Living In The World

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One of the three lovely golf courses that bejewel our community is currently closed for renovations preceding some PGA event in the Fall.  That is delightful because it means I need only step out the door to wander down paths that wind among ponds and streams, flowers and forests, and baronial homes – some of which actually remain within the limits of good taste.  I am struck each morning by how breathtaking a golf course can be without the golfers.  Herons, hawks, and rabbits all conspire to irritate the crows.  Turtles flop about the ponds and yes, “Muskrat Suzie, Muskrat Sam, Do the jitterbug at a Muskrat Land” and then flee as my shadow crosses the bridge.

I suppose one might, therefore, find it a little strange that during this morning’s walk my thoughts turned to agoraphobia.  While dictionaries will lead one into some splitting of hairs, all would agree that an agoraphobic would find my morning golf course ramble terrifying.  Fear of open spaces, of social situations, fear of being out in the world, these all pop up in definitions of the condition.  Perhaps my thoughts turned in that direction since agoraphobia is the existential opposite of universal resonance, and I was struck by how debilitating it would be to be trapped inside that perceptual reality.

The agoraphobic, I imagine, retreats into a home or a room because everything beyond the door is a manifestation of a “fearful otherness.”  Universal resonance, quite to the contrary, informs us that we are in harmony with everything that surrounds us, that we need merely to open our eyes to recognize the symphony.

As the cart path winds behind one green, it passes a cutoff where some older equipment is stored – some good “rustique” methinks, for Dan Coyle, my oldest friend and fellow artist who fancies such things.  Across the path, within hazard markers that foretell a future spraying with RoundUp, a resilient thicket of pokeweed reaches up knee high.  Universal resonance finds a representational still life in this little slice of the world.  Machinery, meticulously engineered and fabricated, spirals into decay in the still of the afternoon as the pokeweed thrives in that same neglect.  Decay and renewal, for awhile, until the mechanics come along, refurbish the machines, which will then beat the weeds down to make way for the sculptured turf of the fairway.  Decay and renewal.  And I walk between, enjoying the smooth sway of my body, the machine that carries my chord, which will, itself, decay and renew until – finally exhausted - it will give up my chord to another renewal beside another fair way, as yet unknown.  It is a peace utterly alien to the agoraphobic, and that realization casts a bit of a shadow on my ramble.

Still, I realize, bringing light to the shut-ins of the world is above my pay grade.  It would be counter-productive for me to head back to school in the hope of, sometime in an uncertain future, hanging out my therapist’s shingle. Universal resonance asserts that we strive for a rational relationship between the mandate: foster harmony, enable beauty and oppose harm; and our own choices and abilities.  I now accept that I write, I teach, I occasionally make art.  I am interested in finding new pathways to share my efforts and the efforts of others.  And that is how I best beat back the darkness; that is how I foster harmony, enable beauty and oppose harm.  That, and of course rambling along .  .  .  .
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Superconductivity, or the 96% Solution

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As Colonel Hannibal Smith of A-Team fame was wont to say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”  You see, for years now I have been aware that my whole “Chord Theory/Universal Resonance explanation of the universe and existence” notion often foundered on the shoals of lack of pragmatic evidence.  When the whole construction rests on interactions too small to be measured – the behavior of strings – well, eyebrows tend to be raised, chortles are stifled, or not. 

New paths show promise in countering those reactions.  First, evidence that the status quo is flawed opens the door to alternative explanations, such as those I propose.  And, the more humongous the previous errors, the greater the wiggle-room provided.  Second, testable hypotheses generated by the alternative explanation are presenting themselves.

I am now willing to assert that the now widely-accepted notion that some 96% of the universe made up of dark matter and energy had escaped the observational efforts of the scientific community, qualifies as a humongous error. [See link.] 

And now even more recent data from the Kepler mission points to yet another elephantine oversight.  The May 20th issue of Science News carries an article entitled: Stellar Oddballs, in which Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley says, “There are so many stars that show bizarre, utterly unexplainable brightness variations that I don’t know where to begin. These phenomena have never been seen before, or never with such clarity.” Or in other words – “Oops, our bad.” [See link.] 

The point is not so much that “they got it wrong,” as it is that everything we were sure of yesterday can change tomorrow.  Certainty isn’t; which gives greater rein to hypothesizing about the uncertain.  Hence, this hypothesis:

As I understand it, little of what we know about the cosmos – or thought we knew – is based upon actually looking at a phenomenon.  That’s very old school, very Galileo.  Today, we measure the results of interactions or shifts in interactions and then define and identify the phenomenon by interpreting the interactions.  We don’t “see” particles collide in the Large Hadron Collider [LHC], rather reactions are “detected” that are consistent with what theory asserts should occur when specific particles collide – the actual collision is inferred, not observed.  That oblique ascertainment of “reality” applies in our everyday life as well.  I am looking at a pen that is blue.  But blue is actually the color that the pen is not.  The pen absorbs – takes into itself - all the other color wavelengths and reflects back those that are not “of it” – blue.  We see, and name the object’s color, by the reflected wavelength, by the characteristic it does not possess, blue.  Hence, Picasso’s blue period was really his “every color but blue period.” 

The objective of the foregoing is not a semantic game, rather it is an attempt to demonstrate how we might have missed most of the universe, and further, how we misunderstood much of that which we thought we had observed.  The issue is important since the data – as far as we can trust them – now seem to assert that our portion of the universe, the 4% we imperfectly observe, is different from the other 96% that we have not observed.  [A cautionary note seems important here.  There is no reason that I can see, to assume that the other 96% is made up of uniform “otherness.”  There may be a wide variety of “othernesses” in play.  But let us leave that for another time.]

The observational imperative of the 4/96 split would seem to be that we avoid attempting to observe the hidden 96% of the universe using the norms we have ascertained here in our 4%.  To do so is to become, once again, the midnight drunk searching for the car keys only where the light is best; searching using the flashlight of theories that now seem, at least, incomplete.

Chord theory, universal resonance, suggests a different observational strategy.  Our 4% solution rests on the observations of reactions, of collisions, of resistance.  The observation of discord, not harmony.   Universal resonance asserts a wider universe in which harmony is the norm and resistance the aberration. So, perhaps we should ask ourselves, what is the observable opposite of resistance?  What phenomenon might reveal a universe of harmonic normalcy? Conductivity seems to raise a hand. And superconductivity – that state when resistance disappears completely, when there are no collisions or reactions, defining a universe where harmony reigns, but is, to us, invisible. 

That is, of course, the nature of the ultimately harmonic universe posited by universal resonance.  The question remains: What does that universe “look like”?  What lampposts shed light on the other 96%?  I would hypothesize that the other 96% - or at least significant portions of it – are cloaked by superconductivity, perhaps even hyper-conductivity that would allow more than one object to commonly occupy the same space at the same time.  Yes, yes, we know that is wrong – at least so it seemed yesterday.  But continued “head-stuck-in-the-4-percent” attempts to prove such bizarre notions impossible, simply impede progress toward discovering how we might observe them once they rudely assert their reality.

A more fruitful path would be for those with the appropriate skill sets to seek for “cosmic background superconductivity,” as they have previously sought cosmic microwave background radiation.  How?  I haven’t the slightest idea.  But there are some wickedly brilliant people out there who can probably get their heads around it.  I look forward to their work!
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Observing the Elephant, or, WiiinWim

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The fable of The Blind Men and the Elephant teaches an important to truth – to children.  As nimble fingers explore the pachyderm those tracing the side find a wall, a tusk becomes a spear, the trunk a snake; leg, tree; ear, fan; tail, rope – until the poor beast is totally and inaccurately deconstructed.  The implicit assertion is that could we but see the entire creature we would somehow “know” what it “is.”  And that is a valuable lesson for kids – “Get all the information before reaching a conclusion.” But seen from another perspective, the fable itself becomes an illusion.  No mere observation of the elephant would reveal the matriarchal social structure, the navigational nuances, or the communicative sophistication of the species that we are only now beginning to understand and appreciate.   So the story of the elephant and the blind men leads us into a WiiinWim situation.  Ah, no, again, not a typo – just another example of my love of acronyms.  WiiinWim stands for “What It Is, Is Not What It Means.”  And I am, again, talking about the universe – this time the optometrist’s universe.

The Optometrist’s Universe is a simplistic metaphor. An optometrist provides the lenses that allow us to read.  However, the ability to make the glasses is completely separate from the ability to read and comprehend whatever text is made legible by the lenses.  The most skilled uni-lingual American optometrist can peer through her finest lenses and still find French a mystery. Seeing the text is not the same as reading the words, and neither equates to understanding the sentence, let alone the paragraph or the book.  The same, I would posit, is true about astronomers and cosmologists and the universe: seeing is not directly correlated to understanding.  WiiinWim. 

This current musing drifts from my recent reading of The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, by Richard Panek.  The book simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed me.  The fascination comes from the fact some of the smartest cosmologists, astronomers, mathematicians, and scientists somehow overlooked 96% of the universe. Even more fascinating; how easy and understandable was the error.  The embarrassment stems from the fact that these were “family” to a certain extent – members of the academic family – and much of the error was compounded because they expended incredible amounts of energy fighting over “grants and glory.”  At times the whole process wasn’t so much a “chase for the truth” as it was an effort to “affirm my version of the truth.”

But I digress, as always.  What I found most troubling about the work was the “Blind Men and the Elephant-ness” of it.  Perhaps trapped by the metaphor of his title, The Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, Panek seems to assert that once we learn to “observe” and measure the other 96 percent of the universe we will have “seen the elephant,” and that vision will put to rest pesky questions regarding the meaning of existence, the nature of love, the existence of God, and all that jazz.  I must object.

Here is my concern: the technology that reveals the extent and structure of the universe, and the individuals who operate the equipment and analyze data, do not necessarily reflect the skill sets and knowledge bases best-suited to understanding the meaning of the universe.  Now, I certainly do not wish to reduce the astronomer's role to mere lens grinder or image-maker, no, the skill involved in the conception and creation of contemporary telescopes and other sensing devices is quite incredible.  To image the various guises of the universe we can see and to even contemplate the tools necessary to perceive the other 96% that we cannot see, is a manifestation of technical and scientific skill of the first magnitude.  The astronomer's labor is worthy of daily admiration, and occasional awe.

But while those exceptional efforts bring the text into focus, they do not automatically provide insight into the meaning of the text resolved by the device.  I’m not advancing the general semanticist's old saw and simply asserting that, "the word is not the thing."  As a matter of fact, I’ve come – well, maybe not 180 degrees from that – but certainly, 155, maybe 160.  I am far more comfortable with my own perspective, drawn from my writings on Chord Theory and Universal Resonance [drop me a note, I’ll send you the links]; that while the word it is certainly an inherent part of the thing, it is just as surely not the whole thing.  To discern the symbol is not synonymous with understanding the symbol.  Were that the case, Dan Brown would be a far less wealthy man today.

Let us explore another metaphor.  Let us consider Maxfield Parrish's Sunlite Valley from 1947.

 I choose it because it is not Rembrandt or Van Gogh.  It isn't even J.M.W. Turner or Thomas Cole. It is an unabashedly romantic landscape, which if painted today might be accused of some photoshopping - a little heavy on the saturation, a bit defuse on the sky - but I like it. It is sort of painting “comfort food.”  The point is this: you could take the physical elements used to construct the painting and put them in a room.  The tubes of paint, or perhaps the pigments and binders used to make the paint, the canvas, the brushes, the stretchers for the frame, the varnishes.  Throw in the wood for an easel. Maybe add some lights.  Everything. Dump it there, in the room.  Let all those elements stand for everything that makes up the universe or the multiverses or whatever.

When the astronomers and astrophysicists finally manage to define all of those elements for us, then they will have cataloged the materials in the room, they will have marked the paint in Parrish's studio.  When they isolate the forces that pull elemental particles into larger clusters and reveal the actions and reactions that suture up the galaxies and the unimaginably immense super strings of galaxies, then they will have discerned what holds the paint together, what allows it to cling to the brush and adhere to the canvas.  They may have even have glimpsed the nature of Maxfield's technique, his brushstrokes, and his preferences for hue and texture.  But unanswered still is the question of why the artist chose to paint that particular scene and for what purpose? What, if any, was the intelligence that stretched from conception to execution?

And that, of course, brings us back to WiiinWim - what it is, is not what it means.  If you have followed these posts for long you know that they stem from my own efforts to merge the physics with the philosophy.  And those efforts have led me to a number of assertions about "what it means."  I wait, with not much patience, to learn the nature of that 96% of the universe that remains cloaked.  I am curious to see if it seems to “confirm or deny” my guesses about “what it means.” If you have forgotten the nature of those guesses, you can download the long version The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart, [200 – 300 pages depending on font size] for free here:

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/624/the-god-chord-string-theory-in-the-landscape-of-the-heart

But, in short, the work concludes with this thesis: Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm: these are not the only truths, but without them all others come undone.

It is an assertion regarding appropriate human attitude and behavior that is drawn from what physics reveals about the nature of reality. You see, the recurring theme is that each time the best and brightest observers of the universe assert the primacy of chaos and the eventual demise of existence - those lynchpins of nihilism - newer evidence, better data, and a broader view reveals transcendent harmony and order. I continue to scour the emerging literature from the LHC, Hubble, et. al.  To date, the dominant chord still echoes harmonics.  And in that echo sounds the human mandate: Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm.
 
The God Chord has been downloaded some 16,000 times, and is, I assume, also occasionally read :-)   So the foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm message is inching along through cyberspace. But my wife, Christine, requested a shorter version a couple of years ago, “You know, one regular people might actually enjoy reading.” 

Let me close with the 700 words that were the result of that request as they sum up my take on Wim "What it means":

Distillations: An Acknowledgement of Universal Resonance

by

RL Schrag

September, 2009

Being a tiny little book that attempts to present Universal Resonance, the worldview formerly know as Chord Theory in a more accessible form.

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Distillations

“Even small works can be beautiful if they point the way.”

Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm: these are not the only truths, but without them all others come undone.

The object of this work is to distill universal resonance to its most parsimonious essence.  The guiding principles will be brevity and clarity, the objective, a work you can hold in the palm of your hand.
 

Universal Resonance

From the string theory of physics I accept the assertion that at the irreducible core of all things rests the string.  Unimaginably tiny, it vibrates.  Its existence mandates that the universe be defined by resonance; that we are made - as is every other thing in the universe, no matter how great or small - of music.

Existence, therefore, is best understood in terms of harmony and discord with no artificial distinction drawn between physics and metaphysics.

Universal resonance sees the division between physics and metaphysics as an intellectual artifice, a relic of wars between dueling arrogances:  Metaphysics asserts that truth is beyond measurement, while Physics fails to imagine the instruments equal to the task.

Universal resonance anticipates a world in which the unimaginable will become measurable, and the unbelievable is rationally explained.  It has happened so often in the past, it seems foolhardy to assert the contrary.

Foster Harmony

This guides all our behavior. It shapes what we do and what we should refrain from doing: We seek harmony.

Implicit in the exhortation to foster harmony is the realization that we cannot choose for others. The only chord you can tune is your own.

Harmony rarely frowns. She is not selfish, arrogant or disdainful.  Harmony could be rather tedious were she not so willing to laugh at herself.

Enable Beauty

This tenet mandates our active participation in making the world more beautiful. A broad conception of beauty is implied, one that transcends culture, market and current taste.

The route to beauty winds through throngs and past lonely places.  Where and how we choose to follow is unimportant.  That we do follow is imperative.
 

Oppose Harm

Harm is anything that compromises harmony and beauty. Sometimes active opposition, though seemingly discordant, is the necessary path to harmony. But, whenever possible, opposition should be graceful, gentle, even beautiful.

Remember, opposition forced into the public sphere usually indicates a failure to blunt harm in a more private and graceful manner.

The Self

The self is the symphony we compose with the choices of our life.  Inclined by biology, we take from our DNA the realization that we are utterly unique.  Each breath we draw, each hope we cherish, our fears, the thoughts we think, all trigger cascades of discernible physical reactions that strum the very strings of our self, creating and recreating us anew each moment.

Though buffeted by both choice and chance, we are the composers of our life’s symphony.  It is a role we are powerless to relinquish.

The Soul

The entity that most religions call the soul is recognized in universal resonance to be a physical reality; a cluster of those unimaginably tiny strings that uniquely encodes our deepest beliefs, feelings and insights. It is a minute morsel of matter whose size and resonance allows it, on the occasion of the demise of its current body, to migrate among the multiple dimensions demanded by the math of string theory, thereby actualizing immortality.

The Universe

Is the encompassing resonant harmonic entity of which we, as individuals, are and will always remain, a unique, sentient part.

The universe expands beyond the multi-verse of our theorizing, and yet is reflected in the infinitesimal perfection of the soul.

Our knowledge of the universe is evolutionary.  We are disabled by the belief that we can imagine the horizon of understanding.  Our belief in complexity blinds us to the insight suggested by simplicity.

Wisdom

We gain wisdom as we explore the three truths.  It is an exploration that is ambiguously poised between the private and the public.

We are unique entities suspended amidst unimaginable billions – unlike any other, yet in evolving concert with all.

Perhaps wisdom is best seen as unfolding harmony, comprised of works accomplished, commentaries on those works and the thoughtful anticipation of works yet to be.
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Finding Your Fulcrum

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I usually hate it when the right words are already taken, but this time it may have been helpful.  It started when I stopped listening to music while doing my evening Reike.  You see, for the last 30 years or so I have done the same ritual every night before I go to sleep. It is a truncated Reike session that helps me relax and ease into sleep.  Until a week or so ago I would perform the ritual - which involves placing my hands on my head and slowing my breath - while listening to music.  A form of meditation, if you will.

Interestingly, I had noticed that there were times when the music seemed to run counter to relaxation.  You see, you are supposed to shift your hand position every three minutes, and it seemed that knowing where I was in the music would make me impatient to get relaxed - and yes, I realize how oxymoronic that is.  Anyhow, we have one of those “nature sound” generator things by the bed.  It will do rain, surf, wind, summer night, etc., etc.  We often run it at night and so I started just doing my Reike/relaxation/meditation to “summer night.”  It seemed to work quite well, which, naturally, got me thinking.

Thunderstorms, real ones with rain and wind and all that are incredibly somniferous events for me.  Love that word, "somniferous," sleep-inducing; the word itself is somniferous, I’m yawning here typing it.  But again, I digress.  Thunderstorms put me to sleep.  But then I thought about it a bit more.  They don’t actually put me to sleep – they relax me so completely that sleep often follows, but not always.  Same with crickets at night, some music, and, when I was young, the murmur of my parents voices drifting in my window screen as they talked out on the porch.  Some sounds seem to transport me to specific and utterly tranquil places.  The whole storm thing whisks me away to a lake I do not recognize from my “real” life, but is as familiar to me as any place I have ever been:

It is a Northern lake, similar to, but not specifically from, places I have visited in Northern Michigan and Wisconsin.  There is a boathouse rocking between two flanking docks, fragile yet unquestionable in its security from the wind and rain.  I am in a hammock, gently rocked, but not chilled, by the cool breeze. I know it is not real because there are no mosquitoes.  Still, I am quite content to rest wrapped in serene “somniferousness.”

Certain smells – lilac for example, no, not lavender, lilac – does the same thing.  Comfort foods are comfort foods because they, too, bring comfort and that feeling of somniferous well-being.

There is obviously a chord theory/universal resonance issue going on here.  After all, if it is a theory of everything, it has to be a theory of everything.  So, Chordman, how do you explain these seemingly spontaneous onsets of somniferous well-being?  I’m glad you asked.

This is, however, where I began to run into the problem of the right words having already been hijacked.  The thought that originally came to me was that this phenomenon was a wormhole notion.  Wormholes are tunnels through spacetime that allow for nigh unto instantaneous movement across light years of distance.  Spontaneous onsets of somniferous well-being could be similar shortcuts to harmony.  One cuts through lengthy sessions of meditation, reflection, etc., and moves directly to a centered sense of well-being.  Hence, these paths transcend the normal spiritual pathways to enlightenment – they are transcendent.  So I originally thought to call them “transcendors.”  Unfortunately I run into a lot of semantic issues if I follow that path because this is precisely where most of the words have been claimed by other “theories of everything.”  Transcendent, transcendental, transformative, -- all are the “property” of some other worldview.  So even if I could lay claim to transcendors, it would probably seed more confusion than clarity.

I was also having problems with the word “wormhole,” I just don’t like it.  I know, I know – beyond trivial.  But universal harmony asserts that the “thing” is a complete totality – the painting is the wood, the canvas, the paint and the varnish, in addition to the thoughts, emotions and the brushstrokes of the artist.  The map is a real component of the territory, the word is an important aspect of the thing.  So the word “wormhole” had to fit the phenomenon being expressed, and it didn’t.  “Holy Dune, Batman!  Would you look at the size of that wormhole!”  I just couldn’t go there.  So potential confusion in the transcendent camp and a trivial sense of discord with the word wormhole sent me poking around for better discourse to explain the phenomenon in question.  Here’s what I came up with.

A wormhole asserts a movement from one point in space-time to another.  The different locales in the universe, particularly when observed from points removed from the wormhole, lie at great distance from one another.  However, universal harmony asserts that the universe is a single harmonic whole, so it follows that discord is resolved by shifting perspective, not location.  Harmony, if you will, is in the mind of the beholder and is not dependent upon the location of the observer in the cosmos.  Hence, moments of somniferous well-being are functions of perspective, not location.  I need not scour the ends of the earth to find the lake of harmony whose shores welcome me each night, it is always there in my head.

So the various triggers of somniferous well-being do not, wormhole-like, take me anywhere. Rather, they alter my perception of the space I currently occupy. They enable and affirm my recognition of the harmonic universe that surrounds me.  They provide balance.  And, ah ha, that calls forth another concept.  When we think about Archimedes and his lever to move the earth, we do tend to get overwhelmed by the lever.  That is understandable, the scale of the thing would be awesome.  We think less about the fulcrum.  Yet, obviously, without the fulcrum, a lever – no matter how long - is just a board.  It is the fulcrum that enables balance.  Shades of playgrounds past; the yelling softens as light mellows through recess dust. Then, carefully, there is neither teeter nor totter, set the table; there is balance, there is harmony.

So, I have come to this – the thunderstorm, the lilacs, the crickets, some music, and maybe grilled cheese sandwiches – these are my existential fulcra.  They balance my life, they shift my perspective in ways that allow me to simply “be” there in the midst of harmony; calm, balanced and relaxed.  How did Simon and Garfunkel put it?  “All dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.”  Furthermore, to the extent that constructed representations of those fulcra are accurate; the sounds in the “sleep machine” or lilac candles or infusers, they too can become fulcra, balancing and relaxing, affirming harmony.
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An Inclination to Laughter

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When your father is in the second half of his 9th decade you can’t help but occasionally muse about what the world will be like when he is no longer in it.  Still my brother-in-law’s email about Dad’s escalating back pain, possibly from a fractured vertabra, was unsettling. We have since learned that there is no fracture, but a urinary tract infection. So antibiotics, pain meds and eventual physical therapy seem to be the order of the day.  Yet prior to that, the initial email phrase “In someone this old, a fracture could be the beginning of the end” was certainly cause for reflection.  One might ordinarily end that sentence with “concern” rather than “reflection,” but the choice is intentional.  “Cause for concern” brings a lot of conceptual baggage that does not necessarily apply in this instance.

I do not know if one can inherit an inclination to laughter, but it seems a common trait in the Schrag family.  I recall it particularly in my Uncle Paul who passed away a couple of years ago at 99, and in my Uncle Delbert who is still chuckling along through his 80s.  It is not frivolity; it is more being in tune with all that is humorous; an ability to laugh often and to give your full attention to that laughter.  I remember that inclination being more prevalent in my father as a younger man, when Mom was still alive.  It was more tempered than in Paul and Delbert, perhaps by the professorial need to be “right”, but it was there nonetheless.  I choose to believe I have inherited that inclination to laughter.

I have seen only the briefest of flashes of that inclination in my father these last few years.  Perhaps losing both a son and a wife leeched some of the laughter from his eyes.  And, recently, he has made no secret of the fact that he finds the process of growing old most distasteful.  His memories of himself as a younger man remain quite clear; he dislikes his own comparisons to the current edition.

My belief system, Chord Theory, or Universal Resonance as I currently conceive of it, releases us, at life’s end, as sentient entities free to explore the joyous intricacies of the universe.  Should I be “concerned” that my father might be approaching that new experience?  He has lived a long and rich and complex life, and he is most displeased with the reality of his current “everyday.”  He seems to live more from force of habit, than from any joyful anticipation of what the day might bring.  So, on closer reflection, my major “cause for concern” is a selfish one – I will miss him.  He has been a loving consistency in my life, for all my life. And yet even that selfish notion of “missing him” is more complicated than it seems at first blush.  I will miss the idea of having a father.  I will miss the concept of my father as a mentor.  I really have had no other.  But in truth, he has not played that role for more than a decade.  Like he himself, I will miss the man he was but is no longer.  His eventual, yet certain departure will transform the fabric of my existence.  I know I will find ways to honor that departure, but I’d rather put it off still longer.  And yes, in light of his own ennui, that is selfish - and I will own that selfishness.

Still, while I will do what I can to aid Margaret and William in their always excellent, and deeply appreciated, on-site care, I need to begin to make my peace with the idea of a “world without Dad.”  I find it comforting to begin that process with my firm belief that when he does leave us, Dad will once again be free to fully explore his hereditary inclination to laughter.
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Pen to Paper

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By most measures, I should be doing other things.  I have lectures to prepare, papers to grade.  I must pack for a trip only hours in the future.  So, naturally, I have taken my large leather-bound journal to the table, dimmed the lights, lit the candles and taken pen in hand.  An opera I do not quite recognize drifts softly from the next room, rain patters around outside in the darkness.

It was a strange vision that sent me here.  My wife has preceded me to Chicago, so I bumble about in an easy return to my unscheduled single days.  Yet, I had neglected my medication and so found myself in the kitchen, in pain, loading the dishwasher.  I retreated upstairs, put on the classical music channel, and lay down on the bed waiting for the pill to kick in.  It was simple to drift off into what I now think of as hyperconsciousness, a state poised between waking and sleep that has been my favorite haunt since childhood.

I am in a sleigh, or so it seems.  There are no creatures hitched before, but I glide through a snowy moonlit wood.  It is tranquil, quite soothing.  Apparently I steer by will as a subtle inclination guides the craft across a meadow, then back into more sheltered ways.  The barriers between experience and perception melt and I am where I am.  A comfortable completeness.

Gradually I become aware of the music and the drumming of the rain on the roof.  What we call consciousness intrudes, nudging me toward responsible activity.  I mount my usual protests that this voyage is far more important.  Coming downstairs to write seems a reasonable compromise.

I do not think it is entirely generational that I find these creamy sheets of handmade paper far more enticing than the cursor blinking at the first line of a newly opened document. Certainly there is the physical pleasure of forming the letters upon the page – the pen tracing an individuality totally beyond the ability of any “family of fonts.”  But it is more than that.  There is a feeling of permanence.  I, more than many, am aware of the incongruity of that assertion.  This book is fragile.  Fire or flood could undo it utterly.  It could be lost, discarded, rendered asunder in a dozen different ways.

Furthermore, I know that its digital incarnation will slip up into the cloud of the worldwide computer where web-bots and widgets, spiders and data miners will stuff its 1s and 0s into servers with no apparent masters; confined in seeming perpetuity.  Yet, the Internet conveys an accidental immortality – existence without intention.  Perhaps that is why I see the cursor’s welcome as more of a wink than a blink.  It knows.

But an honest pen to a new sheet of paper?  The possibilities overreach the universe.
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Distillations Part 6

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The Soul

The entity that most religions call the soul is recognized, in universal resonance, to be a physical reality; a cluster of those unimaginably tiny strings that uniquely encodes our deepest beliefs, feelings and insights. It is a minute morsel of matter whose size and resonance allows it, on the occasion of the demise of its current body, to migrate among the multiple dimensions demanded by the math of string theory, thereby actualizing immortality.

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The Early Multiverse

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RL Schrag 2009

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Distillations Part 5

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The Self

The self is the symphony we compose with the choices of our life.  Inclined by biology, we take from our DNA the realization that we are utterly unique.  Each breath we draw, each hope we cherish, our fears, the thoughts we think, all trigger cascades of discernible physical reactions that strum the very strings of our self, creating and recreating us anew each moment.

Though buffeted by both choice and chance, we are the composers of our life’s symphony.  It is a role we are powerless to relinquish.
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Self Portrait

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RL Schrag 2003

Distillations Part 4

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Oppose Harm

Harm is anything that compromises harmony and beauty. Sometimes active opposition, though seemingly discordant, is the necessary path to harmony. But, whenever possible, opposition should be graceful, gentle, even beautiful.

Remember, opposition forced into the public sphere usually indicates a failure to blunt harm in a more private and graceful manner.

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The Musician

RL Schrag 2001

Distillations Part 3

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Enable Beauty

This tenet mandates our active participation in making the world more beautiful. A broad conception of beauty is implied, one that transcends culture, market and current taste.

The route to beauty winds through throngs and past lonely places.  Where and how we choose to follow is unimportant.  That we do follow is imperative.

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Off Ocracoke, NC

RL Schrag 2003

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Distillations Part 1

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 Those of you who have been around for the past eight years know that The Wall grew out of notes that I would actually stick on "the wall" above my desk at home.  Those notes grew into the book The God Chord that some of you have had the persistence to read.  I thank you for that effort.


My wife Christine, coming from the marketing side of life, has often opined that if I really wanted peole to read the work, I should consider the reader staring at those 240 plus pages that meander through physics, philosophy, art, occasional comedy and unintended tragedy.  Jeez.  Everybody is an editor.  I have however taken her advice and distilled 246 pages down to 719 words.


I am still quite fond of the 246 pages, but I am going to share the 719 words here on this blog.  Not all at once, of course, but chapter by chapter:


Here is the first: