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The Cosmic Dialectic, or, Jesus Wouldn’t Tweet

Dear Friends,

The 150^th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, the 50^th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, and the first anniversary of my hip surgery sandwiched in-between.  Three Earth-shaking events such as these beg for a Dispatch.

“that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

“Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.”

“I’ve been really chatty, haven’t I?  I think they gave me a Vicodin for the ride home just so my son could see me high.”

Long ago, I promised a bloviation on Evil.  Rereading it at 4 am, it seemed fitting for today.  So be it.  It was drafted long ago (North Carolina!), hence some of the language, and has been pondered since.

Sorry if it offends.  Well, not really.

I do hope, however, that it has ideas worth thinking about.

Dateline: Westport Island, Maine

 

The Cosmic Dialectic, or, Jesus Wouldn’t Tweet

We start this Dispatch by saying that, as a recovering Presbyterian, lately I have learned a lot from listening to Christian radio in the deep South.  Bear with me and hang in there, it’s more interesting than it might seem at first.  But saying it has been a revelation would be too poor a pun.

 

Cruising the deep South on Easter, I was unable to get the beloved NPR, in Wilmington, NC and instead found myself dial-spinning between different Christian radio stations, all observing the holiday.  I noticed, in some, a recurring theme.  They spoke of how Christ served others, exclusively.  To have Christ live within you was to be selfless, acting in the world for the betterment of others, especially the poor.  To be “saved,” and “reborn” was to lose one’s ego to the relentless service of others.  I took to calling this “the Christ Impulse,” and thought about the following:

 

Jesus was a man, Christ is an idea.  Please note the difference in verb tense.

 

Then, evidence corroborating this notion just came flowing.  In Christianity, the Crucifixion, it seems to me, symbolizes the ultimate selfless act: Jesus the man died on the cross to take the rap for the sins of all mankind.  Death.  Nothing in it for Jesus, it was done entirely for others.

 

Do we Get that idea?  In many ways.  Look at how we honor veterans, first responders, and others who put their lives on the line for the rest of us, selflessly.  Look at how we revere those soldiers who died in wars, and the firefighters and police crushed in the collapse of the Twin Towers, for instance.  Look at how we honor heroes of that type – the guy who runs into the burning building to rescue the child, or even the kitten, risking all for the sake of some other.  Look at how we revered Mother Theresa, who worked tirelessly with the poor in Calcutta, Doctors Without Borders and other organizations who send volunteers into sketchy places trying to make things better for the least advantaged, at significant risk to themselves.

 

But do we really Get it?  The more superficial of the Christian broadcasters kept talking about how wonderful it was to be Saved.  How wonderful it was to have our sins forgiven.  But I kept thinking “Saved, so that?”  It seemed to me that being Saved, whatever that meant, was a means, not an end.  Being Saved, it seemed to me, was feeling forgiven for one’s sins (back to Sin in a moment), being freed from our self-centeredness, and taking up a life of service.  “So that” we can serve. 

 

The more superficial were, themselves, focused on the Self, rather than the other.  With that, we set up what Joseph Campbell described as “working all week, going to Church on Sunday, and lying on the psychiatrist’s couch on Monday.”  If one can’t take the Christ Impulse of service, and live it, then what’s the point?  Church is good for establishing habits – volunteer activities to serve, as a model for a larger life of service.  But one should easily and quickly graduate from Church and step into the real world of service.  But what can that mean?

 

I like to start small and practical.  Pick up a piece of trash and toss it in the wastebasket and you improve the world.  Volleyballer Gabriella Reese got slammed for writing in her book that she “submitted” to her husband and family.  Hearing her interviewed, she defined “submission” as “choosing to put family first, and serving their needs.”  Put that way, it sounds more reasonable, and makes her guilty only of having a poor editor.  I think the biggest parts are forming a habit, and taking on a spirit of service, where that little something extra inhabits what you do.  A spirit of selflessness, of attending to the other.  Remember Michael the nurse, from a previous Dispatch?  He Gets It, in a really deep way, and one feels the focus he brings to others.  It’s palpable.  It’s doable in everything that we undertake.

 

I think, however, that the fulfillment of the Christ Impulse must continually expand.  Good friends Dick (may he RIP) and Pat Bauries used to “sponsor” less fortunate families at Christmas and Thanksgiving, Buying simple presents for family members, and letting Dick indulge in his love for cooking by catering the family’s holiday feast.  And, knowing Dick, I do mean feast.  They just did it because, they told me, it was the right thing to do.  And then, there was no fanfare, no letters to the local paper about “Oh, what good people are we.”  Dick was not shy about publicity, to be sure, but not for this.  It’s the right idea, and one that I will adopt when I am finally off the road and settled.  Cooking a turkey is tough in the van.

 

So why don’t we all show the Christ Impulse?  Because it’s really, really hard.  Because our society is oriented towards selfishness rather than selflessness.  Christopher Lasch wrote “The Culture of Narcissism,” which describes our obsession with ourselves, in the 1970s, and if anything, it’s gotten worse.  The Me Generation.  The Me Decade.  Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are used primarily to glorify and promote ourselves (but look at the awe we display when Libyans and Syrians use it to foment rebellion…).  Relentless advertising to stimulate consumption of things and services focused on ourselves.  In comparison, resisting all of these pressures, and devoting most of one’s life energy to service, is immensely difficult, if for no other reason than the question “What’s in it for me?” keeps rising.  The problem is, that question is out of bounds, more or less.  We also, at least I do, move through the world unconsciously, being less than present in the moment.  In that situation, I think our default choice is selfishness.

 

Enter Jimmy Carter.  As you know, I had the privilege of attending his Sunday School lesson at the end of April in Plains, GA.  The day before, I had bought his book “The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter” at the bookstore in the Carter Visitor Center.  Here’s a guy who Gets It.  Listening to him, and reading his book, I learned about his dedication to service throughout his life.  I mean, he’s been teaching Sunday School for 70 – count ‘em – 70 years, starting when he was a Midshipman at the Naval Academy.  Military life, politics, Habitat for Humanity, and now the Carter Center, Mr. Carter has a deep devotion to service.  One can’t help but come away from the conclusion that he understands what I am calling the Christ Impulse, and weaves it into his life every day.  Aunt Karen, my sister, always a keen observer, says that he’s living an “authentic” life.  The root of “authentic” being “author,” he’s writing his own life.  Admirable, and even wonderful.  He’s an example of what Americans can be, I think, when we’re at our best.

 

I recently saw Stephen Colbert’s interview with Bill Clinton, where Stephen taught Bill how to Tweet.  Mr. Clinton made an interesting statement.  When Colbert asked him why he was doing these selfless things, such as holding his conference of world leaders prior to the opening of the UN General Assembly session, Mr. Clinton said that, at core, selfless and selfish were the same thing.  Whoa!  Let me think about that.  At one level, which I’d bet is not core to his thinking, to be selfless is to be reborn, and have Christ living within you, as the better Christians describe it.  There is also a deep joy that comes out of seeing your efforts pay off, but that’s the reward from the achievement.  There is also the joy that comes from being completely immersed in the activity.  So, OK, I can see it, maybe.

 

Enter Max DePree, the former chairman of furniture maker Herman Miller, and writer on leadership.  He says that people volunteer in non-profits because they want to do something, or develop some skill or talent, that they cannot develop anywhere else.  There’s the sense of community they derive, too, from people who share their values.  They have a chance to do things that matter, on a scale that makes a difference (sound familiar, former Monadnock School Board friends?).  His advice: give newcomers big, meaty, important projects.  They won’t let you down, and it’s what they’re there for.

 

That said, what I sense: Bill Clinton is still in it for Bill Clinton.  Jimmy Carter’s in it to make the world a better place.  Does Mr. Carter have an ego?  You bet.  But he subsumes it in his work, it seems to me, better than Mr. Clinton.  I respect them both, but I really respect Mr. Carter.

 

So, then, back to “sin.”  I struggle with the emotional baggage associated with the word.  Look at the seven Cardinal Sins, and you’ll see that they all describe egocentric personality defects.  Pride, Envy, Sloth, Greed, Lust, Gluttony, and Wrath, just to name them.  They’re all about what I’m doing in my own life, rather than serving others.  When I taught fourth grade, we explored the Norse Myths.  Loki, the Trickster God, was always getting some aspect of his personality out of whack, and from that he would go forth and cause mischief, or what some would call Evil.  “Loki woke up feeling jealous one morning, and decided to cut off the beautiful Sif’s hair.”  We explored how, in fact, Evil was within us, not external to us, and arose out of being self-centered.  It was within us, and could not be expelled.  Rather, we needed to recognize it and integrate it into our lives, where we could channel the energy into positive things.  Such musings were the precursor to this Dispatch.

 

I think we’re on to something here.  Evil is not some Thing out there.  We sometimes view it as such, but any such view is a construct we make that comes out of our collective culture, methinks.  Evil has no objective reality, only a subjective perception.  If anything, we’re looking for absolution from harboring evil within ourselves by hoping that evil is somewhere else, rather than in our own hearts and minds.  Not so.

 

An old Persian story has Satan being cast out of Heaven because he refused to put Man ahead of God, which God required of his Angels, of which Satan was one at the time.  Satan, the story goes, loved God so much that he couldn’t put anything in front of that love, and openly refused.  Whammo!  Cast out, forever  Hell, then, according to the story, is Satan, who longs every day to see his beloved, but no longer can.  Now that’s an interesting twist.  What does it say for the rest of us?

 

So, back to our main thread.  Evil resides in me.  Evil is a part of me no matter what.  The Christians believe Christ was perfect, I think, because he was able to scrub out all aspects of his ego, and live completely for others.  He wasn’t in it for himself at all.  Not a whit.  If the Christ impulse is to serve, then perfection is 100% perfect service.  Christians are told that they will not be perfect.  No one will achieve 100% service.

 

In a favorite book, “The Wizard of Earthsea,” author Ursula LeGuin does a masterful job of exploring good and evil.  Ged, our hero, is a young wizard who summons up an evil creature from the Underworld in a fit of pride during a contest with a rival student wizard.  The dark creature, faceless, hunts Ged, and twice almost defeats him.  Ged, escaping, takes refuge with his old master on the island of his birth.  Ged and his master talk long into the night about the evil creature, and Ged’s path.  His master suggests that perhaps instead of being hunted, Ged should turn and become the hunter.  Ged recoils from the idea, and asks why, but the master is silent.  They sleep.  In the morning, the master awakens to find Ged gone, with a simple message left behind: “Master, I go hunting.”

 

When Ged hunts the dark creature, it flees, and our hero gives chase.  With a friend on board a small sailboat, they track it across the vast ocean.  They meet it, and magically, Ged steps out of the boat onto what seems to be a beach.  He approaches the creature, and they square off.  In the book, to know something or someone’s true name is to have complete power over it or him.  The two point at each other, and both say Ged’s true name.  Ged’s friend sees this from a distance, and watches them “merge into one being.”  Ged had learned the true nature of the evil he had loosed – that it was part of himself, without which he was not whole.  And to name it gave him complete power over it.  Similarly, however, the evil side knew his true name, with the same resulting power. The two powers gave him complete power over a whole human being.  Yowza!  That lady can write.

 

So, it would seem, we mere mortals need both ego and service to be whole.  Christian “Forgiveness” anticipates this, I think, by allowing us to get past the idea that we are awful people because we have flaws.  “Yup,” sez God, “You’re flawed.  Always have been, always will be.  The flaws have to do with being too self-centered.  But y’know what?  S’okay, as long as you try to be better.  And while you’re at it, help others.  Help the planet.”  Or so it would seem, say the better Christian radio ministers.

 

Enter Aristotle.   Aristotle at this point would ask: “So, then, how do we imperfect beings achieve a proper balance between our own egos and the Christ impulse to serve?”  How do we achieve the mean between the extremes?  Where is that mean?  How do we balance the Self and the Other?

 

That’s a tough one.  Enter Jimmy Carter.  He would ask us to take an inventory of ourselves, and particularly our actions, to see how we stack up.  Chances are we’re pretty weak in the service category, and have focused mostly on ourselves and our own needs and desires.  We’re sinners, say the Christians, because we’re too self-centered, adds Rev. Bruce.

 

The Benedictines consider any guest as the possible coming of Christ.  Known for their kindness and hospitality, they get it right.  Remember: everything we encounter – the good, the bad, the beloved, the hated, is at the Center of the Universe.  To affirm it all is really the only choice.  Just might be Christ at the door, you never know.  That does not eliminate judgment, or liking or disliking.  It says that this is the reality that we have, and out of it we can choose the roadmap for how we live our lives.  Once we have decided that path, we make choices as we follow it.  Do we take ethical shortcuts?  Perform small evils to attain what we think is a higher good?  How do we treat those other Centers of the Universe who don’t follow our particular path?  Lance Armstrong encompasses all these in microcosm.  

 

Re-enter the Bauries.  Dick loved to cook, and gave the meats and vegetables (fruits, too, sometimes) of his labor as a gift to the world.  Pat is a very caring woman, who supported Dick (she chopped a lot of vegetables), and I suspect did most of the logistical work of finding families, making the contact, shopping for small gifts, etc.  A good team.  They were using their strengths, and especially in Dick’s case, what he loved, to give service to the world.

 

I enjoy cooking a lot, too, and am pretty good at it.  But I wouldn’t want to do it full-time.  To do what the Bauries’ did sounds like a way for me to play with pots, pans and ingredients, while doing something special.  Maybe more than just Thanksgiving and Christmas, too.  Make it a habit, so that it retains its specialness while not seeming too burdensome.  That, to me, begins to balance my personal ego needs, with giving service.  From my travels around the country, now eclipsing 15,000 miles (update: the final number was 39,583), I can assure you that I will not run out of families to help in my lifetime.

 

I am deeply committed to public education, and deeply concerned that the coming generations are prepared to meet the challenges and messes that my generation – including me – are leaving them.  In Maine, they’ve recently given all public schools report cards, A to F.  Now, while their Tea Party governor thinks the right solution is to take money away from failing schools (and that makes sense because…?), there are efforts underway to improve school performance on the cheap because Maine, like other states, has no money to throw at it.  Hey!  I know something about that!  With current longer-range plans having me settling here, my fantasy would be to call the Commish of Education in Maine and volunteer (from what I read, I’m not worried that it will all be solved in a year or so).  Volunteering would free me up to still substitute in the local high school, or even perhaps be an adjunct teacher.  I have an outline for a syllabus for a high school philosophy class (Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Bill James, how and why these guys’ ideas matter to teenagers – yum).  Doing both those things bring what I think are my strengths, values, and beliefs to the forefront.  I suspect I would derive deep joy, too.

 

The Hindus get some things right.  One is that they accept all of life – the good and the evil.  They affirm life with all its horrors.  You can’t pick and choose.  That’s hard.  But useful to think about.  Many don’t understand why God would create tornadoes, Alzheimer’s, and Sandy Hook.  Why would God allow such evil?  Well, I argue that we commit the sin of pride by claiming to understand the will of God, or in my chosen vocabulary, the purpose of the Universe.  Not to mention making implied and explicit judgments of God and the Universe.  If I am honest, I have no clue, nor should have, of the purpose behind things I perceive as incomprehensible evil.  The Infinite is beyond my understanding.  I cannot know it.  I can only accept it, and have faith in some ultimate purpose, or use the good and evil I see as the seeds of my own purpose.  I can see the things that seem to be evil, and try to act to correct them, if I can, or at least not let them become a part of my behavior.  Road rage.  Child abuse.  Pop Tarts.  Disco.

 

Perhaps the value of incomprehensible evil is that it makes faith necessary.  We have to give in, and have faith that there is a purpose behind what we perceive as evil.  There is a purpose behind Sandy Hook, cancer, and Las Vegas.  We cannot see that purpose, but we must have faith.  Perhaps in the struggle to rid the world of the evil we don’t understand, we validate the good by our actions.  I like the idea that the world is a better place because we are trying to make it better.  We don’t actually have to “accomplish” anything.  The world is better simply because we are trying.  The Buddhists have a great saying: “the value is in the activity, not in the accomplishment or the reward.”  Bingo.

 

A remarkably poor BBC radio interview in the wee hours talked with a man who had lost his wife to a brain hemorrhage (something to which I can relate, having survived one).  He had subsequently studied how to be happy.  He learned that eliminating those things that made you unhappy did not leave happiness as a leftover.  Instead, he said, with no time to elaborate, happiness comes from figuring out what you really want to do, writing that down, and then doing it.  Not waiting until tomorrow, but starting today.  Right now.  He had learned to be happy following that path.  Then the BBC ran out of time, with many questions swirling around in my brain.

 

But it makes sense. Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  Instead, Annie Dillard: “The way we spend our days is the way we live our lives.”  Find what you really want to do, and start doing it, today.  Goethe: “Whatever you can do, or dream that you can, begin it.  Boldness has power, genius, and magic in it.”  If you believe that you can dream big dreams, float them out in the Universe, and have them take on lives of their own.  I am witness to that, and will testify that it works.

 

“Hogwash,” a trusted adviser tells me.  “That “take on lives of their own” stuff is nonsense.  Look closely at your own experiences and tell me that you weren’t guiding what happened all along the way.”  Ulp.  She’s right.  And each time, it’s been a great ride.

 

We’re not done.

 

Jacob Needleman, in his book “The American Soul,” (a fantastic read, by the way!) talks about the “ancient wisdom” surrounding good and evil, taken from the great traditions of the world.  It squares with the Ursula LeGuin passage in my Dispatch: that we can’t be whole without integrating good and evil.  Needleman says that the real evil is preventing this integration from happening – keeping evil separate.  That leads to fear and violence, he says.

“…The lesson is surely that evil conceals itself in the heart of good and that we ourselves, in this very moment, are at least as asleep as we are awake.  Always and everywhere, the forces of the cosmos play themselves out.  Always and everywhere good is resisted by evil.  Our question is how to live so that a harmonizing, reconciling force can act to bring together the good and evil into a new and great creation, both within ourselves and in the world we live in.  For this, we first need great ideas and ideals that will enable us to become aware of both the good and the evil in life…[which] bring people and forces into relationship, rather than set forces and people apart from each other.”

The harmonizing, reconciling force.  Bring together good and evil into a new, great creation.  The Cosmic Dialectic, we’ll call it.  Bringing forces and people into relationship, rather than apart.  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Needleman continues:

“Morality becomes “moralism” when it imposes a sense of good and evil that diminishes the interconnectedness of life.  Certainly, there are things that must be destroyed, killed – but only for the purpose of allowing the whole to restore itself.Judgment that does not allow this restoration, judgment that keeps the good and evil away from each other is “moralism.”  It is often sanctimonious, self-righteous and, all too often, frightened and violent. The great wisdom has always seen the world as a fallen place partly because of this pervasive violence that seeks to destroy what it opposes without regard to objective law and justice.

“This teaching about the interdependence of “good” and “evil” is not to be found in the mainstream religious and ethical doctrines of European culture.  The religious and moral doctrines that are familiar to us almost without exception support the radical separation of the good (however it is understood) and the evil (that which resists the good).  Our moralism compels us to destroy.  More often than not, mainstream religious and ethical moralism crystallizes the separation between parts of reality – in the form of dualisms such as mind and body, spirit and matter, man and nature, life and death.  It is comfortable and habitual for the mind to perceive in this dualistic way.

“Beneath the surface of mainstream European religious and ethical moralism, however, there has always existed another teaching about the interconnectedness of good and evil, a teaching in which what is objectively good is the wholeness of reality, and what is objectively evil is that which holds the elements of life apart from one another.  In this teaching, exemplified in such “esoteric” doctrines as Kabbalism, alchemy, and Hermeticism, what appear to the mind as opposition and contradiction are understood to be elements of a unity that surpasses the habitual understanding of the ordinary mind.  This unity – this reconciling interconnectedness – may be called peace; the peace that passes understanding.

“The hidden doctrine of interconnectedness…teaches that evil rises because man has attempted to exclude the force of “evil” from his life and his awareness.  Wisdom teaches that when evil is so far separated off from good, its force grows and destroys the good in its unnatural isolation.  This is true within the individual…within the community and within the life of a people or nation…”

If Evil is within me, and is, in fact, the egocentric impulses, then I think Needleman makes a lot of sense.  In our society, the overwhelming rhetoric dodges our own responsibility when we mindlessly go about our business, focusing on ourselves rather than the collective good of all.  It’s easier to package Evil off somewhere else – making it somebody else’s problem.  Only that never gets to the only thing we can ever really do something about – ourselves.

Wendell Berry writes:

“The most important people in the Bible, in fact, from Abraham to Jesus, are not priests, but shepherds, soldiers, property owners, workers, housewives, queens and kings, menservants and maidservants, fishermen, prisoners, whores, and even bureaucrats.  The great visionary encounters did not take place in temples but in sheep pastures, in the desert, in the wilderness, on mountaintops, on the shores of rivers and the sea, in the middle of the sea, in prisons.  Religion, according to this view, is less to be celebrated in rituals in church than practiced in the world.

 

“Good work, therefore, honors God’s work.  Good work uses nothing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin.  It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love.  It honors nature as a great mystery and power, and as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands.  It does not disassociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty.  To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for.  This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God.

 

“I have been talking, of course, about a dualism that manifests itself in several ways: as a cleavage, a radical discontinuity, between Creator and creature, spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, worship and work, and so on.  This dualism, I think, is the most destructive disease that afflicts us.

 

“If we credit the Bible’s description of the relationship between the Creator and the Creation, then we cannot deny the spiritual importance of our economic life.  Then we must see how religious issues lead to issues of economy and how issues of economy lead to issues of art.  By “art” I mean all the ways humans make the things they need.  If we understand that no artist – no maker – can work except by reworking the works of the Creation, then we see that by our work we reveal what we think of the works of God.  How we take our lives from this world, how we work, what work we do, how well we use the materials we use, and what we do with them after we have used them – all these are questions of the highest and gravest religious significance.  In answering them we practice, or do not practice, our religion.

 

“If we think of ourselves as living souls living in the midst of a Creation that is mostly mysterious, and if we see that everything that we make or do cannot help but have an everlasting significance for ourselves, for others, and for the world, then …To use the gifts of Creation less than well is to dishonor them and their Giver.

“There is no material or subject in Creation that in using, we are excused from using well; there is no work in which we are excused from being able and responsible artists.”

 

Berry calls on us to see the interconnectedness of all things. No work in which we are excused from being able and responsible artists.

 

Needleman cites the peace that passes understanding, that requires the interconnectedness of good and evil.  So, if I can look within myself and find those things about which I care the most – for me, education and our children’s future – and set off to DO something about making them better, then I think I’ve lassoed my ego and the Christ Impulse into something that I can pursue with energy and dedication (I have personally banned myself from using the overused word “passion,” not gonna happen).  It’s not an obligation, it’s a calling (please refer to the prior dispatch on Jobs with a capital-J).  It gets to Prez. Bill’s idea of Selfish and Selfless being the same thing.

 

I like these ideas.  They require that we be present in this moment.  Life becomes a meditation.

 

The Cosmic Dialectic: The interconnection of good and evil that results in a synthesis surpassing either one, eliminating any notion of dualism.  The relationship is whole.

 

From the Thomas Gospel.  “The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the Earth,” said Jesus, “but men do not see it.”  Because most people don’t live in this moment?  That to experience Heaven spread upon the Earth requires meditation?  Enter the previously-mentioned Jon Kabat-Zinn, who advocates meditation as a means of experiencing this moment, right here, right now.  Or flip it: maybe experiencing here-and-now deeply can be called meditating.  Who cares how you get to that feeling of awareness?  I get there photographing, and that has been one of the great joys of the trip.  Every day has been magical, mostly because I have felt present in the moment as I look hard for, and make photographs.  Being present in the moment is a nice way to live.  I wish I were better at it, because it’s really hard to maintain that state.

 

One Universe, where good and evil are interconnected.  Where that understanding, that “vision” of interconnectedness – peace – may be as elusive as any picture of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics.   Where that which is beyond our understanding requires faith? 

 

As the Hindus believe, saying “Yes!” to all of it.  Affirming everything.  We are each the Center of the Universe.  No exceptions.  It is all Heaven.

 

The striving for a life of meditation, presence, with faith at the core, and service as the means.

 

Way good enough for my church.

 

Start small and practical.  Give service by picking up a piece of garbage and tossing it in the wastebin.  Want to make it real service? Pick up a cigarette butt.

 

I’m back in Maine, for good (“think of yourself as in between trips,” advises sister Karen).  They’ve logged the path of my driveway, construction begins in earnest on a small Writer’s Cabin next week.  I hope to be in it, writing, in April.

 

Count your blessings this Thanksgiving.  May the Multiverse hold you in good favor.

 

Best,

 

Bruce

Waves, Rain and Grist

Dateline: Charleston, Oregon  August 29, 2013

 

Waves.  After my respite in Maine, I decided – once again – to try to muster some self-discipline.  I arrived back in Seattle last Saturday night, and immediately resolved to park somewhere nice and re-establish Marga into touring shape – stow the fall clothing I had removed from the bag I took to Maine, stow the stuff I wear day-in and day-out from that bag to where I normally keep it.  Clean Marga, re-organize the stuff in the bins between the seats, toss the 4-week-old loaf of bread and get a fresh one, and a few more items.

 

It’s now Thursday, and I had yet to do any of that, except replace the bread.  And what does one say about a loaf of whole wheat bread that is five weeks old, not moldy, and still soft?  Nothing good, I think.  It was OK bread.  Not Dan’s Brick Oven Bread, a desem sourdough loaf of outstanding quality (and sorely missed), but it was good enough with WalMart  Natural Peanut Butter when it was young.  I’ll let you know if I sprout a new head from the preservatives in the new loaf.  It’s the same bread as what I tossed.  Safeway House Brand 8 Grain.

 

I had fantasized about finding a pretty place to park on the beach, waves crashing, and doing all my housekeeping while I watched the ocean. 

 

The Multiverse heard me, and gave me Charleston, Oregon, and Bastendorff Beach Park.  A pretty beach, nice waves, adequate, flat parking and a maximum stay of 24 hours.  No signs prohibiting camping, and besides, my version of camping is a parking space.  I’m checked in for the night.   I’ve been watching surfers in the four-foot breakers, and teenagers on boogie boards.  A lady my age parked behind me to take a walk on the beach and took a long look at my church signs.  She seemed skeptical. 

 

The rain came in, hard, with a wind blowing out to sea.  I had to trim the van’s windows to minimize the intrusion of spray.  Dark is closing in, and with no stars or lights around, it will be a dark night.  I had hoped for a sunset.

 

Before bunking in, it was off to the Harbor View Café, where I ate a generous helping of beer-batter fried local tuna and fresh-cut French fries.  My other variation of fish ‘n chips had been deep-fried salmon in Westport, Washington, which had been equally wonderful.  I can’t remember the last time I ate red meat.  Don’t remind me about deep frying the fish.

 

Then, it was off to Wally World to get an oil change and tire rotation. Marga just passed 30,000 miles since I bought it, and so 29,000 miles on the trip.  I like to make sure it’s well taken-care-of. 

 

Post-Wally, I went to Safeway, down the road, to check email and internet stuff from their parking lot.  Safeway has free wi-fi, too, bless them.  I got back to the beach about 5:00.  After the big tuna meal, I tucked into a piece of 8-grain bread with nutty butter for supper.  I’m trying to cut back on eating after a three-week gorge session in Maine.  Feeling porky.

 

I’m looking forward to falling asleep to the sound of the surf.  It’s going to be a good night.

 

Rain.  This morning, I awoke in the Sutton National Forest Campground to the sound of a light rain starting to tap on Marga’s Roof.  Looking at my watch by flashlight, it was 6:24.  Good enough, since I’d bunked in about 8 the night before.  It had sprinkled on and off all night. 

 

I noticed, tucked into a secluded space, just how dark it was.  It was really dark in the middle of the night.  Really dark.

 

Once on the road, I meandered, as I have done coming down the Oregon coast, pulling into every state park, wayside, National Forest, and National Recreation Area that promised a beach.  The Oregon Dunes National Seashore brought several such opportunities this morning in the rain, which varied from a light mist to torrential downpours.

 

Nevertheless, I fell into the photographic groove, making many pictures with the digital camera and my beloved Holga (a Holga costs $29, is made entirely of plastic, including lens, makes 2¼ inch square negatives that are sofl focused, vignette at the corners, and of varying exposure quality because it has no adjustments.  The subject matter of gnarly lichen and moss covered oak trees was perfect for the ethereal Holga quality (or, non-quality).  Add digital snaps that I can manipulate, and it was a photographer’s dream.  Or at least mine.  I don’t know what they look like yet, and won’t see proofs of the Holga’s film until I have a home with a darkroom, but that’s kinda not the point.  It’s wonderful to be in that groove – completely in the moment and snapping like a mad fool.  In other words, it was a lot of fun.  Joyful.  In the rain.

 

In the rain?  With homage to having had a bad hip for years, I have refined the technique of making pictures whilst still strapped into the driver’s seat.  Roll down the window and frame it up.  That came in handy this morning, with the van keeping the rain off the lenses.  Not to mention off me.

 

I teach that photographers always stand in the wrong place.  The trick is to stand as close to the right place as possible.  Do I feel guilty that I’m not standing?  Nope.

 

 

Grist.  While in Maine, I took all of the Dispatches and pasted them into one big Word file, and printed them with page numbers and a date stamp.  I did the same for all the files of notes I have transcribed from the recordings I make into a little digital recorder.  117 pages of Dispatches, 145 pages of transcribed notes.  Grist for the book, and I’m nowhere near done.  It’s encouraging, although I’ll be honest and say I couldn’t stomach reading through the notes when I tried.  That will take special effort, and I dream of doing it at my desk in my new house.

 

The notes will be challenging, but are more valuable than the Dispatches.  In them, I note what I want to research more and learn about, perhaps pontificating about it in the book.  Therefore, one line in the notes may imply several days’ work.  I also muse about things, and think out loud about directions for the book, themes, insights, revelations, and good lines.  The stream of my consciousness runs fast, and spills unglamorously over the rocks of my soul.  It’s healthy, and saying the difficult stuff out loud helps, and forces me to focus and be specific.

 

I don’t quite yet know what I’ll do with the Dispatches.  Someone suggested that I make them chapters of the book.  I don’t think so – they aren’t cohesive enough, and the stories they tell are, in some ways, peripheral.  I have themes that are emerging in my head, and in the recorder notes, that I haven’t written about in this forum.  These are the things I care about the most, and unless I shift the direction of the Dispatches to cover them, they wouldn’t fit into a Dispatches-only format.

 

I may punctuate the overarching narrative with Dispatches – give the reader a break, I say – and let everyone exhale a little.  Depending on the format, I could run Dispatches as sidebars, perhaps.  I have had a lot of fun writing them, and so I guess it would be a shame to leave them out.

 

Fortunately, I have a lot of time to think about this, and when the time comes, I’ll play with options.  I have great faith that the right format will present itself.  Back in olden times, Evan was filming his documentary about Swanzey.  “But I don’t know what the story is!” he would complain.

 

Have faith, I said, the story will emerge from the material, I replied.

 

We had this conversation  often, and he always looked at me skeptically.  Later, during editing, it did begin to emerge, and when mentor Erik Ewers saw a rough-cut, his suggestions crystallized the story.

 

With 145 pages of notes, so far, and anticipating well over 300 by the time I’m done, I suspect the hard task will be selecting.  Hard, but fun.  I envision my 30”x120” workspace top covered with Post-Its, in multiple colors, that I move around, group, remove, add, and watch the stories and themes that must be included assert themselves.  They’ll talk to me, I know.  I have faith/

 

Update – Friday morning.  A splendid night, listening to the surf, and sleeping oh-so-deeply.

 

Cheers!

 

Bruce

 

 

Aashiyana

Dateline: Westport Island, Maine, Saturday, August 17, 2013

“I should be suspicious

Of what I want.”

– Rumi

“Aashiyana” is a Sanskrit word that means “beautiful home.”  I found it with the online Sanskrit-English translator.  It is apparently a relatively popular girl’s name in Hindi.

It will be the name of my new home.

I took a break from Drifting a couple weeks back.  The way had gone stale, or I had.  Photographs weren’t coming, I was having trouble keeping in the moment, and it seemed like a veil covered the landscape.  I was distracted, merely going through the motions, and that’s not what the trip is supposed to be about.  It was time for a break, and I flew back to Maine for lobsters and R&R.  R&R from an extended vacation?  Go figure.

Then, a week or so ago, I made a long-procrastinated appointment to visit the folks at the Shelter Institute, here in close-by Woolwich.  I met with Blueberry to learn about their timberframe design and manufacturing services.  Unbeknownst to her, I had already made drawings and done a lot of thinking about the house I wanted to build. Shoot, I did that last winter in my little cabin.

Prior to my session with Blueberry, I had walked through a house for sale on Westport Island, which from an online search of MLS listings seemed interesting.  I’m in a tough category.  I want a small house – 1,500 square feet or so, single-level to anticipate my sinking into geezerhood, on the water – salt water, not a lake or river, nicely appointed, space for a darkroom  They don’t exist.  Waterfront lots typically have either 600 square foot uninsulated cottages, or 4,000 square foot mini-mansions with mansion price tags.  What I looked at was 1,900 square feet – big – and ultimately a little goofy in its design.  The main floor bathroom had a beefed-up shower curtain as a door.  Huh?  The living room was narrow, and with a wood stove in one direction and windows facing a lovely water view in the other.  It presented tough decisions on furniture and how to arrange it.  Living room as tennis court stands, with heads swinging back and forth.  The basement was a walk-out, and had a lovely space, but with its windows shaded by the wide deck above, it was dungeon-dark.  The kitchen in an otherwise nicely-built house was done on the cheap, with poor cabinets and crummy laminate countertops.  Why?  And the killer: no space for a darkroom.  Back to the drawing board, literally.

Blueberry and I bonded – she is a knowledgeable, no-nonsense mom of two girls, and daughter of the founder of the Shelter Institute, which has classes in timberframe building, a store of fine tools, a real-estate agency, a big shop where they fabricate posts and beams, and more.  They have been around since the early 70s, and survived all of the bumps in the real estate world.  We have agreed that she will do all the worrying – she is predisposed to do that, while I am more trusting in the Multiverse.  We’re a good team for this project.

We agreed that the next step should be for me to plunk $500 on a design consultation with their two guys, Gaius, her brother, and Ethan, their engineer, to draw plans for my abode, on which they could put prices.  Three days later, I spent 2½ hours with the two guys, and we developed plans for my 30×48 ranch-style timberframe, including window selection and placement.  Gaius suggested, after hearing stories of my trip, that I should have a radio show just to tell stories.  Little did he know about these Dispatches.

OK, house designed.  But where to put it?  I had been doing internet searches of vacant land, and toured in my rented Toyota Yaris (plenty of interior room, but I’ll tell you, friends, it doesn’t drive at all like Marga the Chevy Van, and therein were a few times of panic and peril when I first got it.  I mean, you turn the wheel just a little, and it goes there.  Marga thinks about it for a minute, and then slowly, lumberingly, responds).

My dream parcel, which I looked at, was a little cottage on a larger parcel down by the water, surrounded by mature trees.  Subdivide it from the rest of the mess that was for sale, bulldoze, and build.

To make a long story only slightly shorter, Maine coastal regulations say that I can’t do that.  I can only make the 300-square-foot cottage 30% larger, or bulldoze and build much farther from the water, which wasn’t in a good spot.  The owners were crazy, too, and when I actually put in an offer for a subdivided parcel, their realtor laughed.  Not nice.  She said they had turned down a somewhat similar offer for a third more money than I had offered, because the family members in this estate sale thought that the whole property was worth at least twice the entire asking price.  Not likely, and that it has been for sale for over a year at their pauper’s-valuation gives some evidence that they are delusional.  Punch line: the realtor is apparently one of the heirs.  Moral: Don’t die and leave your heirs land.  They will cease to be rational.

So, on to choice number two.  3.4 acres on Westport Island, 4.5 miles south of Route 1, facing the Back River, a wide salt-waterish body.  315 feet of waterfront, 420 feet deep, covered with mostly hemlocks and oaks.  When I walked it, it was lovely.  Westport setback requirements are 75 feet from the water, the building spot I found looks to be about 150’, so no worries.  The listing had a septic system design from 2002, so that hurdle looked cleared.  There is a right-of-way for a driveway through the parcel behind it to take me out to Route 144, the main drag down the island.  I found an Osprey feather where I plan to build the house, the parcel is full of wild Blueberry bushes (remember her?), and there are also, friends of the Multiverse, wild raspberries.  In addition to all those signs, I remembered that I really wanted a little house in the woods, too.  This land gives me both.  It is ideal.  Fruit included.

Condensing this fascinating narrative, I have a contract on it.  After proper inspections and a new septic design to clear off the contingencies (can you believe that government regulations about septic systems near the coastline have changed in 11 years!  Amazing!  More guvmint interference in our lives!),  I will close on it sometime between now and September 26.  I suggested to Blueberry that I hear Christmas bells for being in my new house by then, and she smiles and says that January is more likely.

Maybe.  On the other hand, with the peace of mind of a future path, I can re-focus on the trip.  After all, the Pacific Coast has long been fantasized as the highlight of the trip, with Drifting around northern California also of special value.  I want to be here for construction, in order to supervise, photograph, and lend a hand where I can.  The timberframe and sheathing will go up in about three or four days, and I for sure don’t want to miss that.  Therefore, timing is a matter of deep thought right now, and I may just delay construction through the winter to have time to do the trip right, and then be here while my home is made next Spring.  Thoughts, anyone?

Oh, yeah, the Pacific Coast.  For about four years, I have had a fantasy of living in Long Beach, Washington.  I was going to run away from home, live in a driftwood hut on the beach with a bunch of my good friends, who, of course, were going to drop everything in their lives to squat on a beach in Washington State.  We were going to play volleyball every day, and at night, we’d line up near water’s edge to watch the sunset while sucking Tootsie Roll Pops with our hands clasped behind our backs, rocking up and down onto the balls of our feet.  We would live an idyllic, irresponsible life.

Now, when this fantasy intersects reality, the first thing we look at is how many cloudy days Long Beach, Washington has each year (a lot), the average temperature (mid 50s, I think), the amount of rainfall (measured in buckets), and the wind off the ocean (strong, consistent, including the occasional gale warning).  So just on paper, Long Beach and a vagabond life of beach volleyball is a complete bust.

Then, I went there.  Bunked into an expensive Super 8 in not all that great a shape, wandered down to a restaurant, where I ate an oyster burger (oysters being a famed local crop), garlic fries, and a pint of local beer.  I got mild food poisoning.  The following morning, I drove out onto the beach, to find it driftwood-less, and full of signs telling me to get my goddam van off the sand.  Well, I’d driven a few beaches farther north, and knew to look for wet sand to turn around on, because it was packed and I wouldn’t get stuck.  Wrong.  Marga, even with Traction Stabilization, dug in and spun its wheels.  Climbing out and approaching a woman with four sturdy teenage girls, I asked for a push.  Mom flatly refused.  Refused.  Said explicitly that she “would not help.”  The first such case in 27,000 miles of human interaction.  She pointed at the next group of people and told me to go ask them.  I thanked her for her kindness, and sure enough, the next couple came, and inside of 30 seconds, I was back on solid sand and leaving Long Beach, Washington, as fast as I could.  The Multiverse had given me many, many signs that Long Beach was not the place to spend the rest of my days.  Even with Tootsie Roll Pops.

I flew out of Seattle a day later, having gotten a pretty good fare on Southwest from there to Manchester, New Hampshire, where I rented the little Yaris pocket-rocket for a good rate.  On to Maine.  Lobster dinner accomplished, house plans accomplished, land almost accomplished, pending a walk-about with the local code enforcement guy to ensure that it is a buildable lot.  I have a call in to him, as yet unreturned, to schedule the walk-about.  My new septic design will be scoped Tuesday.  The driveway, septic-installer, foundation-digger will meet me Wednesday.  I think I’ll get back to Seattle late in the week, or after the weekend, to resume Drifting.  I feel ready.

Well, it seemed the way opened to plan to settle on Westport Island, in Maine.  While I had hoped merely to connect with the Shelter Institute, the actuality exceeded the scope by a lot.  Yet it all fell together quickly, and so far, wonderfully.  Heat Moon has something in his guiding advice to me (“Proceed as the way opens”).

So does Rumi.  None of this would have happened if I hadn’t wanted R&R, if Drifting had not gone stale.  The Multiverse is a terrific place, but then, as I’ve said, it’s the only Multiverse we have.  And I have raspberries on my land.

I hope all of you are enjoying the summer.

Cheers!

Bruce

A Cosmic Primer

“His writing is interesting,” Friend Wendy’s mother, JoJo, told her.  “But I don’t understand it.”

A valid point.  Let’s do a primer on the Multiverse.

We live on planet Earth, a third-rate planet revolving around a third-rate star in a remote part of the Milky Way galaxy.  OK, everybody knows that the Earth revolves around the sun, right?  Don’t be too cocky, in a recent survey, 49% of Earthlings didn’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun.  Fortunately, majority ruled.

Earth is a relatively non-descript planet.  It formed from a giant cloud of dust that had been ejected by the explosions of multiple stars. Dust consisting of all the elements that we remember from the periodic table and high school chemistry, like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, and so forth.  All these elements were created in the interiors of stars that exploded – what we call supernovas.  The gravitational attraction of all the dust made the dust come together and become more and more dense, until it condensed into a solid ball with, as it turns out in our case, a molten iron core.  That’s our planet.  Stars died in massive explosions so that Earth could exist.  So that we could exist.

Earth revolves around the sun at a distance of 93 million miles.  Fortunately for us, that is precisely the distance needed to give us the climate we have.  Venus, closer to the sun, is wicked hot, because it’s closer, and because there is a horrific greenhouse effect on Venus.  Mars is farther away, and a bit chilly for our tastes.  Earth is juuuust right.

Earth revolves around its axis, giving us day and night.  The rate of rotation keeps us from being too hot or too cold – juuust right.  Know why we have seasons?  Because relative to the sun our rotation is cockeyed – at a tilt of about 23 degrees.  So when it’s summer in America, and the sun is higher in the sky, it’s winter in Australia, with the sun lower in the sky, and vise versa when the seasons are reversed.  It is NOT, as many Earthlings believe, because we are closer to the sun in summer.  When the sun is higher in the sky, it has less air to penetrate, and so it’s warmer.  In winter, with more air to penetrate, it’s colder.  Varying the distance from the sun has nothing to do with it.

The sun revolves around the core of the Milky Way galaxy, and takes a long time to go all the way around.  The sun is one of 100 billion – that’s 100,000,000,000 – stars in our galaxy.  Many of them are near the galactic center.  We like the galactic center, because scientists have found large quantities of Ethyl Formate, the chemical that makes raspberries taste like raspberries, in the center of the galaxy.  Hence the phrase “Taste the Raspberry Universe.”  Scientists have also calculated that the Universe has a color, too, that is a light cream hue.  In a contest, the scientists named it “Cosmic Latte.”  Cool.  Don’t know if the winner got a cash prize – Star Bucks??

Our galaxy is one of a cluster of galaxies – galaxies tend to form clusters from gravitational attraction to each other.  In fact, we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, which currently is about 2 million light-years away.  (Note: a light-year is the distance it takes for light to travel for one year at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.  That’s about 6 trillion miles.)  If you want to worry about it, we’re scheduled to collide with Andromeda in about 10 billion years.  It won’t keep me awake worrying.

I hear two numbers for the number of galaxies in the universe.  I read 100 billion, and I read 200 billion.  Either way, it’s a lot.  If you hold your hand at arm’s length and stick your thumb up to the night sky, your thumbnail is obscuring about 100,000 galaxies from view.  One thumbnail.  The Hubble telescope has made pictures of a slice of the night sky smaller than your thumb, and there are more galaxies in the picture than you can count.  Love that Hubble.

Now, the accepted view is that the universe was created about 13.72 billion years ago by an explosion of unbelievable magnitude.  The Big Bang.  At that time, one view says that all the matter in the universe was contained in a space so small we can’t conceive of it – 10 to the minus 23^rd power centimeters, known as the Planck Distance.  Think of a decimal point, 23 zeroes, and a 1-slice of less than an inch.  That’s pretty small.  It exploded into the universe in a tiny, tiny fraction of a second.  Another, more recent idea, holds that empty space isn’t really empty, but rather contains energy.  Since Einstein told us that matter is energy in another form, this idea says that the entire universe could have been created from empty space that burped into the universe that we see, and the complex physics behind it says that it might just be possible.  That’s all we really need to know for this Dispatch, which is good, because I’ve read the chapter in the book that explains the basic idea 4 times, and I still don’t understand it.  It has something to do with frozen beer bottles exploding when you open them.  Huh?

That said, the burping has to do with Quantum Mechanics, which is the science of the very, very small.  It’s where physicists talk about quarks, and the Higgs Boson.  The math supports the idea that there was a burp involving the very, very small in space empty of everything except energy, and voila!  The universe.  Energy changed into matter, sort of, and we got all we have.  Hence, the Quantum Burp!

When the universe was formed, it was very hot, and a lot of tiny particles like protons, neutrons, and electrons were swimming around.  When it cooled off enough, after 100,000 years or so, protons and electrons could form bonds, and create hydrogen, helium, and a little lithium.  But that was it.  Gobs of hydrogen, under the force of gravity, came together until the gravitational attraction was so intense that the hydrogen atoms fused together into helium, giving off an incredible amount of energy, and forming stars.  We do this on Earth when we explode a hydrogen bomb.  Think of the sun as millions of hydrogen bombs exploding every second.  The sun stays its size because the explosion from hydrogen fusing together is balanced by the gravitational attraction of so much hydrogen.  That’s what stars are all about.

Stars the size of our sun, when they run out of hydrogen fuel, will swell into what are called Red Giants, where, in our case, the sun will swallow the Earth as it expands.  It will be a Red Giant for a couple million years, and then collapse into a White Dwarf, a small, hot ball not much bigger than the Earth.  The Red Giant part is on the calendar for about 5 billion years from now.  No need to buy extra Coppertone right away.

But, you see, all stars are not the same size.  When a star is roughly 10 times the size of our sun, there is no Red Giant stage.  Instead, the star explodes in the universes’ largest detonation, the supernova.  Astronomers calculate that a supernova happens in our galaxy about once every 100 years or so.  When a big star explodes, two things happen.  First, it ejects huge amounts of “dust” consisting of the elements heavier than lithium – those which make up the bulk of our plant – especially carbon, oxygen and nitrogen.  The other thing that often happens is that the leftover matter collapses under gravity so strong that not even light can escape.  We call that a Black Hole.  Black Holes are cool, but that’s a subject for another Dispatch.  Or maybe not.

So if supernovas are the source of all elements heavier than lithium, just for the record there have been about 200 million supernovas just in our Milky Way galaxy.  That’s why, thinking of yourself, you are made of stardust – the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, and other trace stuff came from long-ago supernovas, and in fact the stuff in your right hand is likely from a different exploding star than the stuff in your left.  Stars Died So That You Could Live.

But it all gets weirder.  The next frontier in particle physics beyond Quantum Mechanics is called String Theory, or sometimes Superstring Theory.  In Superstring Theory, the math works when we imagine a universe of eleven dimensions, including time.  We experience four, including time.  The esoteric ideas go on, and the math supports, the notion that there may be multiple universes – as many as 10 followed by 120 zeroes multiple universes.  St. Brian Greene, when explaining the implications, notes that with that many universes, at least one is exactly like this one.  So remember that the next time you’re singing in the shower – it may be at least a duet.  And dare I mention sex?  It becomes a group activity in a Multiverse.

The Quantum Burp idea, promulgated by St. Lawrence Krauss, implies that there may be as many as 10 followed by 500 zeroes alternate universes.  Even more than Superstring theory.  Uff da, as we Norwegians say, that’s a lot.  Think of a quartet or a quintet in the shower, and an orgy, of sorts.

St. Brian Greene talks of all these universes as being imagined as a Cosmic Bubble Bath, where each universe is a separate bubble.  Let me imagine myself with all of the beautiful wimmin in the world sharing the Cosmic Bubble Bath.  Cosmic Bliss.

Enter St, Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He notes that there is more gravity in our universe than can be explained by the amount of matter.  He also notes that the math of multiple universes supports the idea that gravity may be able to be felt between universes.  We may be feeling the gravity from another universe.  Cool.  This notion prompted the earlier Dispatch titled “A Consensual Universe?”

So here we are.  Stardust.  In a universe that tastes like raspberries, and looks like latte.  A part of a bubble bath of an incredible number of alternate universes, whose gravity may be shared.  Not just a Uni-verse.  Maybe part of a Multi-verse.

Feeling small?  We are pretty small stuff in something so large.  I’m a blob of protoplasm inhabiting a third-rate planet revolving around a third-rate star in an average galaxy that is one of 100 billion galaxies in a universe that might be one of more universes than certainly can be imagined.  So what do I do?  Well, my question to the likes of Krauss, Greene and Tyson is: “When did the creation of our universe end?”  What date and time?  I don’t think there is one.  The Creation Is, not was.  It’s still going on and we each have a role to play, for better or worse.  I don’t think my life has meaning beyond what I make while living it.  I play a role in the ongoing creation, and to the extent that I can make that role meaningful for me, then it is enough for one man.  As part of it, the best that I can do is to live fully in this moment.  I am finding that to be more difficult than I thought.

So that’s the Cosmic Primer, dear friends.  I hope it has made some sense.  Enjoy the Multiverse; it’s the only one we have.

Sing loud in that shower!

Bruce

Morning Coffee

Dateline: Olympic National Park, Mora Campground

It’s a bummer that the otherwise-nice campgrounds in the National Parks typically don’t have showers.  Running-water bathrooms, but no showers.  I have only found showers in the big visitor center at the north end of Grand Teton.

 

The campsites here at Mora are self-service.  You pick one that is vacant, leave something as a marker, go to the self-registration area at the bathroom, fill out an envelope and put $12 for each night in it, detach the receipt and put it in the display area that has little numbered windows corresponding to the sites, and you’re the renter.

 

I did just that, carefully stalking number 65, and putting my folding chair in it while I registered and made a short jaunt to the beach.  When I got back, someone had carefully moved my chair, and parked a large pickup in my site.  A trespasser.  He immediately came over from the adjoining site.

 

“I left my chair here,” I said.

 

“We had this space last night.”

 

“It wasn’t registered.  The window was clear of a receipt.  There wasn’t anything here.”

 

“They must have taken the receipt out this morning.”  Meaning: he didn’t pay for it, he just overflowed and mooched it for free.  An uncharitable thought, but likely accurate.

 

“It wasn’t registered, and there was no trace of anyone here.”

 

“We had this space last night.”

 

“I paid for it.”

 

“I’ll need to go find another space.”

 

Silence.

 

“Do you want it?”  He asked, with annoyance.

 

I nodded.  He almost spun dirt driving out.

 

He sent his young son to terrorize me with his remote-control pickup truck later when I was trying – unsuccessfully – to nap in the back of the van with the doors open.  Dad came over to loudly inform son that they no longer had this space.

 

“Yes we do!” shouted the boy in return.

 

Hey, ya know, I followed the rules, did what they told me to do, and rented the site.

 

It was 4 o’clock when I got bored in the van and rolled out to pull my stove and other bits and make some instant coffee.  I sat sipping in my chair, reading Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Storey Mountain” for a couple hours in the progressively-chilly late afternoon.  I listened to military planes – probably fighters – maneuvering low and nearby.  How did I know they were military?  Military jets are not built to be quiet.  

 

The ground shook, and they were not all that nearby.  Probably out of McChord, an airbase south of Seattle.

 

About six, I retreated to the passenger seat of the van to write the Cosmic Primer dispatch, not yet sent.  You’re all in tough shape now, because AOL created a Distribution List of all of you.  Formerly, every time I sent out a Dispatch, I put in each e-mail address in the “bcc,” which took, it felt, as long as writing the piece itself.

 

Oh good, someone’s car alarm is going off at 6:50 a.m.

 

Back to our exciting news.  A Distribution List will let me send these missives with the mere push of a button!  The boy comes into the 20^thCentury!  I don’t actually give him much hope, but at least he’s a little better off than he was.

 

Steinbeck traveled in 1958 for “Travels with Charley” because, he felt, he had lost his ear for American speech patterns, and it hurt his writing.  He went to freshen his ear with America’s speech.  Two years later he would win the Nobel Prize, so I’m guessing he wasn’t hurt that much. 

 

Trivia question: For which book did he win the Nobel?  “Grapes of Wrath”?  Buzz!  Wrong! He won for “The Winter of Our Discontent.”  I learned that from the hippie owner of a nice little café in St. Ignace, Michigan, who had made the pilgrimage to Salinas to see the Steinbeck Museum and the pickup Steinbeck drove, driving his own psychedelic-painted van, now decorating his café parking lot.  He did not mention if they had stuffed Charlie, the poodle, as Roy Rogers did Trigger and Bullet.

 

Heat Moon collected people’s stories as he traveled, with an uncanny knack for getting into interesting conversations in little bars in small towns. As one reviewer wrote: “He has a knack for catching people at their best.”  His book is about people, and the richness he finds in their stories.

 

Well, I’m travelling like Steinbeck and Heat Moon did, and there’s a book here, somewhere.

 

Now at the 27,000 mile point, I’ve had a lot of time to think about directions for my book.  I keep coming back to the idea that I’m on three journeys.  A journey of the mind, where I’m rediscovering America, its places and its people.  America, in my direct experience, is not what we see and hear in the news and on TV, and it is certainly not what it was when I was travelling in the business world or for pleasure.  America, to me, has changed a lot since I first moved to New Hampshire in 1999.  It most certainly is not what Steinbeck and Heat Moon found when they travelled in 1958 and 1978.  So writing about what I see, and what, to me, has changed, is worthwhile, methinks.

 

Second, there is the actual journey itself.  How I go about it, where I go, what I do, how I decide to go somewhere, the getting there.  Previous Dispatches have talked about the differences between my trip and those of who went before.  Cell phones, the internet, back roads, chain motels beyond Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson’s, interstates, microwaves, campgrounds, WalMart parking lots.  There is a lot, and it defines the character of the physical trip.  That’s worth writing about, because it reflects the ideas about a changed America.

 

And there’s me.  Having been told by a much-trusted adviser that who I really am isn’t who I think I am, then who am I?  The trip is a way of rediscovering myself, learning who I am, and thinking about who I want to be, during a period when I can become whomever I want, within the practical limits of self-discipline and ego.  So, rediscovering myself, using others as mirrors into myself, and using the way I manage the trip, is at the core of how I got here in the first place, and at the core of rediscovering who Bruce is.

 

So, dear friends, three journeys: one of the mind, one of the body, and one of, well, the spirit.  Or as I taught in Waldorf and still use in photography workshops: Head, Hands, and Heart.  With luck and not a little skill, my book will tell these three stories, weave them together, as they surely are woven, and balance them in a way that I hope entertains the masses.  I suspect I’ll need a good editor.  Remember, the goal is to be on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR, and be on Stephen Colbert’s program.

 

Heh heh.  3 journeys means nothing but trouble, however.  The immediate and obvious question: When did each journey start?  Did the journey of the mind start March 3, 2013, or in 1982 when I read “Blue Highways” and said “Someday I’ll do that!”  Did it start in November, 2012, when I resumed regular cruises with camera ready, and enjoyed a revolution in my photography?  When good friend John Bowen advised me that this was the moment to look at my bucket list, and do it?  Did the journey of the body start with those photography trips, which became regular Sundays on the road during the divorce process?  Did it start with my trip to Ukraine, rekindling a long-lost sense of adventure?  Did it start July 28^th, when I left Honey Hill for the last time, and drove 800 miles in one day?  Or when I rented the cabin in Maine, to wait out hip surgery and winter’s months?  Or on March 3^rd, when I spent my first chilly night on the road, parked in the Cheshire Medical Center parking lot?

 

And what about the trip of the heart?  March 3?  The Saturday in February 2012 when Victoria announced that she wanted a divorce?  Years prior?  When I was recovering from my intracranial hemorrhage in 2001, wondering why I had been spared?  When I was in Junior High, and first started noticing my mother’s behavior, and remembering slamming dresser drawers in frustration because I didn’t understand why I felt so insecure at home?  When a woman at the Zone VI Workshop, a counselor in Homer, Alaska, told me that my mother was an alcoholic, and then described me almost perfectly?  When I first heard of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Vietnam veterans in the early 80s, and thought that the symptoms described me perfectly?  Where does that story properly begin?

 

No need to decide on beginnings now.  But I am aware of the possibilities, and ruminate as the miles roll on.

 

Steinbeck, in a bitter few pages at the end of “Travels with Charley,” laments that he failed in his objective for his entire trip.  Good to keep in mind.  But the book still got published.  Well, he was John Steinbeck…

 

In the meantime, I fixed my left rear turn signal bulb here at the campsite.  Smart boy, I had Googled it, and watched a video of a guy doing it on precisely my van – a 2012 Chevy Express – so I knew what to do, and did it with not a little panache, and even more self-satisfaction. 

 

Enough for this morning.  Time to clean up the campsite, visit the restroom, and head off.  More Washington beaches ahead, with their large collections of driftwood (in the form of entire trees, bleached white and stacked by the waves and tide).  The sand is mostly by the water, round stones making up the rest.  All the sand and stones are, to us photographers, 18% gray, or middle gray.  Not the light brown or Cosmic Latte tones of other beaches.

 

Taste the Raspberry Multiverse, everybody!

 

Bruce

The Cosmic Garbage Dump

I have been watching videos of St. Lawrence Krauss on YouTube.

 

In the latest one I watched, he talked about Dark Matter and Dark Energy in our particular bubble of the Multiverse.  Dark Matter and Dark Energy are predicted by cosmological math, and in interesting ways have been measured in our corner of the Cosmic Bubble Bath.  We don’t really understand either, and have not really “seen” either directly.  They’re everywhere, however, even passing through your body right now.

 

He talked about the behavior of gravity in empty space.  In empty space, gravity takes on a repulsive, rather than attractive, character.  St. Albert Einstein predicted it, so it must be true, and appears to be.  So, quoth St. Lawrence:  “As all high school physics students know, Gravity Sucks.  But, when it’s repulsive, it Blows.”  That accounts for the measurements that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, rather than slowing down. 

 

St. Lawrence tells us that the future is miserable, since as the Universal expansion continues to accelerate, there will come a time when all of the other galaxies that we see will disappear, having moved away from us faster than the speed of light.  Faster than light, you ask?  You thought nothing could exceed the speed of light.  True, says St. Lawrence, in space, nothing can exceed the speed of light.  But the acceleration of the Universal expansion is the acceleration of the expansion of space itself.  “And space can do whatever the hell it wants,” says St. Lawrence.  When all the galaxies disappear in about ten trillion years, we’ll be alone, and the physicists of that time will have no way to learn about the Quantum Burp, or the size of the Universe, or pretty much anything cosmological.  They’ll have only our galaxy, as was true before Edwin Hubble discovered the existence of other galaxies in the 1920s.  Hubble and I graduated from the same high school, as a passing point of trivia.

 

He went on to say that the measurements and the math tell us that 30% of the stuff in our bubble is Dark Matter, and 70% is Dark Energy, neither of which have we observed, or know much about.  Wait a minute!  70% + 30% = 100%.  Even I can do that math, as a humanities major (I have, as you may suspect, a BS in Speech…).

 

Yup, says St. Lawrence, the Stuff that we see and measure in our Universe constitutes less than 1% of all the Stuff in the Universe.  Most of the Universal Stuff is Dark Stuff.  So, he concludes, first off, you should feel even more inconsequential than you did before.  Second, our Stuff in this bubble of the Multiverse is little more than Cosmic Garbage.  We are, effectively, the Cosmic Garbage Dump.  Our part of our bubble in the Cosmic Bubble Bath is the cesspool.  The septic tank.  Feeling better?

 

Coming back to a gravity that both blows and sucks, it seems that we can conclude that if gravity sucks between bubbles of the Multiverse, then it also blows between them.  In another Dispatch, I talked of our Universe being consensual, exchanging unprotected Gravity with other Universes.  But now, with the adoption of the concept of the Multiverse, isn’t exchanging unprotected gravity between parts of the same entity merely self-abuse?

 

Stay tuned.  St. Lawrence has hinted that he may be near a breakthrough in our understanding of Dark Energy.  He’s writing a paper and the way the math works seems too good to be true.  “Unfortunately,” he cautions, “Things that look too good to be true usually are.”

 

Not to leave you feeling hopeless, St. Lawrence talks about how this Universe is perfect, obviously, to support human life.  “It must be,” he says, “Or else we wouldn’t be here.”  He also says that we are here precisely at the right moment to do the physics and make the observations we are making to understand the origin of the Multiverse, and how it came to be the way that it is.  The Anthropic Principle, he cites.  Remember that you heard it here first.

 

St. Lawrence is a rock star – articulate, funny, and compelling.  He’s also an anti-theist.  I wonder how he’ll react to learning that he is a Saint in his own time?

 

Cosmic Bubbles, Cosmic Garbage, Cosmic Self Abuse.  You’d think that was enough…but…

 

Breaking News!  Son Evan forwarded me the link to WikiPedia that talks about how scientists have labeled the color of the Universe “Cosmic Latte”!  It seems that when they measured the different light we receive from space, and matched it to the visible spectrum, it turned out to be whitish-beige.  This is a big deal, because they used to think it was pale green.  After a contest to name it, the winner was “Cosmic Latte,” which was thought up by a scientist while sitting in a Starbucks’. 

 

Ain’t the Multiverse grand?

 

The Multiverse, the Cosmic Symphony, and the Cosmic Bubble Bath

My Sunday morning started off poorly.  My Google Chrome web browser had been hijacked by the “searchiu” virus, and my cell phone was farting at me, rather than making its usual beeps and boops.  Then “Ask.com” intervened on my browser and prevented me from doing any web surfing with the bogus “searchiu.”  Electronic Hell.

Going to Google Chrome “Settings” and deleting the malware browsers fixed (I think) that problem, and turning off and on my phone seemed to fix that as well, my phone returning to its typical annoying cheerfulness.

My phone gets tired, I think.  When left around, it fades down to one bar, or no bars, of AT&T service.  But if I shut it off and restart it, I get four bars.  Go figure.  Next time I’m in civilization that has an AT&T store, I’m taking it in to ask.  For the time being, however, it’s survivable.

While more coffee than usual helped, nevertheless I was in a foul mood.

But as we know, dear friends, the Universe seems to always give me what I need.  A foray into the TED.com site found this talk by St. Brian Greene.  It is the most cogent, easy-to-understand, and compelling explanation of a lot of sophisticated ideas that are core to the Church of the Quantum Burp that I have found:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_greene_why_is_our_universe_fine_tuned_for_life.html

Ohmygosh!  Where to start?

First of all, the Church of the Quantum Burp no longer celebrates the Universe.  We now celebrate the Multiverse!  We’ll accept the idea that there really are 10-to-the-140^th power universes, as the superstring theory math predicts.  So the now Religiously-Correct term, at least for my church, is Multiverse.  Religious Correctness is important.

Second, it’s really romantic to think that, if tiny vibrating strings make up the quarks that make up the subatomic particles that make up atoms that make up matter, then the Multiverse is made of music.  The Musical Multiverse! The vibrations of the strings constitute the Cosmic Symphony, of which we are all a part.  Beethoven’s got nothing on the Multiverse.  Neither does country music, to be sure.  I want to be a Cosmic Cello!

Finally, St. Brian describes the situation as being that we are one Universe in a Cosmic “Bubble Bath” of Universes, where each Universe is a bubble.  Now, as previously stated, I’m not in the church biz for the money, I’m in it for the chicks.  Didn’t St. Brian just hand us guys the best line ever created?  “Hey, Baby!  You know we’re already sharing the Cosmic Bubble Bath!  How ‘bout holding my hand?”  Too tough to refuse, eh ladies?  Makes you just want to melt into the Multiverse?  As a way to escape, maybe.  Submerge, like John Lennon in “A Hard Day’s Night” as he plays with his toy U-Boat.

Finally, St. Brian leaves a hole for faith big enough to launch a Saturn rocket through.  This Universe that we live in is precisely tuned to allow us to exist.  The slightest change to any of about 20 key formulas that govern our Universe would change the universe enough to keep us from existing as humans.  The Anthropic Principal, as it’s known.  Who made our Universe exactly this way?  Well, if we grant that there are 10-to-the 120^th power universes, we could be here by chance.  Or, many would argue, there was another agent at work to allow us to be here, now.  That is an issue of faith.

I listened to a lecture that finally let me understand Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.  In it, Kant says that we can have absolute knowledge only of what we experience directly.  So anything beyond our direct experience, like the Big Bang, the Multiverse, or the Cosmic Symphony, we can never have real knowledge about.  We can only have theories.  Kant, a religious man, later said: “I had to limit knowledge in order to leave room for faith.”  We’ll have to think about that, since we acknowledge that Kant was a pretty smart guy.

We’ll keep this Dispatch short.  Enjoy the Multiverse, it’s the only ones we have.  Get some champagne, listen to the Cosmic Symphony and splash around in the Cosmic Bubble Bath.  Hum a few bars, maybe.  And remember that in my church, we celebrate, rather than worship.  So celebrate it all!

Cheers from Door County, Wisconsin.  Come to Fyr Bal in Ephraim next weekend.  Bonfires and fireworks in the Scandinavian celebration of the beginning of summer Saturday night.

Sunday Morning Evangelism

I just watched this.  The best explanation I have seen.

http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_greene_why_is_our_universe_fine_tuned_for_life.html

Enjoy the Multiverse.

New Old Stuff

A page of PDFs of old photography articles, published and unpublished, is now available at http://www.bwbarlow.wordpress.com.