The Final Chapter from 1983

It's Saturday, March 6. I've been staying with friends in Mystic, Connecticut. They've been kind enough to care for me while I am possessed by this writing. They have a word-processor, and I have developed an addiction. I hate the infernal machine, but there is so little time. It really helps a lot, and with patience, it can be trusted. But I have been addicted to the writing. For several weeks I have been doing my time in the desert of words. Not to go outside. And now I have a cold.

I was up before dawn this morning. I couldn't sleep. And I know better than to fight such feelings any more. In the past, when I have journeyed, the single most important rule has been never to return along a route already traveled. That has been a good rule, because it has taken me places I otherwise wouldn't have gone. It's gotten me into plenty of jams, too. I remember being pinned under my five-hundred pound motorcycle on a rocky dirt road that had become too steep. I was swimming in sweat by the time I had the machine righted. But I couldn't go back down.

The road ended at the top of a small hill. It opened into a farm field. The view was spectacular. I don't know what impelled me, but I took off cross-country on my highway motorcycle. It was crazy, but I just refused to return along the path I had come by. It was an exhilerating ride. I remember that the exhileration lasted until I was back on the highway. I had checked over the bike after its minor spill, and when I came to my favorite switchbacks through the woods I was more sure than ever of my connection to the machine. It was a game. The road had become ever more familiar with each new challenge of its dangerous though well paved curves. Each time I was more sure of myself. This time I was one with the bike and the road, and there was no real limit to my speed. I took curves at well over eighty which had been marked with warning signs of thirty-five miles per hour. I certainly wouldn't do it again unless I knew. Another biker saluted me when the road became straight again. He had watched.

And so this morning I discovered the beauty of well-trod paths. As the dawn broke, it was the familiar songs of the familiar birds which stirred my soul most powerfully. And the houses were not an affront to the natural scene. I was reminded of dawns in Canada, away from houses, but this was not deficient. There was only the roar of the distant highway to disturb me. Along which blind men hurl at silly speeds wanting never to return. But here, in Mystic, I watched a seagull circle toward me and away. He had something to say to me. As I watched I knew the pure joy he felt in his movement. Not joy, really, but oneness. When you are a bird, you just rise at dawn. There were lots of stirrings.

As I walked back, the cars were beginning to come alive. I felt a little sad that their life should be so shielded. The seagull's message was open-faced and honest. But the stirrings of human life had its beauty too. And I didn't hate the cars. I was only sad that it would be so difficult to penetrate the armor.

This morning as I rounded a corner in the road and saw the red beginning to show across the harbor, I remembered what one can really see if his heart is open. I was startled as if there were a face in the scene. The tears came to my eyes for the beauty of which I felt so much a part. For the first time in so many years. The utter beauty of the world. A world in which there are other souls. The birds and fishes both willing to give their lives to each other when the time comes because not to is to deny everything. I have seldom felt so moved. It was a natural scene, where man's intrusion too felt natural. Mystic is a pretty town.

But my tears of joy at joining the dawn were also tears of sorrow. I felt the evil of man who is so rapidly eradicating those other souls. My heart truly reached out to all the unsung life of the earth which is suffocating with hardly a cry. I heard the roar of the highway, and I was sad.

It is thrilling to always discover newness. But it can become an addiction. In the end it numbs one toward what is most ancient. I remembered this morning that the soul is stirred more strongly by the familiar than by the new. I remembered that there is no need to be cut-off. Newness is a quality of mind. Under the sun, there is nothing else new.

The birds don't hate when they kill. And they don't thrill when they fly. But they are connected. And it is love that connects them. I felt it. It is the same love that we can feel when we allow ourselves.

I began writing when I changed the quality of my reaction to what was happening around me. I felt summoned. That is simply the feeling that comes when the mind lets go and allows the connection to be made. The stormy morning was welcome because I changed the quality of my reaction because I decided to believe that my life meant something. I was summoned because I summoned myself. It is a circular argument. Don't kid yourself. All good arguments are. Truth has a familiar face. Arguments with a point cause blindness. And a mask over truth is required in defence.

In writing, I have tried to be honest with myself. I had to invent you, the reader, because I had no confidence that anyone would want to read what I would write. But I had to imagine a reader in order to keep me honest. Writing that is too secret only digs a hole for oneself. Words are for sharing. I have written boldly, but not with pride. It is as big a mistake to pretend you are smaller than you are as to pretend greatness. I have tried to be honest.

That is what makes all the difference. And not worrying. As I wrote I began to see the shape of my life. The bright points in my memory began to have a purpose. I had always known that, but I had no confidence to make sense of them. Now I can look at my life -- the real thing and the literary form -- and know what it means. I am finally my own best critic. There is no other critic, no authority, no psychoanalyst, no reader who knows the significance of my life better than I do.

That is true of everyone who is honest. When we erect the wall of lies, we build also a barrier between our conscious mind and the unconscious which more easily makes the connections to what is familiar for all life. There is only one way to make our minds whole, and this is the only moment in history when it is possible to be whole. Words rule the conscious mind, but poets have known how to unlock the barrier and make words meaningful. The rest have used words as weapons or tools for manipulation. Finally, they have become the bulldozers of the fertile earth of our minds which must include our hearts.

But I am as immune as the earth. The earth will die without hatred if we feel we must pierce her skin and draw her life's blood out. And I will die without hatred if the message I bring is too hard to take. But it's all so unnecessary. We've all been this way before. It is not necessary to repeat the mistakes of the past. It is not necessary to remain willfully blind when the mask has been removed.

No-one can know the meaning of your life except you. And you must be honest. I see now that my boat was not another attempt at transcendence of the skin as I had feared. I would laugh at the suggestions of womb-space because they were so obvious. But really, I did have to crawl back in and be reborn into the swirling maelstrom. I had to be shocked into tears from the numb slumber into which my life was slipping. Wy boat has been a womb because only there was I able to shut out the noise -- the conscious voices and the authority. Only there could I ignore the guilt that kept reminding me that I had to make a living. Only there could I remember the connections that make a life. And finally I could become whole and now I must emerge.

When you are whole, the story of your life writes itself. Believe me. I am the man who made you blind by asking you to believe in me. And now I must make you see. There is a way if I can only let go and feel it. This writing is the axe, and I am the woodchopper. I must find the moment. Please don't imprison me for my boldness. No man has authority over any other.

Sometimes the words are enough. Sometimes putting on a mask -- acting like you believe -- is enough to lead you believe. If you really pray earnestly. Don't tell jokes. Don't lie. Just try to be the words.

I was blessed in Chinese with a wonderful teacher. I tried to put what he taught me with what I knew into my graduation essay. It was just passable. But at least I couldn't forget what I'd been taught -- what I'd already known.

I wrote about Li Ho, the "mad/demonic" genius. He was a little out of the classical tradition. But enough in to be remembered as a poet. Some comparisons have been made to Western poets. I wrote about his poetry in terms of the rules of Classical Chinese poetry. These terms aren't found in books, nor taught anywhere else. They are the terms that only my teacher had the nerve to translate properly from the Chinese. He is a bold man.

I believed my teacher, not only out of respect, but because what he said made sense -- complete resonate sense. So I wrote about Li Ho who died of old age when twenty seven, and who broke the rules of Chinese poetry just enough to be considered mad, or demonic. With the help of my teacher, I began to realize the power of his poetry.

In Chinese there are no metaphors. In the canonical, classical language. Believe me, it's true. I didn't make it up. It's not my idea. And yes, there are no ideas either. No Platonic eternal abstracted-from-the-substance ideas. There is no appleness in Chinese. Only apples.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not speaking absolutely or from a position of authority. This is a tendency in the Chinese poetic language that I know to be true because I know that it makes sense. Anything can be translated. Words can be made to read anyway at all. But there is such a thing as mis¬reading. And to translate Western terminology for explic¬ations of Chinese poetry always results in a misreading. Something is always lost.

Sure, the words for things are said to look like things in Chinese, so you don't need ideas. That's not quite the case. The words are abstract symbols. They are simply spatial rather than linear in their arrangement. There are no capitals at the beginning nor periods at the end of a classical Chinese sentence. There is a shape. There is a rhythm. The meanings and the sounds rhythmically cycle with their ebb and flow. The emphasis is on the space and not the line.

Sure, you can find metaphors in Chinese. And if you can't find them you can put them there. It would be an act of translation. The language would still make sense, though something would be missing. The crucial thing. Same with ideas. Anything. Any world can be translated into any other world. It just takes time. And sometimes it's more interesting to notice the differences. Sometimes learning an alien language just to read a poem is worth it when the translation can lack so much. The tendencies in the Chinese classical, and particularly the poetic language are different than those in the West.

Lines point. They point beyond. Beyond the text to where the meaning lies. The ideal realm. God's realm. Where the answers are. Abstraction. Metaphor points. Using what is familiar to point to what is remote. Beyond the text. Beyond life.

Spaces are. There is no progression -- only rhythm. There is change, but it is cyclic. You don't read for the point or for the ending. You read to meet the heart of the writer. Or, if you read the oldest texts, you read to find the heart of the universe. Not just the center. The heart. In Chinese the term for heart is the same as that for mind. Hsin. They didn't used to leave the feeling out of thinking. Until they took to studying the West.

There is Heaven above and Earth below. Man is in the Center. Where Heart is, and Mind. Hsin. But heaven isn't the ideal realm. In Chinese, it's peopled with all Sorts of mortally weak immortals. They act like their counterparts on earth. But for the educated -- literate -- Chinese, though not quite all the gremlins are ever eradicated, the heavens are simply a model of constancy and order. One doesn't look beyond life for meaning. You look for clues in the more constant life of the heavens. So that the maelstrom may be ordered. Chaos made still for a while.

Words are wen in Chinese. Sounds like "one". Heaven has its wen. Earth has its wen. Wen is pattern. It is not separate from the substance on which the pattern is manifest. Words don't point to the ideal. They don't mean anything beyond themselves. They are the pattern through which order is manifest. They indicate what is at the center. What is at the heart. It is only through wen that the center is apparent, so buried is it in the shrouds of flesh, rock, or whatever. Attempts at hiding also show up on the surface, though a reader must be adept to see the wicked heart.

Heaven has its wen. The constellations, the clouds, the rain. The moon. The apparitions. Earth has the rivers, the trees, the animals. The ten thousand things and the apparitions. Man's is the realm of hsin -- heart/mind -- and has it's words. The words don't point -- metaphorically --to the meaning of heaven's order or earth's order. The words place hsin in the universe and thus make it whole. It is an act of ordering that seeks not to control, but to perceive and to create at the same time. To find what is there and to join it.

China had an elitist tradition, and words were at the center. Gestures, faces, and other meaningful patterns were ignored in favor of words. So the literate were elite. And the illiterate had no power. But they were not ignored.

The reader finds the poet's hsin in the words of his poem. He finds it forever after when he is reminded of the occasion on which the poet wrote. A mountain, a kind of bird, a singing girl. The poems are memorized, they are borrowed from -- plagiarized, hackneyed. But they are never fiction. A Classical Chinese poet doesn't lie. He doesn't invent his poem. And poems are dominant over narrative which has a direction and a goal. Narrative has been dominant in the West. And fiction. Mythology. Metaphor.

There is rhythm to a Chinese poem. Not just the sound, but also the meaning. The basic poetic unit is the couplet in which components of each line are placed in parallel opposition. The word for "mountain" opposes the word for "lake" for example. The relationships are complex and deter¬mined by tradition as much as by rational cosmology; if there can be said to be any difference between the two.

Li Ho began to move his couplets from the rigid structure of the written line out into the world. The effect on a classically trained reader is hallucinatory. You can't tell what is real. Instead of observations being contained in the old form by a poet the truth of whose vision is trusted implicitly, the observations take on the bizarre juxtapositions that are possible only on the page. You have to move to see opposed things together, though they can appear to¬gether on the page. The Chinese poet looks for poetry in nature. He looks for couplets. Li Ho was describing a landscape that could only occur in couplets that had been invented on the page. The movements in the real world that would have been required to unite the opposites seem impossible.

If you trust him, the scene is hallucinatory. If you don't, then you might call him a liar. But the poetry is beautiful. Li Ho was considered mad. He was being tempted by metaphor. A structure of meaning which points beyond any substance to meaning in the abstract. Beauty. The word.

According to our language, he would have to be considered mad by most. The magic carpet rides that would have been necessary for him to unite with his literal vision what was on the page could not have been actual. So the reader has to get confused. The poetry is too beautiful to simply call Li Ho a liar. To say that he is making it all up.

Perhaps for Li Ho himself there were some magic carpet rides through his poetry. Perhaps he saw something there in the nature he describes that was literally invisible to stricter minds. Perhaps he was hallucinating. He describes ghostly events. Written characters in the landscape. He unites visions that would require something like a motorcycle for their literal coming together. All he had was a horse.

I'm sure that in the sense that we understand, he was inventing things on the page. He had discovered a meaning different to that approved of. It must have been unbearable. His hair turned white and he died at twenty-seven.

Fictional narrative was being discovered in China during the same epoch in which Li Ho wrote. My last attempt at staying in school was thwarted by a wrestling match with a long Chinese narrative called "The Jouney to the West", or "Monkey" as it is translated. The title alone seemed significant to me. It concerns the upstart monkey who acts like a man. He is a willful little bugger. It seemed to me that this story did represent the literal beginnings of a Journey to the West for China. The discovery of the power of will.

The literal journey is the travelling of Tripitaka, the Buddhist monk, to India for the scriptures of Buddhism. The introduction of Buddhism to China brought many things. Storys. A pointing away from this life. Forsaking of worldly ties. Of family. A new pattern was emerging whereby the secular authority of the written word was implicitly challenged. As is usual with China, the new was assimilated without subverting the old completely.

But the book is not really Buddhist. It represents more than the literal journey. In this book, which has always been considered frivolous by the literate Chinese -- a children's tale -- Buddha is a God-like figure. Or rather there is a God-like figure who finally thwarts the will¬fulness of monkey who would subvert the whole order of the universe by his willfulness. It is a brilliant book. And what a brilliant way to keep it from being understood. It's childish.

Monkey has a phallic wand that he can use to transform things at will. He can make whole armys of himself with the wand to fight off adversary gods. He refuses to recognize the existence of any other will than his own. They are all a threat, and so he must have clones of himself. He uses the wand.

And there are plenty of magic-carpet rides. In a humorous sort of way, one might easily see the modern world de¬scribed in the Journey to the West. Not literally. Not even by using the magic devices as metaphors for cars and planes and telephones and what not. But mostly because monkey describes pretty well the modern mentality. If we are honest we will recognize ourselves in him.

Li Ho was smitten by the demon invention. He sought an immortality beyond this life, and so he died young. But 0 the life that has remained. The words are his immortality. If we understand them. We kill every writer we misunderstand. And every gesture we misread because of our unwillingness to see. Because we are blinded by our own lies about ourselves. They are not our lies. They have been forced upon us by authority.

The Chinese chose their magistrates according to their knowledge of and ability in poetry and the classics. The purity of the tradition has waxed and waned with the dynasties, but that has been the rule. A man's hsin was more important than his reasonable intelligence. He had to be good at reading other men. There were plenty of abuses. People lied all the time. Liers got into power. But they didn't trust law. They knew that whatever is in a man's heart cannot be read mechanically from his actions by the application of some perfect rule. They knew that only another man could judge the contents of the heart. And the judge would have to be screened carefully. Not the common law which is an institutionalization of misunderstanding. Authority behind the mask of the common man. But the elite charged with the responsibility of their position.

The punishments for misuse of power were severe. And among the most severe was banishment. To be excluded from the community. Not quite literally, but to be placed at a remove from the capitol which was the focus for all the tradition which ultimately had given the poet his vision. His vision was what was most precious. To be cut off from the source was terribly painful.

Some chose reclusion. Their vision turned them away from power. The word for them may have led back to the gesture, and they mistrusted the right to judge. But they had their books. And some wealth, since the written word commanded so much power in China. The recluse wasn't quite cut-off. He just didn't want authority, nor did he want to be subject. It is a great and long tradition.

China has never been in a position to reverse its ages old elitism. They never had science. Nature was recalcitrant and provided floods to wipe out advances. Droughts to decimate the population. They took these things to be the way of life and didn't complain too much. The magistrates felt responsible. When nature was uncooperative, it was assumed that the pattern had been disturbed. By an intrusion of will. Or by a lie. By a failure to live up to responsibility.

It has always looked silly to we who are so sure that the events of nature are only random. We pity their ignorance. Yet we all know the Chinese "invented" many tools before the West. They're different. Not better. Not deficient. And they have always been elitist until recently.

We trust the Word in the West. In the beginning. The logos. Science. Truth in the abstract. We believe that there is only one truth -- one answer, and that it is absolute. We think the perfect law can be written that will solve our problems and dilemmas. Pro life. Pro choice. Freedom or Socialism. Heaven or Utopia. They are all the same thing. The true choice is the one we have been avoiding. It has seemed at times that there has been a conspiracy to make us avoid the true choice which allows us to find truth that is not abstract.

We don't trust ourselves or each other, so we must trust the law. The machine. An accident -- fate -- or the doctor's fault. Somebody's fault. Guilt. You can't have it both ways.

All the choices we offer ourselves in the West are the same. They are all perpetual evasion. They are no choices, only a diversion from real choice. A diversion. A game. There is only the personal choice. The answer always bears two horns. Paradox is at the root. The serpent eats its tail. Progress is a myth. Stasis is impossible. Metaphor is the only way to know truth. Truth is metaphorical. Metaphor is myth. There's no way out. The Tao that can be uttered is not the eternal, unchanging Tao. There is NO ANSWER. The Name that can be named is not the true Name.

There are many more words, but it's getting late. It has to be NOW. There is no return and there is no progress. There is no decline and no fall and no ascent. They were not lies before, but they are lies now. The truth is time-bound. There is only NOW. There is no time to find but the one you remember NOW. The program that can be designed is SHIT. It's out the door. It's already too late. It's NOW.

Now is the time to take your money out of the banks which have been financing the lies. It goes in seconds to the powerful. Not the people. The machine. You are giving it your power. Do you agree with the power structure? You can't disagree with words. You can't complain and moan about the fate of the earth when you're paying for it right now. You are the system. You can't design a better one which will solve all the problems. All you need is confidence and faith. I know that words can do at least that. They can give confidence.

You're in control. YOU.

Don't keep the money for yourself. Burn it. Fast. It's an abstraction. Wealth is you. Don't sell your soul to a machine that pretends to take care of everything. The machine can't make all the connections. Only you can do that. Money isn't evil. It's the blind faith people have that makes it evil. The economy is everyone. It works when we work. But don't depend on money for your survival. The true wealth is you.

And don't listen to anybody who tells you what to do. Listen to yourself. Listen with your whole being, not just your mind. Feel your choice. Don't let people tell you you're wrong or bad or evil or dead. Only you can know that.

Nothing's going to change. We're there. We have the keys to the tractors and the super-markets and the cars and the plenty. There's no longer any need to listen to THEM. They are us. There is not any difference. We all hold the keys. You don't need to pay your own jailer. Look around and see who's hungry, sad, afraid, angry. Feed them. Calm them. Love them. Now. Not in heaven or in utopia. We're here.

And don't listen to what anybody tells you to do. Don't love because you're guilty -- because you think you ought to. Look inside and see if maybe it's easier -- more alive -- to love than not to. Maybe it's only you that's holding you back. Not your luck.

And it certainly isn't them. If you don't care for them, then why give them power? Why listen? You know what to do. Nobody else.

We've got the TV's and the computers and the knowledge and the power. If we need something someone else has got --we give them what they want -- everything and anything. We can do it together, but only together. It's us in America. The "middle class". We are the tyrannical warlords of the earth. We're the lucky, the wealthy, the responsible. We're lying when we say we've got to look our for number one. Not then, but now. We've got it made. We throw away food in this country. We burn up money -- energy -- at the same time we crave it. We've got to kick the habit, because all our addiction is doing is making us more numb. We are in limbo.

Don't be afraid. The world hates us, you and me. The earth hates us. And they are not afraid of us. Put down the knife and confess -- together. Not guilt. Just look inside and ask who is it. Who is the millenial coming. The time to remember is now. There is no choice.

But you must believe.

Buckminster Fuller is right, only he's not nearly literal enough. Gravity is Love. It is -- really. But science isn't going to solve our problems. We are. Truth can't be pointed to. It has to be felt. Perhaps we have progressed to this point. Perhaps, just maybe, Christ was -- is -- real. His would be the only true guilt. He has been responsible. So don't feel guilty when you kill him. He killed himself.

The earth only hates us because we hate ourselves. Don't try to tell me who or what I am. And I won't try to tell you. I know who and what I am, and so might you.

We have progressed nowhere. We have only rehearsed the ancient Chinese knowledge, and my mother's knowledge, that there are good times and bad times. The problems come if you tip the balance too far. If you spin the yin and yang too fast it escapes the chamber and returns to a bullet. A vector with trajectory and only destruction at the end.

We have gotten it all backwards. Science is a metaphorical language. It can be very beautiful to the initiate. But it is not the language of truth. Poetry is the literal language. Read some of the old poems and see if it isn't true. See if they didn't know something about us that we have forgotten even though we are here.

Read some of the new poems. Listen with your being. Look at a daisy.

Preachers are metaphorical bulldozers. Listen with your heart, and you will find the unadorned beauty. There is a place for everything. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is right. The choice belongs to each individual self whether their whole being is tied to a positive future or a negative one. Do you feel good? Do you feel good about yourself? Please try.

We are at the point of explosion. Fate has brought us there and fate is not meaningless. Christ was real -- not fictional. Not a myth. Real. In the flesh. Believe it. Our tradition has brought us to this point. Our concern with beginnings and endings has brought us through science to where we have little choice but to take careful control of the earth. Christ knew, but he couldn't have known. He couldn't have known that when he was asking only for faith in Him, he was offering also the numbness of the most dangerous insurance policy. The crossroads. The crucial, critical point. The cross. He took our guilt upon himself. But he has led us down a path toward blindness. The woman has been left out.

It could be considered an accident that so many have found ardent focus for ther participation in the sweep of Western culture in the Christian myth. They could all be stupid and misled. Or Christ could have been a man who was connected. Who knew what he had to do to bring the future -- this future -- into being. It doesn't have to be a bad moment. Christ didn't manipulate. He took what was in the fabric of the civilization and believed in himself. If he wasn't the son of God, then it was exactly as if he were. And now we are all responsible. Not guilty.

But he lived in a different time, and could hear the voice of God. It may have been his own voice separated from himself by the barrier between conscious and unconscious. He couldn't have known. But he heard the voice of God and he listened. Now we must listen. And don't forget the woman.

I've given little lectures about the I Ching. Usually people go to sleep. They're about how, if you don't believe in God, and you don't believe in will -- classical Chinese doesn't have an identical term, though you might mistranslate -- and you don't believe in beginnings and endings, then you might believe in connections. The roll of dice is meaningful. The accident is telling you something if you know how to listen. God does not exist, yet He is Buddha. The serpent eats his tail. The man accepts the woman, and pray to god the woman will forgive. If she picked the apple, we gave the reason. And we've run the show. God-damned Mother Fucking men of the Earth. Wake up! Feel. Cry. It's getting late.

The hexagram is chieh, "limitation".

We are reaching the limit. I know my fate. You will have to remember yours.

I know this is all unclear. I know it's hard to read. But if something stirs you, why not read it again. Start from the beginning or wherever. Don't be upset with me. I know I can't write. But I doubt I've been responsible for all of this. Do you recognize something here?

Chapter 17, from 1983

I knew that there was nothing to be found in physics --nothing that I was looking for. But I didn't know it in words. I only knew it by instinct -- by emotion; by vague memory. I had the vague memory that I already knew the answers to the physical problems. That I'd already solved all that. I had the vague memory of epiphany.

So I traveled, and I foundered and ...

I didn't know what it meant until I said it. I didn't know what it meant!! I'm scared. I'm excited. I have to go fast now. I can't sleep. I can't eat.

I floundered. I wanted to study some language. All I knew was English and a little Spanish. I remembered that my words were limiting my universes. I remembered that I wanted to break those limits. I was floundering in Buffalo. I thought of German. Wrong time. My friend suggested Chinese.

Of course. What more distant language? What could be more remote. We rode up to the University of Buffalo on my 550 cc Japanese phallus. My friend wasn't into the motorcycle so much. But I liked to go fast and had a black leather jacket and was starting to smoke Lucky Strikes. We were a little late. The poor professor looked over his glasses and suggested that perhaps we'd found the wrong room. Oh, no. This was Chinese wasn't it? Yep, this is it.

So he asked everybody why they were studying Chinese.

This is getting difficult. I didn't know it would happen like this. I have so many things I wanted to say and they're not going to get said. I'm not an artist. This isn't a story. This is real and I'm not crazy.

But how?

Honesty?

The question came around to me and I said, "I think the way you look at the world depends quite a bit on your language. I figure that learning a new language will change the way I look at the world. And Chinese is the most different langugage I know of."

I had happened upon Chinese by accident, yet my reason was honest. I don't know how I said it. Normally, I couldn't open my mouth in a classroom. But this was UB, and I'd been to Yale -- so I had confidence. And I had my new tough skin.

I guess the black leather jacket didn't go with my answer, because the prof. took a shine to me. I did well. I worked hard. And he convinced me to go back to Yale.

Why do you study Chinese? Well, trade's gonna open up there you know. It's a whole big market. One quarter of the worlds population. It's inevitable. Be where the action is. Bound to be in the world's future.

I gave those answers a lot. I play an act. I hide behind a mask. But the answer I gave that day was honest, though I wasn't quite sure when I said it. And it was unselfish. It was the truth. I didn't want to be famous. I was determined never to go back to school again. I didn't want to prove anything to anyone. I just wanted to "expand my mind." Well, I've blown it now.

It's easy to do. When I was a freshman at Yale, my purity went downhill quick. I pulled cigarettes out of people's mouths at first. I still didn't drink more than an occasional beer. Nothing made sense and I wanted my world to make sense. People sometimes told me I really seemed to have my shit together. And then the shit hit the fan.

I was jealous and I hated myself for being jealous and the world didn't make sense. My girlfriend who I knew loved me loved somebody else at the same time. I was torn between possession and trust. My pain was real, but it was only mine. Nobody had lied to me. But I lied. I told her I didn't love her. And I smoked and I drank and I got stoned. Same old thing. A few hits and I wasn't just stoned -- I was hallucinating. I saw music and I felt time stop and colors changed and tasted -- and I was really in outer space.

Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- made sense and I was ecstatic. I couldn't believe that I could function at all but it was ecstasy. I had shut up my rational mind. I had stopped demanding an answer. Stopped demanding that the world make sense, and suddenly it did, though my mind couldn't have known. Or rather, it wasn't a rational experience. My mind was involved. But words can't tell.

And then I came down and was depressed -- for days. I couldn't get out of bed. I was suicidal. And I wanted to get stoned some more.

Hy friends were afraid and reluctant. I was hurt when they smoked behind doors and behind my back. So I tried to get cool and show everybody I had my shit together. And they got a kick out of me. I was wild when stoned. Probably nice to see me lowered off my high horse. But I still managed to insult people. Now they were frivolous because they couldn't let go and be stoned. Now they were too up-tight, and once again my way was the only way. Let loose, man. It's great.

I made it through that year all right. I did well enough, though I managed to avoid the math and science courses. My advisor was sure I was wasting my life. But I was adamant about the diversion. "What can you do with it?" he wanted to know. I'd picked up a line at a party, "What can you do without it?" (philosophy, art, literature, ambiguity) The voice of authority was unsatisfied. I tried to make amends -- but I couldn't do it. I flunked out. I dropped out. I hated school. It hated me. It was definite.

During my freshman year, a kindly professor had kept me from flunking English. I was thrilled and excited, but I couldn't read the assignments fast enough so I always got behind. I had no training so I sat with my mouth shut all during class. He thought maybe I had a real problem. Not me, I assured him. I had my shit together. Trouble was, they'd placed me over my head for some reason and I just didn't have the background of a typical Yale College literary freshman.

Seems that I made out all right in literature over my head. I wanted to. I was excited. But, then literature's easy. There's no hard core evaluation. It's all wishy washy. Anybody can squeak through. I had read a handful of literature before coming to Yale. The first real book I ever opened was Plato's Republic. I'd been avoiding my assignments and we were only supposed to read a synopsis. But I was curious. And I never put the book back down. I read the whole damn Republic overnight. I was rather elated that I could understand it and by what it said. And rather angry that I should have somehow felt that it was beyond me.

I was a little embarrassed. I tried to keep it all low key. I was in high school. I didn't want anyone to make a big thing out of my staying up all night to read Plato. And I certainly didn't want it to be known in school. I got my good grades strictly without doing the work. I was smart. I didn't learn by rote. I understood the principles. But there was something in Plato that struck a chord too heavy. A memory of meaning lost or meaning yet to be found. I was compelled.

The only other real reading experience I'd had was Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The high-school English teacher couldn't believe that I hadn't finished it. I started and never finished. Now that was really a crime. Almost anything else can be done but that! All you can do is shake your head. It makes no sense.

It made no sense to me. I was compelled by the book, but couldn't finish it. Too excited? I later redeemed myself and thoroughly embedded myself in the book. I can hardly remember a thing except that the protagonist is Roskolnikov. But that's the way I read. I shake. I shiver. I get excited, but I forget everything. Except the life. That becomes a part of me.

I recently re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. All I remembered about the book is that I'd read it while dropping out of school -- when I was supposed to be studying for exams and writing papers. Everyone knew I was crazy, but there I was excited about a book and nothing else mattered. I was bothered recently that I couldn't remember anything. How could a book have been so important and leave me with nothing?

Then I read and I remembered. It was a bit of a shock. I had become what I was reading. I had gone through my motorcycle -- but that's just a metaphor. I know about wrenches and saws and how things work. I've effected major repairs to this boat on which I live. I couldn't have known how well I read.

But nothing ever seems legitimate. I've always had lots of help. An old friend helped me with the boat. There was some money from my father. No matter how hard I've worked in my life -- chasing out gremlins and trying to fill the gap --it's never seemed legitimate. My American Protestant background tells me I've got to go it alone. I've read little parts of the Bible. I have a personal relationship to God. There's no ritual. 0nly Ego. A direct line. And if I can't keep sober -- maintain control and do things right --then I'm not legitimate, if not damned. I have to hold what I've read in my conscious mind now. I have to remember.

I learned something with my boat. I tried not to worry. I tried to deal with what I was able to deal with. And things came to me. The skills. The tethers when they were needed. The materials that I couldn't find or afford. My friend when I needed his help and love; and money. When I worried; when I thought I ought to get things under control, then everything fell apart. Nothing worked then.

There are plenty of ways to fix boats. But let's not lie to each other, OK? Sure, I'm proud of my boat. It's a mess, but I'm prouder still of how little I knew beforehand. I hadn't done fancy carpentry. I'd only sailed a board-sailer. And here I am in my boat which I've sailed through a good stiff breeze, and all the way to Block Island and backwards through the Race (which only a fool would do). I survived and I feel blessed. Sure, it's hell to let somebody see how I live. Downright embarrassing. But I try to hold my head up. So I live this way. I'm not going to feel ashamed that I don't have a house and lots of money and a big ego-pushing job. Oh, I make my gestures. I try here and there, but a little voice warns me away.

You get the answers you want. I feel proud when someone seems to be impressed. I feel embarrassed when someone seems critical. It's hard to feel good about myself, because somebody always seems to want something. I needed to be alone. I couldn't have known where it would lead. I have more confidence now. I hope I won't need to feel proud or ashamed or guilty. But that depends on how much help I get.

It's important to realize that I haven't been chosen. My boat is no major accomplishment. My life is no breakthrough. I didn't go out a fool to tempt fate and come back smelling of roses. I assessed the risks at every stage and never took any greater chances than I take on the highways. And I've never had a real accident on the road. I'm careful -- even when I'm drunk. I'm in control. But always it comes down to despair.

Now I know something about control, and I can't be sure about being in control. There is no choice for me but to relinquish control. I am prepared for it. I haven't been chosen. Just in the right place at the right time. Or wrong depending on how you look at it. We are all lucky. It just depends on whether you can listen to yourself. Or is there too much noise? But my choice is mine to make, and so is yours. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything other than that you must be yourself. There is no choice.

Look, I say to myself, the world's fucked-up, right? It's either going to poison itself to death or blow itself up. This isn't going to be any goddamned apocalypse. That's only when God pushes the button. This time WE push the button. It's our fault. And it isn't fate. I'm not going to be a lawyer or a politician or rich or all those other things Yale and all other voices of authority prepare you to be. The world's changing. The steady sinusoidal curves, the oscillations -- whichever ones you want to follow -- are reaching for the asymptote. Geometric progressions don't occur in nature without explosion.

Malthus knew that. Anybody knows it. This isn't just change. It's accelerated change and it's cataclysmic. Why be a lawyer when lawyers won't have their positions forever, and forever is around the corner. Why be anything. Why not be myself.

But Malthus was wrong. He forgot that everything changes together. We have expanded the foundations. It can't go on forever without a change of consciousness, however. Gravity represents a geometric curve. Acceleration. Love. But there is always friction to slow the explosion. We can make it through if we care to. We can't pretend anymore that there are accidents in nature. It will be no accident if we blow it. It will not be the fate inherent in the other mind of God. It will only be our numbness. Our denial out of arrogance of feeling to a universe which has had enough of our stupid joke.

There is now, at this moment, only one true faith, and that is faith in oneself. Science isn't going to pull us through. That is BULLSHIT! And it isn't faith. That's blindness. That's rowing ot to sea in a storm with a leaky boat. Only we can pull us through, together.

So now I want to pull it all down. I want to take everybody's position away from them. But I won't. I can't. I have absolutely no power. But everyone will have to do it themselves. You don't need position if you can believe in yourself.

Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. I've made a leap of faith. Beyond that there are whole avalanches of meaning revealed. I've known it forever, but I finally decided to believe it. To accept the limits of my own mind. There is NO ANSWER. It's a matter of faith. If you believe in why. If you believe that there is a relationship between YOU and what is other. If you believe you are connected to the Universe. Then everything is possible. If you would simply have faith in meaning.

You don't have to smoke anymore to watch your breath and prove that you are in constant moving exchange with the universe. You don't have to play the lotteries and hope for your good fortune. To do that is to succumb to the hope that slipped out of Pandora's box. It is a cheap hope that is dangled in front of you to keep you from yourself. To keep you a slave. But pity the wealthy who give you the lotteries. Even as they steal your money and replace it with false hope, they are more enslaved than you. Don't offer your anger. Offer your love.

You don't have to find the cheap thrill of challenging fate. You don't have to suffer for your insecurities. You don't have to feel neurotic because you secretly know you are somebody. You are! And you are going to make yourself somebody. Not by taking control and making all the right decisions. But by remembering -- feeling, caring – knowing what you know and saying it. Shouting it! Being who you are by a simple act of faith!

And don't be misled. You have no choice. There is nothing else. It's too late.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking I've been chosen. I haven't made a fiction except for fear of hurting people. Now I know enough to tell the truth. This is all true. Details are left out. Some are combined. But you have no choice but to believe. Not the words. Not me. Not an answer or solution. But YOU.

I may be among the early aquarians or what Pirsig calls the Romantic-Classic blend. The male-female, yin-yang in one. Or I may be ignorant and proud and disgusting. I can't know. I know I can't truly feel. I had to put feeling back in the universe because I'd taken it out. Because every soul who betrays himself takes feeling out of the universe --drains the magic. And I have been the voice of reason and the king of control in my life. And I talk too much.

It's the Woman's turn. I've fought and I've made the leap and now there are no more questions. I know who I am and I know what to do. There's absolutely no time to waste. These words must be allowed to spill out. There's no time for control. There's only time for care. And there are so many words which must wait. But let's not wait for the answer. It's too final.

I flunked my English papers because I didn't know how to write. But I got some help. And when I returned to school to study Chinese I floundered. Some thought I was hopeless or nuts or just too eager and enthusiastic. Calm down. You can't have everything at once. Slowly and with pain I learned not to flunk courses. To receive grades of A instead of F. And to speak a little Chinese.

And I had been right. One does think differently in Chinese. I was excited and fascinated. But as usual, I was overexcited. When it came time to graduate, I had a paper to write and I couldn't write it. The summer dragged on and I couldn't get anything done. I don't know whether I wanted to say too much or simply didn't know how to write.

I took a bold step. Faith in science. I engaged a psychiatrist at the school. Another revelation. I was thrilled.

He hardly said a word. But I'd begun to read about self-help and finally to write about myself. At first I thought I'd publish what I wrote. Then, as I wrote, I realized how execrable was my style and how insipid was what I had to say. But I wrote and I learned about myself and science was vindicated. The psychiatrist was a hero. I wrote my paper for school and graduated magna-cum-laude with distinction though seven years and several months too late. But my parents were relieved as was I. I went off to graduate school for more Chinese. I'd found myself.

Now everybody's more concerned than ever, and I feel unsure. I seem to have slid back. When I finished the paper and the visits to the psychiatrist, I was certain that I have been deluded in my life. I had admitted my pride to myself -- that I had secret desires that nobody knew and which I expected to be validated only by fate. I had watched a movie on TV -- an accident -- about a gambler. This time my excitement was not for what I remembered about the fiction, but for what was revealed. Something I hadn't known before and have now forgotten forever.

I saw myself as the gambler -- the rider of the winds of fate who can't admit to himself that accident is accident and quite meaningless. It was a painful admission. But it was a release. I accepted my ordinariness. I made a connection to a time when I had nearly drowned. My life had passed before me at the instant that I knew I was doomed, and when I gulped what I knew would be a final gulp of water I had reached the surface. I gulped in air and lived. I ignored the coincidence of my survival. I might have drowned. But the night after watching the TV show, my life passed before me and I knew that some rotten part of me had died. I felt the old self who smoked and procrastinated and drank and would hardly let me breath; I felt the old self die and it was exactly like a real death.

But he's been back to haunt me along with his drink and cigarettes; cynicism and depression. I had made the connection to death but I had forgotten the accident of life. I truly did almost drown. But at the moment that I gave up, I found myself on the surface. Now I can make the deeper connection. I had forgotten that the problem with the gambler is not that he is expecting fate to be meaningful --but that he is trying to control it. He wants fate to be meaningful for him. Ail he really needs to do is to let go and stop worrying. There are much nicer ways to pass the time.

Now I've put my arms around him and assimilated him. It was a joyful and painful reunion. There were tears. But I'm whole and reborn.

Fate is not meaningless.

Exactly nothing is meaningless.

My life is meaningful. It's an act of faith. And so is yours if you let it be. Let it be. There will be an answer.

We're getting close - chapter 16 from way back when I was oh so young and naive

Look, I'm just trying to put emotion back into the universe. I think it is there and belongs there. I don't mean the cold dead stars that are still abstractions to us. I mean here. There's no physical universe. That's a propoganda ploy to keep you from believing in yourself. You're not a number or a feather in the wind. You exist because you feel and because all history wanted to make you You're not an accident. It's OK. It's alright. Calm down.

Nor can you escape. You aren't what you see or even what you feel; emotionally alone. You're also all the little molecular attractions that keep you bound in this world at this time. It's not so bad. They don't want you to leave.

I've known about the physical universe for years. As soon as I learned about relativity I knew. It was a vision, an excitement, an elation. It was a memory.

But I also knew that I couldn't know what I knew, and that I didn't have the words. And without the words, you know nothing. I had no confidence. I listened to the voice of authority. And I became neurotic, and depressed and suicidal, and useless and lazy and all those other things the voice of authority hates so much -- even while it is the cause.

If I can do anything now in this world, I hope to be able to give men the confidence to believe in themselves. No one has any true authority over you. But you must believe that your life is meaningful. Take heart, and don't be afraid.

Don't get me wrong. It is crazy to think you know something. That you have something to say, but nobody's listening. No. If you have something to say, you say it. If it isn't understood, then you say it better. You don't give up.

And words aren't important. There's nothing to discover about truth. It's always a matter of remembering --sometimes it's the difficult matter of finding the words for what you remember. Sometimes you remember it alone. Sometimes you paint a picture or sing a tune or cry or shout. Words don't mean anything without the connection -- and a connection that's forced is a rape -- nothing less. Don't believe what "they" tell you.

I'm getting carried away again. What I knew years ago in the little cabin up in Canada was quite simple. Einstein had added the dimension of time to the others -- those of the physical, spatial universe -- the perceptual, and with time, moving universe -- and it was added for the first time on equal footing with the other three.

The trouble was that we couldn't deal with time on an equal footing. It could be done mathematically, but we can't. Time defines the dimension by which we can be circumspect about the rest, but we can't be circumspect about time -- we're stuck in it.

Then Einstein had the further stroke of genius to equate gravity with acceleration in his general relativity. Now when I heard that, I started reeling. It wasa true epiphany. I knew that, and it's kept me going since.

Einstein spent his life looking for some universal field theory. Something to unite gravitational, electromagnetic and all the other "forces" in the universe whereby things move together or apart without colliding as actual billiard balls seem to do, or which hold things in some constant relationship -- electrons to nucleuses and all those other metaphorical descriptions of what is really unknowable except by a complex system of trust and belief which differs very little from abstraction.

And Einstein balked at quantum theory. "God doesn't play dice." Well, I don't believe in god. And I never thought I was a number. But I guess I didn't really believe in myself either. I mean really believe, in the way a truly religious person really believes in God. I didn't believe that my life meant anything and, without knowing it, I set out to prove it, while at the same time wanting to prove that it did mean something. All answers are paradox -- obviously. Everybody knows that. Except that somewhere along the line we've been conned into believing in absolutes. The woman's knowledge has been forgotten.

Look. God is an abstraction. Now. In this age. Time is an abstraction. Space, molecules, electrons, percepts, concepts. Emotion is an abstraction. We use a language by which we know our mind is shared, and we try to describe things that aren't universally shared. We use metaphor. We use terms that we are familiar with to refer to something unfamiliar.

"This boat is as cold as a witch's teat", to give a paradoxical example. I have no idea how cold a witch's teat might be. I use it to mean damn cold. People laugh (the first time they hear such a thing) because it's jarring and also because it reverses the metaphorical process.

Wouldn't it be a pretty rotten joke if we were so mixed up that we thought a "witch's teat" was something we were familiar with and cold was a surprise. Because that's the way metaphor usually works. Yet we often describe truth as though it were an abstraction. We use the physical world as a metaphor for reality, when we know there's more to it than that. And ultimately, we believe what we hear in words --from authority -- even though we, all of us, remember something more true.

I knew when I learned about Special and General Relativity that there was some hanky-panky going on. Time was mathematically equivalent to the other dimensions, but not conceptually. We didn't really want time to be equivalent, because we believed so strongly in progress --that we are going somewhere. There has to be direction to time, we reasoned, because our whole entire utter existence would be meaningless without it. We might as well go backward as forward. We might as well return to the caves. We might as well blow up the world. Hell, it's all meaningless anyway. Play like you mean it, though. Play tough. Play hard. You got to believe, man. Get the spirit.

We got the spirit, but it's all a game. When the goal isn't real. When you've invented it. It just isn't the same. A game is exciting for a while. But it isn't life.

They tell me that time cannot be an equivalent dimension because, mathematically, you end up with imaginary numbers when you consider it to be so. But that depends on the way all the machinery of mathematics leading up to that result has been applied. Mathematics can be a very elaborate game indeed when it is not connected. In math, anything is possible. But let's not get lost in the maze. It may be tremendous fun -- it may be true artistry. But don't pander beauty for truth unless you really believe that is the only connection yourself. Don't try to convince.

No. Progress has to be real. It has to. It has to. We resort to the "human conditon" to explain the directionality of time. It has no direction, but we are bound as though it does.

Sure. Bound, as always, by ignorance and hatred.

I was bound. I couldn't bear it. As obvious as it was -- blaring over every radio speaker in the country -- "Ail we need is love". Sure, we all know that. But we don't really believe it. We have no faith. None at all. We can't believe it's all a game -- that we have to invent the goals. Yet some of us seem to believe that. And all of us act that way. Like it's all a game. It doesn't mean anything.

Look. Time is like the other dimensions. When length -- the dimension along the direction of motion -- shrinks, it's presumed that it goes back to normal when the motion slows to subrelativistic rates. But time, presumably, can't do that because when it slows -- I mean really slows, not just apparently -- then everything changes. But we can't assume that means a different universe. So we suppose it to be the same one aging more slowly.

But that's really rather preposterous. That's our point of view -- the proud originator. We don't know what the universe looks like from high enough speeds to change the measurement of dimensions. We don't know what energy on the way to becoming matter looks like or vice-versa, because we can only experience the end points and the explosion in between. Time slows from our point of view for something in motion. We see a part of the "object" which remains in our universe. But the rest is in a universe beyond -~ other --and we don't perceive or conceive that universe -- Yet.

We don't know how to enter other universes and return. We can't even maintain our own. We're going to either perish of neglect, because we don't care -- or we're going to blow ourselves to the other side, by making the fast trip from matter to energy. Funny thing is, only a few pounds get to make the journey -- the rest of us just blow-up.

The only way to unite with what is other is to feel. To find the entrance spontaneously because it feels right. The only entrance to other universes is to let go. It may take some time. But we may be immortal right now.

It's easy to go to the moon and back. Perceptually --conceptually -- all the molecules remain in touch. Hell, the moon's bound by our gravity, and the tides of the world's life-blood are tied to the moon's. There's no time shift. We didn't go nearly fast enough, and we only lost touch for a while on the dark side. Propogandists will tell you the spaceboys came back younger. Don't believe them. We were all changed.

Motion takes time. That's the definition. Changing takes time. Growth, learning, loving, leaving -- they all take time. You just can't have it all now. There's no instant gratification. You have to earn the moment. And you can't escape time any more than you can escape your skin. Bound by a conspiracy of love and utter devotion, your fate is the earth's.

Oh, sure, we could send one astronaut off at a pretty high speed. We could even arrange that he accelerate forever without our help. I don't know how he'd ever find hiway back. We haven't mapped the universe at that speed. He might map it as he goes -- to make sure he could get back. But in order to go very fast at all he's going to have to accelerate for a very long time -- unless he breaks all the physical laws we know -- and for all that time the universe will be changing.

Changing change. Acceleration. Gravity. Maybe he could bring along some super-micro-miniature computer to find his way back through the new world. There'd have to be test missions at ever increased speed and distance. It all takes time. We don't know if we've got a decade left. Even if the physicists are right. Even if he'd come back younger, he'd have to be damn sure that an older world would care. A much older world, because it takes so damn long. He'd have to be sure that the world would still be there -- in either sense. He might not be able to find it.

The universe doesn't care much if you turn it around between mass and energy. It's all a matter of point of view. Bonds are made and broken all the time. Hell, as far as it's concerned you can burn up the whole goddamned earth to shoot a little seed into the blackness of space. "'Cause that's what you'd have to do. It's not "ready for take off". It's ready for jack-off. We haven't seen the face of the universe and we're just shooting into outer space. And nobody's seen God's face for eons. How do we know God's a woman?! Better save our act.

No, the universe doesn't care. We can play fool and try to replace the dirty smelly dangerous randomness of nature with what we've synthesized. We can pull the metal levers on plastic lighted boards with our rubber-gloved hands. We can do it all. The universe will have a good laugh. What a joke! Smelly little man whose own body is beyond his control wants to take over itsy-bitsy planet earth whose control is so simple.

Let's see now. Where's the key. Who knows what's under the hood? But if I could just find the key to turn the damn thing on. Why won't it start. Must be doing something wrong. Have to call in a mechanic. I don't know what's under the damn hood. What makes it all go. God damn it.

Fuck you Earth. A kick in the tires and walk away.

Yeah, right.

Where to, bud?

Like man, spacey. Way Out!

Oh wow.

Hey man, stay cool.

Yeah, man, quit you shakin'.You ain't goin' nowhere.

So GET DOWN!

DANCE, MOTHER FUCKER.

"Howie."

Yeah?

"This is God. You can't write this. This is classified."

Fuck you, God. (it's only words)

"That isn't nice."

We're not gonna blow it, man. This ain't your show no more. Leave us alone. We ain't coming crying to you. You got other places, man. Other souls need saving. Dig?

Let's come off the stage and live. Let's greet each other again. Take off the masks. Remember who you are. Only you can know. I begin to remember who I am. Don't leave me so alone. Let's not forsake one another. We have never been so alone. We have killed our father as the ancient prophecy said we must. We have slept with our mother. And we must not blind ourselves. We must not. We must open our eyes and see that we have no choice. There is no choice. I am so alone. Help me.

Chapter 15 seems like a continuation of 14, so here you go!

In general, tools for regularizing perceptual matters themselves have a perceptual relationship to the user. The sure feel of a wrench in the hand. But it might also be considered an emotional relationship. I like the feel of my tools. Tools for regularizing conceptual matters generally have an emotional relationship to the user. Words, gestures; but also perceptual tools which create perceptual patterns which can have primarily emotive value. The artist. The poet.

No words -- tools -- have absolute meanings. Concepts may be considered percepts from some other point of view. Motions may be considered emotions. But at least this minimal configuration cannot be reduced further. There are no universes conceivable in which perception and motion describe, exhaustively, that universe. There are no universes bereft of emotion. On that minimal configuration, we must agree.

We must agree because no other construing can make sense any longer. Tools must make sense in order to be useful. There may be an ending. Ambiguities revealed also end the mystery which made them so compelling. But it cannot be right to preserve ambiguity when it no longer exists. That is the only evil. It is frightening to imagine a language to account for everything -- to render everything understandable. So many of our activities will have to change drastically. But that has always been the case. The only difference is in scale.

And this language preserves otherness. There is no longer any basis for judging the validity -- the truth value -- of any other. Of any other culture, way of life, or person. The judgement itself becomes evil. Science is the attempt at a universal language, which, paradoxically, through its presumption that it is value free, ends up by judging every other which is not organized scientifically. Science is truly value-free, and that is the only condemnation necessary to awaken and realize that it cannot be a universal language. No universe is conceivable without emotion.

In a common sense way, we all know that otherness, paradox, or the reductive existence of a least two is essential for any minimal universe. Absolute assimilation is thereby the equivalent of non-existence. Likewise, absolute dissociation between self and other is impossible or unthinkable.

The quality of pattern-recognizing mind that is now predominant on the earth is the ability to organize complex perceptual motions, according to the mathematical language, as "universal laws". At least that is the apparently predominating quality of mind. "Nature" may yet have the last word. Still, the presumption is that this rational mind is predominant, and that these "universal laws" are valid for all physical existence throughout the universe. A further assumption is made that they are approximations which have proven validity within the known cosmos. So far as we can see with the aid of various perceptual and conceptual tools, the laws are valid. Apparently, as the tool inventory increases, these universal laws now apparently valid will be shown as approximations. In infinite universe, therefore, their validity is approximately nil.

"Infinite Universe" would include other dimensional structures. Anything other than what we can now conceive. In other words, our universal laws express the limits of our universe. But limits approached provide the necessity for change. If limits are approached too closely, that change is explosive. The future is always a surprise. We must not close our minds because of what was once exiting in its truth -- in the Past.

What, then, are the universal physical laws upon which we place so much trust? They are precisely tools for determining the degree to which we must share the same corner of perceptual -- moving -- universe. They determine the degree to which we must agree in order to share this universe.

Beyond what we can perceive, they are not universal. It is merely boastful to presume that they are. A pronouncement of specialness, and a fear of hostility. And they only describe one facet of this corner of the universe. They leave out emotion.

"Are there other universal laws than those we have 'discovered'?"

It is fruitless to consider that matter. This is the corner of the universe we have been fated to inhabit. These are the laws we have been fated to uncover. It is far too late now to imagine other universes. Or too early. A self which denies the laws of our universe forsakes membership. In the human realm, he is dead. In other realms, he merely ceases to exist. However, other universes may exist. Don't wait for them to call on the phone, though.

It is a common problem in quantum physics to wonder if information can be conveyed instantaneously. This problem, historically stems from Einstein and other's unwillingness to accept the precepts of quantum mechanics, whereby existence is seen to be a probability function. At the extremes of the physical universe -- the perceptual moving universe --existence can not even theoretically be known beyond a "cloud of probability". The act of perception -- measurement -- is said to "collapse" the probability function such that existence is either determined or not. However, according to Heisenberg, not everything can be known about the percept whose existence can be determined. If its exact location is to be known, then its momentum cannot be known, and vice-versa. This is the uncertainty principle. An apparently universal law.

The problem of instantaneous conveying of information comes in when it is observed that percepts are often inexorably paired with other percepts. Such a pair can be separated in space. If the existence and some quality of one percept in the pair is determined, the other is also determined, even though according to physical theory, nothing can be known about the physically distant percept prior to the act of perception. And the act of perception is limited by the speed of light. Perceptual information cannot travel faster. But in this case, information seems to have been conveyed instantaneously. What is the structure of physical universe that allows this to occur, scientists want to know. Einstein was disturbed, because he had determined the absolute limit of the propagation of perceptual information to be that of the speed of light. All information is conveyed according to this limit, in a perceptual universe.

It might anger some scientists to consider the connection between paired percepts to be a conceptual one. In a physical universe apart from mind, concepts cannot be prior to physical events. They are a property of mind, and arise from the experimenter and not the experiments. However, there are certain rather obvious consequences of quantum physics that are often overlooked: A single percept fills the universe with its probability function. If there are no other percepts, that probability function is universe. In a reductive universe of one self and one other, therefore, the probability function of each is affected by that of the other. This, of course, is all abstraction, because we are always conceiving of such scenarios from some outside vantage -- as though we could do such a thing.

Physicists do not deal in abstraction. There is a wonderful paradox here. Physicists deal with what exists concretely -- not abstractly. And yet, prior to quantum physics, they have assumed their position outside the realm of the percepts perceived by them. The universe exists in abstraction until the act of perception occurs which makes it concrete. That is to say, physical universe is known only by perception -- never in the abstract. The basic rule of science. Now with quantum physics, at least parts of the universe are actually determined by perception. Prior to that perception, of course, must be some conception of what is about to be perceived. Complex instruments need to be invented such that quantum mechanical perceptions can be made.

Now the physicist can never be sure that the universe of his perception is not merely the universe of his conception. At least at the reductive limits, he has entered into the picture according to the uncertainty principle. He no longer perceives what is there from some passive remove. He is connected by the act of perception. Whatever causes him to look here or there, this way or that, is now a part of what he perceives.

Now abstraction must be clarified. Abstraction is a universe that is totally in the mind. The practical physicist does not deal in abstraction. The quantum physicist, however, cannot inexorably determine the dividing line between what is in the mind and what is other. His universe may be abstract or concrete depending only on the priority of conception or perception. At the limits of perception, it is not at all clear which is prior.

Let's look again at a reductive universe of two. It can be said to have been fated that the two lonely percepts bear relationship to one another. If they are not connected perceptually; that is, by motion -- the case of the instant transmission of information referred to above -- then they are connected conceptually. This conceptual connection may be considered an emotional connection that is mutual or it may be inherent in the mind that is other to this reductive universe.

However, if we infer an other mind, then we have extended universe beyond its bounds of two percepts. But there is no universe in abstraction, and other mind must always be inferred if the conceptual relationship between percepts is not inherent in them, but is fated, or inherent in other mind.

Actually, the universe is myriad -- but there are some things which must be said about its reductive arrangement. To be conceived, universe must consist at least of self and other. To be perceived, other must be connected by motion. Motion, however, is instigated by emotional attraction that must be fated. There is, then, a quality at the reductive level, to the conceptual relationship between self and other. It can be a neutral relationship, in which case the mind of some other is required -- other to the two. It can be an attractive relationship in which case the attraction may be fated. It is interesting to note that in our universe, any motion between two percepts alone is always motion towards. There is no repulsion. Space-time is curved.

The light from the stars is not a spontaneous emission. It exists as a reminder that our universe is connected. All that has come together is in constant, moving, perceptual contact by the propagation of light waves in "space".

Fate, in the everyday universe, is the matter of accident. Those things which occur beyond our control. That is, beyond our ability to do anything about them or to predict their occurrence. These are said to be fated. In fact, most every activity in our everyday world is a response to fate. We control and understand very little. What we can do is to recognize patterns in the workings of fate, such that we insure our continued existence to the limits of probability. There is always, of course, an absolute limit beyond which we are helpless.

In the reductive universe, the fate of two percepts in motion is ineluctable. There is no direction for motion that will prevent their eventual collision. That collision would entail either that they conjoin and become a single percept, or that they forever meet and separate. However, in the reductive universe, we are really speaking only of probability clouds. And so the motion of percepts, in either response to their fate, can be expressed according to a single probability function. There is no difference whether they are in motion or not -- whether their relationship is conceptual or perceptual -- whether, indeed, they are concepts or percepts. Until mind is inferred.

Mind need have no existence in the manner of percepts or concepts. Mind is the pattern maker. It is that which results from a complex enough dynamic of concepts, percepts, motions, and emotions so as to have connection with other through definition of self or vice-versa. Mind and universe are eternally other, lest mind be universe, or universe be mind.

If the fate of a pair of percepts, which may be concepts in motion, which motion is initiated by emotion; If the fate of a pair of percepts in ineluctable, then they may be considered one in opposition to mind. If the universe apart from mind consists of two concepts, their relationship has been fated as such by mind. A conceptual relationship becomes a perceptual one when emotion arises. If universe apart from mind is all fated by mind, then mind and universe may be consisted one. If universe outside of mind is connected to mind in a manner not wholly originated in mind, then the existence of other mind must be inferred. Conceptual relationship between mind and other mind in turn depends on yet a third mind. Movement between minds -- a perceptual connection -- depends on either mutual emotion or the fate that inheres in third mind.

In our everyday world, we assume that fate has made the random connections which have led to our existence as human minds. We assume that the recombination of the stuff of the universe through the evolution of life on earth has been the result of hazardous -- or random -- meetings. These recombinations which result in turn are faced with random environment which determines which combinations may bear further fruit. Random environment in turn takes on attributes which are patterned according to the evolution of life. The life on earth -- or biosphere -- eventually overcomes the purely random events by which universe seems to be tending toward disorderliness, and instills a kind of anti-random process which is known as life. The conflict between the random and the anti-random. Between death and life is what -- over time -- has led to our existence.

We commonly assume that emotion is a purely human attribute. It may be possible to construe emotion as a universal attribute. Indeed, I think there is no choice. If instead of assuming that two giraffes, say, mate because they happen to meet, we assume some emotional attraction, then we will have to grossly alter our conception of emotion.

According to the foregoing, it must be recalled that motion is a function of time. The only sensible means for assuming the separation of percepts in motion in a reductive universe is time. Percepts not in motion, if there are two, must be connected conceptually. Their separation is not time-bound. In this reductive universe, emotion is a prognostication or a memory, depending on the direction of time. Percepts having mutual emotion will move toward or away from one another. Conceptual or perceptual relationships may be fated. Motions may be fated. But an emotion, once felt, can no longer be considered the action of fate. That is when other mind loses control. Loses the origination of connection. Felt emotions destroy origination.

Now suppose that, instead of assuming that all of the hazardous meetings that precede our existence have been merely accidents, we assume them to have occurred emotionally. We are here. Either it is fated -- in which case mind other than self has been involved, though we may have no emotional attachment to that mind. Or the various meetings have been the result of the prognostication of emotion. Emotion is the attraction to what one is fated to be attracted to. Emotion prognosticates perceptual relationship. That is, emotion timelessly foretells a relationship that only time will make perceptual. In the past we were connected to our mothers --we were one. Our emotion is the timeless prognostication of that connection. Time has no direction. Memory predicts.

We meet a member of the opposite sex. Our emotion is a timeless prognostication of connection. If the connection is strong, the emotion prior to consummation is painful. Some part of us is felt to be cut-off. But pain is a part of living, and should not be shunned. There are worse pains.

Appearance and reality function equivalently relative to human emotion. 0nly we can know what we really feel. 0nly we can know what is real. Part of that reality is always the existence of other. If we knowingly create the appearance of reality -- when in our hearts we know it to be false -- we will always cause pain. Some pain is needed. Time is our prison. But the pain caused of lies is a fruitless pain. Don't pretend unless you have to. Ultimately, there is no need.


To set up a goal and then to achieve it is very gratifying. This gratification confirms the existence of our will. In the West, that is equivalent to saying that it confirms the existence of our minds, whereby mind is defined as that which can take into itself what is perceptual or conceptual other. I see the hilltop. Only time separates my position here and my position there if I am strong, skillful, lucky, and have the will. I have lost my old position, but I have now the hilltop and from there many more goals will be reachable.

But will is only a partial attribute of mind. It is a lie -- a delusion -- when it is seen to represent the whole story. If we assume that it is only through will that our lives become meaningful, then we cut our selves off absolutely from the fabric of existence out of which we have sprung. Ultimately, we can't know why we do everything we do. Mostly we react to what fate throws our way. It is a delusion to believe that we can control very much. And if we succumb to the delusion, we progressively cut ourselves off from the only sustenance -- all of the universe.

That separation is not manifest through pain, but through numbness. We all live in a literal limbo, so long as we blind ourselves to our connections to the universe. It is an emotional blindness. We cut off the heartstrings. Ego is the scalpel, and the balm. Ego cuts us off. Ego makes us numb. I can offer no proof that the universe is the way I am suggesting here. Only you can do that. All I can tell you is that wonderful things can happen if you let go. The story of your life will write itself. Baffling coincidence will provide release from what you thought you had to find -- to figure out -- inside your own tiny mind. The answers are written as on a billboard all around you. I can't prove it to you. All I can do is ask you to believe that I have seen such answers, and that, If you let go you will too.

To be lucky is sometimes more gratifying than to succeed in an exercise of will. To be emotionally attracted to something and to have that something. Supposing you fall in love. There will be a connection there, if in your universe that is what love means. If you feel nothing, there will be no connection. Emotion is subject apparently to will, circumstance, words, etc. To the whole panoply of interpretation to which motion is subject. But will is an inhibitor of emotion. Willfully employed words will quench emotion. Poetry sets it afire. Motion is timebound. Emotion is perpetual.

So there is immortality, but it exists only in the moment. When you are connected to the entire universe --past, present, and future --you are immortal. To cut yourself off is a fate far worse than death. To attempt to refuse death is to refuse the moment, and assure that you are not immortal. If connections are severed, there is no future. And the past becomes meaningless accident. There would be no difference between a past that is void, and the one we remember, if we create a vacant future. All the myriad connections that led to the point of destruction would be mistakes. No different at all from the swirling chaos of physical universe that is other because we believe it to be dead. The balance of the universe is always held in the moment. Right now. And each individual is responsible --though only to himself. Meaning is up to everyone right now. If we imagine a grim future, we create it. If we feel depressed, we create the reasons. Optimism itself is the only optimistic future. Don't forget. And it's so simple to remember -- all the connections.

If any of emotion, concept, motion or percept are removed from the universe, meaning and existence are impossible. Accidents that are merely accidents are always dead -- apart from mind. Accidents that lead somewhere are always emotional. The attempt to remove accident from existence is an attempt to remove emotion.

You can't get to heaven by believing in someone else. You can't be immortal that simply. There is no such insurance policy. You must simply believe in yourself. Christ's work is finished. He has brought you here, and now you must believe in yourself. Everyone is the savior.

"My God, you don't stop. I indulge you and I try to offer advice, and I keep to myself what I really think, but you don't stop. You're not just preaching, you're ranting!"

I really can't help it. I made the mistake of rereading parts of this. It's true. I know it's true. I'm shaking with the truth. Maybe it's just the cold, or like when the wind shakes the boat and I can't tell whether it's the wind or my excitement, but I'm shaking, and I know this is true.

"For Christ's sake! You don't believe in truth. You said so yourself. This isn't truth. This is your belief. Now the problem is to get somebody to believe you. I'm skeptical. You're hardly making sense. You cross too many bounds. Too many fields."

I know. You're right. I can't prove anything. I don't want to prove anything. There's plenty of time for people to fool with proving things. But this is important. It has to be done now -- no later. People have to start to believe. I can't wait until I can say it better. It's now or never. But how do I go on? I'm getting shaky.

oooh! Friday the 13 - better get in Chapter 14 1983

Mathematics is a powerful language. I have been good at it, but my study was forsaken because of my own misplaced anger and by the world's apparently misplaced use of number. I lost my desire. As a language, mathematics is a powerful tool. Computation is not a prominent facility of the human mind, however. It takes arduous learning, and in the end is a task that can always be performed more reliably and simply by computers. The principles of mathematics are not difficult, however. The computer is useless without the prior human understanding of the principles of math. The computer might also be dangerous if it is used to prove things whose proof depends on principles not apparent to the person who is being convinced.

We are being made into numbers. As always we are told that it is for our own good. Rationally, there's nothing wrong with a social security number. It's for your own good. But it seems to be required everywhere, and most of us sense something evil in that. Those who aren't dominated by the demon rationality which tells them to ignore what they know with their hearts. Credit cards. Who are you anyway? Do you even exist without your number? Without countable quantities of money you are nothing.

Is it really your money? Are you willing to act like a number because you can't believe in yourself? Are you willing to believe that you are a nobody? It isn't your money. As long as you believe that owning those countable amounts is the key to having a name, you are the slave of the true possessor of the money -- the holder of the purse strings of your soul. It isn't the wealthy. They are more horribly enslaved. It is the institution. The bank which credits your number, and by that credit accrues more capital for the great institutions -- the corporations -- that truly own the earth. We are all slaves to a system. An inhuman, incorporeal web of false desire which stays erect only out of our fear -- yours and mine. Don't be a number.

The power of mathematics comes from its ability to regularize the pattern sensing capability, which is the highest attribute of mind. Any tool effectively does the same thing. Certain shapes are useful in nature. To a human mind, equipped with pattern perceiving abilities and their reciprocal pattern making abilities -- hands -- these shapes are related immediately to the problem of survival, which provides the simplest why of man's relationship to the universe.

A knife can regularize shapes which are otherwise only randomly available, the regularized shape in turn provides through its vagaries a new set of random impressions from which further improvements suggest themselves to pattern recognizing mind. Words can allow the involvement of many minds in the process so that the randomly dispersed vagaries among the individual minds may combine to produce and implement some pattern which best resolves the why of their collective existence.

Words themselves are tools; that is, pattern regularizing devices. Their import is to regularize not just the environment, but the entire and cacophonous assemblage of experiences which are man's relationship to the environment. Emotions, concepts, percepts, and motions are all regularized by language so that, within a community, the mind can be shared. Through use of language that is honest and open, a sharing of fates occurs whereby all the random --fated; hazarded -- stuff of which patterns are made are shared by the community. Upon this affective sharing depends the why of the group -- its relationship to what is other.

Mathematics deals only with the regularization of percepts and motions. It is a partial language, but by far the most powerful for that sort of regularization. It provides a handle on the world. It enables the most powerful manipulations. When it is understood. And the understanding is an agreement. Concepts must be formed in order for the tool to be used. A relationship between the tool and its meaning --its use -- needs to be understood. Patterns are regularized in such a way that demonstrable rules can be shown to organize their behavior. Mathematics is very stable, and within the limits of the particular dialect, the rules don't change. That is despite the fact that mathematics is often used to describe the most dynamic of phenomena.

Regularization of concepts must precede and follow the employment of mathematics as a tool. The proofs can be elaborate which establish the basis for agreement among minds using the same branch of mathematics. And when mathematics is used for regularizing percepts and motions in the matter of the why of man's existence, its usefulness depends on measurement. There has to be a way for relating the rough assemblages of experience to the powerful language of mathematics. The more precise the measurement, the more surely useful are the descriptions that mathematics can provide.

Measurement is the conceptualization of universe. The rendering static what otherwise is constantly changing. Words are a measure in the same way, though what they can measure goes well beyond percepts and motions.

Prior to the regularization of concepts which precedes the employment of any tool, there must be some emotion. It may begin with a simple desire to survive. A concept may be formed by which the regularity of, say, the seasons is noticed. The language of mathematical computation will be used to further regularize those percepts and motions that seem to be included in the regularized change of the seasons.

The phases of the moon or the passage from day to night might be simply added together and compared with the passage of the seasons.

It is a kind of magic which allows mind to gain a measure of control over his existence. In the matter of why, he has gained a simple answer by his ability to predict those matters of which he can conceive. The conception comes before the perception whenever there is more than one mind. The very existence of more than one mind depends on the proof of connection between them. The only proof is the sharing of language. And that depends on the measure of words. You can't know what your companion sees until he tells you. And you must understand him. You must agree to believe. You must trust.

That is the answer that all mind seeks. Not the answer in words -- but the answer through words. What does my existence mean. The first answer is always to the matter of survival. The mind of animal life is simple, but at least it knows how to pose the proper question. In that man is hopelessly stupid. He considers only the tool. He weighs it in his hand, then turns it on himself in order to unlock an answer that is only inherent in the relationship. Or he turns it on what is other. We have met the enemy and he is US.

Computers are very powerful tools which can complete very complex calculations unapproachable by human mind; or rather, approachable only through the computer. All the complex emotions including trust, desire, belief, fear or whatever are included in the understanding of the way the computer works; or in the trust that it does work the way one has been told, which makes its calculations useful. We can trust the employment of the computer to aid on the way to the moon, much as we can trust a knife to carve a spear --provided we are skilled in its employment.

Ultimately, all of the tools of mankind, if freely and openly employed, attend to a sharing of the fates of all mankind in the matter of why -- mankind’s relationship to the universe. If not freely and openly employed, they may seem to include one community and exclude another. In reality, I believe that such employment insures only that the fate of the entire community, which is now all mankind, is sealed.

When survival describes completely the why of a mind, or community of minds, the chances are optimized when that mind is open -- free to make patterns in the widest possible sense. A language which prevents certain patterns from recognition, for instance, has negative survival value. I am not thinking here of natural or evolutionary limitations in tool production. (it would help to have pistols instead of spears to fight off tigers, etc.) I am thinking, rather, of arbitrary closings off of mind, such as a taboo against speaking with women, for instance, or the refusal to use the left hand -- any sort of restriction. The only natural restriction -- which is a time-bound one -- is that the tool work. That it make sense.

The mind oscillates. What was once an opening up, becomes a closing off when the relationship between self and other has changed. There is a different answer to the question of why at every moment of existence. But the patterns made by mind are themselves only possible if there is an indulgence of the fiction that such patterns endure. They surely endure beyond the lifetime of any individual. Language changes but slowly. But communities, too, must live and die. And when the community or the individual refuses to die, it is as perverse as the unmoving grain of sand in the face of the wind. There can be no such refusal.

When faced with a choice in the matter of survival between one mind or community and another, it would seem clear that the obvious pattern for mind to recognize is that "it's us or them." Happens every time -- a simple pattern.

Except that, on occasion, mind may notice that its survival chances are enhanced by allowing an increase through inclusion of the alien mind. There may be cases where the matter of why is best attended by a closed mind, but I confess that I have a hard time imagining them. What really occurs is that the sustenance of mind is conceived to be dependent on the automatic pattern integration which is conceived to be other than mind. Nature. And the sustenance of nature is seen as limited.

Nature's sustenance is limited at various times in history. There have been times when it has truly been a case of us or them. I wonder what we lose each time we make that decision. For at its base is a simple inability to agree. What is shared is the agreement that sustenance is limited. What isn't shared is the priority of one or the other's survival. But there is the choice of agreement on priority, and trust in sustenance. I wonder what might be gained. To live or perish together. Perhaps if we get together, we can come up with a new pattern which will render the limits of nature's sustenance fictional limits.

That has been the true pattern of history. The sharings are what endure. The wars are aberrations. We get caught up in them because we are ensnared by the mythology of control. We hardly notice that the wars are a mask over the actual sharing which ensues. They may be love acts or they may be rapes. And it may be our own point of view that determines the difference. We are the progeny. We may decide whether our lives are accidents -- whether we are all bastards -- or whether the joinings have been heartfelt and meaningful.

We do not live in that kind of world any more. We are clever. We have learned some of nature's secrets. And we have the choice of keeping them secret, or of sharing them. There need no longer be any question about the sustenance of nature. We know now that if we are careful, nature's bounty is limitless. We have gone far beyond the simple plowshares at the origin of civilization. Our tools are myriad, and their uses unbounded. But we have to agree. And be careful.

There is only one evil, and that is the refusal to see when the capacity is offered. What has been done in the history of man up to now has not been evil. It has all been necessary in order that this moment exists. There have been good tendencies and bad, but the sum total depends only on us now in this moment for its balance. We make the pattern. And we only keep it good by our willingness to see. There can be no condemnations except of oneself.

Nature is other than mind for some communities. For some, the body is other than mind. It might be considered part of nature -- only important to mind for its sustenance. Mind is always self. But where the boundary is drawn makes all the difference in the world in the matter of why. The boundary may be at the neck. It may be at the skin. Or there may only be a flexible boundary depending on how we are connected to what is other.

There must be a boundary. When we use tools evasively, we express something about the quality of this boundary. We are saying either that the boundary should not be crossed, or that the crossing may not be mutual. An honest and open use of tools always expresses the belief that boundaries must be crossed such that self and other are preserved in the crossing. It is always a rape to make a crossing that is beneficial to the self and not to the other. And it can only be a rape when the rapist knows. Some boundaries may be best left uncrossed, but there is usually no need for evasion then. Because true desire is a mutual thing. Evasion is a defense against lies as often as it is the origin of the lie. And boundaries may be moved, but the attempt to dissolve any boundary altogether is the worst kind of willful blindness. Nothing is without limits. And the time must be right for boundaries to be moved.

The use of tools demands the conception of self and other. The use of some tools, such as language, demands the conception of community -- connections among different minds. There have been conflicts, throughout history, between responses to other which assimilate and those which subjugate or destroy. The first response regards the other as different. The second response regards the difference as hostility --potential or actual. Real or imagined. To regard other as hostile demands a certain why. It is mind's function to be special when other is hostile. But mind's function may only be to be different -- to be other.

Competition is the response to a threat to specialness.

More tools are created when other is considered hostile.

More pattern regularizing -- more manipulation -- is seen to be required than when other is only different. Survival is always limited. We are born and we die. In direct response to a fear of death we attempt to create tools that will prolong individual life. We want to preserve our specialness against the hostility of nature which mocks our specialness by indifference to our mortality. The mystery of nature is challenged. It is really a silly competition. We will always die. We will always be limited.

Death need not be considered a threat. Men are afraid of what is other. But women can experience an other self within their own when they are with child. They are not so threatened by paradox. It is not apparently a terrible accommodation, although some women seem to accept the manly propaganda that carrying a child is a suffering. I can't know because I am a man. But it would seem that the joy would equal the suffering. I have been told as much. Women can be reminded more easily of their connection to what is other. Men forget more easily, and fear the return. They use tools. They manipulate. Their bodies are constructed as procreative tools to be forever denied an intimate knowledge of self and other as one. Pity the pricks.

Can you laugh? Some will be angry with men because they are all rapists. Some will be angry with the West because it has been raping mother earth. Some will be angry with me because of my terrible language. My pomposity. (Though I doubt they would have read this far) Some will be angry with themselves. But can you laugh? Paradox is also a joke. We really can't have known until now. There is still time to change.

There are two ways to breech the boundary between the self and other. A perceptual breech involves the establishment of moving connections between self and other. Other is assimilated when movements originating within self are seen to be connected to what is other. When the moving connections have no origin -- but are mutual -- then there has been a breech, though not an assimilation. We may clothe ourselves to limit such breeches. Other may be similarly clothed.

A conceptual breech involves emotive connection. Likewise, when there is origination, the other has been assimilated, at least in part. When the connection has no origin, but is mutual, then the breech is not a violation. The distinction between self and other is left intact.

Out of all breeches of boundaries comes something new. The breech is a connection. Self and other become one when the new life is allowed to grow. The new life produced of violation is always unbalanced.

Violation is only possible when there is origination. In man, when there is will. A perceptual connection -- a connection of motion -- that has no origin, is a fated connection. When the body is considered other than self, for example, the perceptual or moving connections which conspire to give it a regular and recognizable shape are all fated, within limits. Generally, unless we willfully damage our bodies, the interconnections are not considered to have any origin. Origin implies will.

Emotional connection that is originated would be a willful employment of conceptual tools -- words -- to induce an emotional connection that is not mutual. A seductress attracts without being attracted. Gestures. Voice. Willful manipulation of patterns to induce emotional connection or assimilation.

There is no need to fear the various tendencies. Manipulation may be required. Submission may be appropriate. It is only important to know the truth. To make the effort at vision. To see when -- at what time -- the will becomes evil. When a willful definition of self automatically entails a violation of any other.