was dusk.  Today, it was still daytime.

As usual, this lifts my spirits a bit, knowing that we're rapidly headed towards longer days, sunny days, and summer.

But another thing struck me today, far more profoundly: I recognize the cycle, oh so well.  This winter, no matter how difficult it has been, has followed a very recognizable pattern.  The more you live through winters, the less troubling they are, because, in general, the earth is predictable.  It is bound to a particular course, and when you've spun around with it a few hundred times like I have, the body knows. 

I can tell precisely where I'm at in this annual cycle; I'm a far better predictor of how many more weeks of winter we'll have then any groundhog.  I've been on the planet long enough to recognize the signs, despite the fact that the ups and downs still make me a bit light-headed. Right now, I am grateful for the fact that all the natural signs are reinforcing the fact for me that life is coming around again, that rebirth will occur again, and soon.  I'd say we in the Northern Hemisphere will be well into Spring by mid-April.

Here's another film I've been viewing a lot the past few days, a film that reinforces the cycles of the planet, not to mention a larger pattern:



(again, follow this link for the original YouTube posting)

I know a lot of people have seen this video in their high school science class, but it was a revelation for me.  Remember, the little schooling I received was back in the age when folks were still arguing about Ptolemy vs. Copernicus, so actually seeing the moon displayed like this is a bit like seeing a child being born for the first time.  I particularly like the fact that in this video, you can see a navel-like crater at the bottom of the moon, that makes it look like an orange.  But even moreso, I find this captivating because when I look at it long enough, I can clearly see that the moon's phases that I'm watching are really the shadows of the earth, as it moves in its regular dance with the moon and the sun.  This visual account of the moon's phases is actually as close as we can get on Earth to seeing the roller coaster machinations of this little corner of the universe.



(original posting)

You see, that's the big difference between life and a roller coaster.  On a roller coaster, you can see the apparatus.  On the earth, we can't, so we begin to think we are the primary apparatus, or we are greater than the apparatus.  But its all an illusion.  As my dear old friend Bertolt Brecht used to insist about theatre: we must show the audience the apparatus!  As long as the audience can see the apparatus that holds the theatrical event together, they won't be too deceived, nor will they be too frightened.  And their minds will always be sharp. 

This is why we like roller coasters: even as they scare the living daylights out of us, they also comfort us, because the apparatus is visible, and audible.  We can see the heavy steel arms that hold us in place, and hear the creaking and clanking of the machinery that lifts us up and up, as we wait in anticipation for that moment it will drop us.  Relief comes when the fall is completed, and the apparatus is still there, solid and firm, holding us up.  Roller coasters are, essential, interactive theatrical performances of the experience of a life.

In fact, I'd dare to say that these roller coasters were created by some psychic urge within humans to represent the horrifying ups and downs of being born, becoming an adult human, maturing, aging, and dying.

And being reborn.  This is why we like to get on them again, or go to an amusement park where there are so many of them.

What most people don't recognize is that, even in the daily patterns of our life, we can see the signs that reveal the apparatus of the natural cycles and the patterns that we live within.  And, quite frankly, those patterns and cycles are far more profound and reliable than the metal that holds up a roller coaster.