And this noted, without further ado\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hi, James!<\/p>\n
I just spent a nice coupla weeks in Metro Boston, seeing some old friends and going to Orthodox Palm Sunday and I sat with three different sanghas. I resolved some stuff with family. Now M is on a road trip with her sister C, who is moving from Tampa to Colorado Springs, and I hope to make use of the alone time in the comfort of electricity, internet, and flush toilet to do some writing and house maintenance, before going home to my rough camp in my beautiful woods where the running water is Stearns Brook. Good to see I can still run on with the best of them.<\/p>\n
In 1972, I was a man of 25 and life was strange. One of the least strange things was that I went to Belarus with my mother, who hadn\u2019t been home in thirty years. I had never been there, being born in a refugee camp in Germany in the English Sector, then emigrating to the US. We stayed in Moscow with relatives, some of whom were a bit reluctant to have us as they worked for the government and the ghost of Uncle Joe was still everywhere. But family is family, and our people shared their tiny apartment, making a bed for my mother on a window seat, and a pallet on the floor for me. As a usually penniless hippy vagabond, I was on good speaking terms with floors.<\/p>\n
As I lay there in Moscow, amazed I was in this place we so often heard about and from, and in the heartland of my native culture, the usual nonsense sequences of words and images took place. A perfect quatrain formed, perfectly rhymed, cleverly worded, shining in its brilliant wordplay. It was obviously the seed for a longer poem that would from it. But I did not want to turn on a light to write it down but disturbing my mother. The stanza flowed from line to line in such obvious poetic logic, that I believed I only had to memorize the first line and the rest would unfold. I went over the whole unit a few times, and the first line a few more, and drifted off to sleep in the happiness that\u2019s a receipt for the gift of art.<\/p>\n
In the morning, all I could remember was that I had these four lines that were amazing, but what they were or were about . . . absolutely nothing was there!<\/p>\n
When I sit, things form that are amazing. A few times, I was sure I could remember, just like I thought in Moscow, but I was less surprised to learn that usually such thought patterns melt like the frost art on windows in subzero air, leaving not even memory. So I keep a notebook by my sitting place so when such gifts come, I can take a few notes. It\u2019s less disruptive than trying to memorize, not to mention the feeling of loss when a jewel melts through your fingers.<\/p>\n
Much of the Theologia I sent you before, the part called \u201cRainy Afternoon\u201d (from something Alan Watts said) was based on such notes. Sometimes they\u2019re something really good, sometimes I wonder why I thought they were good enough to bother with, and sometimes I just can\u2019t judge them.<\/p>\n
Anyway, here\u2019s a little more.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Theologia Belarusica II [2a]<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nFriday, March 22, 2019<\/em>
\n 8:32 AM<\/em><\/p>\nI stopped in to see the God as is my wont, and as is hers she gave me tea.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me more about the universe and how you created it. How many times did you do it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe usual countless.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you kept them all separate, self-contained? You would have to, of course, or else risk utter chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, actually, I did at first. But when I was done with the first round of infinite possibilities, I started again, only allowed a little karmic leakage between one universe and its neighbor. A most interesting complexity evolved. All kinds of abstractions expressed themselves in the stories of cosmic material.
\n\u201cOne day I thought to correlate some of them without mutual symmetry, allowing communication freely one way, but limiting it the other way. One realm could act as a repository of principal and memory for another.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh? Like ranked geometric spatial dimensions?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, but not really. By the way, what do you have against chaos?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell . . . is there anything to say that\u2019s good about it? It seems like the forces of order \u2014 which I assume are your forces \u2014 are forever in a struggle to keep the crawling chaos at bay. Isn\u2019t the victory of disorder a tragedy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yes! But what about the defeat of disorder? Just imagine \u2014 nothing out of place, everything where you think it will be. Nothing new, nothing unexpected, nothing interesting.
\n\u201cIn truth, perfect order is stagnant, while perfect chaos nothing beyond itself. I found the perfect proportion is two parts regularity to one part disruption. 66% order, 33% chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a 1% unaccounted for.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the mysterious remainder. The salvation of the ages! The silence that lines the signal and the noise.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSay, I\u2019ve been meaning to ask you \u2015 the principles of a reality reside in some other \u2018place\u2019 outside that reality, like the principles, rules, axioms, and natural laws of Flatland come from our own 3-D world. So, that which made the Big Bang possible \u2015 You \u2015 because obviously the universe didn\u2019t exist before it did . . . \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you going somewhere with this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to be offensive . . . \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSweet Boy, we own each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you the ultimate repository of principle? The Alpha & The Omega? Or have you a Creator and a Law?\u201d<\/p>\n
She smiled and stretched. Stretching, she covered earth and sky. Her face was all the many colors, and many I\u2019d not seen before. The rosy-gold of dawn settled on her, and she let the birds laugh for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cDear Boy \u2015 it\u2019s Turtles . . . all the way up!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, nice talking with you, as always. Maybe we can talk some more on my way back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime. I\u2019ll be here<\/p>\n
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