Conceits
(the text)

1.

I will outlast the sun. I will outlast all the suns and all the stars, all the nights and all the days of earth. My infinite spirit is in infinite particles and blown through infinite space with a presence mortal men can never know. I will race through time into the finiteness of infinity where there is no measure.

Being is an earthling’s concern. It is important to us who by living know but not when we will die in human terms. Human beings we define as special because we have decided they are in a state of intelligent conscious being.

We are deluded by a preposterous and outrageous presumption. Human life, we believe, is unique in the cosmos. Although we acknowledge the possible existence of others and perhaps their greater or lesser intelligence it is our beginning notion of so called intelligent life that initiates this thought and brings it forward to a state of reality as we define it.

Consider this:

Human life is a cosmic accident – a slippage that is corrected by death.

Death is a cosmic fix – a return to normal.

In the cosmos there is no life or death and in order to set things back to the cosmic state of status quo, death, to end the accident of life, is a necessary correction. Life is disorder, a disunity, and an incomplete idea that cannot complete itself. It bonds with nothing and thus cannot make something greater than the sum of its parts. Life can only destroy or be destroyed.

Our vain search for consilience while in this state of error (life) is futile. This futility is expressed in man’s self-aggrandizing performance and pursuit of perception and perfection.

Death is a return to normality. It is infinite finiteness, sum zero, and is perfection in the cosmos. Man’s positional error is aggravated by his need for an explanation of, or belief in, “the order of things” that in their actual state, (a relative term), simply do not function within the defined term of “the order of things”.

Then what to do? There must be a channel of awareness or compatibility with such concepts of non-human, non-ordered nature. If “human” being doesn’t get us there then is there any point in trying. Maybe hedonism isn’t so bad after all because that’s all we really have to choose from at the end of the day.

But I think not.

I believe there is a potential to flow with this “life as accident, death as correction”, awareness. I suspect that the key is in movement. Cerebral time traveling. It is our ability to creatively imagine or, what a friend of mine calls, spiritual awareness.

So when it’s time to unpack your life and pack your particles to again sail on the cosmic winds all will be good again. No more, “Angels we have heard on high. Instead it’s, “The answer my friend is blowin’ the wind”.

2.

I have gone through life standing on my toes. Always reaching, always stretching may be okay for practitioners of yoga but for most of us, in time, it gets a bit wearisome. This is a thing of never having enough hours in the day, never getting to the end of one’s “to do” list, and never getting it just right but insisting on doing it one more time.

Going through life on your toes causes funny wear patterns. Your heels don’t wear like most people’s. Instead, it is the front of your footwear and feet that take all the weight and friction. The idea is that by standing on your tiptoes you are higher than your normal self and thus able to see more than you were genetically intended to.

Wearing high heels would be easier and, in fact adding to that, wearing some of those amazing platform shoes would be even better. But most people regard the few who wear these incredible shoes as odd or at the very least, individuals in pursuit of an unmentionable agenda.

Standing on your toes may be hard but I think of the many fences I have looked over. I think of those who built them just above my eye level thinking that this would keep me resignedly in my own back yard. I think about calf muscles that ached from standing stretched out for too long because I just couldn’t get enough of the view. Out there beyond the blinding fence there have been parades and parties, funeral corteges and terrible fights. Out there, the seasons changed more quickly and the sky was red. Out there, people flew through the air while reclining on the faces of elaborate timepieces.

Standing on my toes, I saw Alice falling through the looking glass and then come out again. She looked around and beckoned to me as she went back in. “Now this is my kind of place,” I said. “Of course,” she said.

3.

I heard them tell me at the outset what it would be like. They said when I awoke I would try to get up. When I did they would hit me across the knees with a hard pipe. I would fall down in great pain they said and eventually I would try to get up again. They knew this and told me each time I did they would hit me again and I would fall again in great pain. They said they would do this 12 times. If I was still able or wanted to get up after 12 repeated hits across my knees they would not hit me again. But when I got up the 13th time I would be shorter by no small measure. I would not be able to walk as tall as before and each step would be painful. From that moment forward every step would be painful.

Eventually they said I would learn to live with the pain but it would not go away. I would continue my journey to the end with this pain that I accepted because I insisted upon walking and even though I was shorter and could no longer see as far I would walk anyway.

The beatings began.

4.

Truth is a broken promise and therefore an oxymoron. Those who claim to know it negotiate, rationalize, and use it like a baseball bat. They are not looking for base hits. Truth is not a ring; it is a prison square with harsh corners. It self- justifies itself with an ersatz logic, and reason, neither of which is of particular importance to the cosmos, I think.

Truth does not unite us, it fractures and separates us. It is as hard as steel and as runny as hot lava. Truth doesn’t know or have anything to do with the theatric breaking of a new dawn or the heartbreaking sorrow of death. Truth is an “ism”.

“Just is” cannot be a truth. True love is not a truth. True grit and true stories are not truths. An untruth is an oxymoron. True blue is not a truth.

Descartes did not know truth anymore than others who presumed to speak for deities they have not known but only surmised. So, if there is no truth what is there that is worthwhile?

Plenty I say, and that is not a truth it is a fantasy. Faith is another matter entirely.

5.

When our children were young, I had a pair of dark glasses that I told them allowed me to see through women’s clothing. They were amazed and giggled. I was delighted that their innocent laughs were so real and uncluttered by thoughts of sex and perversion. We had good fun then and such peculiar tales from Papa seem to have left them unscathed for they are two very nice and decent people. Sometimes I think it is, in part, because we learned early to laugh about silly things that often had serious meanings.

I think we have made much of things that needn’t have much made of them. We seem to often impart and discern meaning where no meaning needs to be. What we ourselves have come to mean has often had no meaning. I know a guy who invented a jellybean magnet that sucked up candy from Halloween trick or treater’s bags while he distracted their gaze with Oreos that he made materialize from behind his ear like a coin trick. He hated Oreos but loved jellybeans. This was not child abuse!

Moses played the ponies.

6.

Are we in danger of becoming the very thing(s) we abhor?

We say don’t and we do. We say do and we don’t. I say tomato you say tomoto.

Individuality, which is a big deal to us, could just be the most destructive force that threatens the human species. It seems that we have made rules that say it is either or but not both. The artificiality of this is that we are no longer team players. The first special interest we have is ourselves. That fundamental lesson then spreads out and gets applied to too many other aspects of our lives. The result is self-defined; self-interest that adds up to over-specialization. Most biologists accept the notion that when creatures become overly specialized they are increasingly vulnerable and eventually perish. Any number of things can tip them over and put out their lights.

Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.
Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.
Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.
Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.
Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.
Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.
Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.
Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey. Let us prey.

7.

First, their heads appeared as tiny dark specks behind the sand dune. Time seemed metronomically slow but their blurry shoulders gradually appeared in the distortion of rolling heat waves. Finally, they topped the pale surface of the dune and stopped. Even from this distance, I could see that in their hands, they held bundles of red sticks. In unison and almost mechanically, they swiveled their heads to the left, right, and surveyed what lay before them. Coming back to the center point they stopped and stared directly at me. I sat, perhaps a mile away, in a straight lattice backed white kitchen chair.

She stepped forward first and bent to place a single stick in the sand. He followed doing the same. Then together they walked toward me placing a stick into the sand every three feet. Miraculously, as she placed the sticks new ones seemed to take their place in her hands. When they reached me there were two long rows of red sticks set in a perfect row, evenly spaced, and all pushed into the sand to the same height.

They did not touch me but each put out both their hands to me and said nothing. Moments of consideration passed. Then I stood, turned, and walked around behind the chair. I walked away following the scattered rows of six inch diameter black and white checkered spheres that ran off into the wet sand and on into the water perhaps a quarter of a mile away. The man and the woman did not move and I did not look back to see that they were frozen with their hands outstretched.

Thunder broke as I went into the still water. Far out to sea a container ship slowly made its way to some unknown destination. The smoke from its stack lay flat down against the water. Judas screamed for mercy as the sea turned red and then violet.

Moths flew to the candle flame and the contrails of launched missiles looped in the darkening sky. They spelled out a word. It was love.

8.

Progressions

We have made progressions essential to our nature. With them, we measure and mark in order to make sense of things that otherwise make no sense. Progressions suggest meaningful intent in an otherwise chaotic milieu of cosmic soup.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a deity in a start up position. I think I would use the notion of progressions like we use Easter egg hunts. I’d hide goodies all around the lot and watch what the silly children did. All would be, of course, in the name of good fun and the original intent completely misunderstood.

The financial analysts love progressions and so do armies, mathematicians, mothers in labor and cooks. But there are those who don’t like progressions. Religious people don’t like them usually, people with maladies and addictions, and pilots spiraling uncontrollably toward the ground.

Most things don’t give a damn about progressions: the cosmos, our dog, water flowing to the sea, and meditating monks.

I have spent a long time thinking about and working with progressions. I have made a procession of progressions by using numbers to find a new way of predicting prime numbers. I have painted little black and white squares for days at a time to trick my eyes and yours, into seeing something that really isn’t there. I once worked for eighteen months to feed a progressively ordered and varied offering to brine shrimp so they would breed in a predictable and artificial environment. In all these efforts and others, I measured and marked.

I believe a predictor of artistic behavior is compulsive organization that creates a deceptive field of sensibility and then puts one small thing almost unnoticed out of order. It is the rude moment of exploration and not following the rules. Reliance on progressive certainty is boring and terrible for the soul. Orderliness dulls the mind and lulls us into a love affair with efficiency all in the name of winning a race with time which is yet another progression that in the end doesn’t matter to what I do not know.

9.

I have a friend named Betsy Ross. She has heard all the jokes and references to her name that you could ever think of. Recently an Asian country that wants to change its name asked her to design (and sew) a new flag for the newly created State of Being. Betsy has been searching for appropriate graphic symbols to stitch onto the banner. I can thus far report she has not had any success.

This is incidentally the same person who got into big trouble when she told her boss his pink slip was showing. He denied it and she insisted by saying in a very dramatic voice “me thinks he doth protest too much” which was like throwing gas on the fire. Later, after he had left the company, most people thought he had left out of embarrassment.

9 + 1 = 1 + 9

10.

The chair was on top of a table. One leg rested on a soda pop can, another on a tennis ball, the third on a lipstick, and the fourth on a red, stiletto heeled shoe laying tipped over on its side. There were no curtains over the window and the wall was painted a faded shade of yellow ochre. Outside the sky was electric blue, and pink clouds raced by and I watched as the window slowly and noiselessly drifted open.

The smell of gardenias lay heavy in the still air of the room and reminded me of a funeral I had attended as a child. The smell reminded me of the dead body of my scoutmaster lying in his open casket. I was twelve. The catholic ritual of the wake was unfamiliar, and I teetered on the edge of nausea and fear. I blinked.

Everything was still and if the clouds hadn’t moved, I might have been in a painting. I could have easily been dead and not even known it until there was a life confirming sound.

The noise began slowly and softly at first. It was an oompah pah band that sounded far away in another time and place. A heavily lipsticked lady rushed by me in a long, transparent red gown. I could see her naked body moving inside the fabric. Behind her ran a tall George Jensen spoon with short legs and behind the spoon, a yellow-rimmed dish with long legs. Both ran in double steps because they were shorter and had to keep up with the lady.

I shouted, “Where are you going," and the spoon yelled back, “come and see”. I hesitated and turned on my tiptoes to follow. There was no other side of the room. It had only three walls. At the foot of the missing fourth wall was a black, volcanic sand beach. It stretched away as far as I could see and the surf rolled up over my bare feet and covered them with salty foam.

I ran down the beach after them; the lady, the spoon, and the dish. The sound of the oompah pah faded with the light. We ran into the warmth of a thick indigo night. It was good and I didn’t think or care where we were going. We ran and ran waving our arms that had become long thin artist’s brushes with fire streaming from the ends. We stopped suddenly and wrote our names with fire, in the air of the indigo night.

11.

All religious activity on earth has been discontinued because the Earth Safety Standards Act has deemed it to be injurious to the health and welfare of our species. “Henceforth,” the Surgeon General’s statement has said, “those who have been unable to break the habit will have to go outside and stand in designated places to do their religious things and these designated locations will be far enough away from other people and places so as to not contaminate the environment with second hand religious effects and/or artifacts.” It always rains in these places.

Other significant announcements have also been part of recently reported events.

Subject: Shareware. A new magnet has been discovered and made available to all who wish to use it for whatever purpose. This magnet attracts small rodents, (less than 3” in length) and red hibiscus flowers. The magnet opts for the flowers when the two attractees are present in the same place at the same time. The magnet is not horseshoe shaped, it is spiraled and about the size of a bedspring. The color is vivid purple. The devise is not easily concealed and can be worn as a ring or an additional appendage.

A network of new magnet dispensing stations has been announced by B P, which intends to build these small but jazzy dispensaries next to their gas stations. I have been told that many of these will be near the wet, (because it rains), religious quarantine areas.

Finally, and at long last, a world beautification program has been announced by the Better Beauty Babes of Bristol. Through a grant, the Babes, (as they like to be called), have a fleet of new Caterpillar D9 Dozers. The fleet of 2, 000,000 bulldozers will begin their defined work of leveling ugly buildings, worldwide, by the end of the month. CNN headquarters and several fast-food chain buildings will be the first to go. CNN was selected not so much as a beauty issue (god knows it isn’t) but instead because it was just deemed as senseless as ugly architecture. “This is consistent with our ugly buildings mandate,” one of the “Babes” said to those gathered at a dinner of Mad Cow Mutton and Chives.

12.

If you could see the world the way I dooz
The world be wearin red high-heeled shuz.
Strutin’ down the avenue
Givin’ all the folks a terrific view
From this extra super height
All the asses look extra tight
Ain’t we pretty ain’t we great? This is the way to matriculate
Now and then, we show some lace
To elevate the mundane pace and bring on some sensual grace.
You too can do it if you try
But don’t turn chicken and start to cry
Baby, baby this is cool
Strutin’ down the avenue
Tall sexy red heeled shoes, is how we gunna spread the news.
Strutin’ here and strutin' there showin' everybody we really care
Mr./Ms there ain't no distinction ‘bout how we dare
‘cause strutins just fun and fair

13.

Garden Meditation

There is something not profound about being in the garden. There is dirt there, weeds and intended plants. There is a futile struggle going on for an order that is not natural. It is a place of encouraged beauty, sensual fragrance, and carefully tended form. It is a place of chemicals, amputees and manipulation.

When it rains, the garden renews itself and seizes the opportunity that comes when people aren’t tramping around and making noise. But the sun does shine and the noise picks up and I think the flowers show us a pretended smile as if they were good little boys and girls and I was the teacher.

I don’t own my garden.

There is special beauty in the early morning when the dewdrops are still big and in their reflection, hold a tiny giant image of all the world around them in one little drop on one little petal. These whole images are everywhere and many on the same petal or flower. I wonder how one plant with its small droplets can hold so much vision. I wonder that about some people too.

The rounded water visions disappear when the sun insists on burning brighter with light and heat. The dewdrops are flung away, into the dirt, when our dog or people suddenly brush them aside. I could hope that by falling to the ground the water might moisten the dirt and be good for the plants, but in the dry rush of the sun and its relentless push toward its death in the night the moisture is lost before it ever gets a chance to benefit the plant. It is lost into the evaporating air.

In the simplicity of the garden, mysteries are not puzzles to be solved but fantasies to be dreamed in time that does not exist. It’s sometimes best not to make things complicated. The self-hypnosis of pleasure overcomes my senses if I hesitate long enough and let the rest of the world recede like the outgoing tide that inevitably comes flooding back in again.

14.

I love tunnels. Every time I go into a tunnel I get a rush. I feel like something very important is happening and I am part of it. I am high with anticipation. I think this is part of my particle-self getting together and reverberating like ball bearings rattling around in a cup. Trillions of separate specks that were brought out of the cosmos to make me for a brief time have coalesced and tingle in the tunnel.

I just can’t buy into this idea that the highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This doesn’t mean that I know exactly what my, your, our purpose is or should be but in my definition of purpose there is plenty of space to roam around and accept a great diversity of ideas and expression. I don’t know what the tunnel thing is about but I sense it is something and a great deal more than a bender or unbender of our psyches can explain. Explaining probably isn’t what it’s about anyway.

When I was a real bambino, I was a neutrino
When I was a real bambina, I was a neutrina

15.

There are hints of intelligence in the universe for those who insist on such things. I have recently come upon one, which I am disclosing here for the first time. Thomas Aquinas spent a lot of time and got a lot of credit for proving the existence of a deity he subscribed to and may or may not have really met. This was important to him because he was a pious man who thought he was doing everyone a favor.

This may not be a favor to you and I make no claim of piety but it is true that I have sought and found a little bit of evidence, which when viewed in it’s proper context, can be seen as no less a contribution than Tom’s.

Here it is. All foods that have been truthfully labeled in accordance with the Truth in Labeling Law have and are being shown to have an even number of calories usually ending in zero. There are many foods out there but when viewed in total, for them to have even numbers usually ending in 0 as their number of calories, suggests divine planning and is a revelation to the least and commonest amongst us. Real stuff is accessible to all.

16.

Transcendence

Transcendence to me seems to be increasingly n/a or not applicable. The notion of transcendence suggests that one can leave their old self behind and bring on a new and better one. I’ve tried this and it doesn’t seem to work. Kind of like not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. I have also hoped for this phenomenon to manifest itself in others. Same result.

We are what we are. Few things I have learned as I get older but this is one of them.

There are few benefits in getting older. The list is short and I think gets shorter than short the older one gets. I am increasingly aware that I cannot, will not, and now don’t even want to transcend myself. I have given up in resignation and will finish the race with what I have got. Not even new tires will change the outcome.

This doesn’t mean that I have given up unilaterally. This dog knows the few tricks he has pretty well and intends to use them to full advantage if not effect. Now this has to do with point of view. Yours VS Mine.

17.
And then later on we spoke again. We said the same things as if by repeating and reintegrating them it would change the outcome of our day. But it didn’t. Vignettes: that’s what life is often about. Separated experiences that require a mighty effort to put them all together.

When that beautiful woman passed by so close I could smell her lipstick breath, I thought I was going to touch her. I couldn’t of course because I wouldn’t let me. But I wanted to and that is where we went off. It turned into a screaming manic moment. I was so damn mad I finally just laid down and slept in the dead wet leaves under the bench. I was exhausted by frustrated desire. Much later, I awoke refreshed and looking up saw a small speck far up in the deep blue sky. I was mesmerized and thought I would never look down again.

The plane banked sharply to the right and began its slow lazy circles upward. Round and round it went. The vapor trail made a huge corkscrew design in the sky. Later the pattern just magically appeared fluffy white against blue as the plane speck disappeared into endless space. It was then we decided to again talk of things profound. I said, “what is it you want to talk about” and she said, “you”. I said that was not profound so she said, “well then how about us”.

Circular as we are, us and us are we and the us/we, we/us. If we are “all things in a not shall”, then all this is an impossibility that is only made possible by imagination and whatever degree of reality we can bring to it. All the philosophical relativists need to stay back hidden in the bushes because they will be shot on sight by true believers.

Our conversation, convoluted as it may have appeared, continued. We talked of “isms” and us. Today’s “ism” was the subjectivism of individualism and its relationship to biological imperativisms. Our hero Stephan J. Gould may now be a cosmic particleism but the recollection of his witticisms about our narcissism made us pause and reflect on our fragilisms and factionalisms.

In our time we cannot be either or. We must be one or the other and not both. So here we were a bit of both speaking about the importance of our self and the essential nature of the whole. The “isms” assault us and relentlessly try to break us apart as if it is they know us who have the major stake in this life and our precious place on the continuum can’t make it. Our dualism is not acceptable to rationalism but there is a truism about this realism that even our skepticism cannot question. Pluralism is not negativism and true objectivism is mysticism. Tomorrow we will discuss “istics”.

18.

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2003jekiv