Piece of My Heart

.
I doubt that many would point to Janice Joplin as an advocate of transcendent spirituality.  But one of my wanderings between "wide awake world" and Alternia raised that possibility for me.  I have already confessed to talking to myself, but I take it a bit further - as do many of you.  I chat with what I think of as "the sentient essence of the universe."  More mainstream belief systems would see a parallel to prayer.  I shy away from that slippery slope because of the baggage that any organized religion, and its notion of prayer, brings.

Still, the conversation goes on between me and the sentient essence of the universe - SEU.  No, I don't begin with "Hi SEU." Or Hello There, Big Guy."  I remain enough a product of my western Judeo-Christian heritage, that "Lord" still comes most naturally to mind as a good noun of address for the sentient essence of the universe. So anyhow, the other night I finished my meditation, turned on my crickets, wind and rainfall soundtrack, and drifted off beyond the edges of wide awake world. And I said/thought/whispered, I'm never really sure which it is, "So Lord, how are you doing?"

The thing that sort of rocked me back on my heels was that the question was sincere. I realize it is somewhat silly to inquire after the well-being of the sentient essence of the universe, because the implication of "How are you doing?" is that the question poses an offer to be of aid if things aren't going so well. I mean, what do I have to offer to the sentient essence of the universe? Ordinarily a sit down with the sentient essence of the universe centers around what we want; please give me this or that. If we do offer anything in exchange it is that we will do what we already know we should be doing. Furthermore it implies that the sentient essence is watching our individual actions, as if there is so little else going on in existence. Right. I'm sorry. I just can't push belief that far.  My relationship to the sentient essence may well be personal, but I cannot see that it is reciprocal.  I think the sparrow falls unnoticed, save perhaps by the neighborhood cat.

But that is when Janice kicked in "Take it! Take another little piece of my heart now baby. You know you got it, if it makes you feel good!"

Admittedly, it is presumptuous for us to offer aid to the sentient essence of the universe, more presumptuous still to address the essence as "baby." Yet a further assumption, that partners my assumption that the universe and existence are sentient, is the notion of an objective. The reason for our existence is to - wait for it: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. We do those things because they enhance the harmonic will of the universe - and in doing so we are doing our bit for the sentient essence of the universe.  That Harmony is probably sensed at levels we can't really grasp, the way a skilled conductor can hear the Harmony or discord being contributed by the e-string of the sixth chair viola. But the idea is that we can contribute to the Harmony of existence and it does - somehow - make a difference.

So if somewhere deep in our being, after asking, "So Lord, how are you doing?" we sense a little returned whisper of "It was a rough day." Then maybe we need to let the universe know that we are still in there doing our bit, and affirm Janice's rock offering: "Take it! Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. You know you got it, if it makes you feel good!"

.

Aire on the Bell-Shaped Curve

.
Foster Harmony is first tenet of Distilled Harmony because it is the primary task of our lives.  The other tenets, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm can certain serve as guiding principles in their own right, but they all serve the ultimate goal of fostering harmony. Given that assertion, everything we do should point to, or be interpreted in the light of the first tenet - everything.

Meditation is a task that most would assert is inherently linked to fostering Harmony. Yet, meditation does not mean the same thing to everyone - and, yes, there is a delicious irony there, that we should aggressively debate the tranquil nature of meditation. But let us leave that for another day.

I understand that for many the object of meditation is to empty the mind - to stop thinking. But that need not always be the objective. Meditation can be guided meditation - you can nudge meditation with both music and gentle focus. Rather than emptying the mind, the proces is more like stepping aside from the mind - letting go of the idea of authorship. Perhaps a better analogy is getting a seat in the front row, first balcony, and watching the performance your mind provides if you just nudge it a bit. The show that unfolds is multifaceted.  Naturally the music you select to aid your meditation provides a bed of Harmony, but images and phrases make their contribution as well.

Recently my view from the balcony has provided some delightful interactions among a variety of harmonious elements. Foremost has been the bell-shaped curve. The bell-shaped curve is a simple graphic representation of the normal distribution of anything.  Having been a teacher all my life, my most common interaction with the bell-shaped curve has been in the way in which it uncannily depicts the performance of students in my classes.  Despite the current farcical grade inflation infecting our education system, when I construct a legitimate, discerning test for my students - no matter if it is a small graduate class of 20 students, or a large undergrad survey course of 200 or more - the grades will fall along the bell-shaped curve: a handful of As, a larger chunk of Bs, a whole bunch of Cs, a chunk of Ds (quite similar to the number of Bs) and a handful of Fs. It is quite amazing. It is a most harmonic depiction. It simplifies one aspect of a diverse group of individuals. It distills complexity. Ah ha.

The Bell-Shaped Curve

I began to consider the potential insights one might gain by viewing other aspects of life through the lens of the bell-shaped curve, and it struck me that there may be a distillation within the distillation. Consider this: there is often a maturation, or an "increasing insight" variable attached to the bell-shaped.  The most callow, uninformed students loll beneath the F and D portion of the curve, most students reside under the C spot, while a deminishing population have struggled to claim spots beneath B, with only a few finding their way to an A.  Hence the curve not only describes the number of individuals who will be placed at particular spots on the curve, it simultaneously indicates the extent to which each person on the curve has mastered the content, or come to the understanding that the curve describes.

Consider a brief, albeit important, example, and one perhaps in flux in the digitally redefined modern world: life and friendship.  And here I reach back to my own life and lives of my children, so the example is admittedly culturally skewed, but the idea retains broader validity nonetheless. 

When a child is born their world is relatively small. Perhaps as small as the family unit.  That portion of the bell-shaped curve hovers barely above the baseline. Then the child begins to encounter a wider group of "others."  Maybe informal "others," children in the neighborhood, maybe more formal groups, preschool, what have you, and the curve begins to rise.  As the child grows toward adolescence, the number of people beneath the bell shaped curve also increases.  The increase is both numeric and experimental.  Numeric is obvious.  We meet more people, at school, at work, and in a variety of voluntary affiliations - religious, political, extra-curricular, or extra-employment groups. These last become those who swell the experimental aspect of the curve.  We experiment with a variety of interests, a variety of identities if you will.  It is during this time in our lives - past adolescence and into our adult life - that the curve rises to its highest point above the baseline.  We have more people "in our life" than we ever have had before, or will ever have again.

After that the curve begins to descend again towards the baseline. The driving factor is selectivity. Our areas of interest contract. The child who was carted from music lessons to team sports practice to play group to study group to whatever and whatnot, has decided where their true interests lie. The college student who changed majors 5 times, finally settles on one. The adult who has moved through four or five jobs, becomes more clearly focused on one path.  All areas of our lives contract as the focus becomes not quantity but quality.  The number of people in our lives becomes far less.  They become important in the ways in which they enrich our lives, the ways in which they make us smile. In the ways in which they are truly our friends.

So this descent down the far side of the bell-shaped curve is a distillation.  From the complexity of the herd we distill the value of the few, the vital, the harmonic. It is true that mystery lurks where the curve meets the base line.  Does the final dip define us alone as we internalize all our life's experiences into a single purely harmonic chord?  Or is that intersection with the baseline a transcendent moment? Do we, at that moment, flip our existential poles, like the Earth flipping its magnetic field and what was the end of one bell-shaped curve creates the beginning of another?

Perhaps it never was a single bell-shaped curve but rather a series of waves, each of which charts both population and insight. Perhaps we mistake the numerical peak for insight, when it more truly reflects the mentality of the herd.  Perhaps we lack the patience to travel the longer road to the selectivity at the far end of the curve where we encounter far fewer numbers of far greater quality. 

Most likely, life is a process of repeating distillations. Each distillation begins with a seed, a magic bean, perhaps a singularity which expands into a plethora of potentials. We winnow those to a precious few, distill those few to the essence of the current distillation. And that essence becomes the singularity that fuels the subsequent distillation. A fundamentalist believes they understand and/or represent the "last distillation.” Deeper reflection reveals that we have simply turned a corner, discovering the beginning of a new distillation.
.

Who Are Those Guys?

.

OK, I need to admit right up front that, yes, I do talk to myself.  Come on, admit it.  We all do. Otherwise life would be an endless ride in a crowded elevator, staring at the lights above the door, watching them change, avoiding eye contact, turning inward.  Hmm. Interesting thought, the Zen of elevator riding.  But I digress.  Back to talking to myself. The only problem is that I occasionally do it out loud. This, coupled with the fact that both my wife and I are "acoustically challenged" creates some awkward moments: 

I'll say something to me, and she will ask "What?"  

I (realizing that I had been talking out loud,) "Nothing, just talking to myself."

She: (out loud) OK (internally) Jeeeeez.

Still, the tendency leads to some interesting internal dialogues. For example, couple of nights ago I woke up from a dream.  It was not one of those powerful dreams that won't let go, a dream that follows you into waking, demanding that you pay attention.  It was a softer kind of dream, involving, but hazy around the edges.  

So I said to myself, "I don't even know where we were."

"What do you mean by ‘we'?" I asked.

“You know, 'we' .  .  . the people in the dream.” I said.

"Who were they?” I inquired.

"Ah, yeah. I don't know that either." One of us fell silent, the other fell asleep.

What has followed me into my waking life is the realization that while my dreams do often include "real people who are known to me," just as often they are "peopled" by entities with whom I interact very humanly, but who, upon my waking, retreat into ephemeral, emotional chords. Presences without a specific identity. Hence the question remains: Who are those guys?

I have scratched the surface of enough psychology, psychiatry, brain studies, theology, philosophy, etc., to be able to state categorically and without doubt that, like Butch and Sundance, we really don't know who "those guys" are.  I, of course, love that as it allows me wide latitude to spin my own theories.  I guess the best place to start is with who I believe they are not: Dreams are not neurological static - phantoms generated by the random firing of neurons.  That would certainly be an easy answer - asserting truth in the face contradictory or incomplete evidence.  Sort of like the Creationist paleontologist who recently discovered a fish fossil that mainstream paleontologists date at about 60 million years-old. “Yes,” asserts the founder. “It is an ancient fish. But since the world was created only 5,000 years ago, it can’t be any older than that, and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong."  If we, similarly, write dreams off as being merely random scratches in the gray matter, ignoring the collected data and reflection that argue to the contrary, it becomes hard to assert that they have deeper purpose or meaning; or to hypothesize as to what that purpose or meaning might be. But since our sleeping brainwaves, while different from wide-awake brainwave, seem more extensions of the waking world than the arrival of a radically different state of being, the seemingly more logical - and irresistible, for me anyhow - temptation is to try to understand them. Hence, we constantly seek to unlock the apparent mysteries of these familiar ephemera.  

So let us give it a shot. Physicists assert that the standard model of physics must play by the same rules throughout the universe. I’m good with that. Hence, in my worldview "those guys" have to be all about the pursuit of Harmony. I certainly have no evidence to the contrary, and in the general interest of symmetry I would assert that, as in "walkabout real world," the world on the other side of the consciousness curtain - the world of dreams - is also driven by the four tenets of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. But the relationship between tenet and player is not always as direct as it seems in light of day. Hence I tend to shy away from being too “waking-world centric" when I consider the more gentle shades of dreaming. 

Let me jump - seemingly without segue - to fireflies.  I have never encountered anyone in whom the first glimpse of the evening’s fireflies failed to elicit an “Oh! Fireflies!”  Here, in North Carolina evenings, they seem to fade in and then magically fade out, only to reappear somewhere else. Yes, at a distance, but still close enough to their exit point that even small children can reach out and capture them.  However, the fireflies of both Tennessee and Malaysia are something quite different.  They begin, as do their more common backyard cousins, with a few random flashes, but soon they congregate in thousands, and gradually their flashes synchronize until entire trees blink with all the gaudiness of a Times Square marquee.

And how do we bring that back to dreams?  Well, let us remember that in our dreams - at least in mine - the “players” usually divide into two broad classes.  On the one hand we have recognizable entities who often “play" themselves - your spouse, children, parents, lovers, antagonists, etc.  On the other hand we have “tonal entities” - entities with whom we interact quite comfortably, but who, upon our waking, swiftly fade - disappearing completely by the time we find a cool spot on the pillow, or return from the bathroom.  I have come to feel that the “real people," living and deceased, who populate my dreams are like the single mysterious flashing of lone firefly at the end of the garden.  They are less themselves, and more manifestations of their dominant chords; e.g. my mother in my dreams is not simply my mother. Rather she manifests/represents/demonstrates a distillation of the dominant notes she performed in life - a spiritual, comforting gentleness.  The recognizable players in my dreams, I have come to believe, all follow that model; they sound the chord which they most clearly play/played in "walk about waking world." This applies to both dominant harmonics and dominant discord. Those we love may play themselves, as may those who currently fight the Harmony of our chord. Yet, strangely, they rarely play the leads in our somnolent dramas.  They are “supporting characters.” But supporting in the manner of the old theater assertion that “There are no small roles, only small actors.” In our dreams the “supporting characters” support the dreamworld - they are the solid, constant notes of our chord which hold both sides of consciousness together.

The leads in dreams are played “those guys,” composite entities who manifest chords that contain notes that have been contributed by a host of significant others in our lives. These are the synchronized fireflies of Tennessee and Malaysia. They flash with admirable glitz,  but are currently clusters of fireflies with either insufficient mass or syncopation to coalesce into a recognizable entity which - counterintuitively - would allow them to take their place as the calm, supporting notes upon which our world - both dreaming and waking - rest.  Instead they are notes still seeking their place in our chord.  We try them out in our dreams.  So, ironically, it is those still uncertain notes that become the Darth Vaders or Princesses Lea who start us awake with racing pulse, either anxious or fearful to rejoin the swiftly fading dream.

All of which still begs the question of why they are there at all? Why do we dream? Distilled Harmony leans strongly to a rather simple explanation: dreams are there to aid in our pursuit of transcendent Harmony.  And, as experience does in our "walking around” life, dreams teach with both the stick and the carrot.  Dreams are the carrot, nightmares the stick.

.

The Flight of The Words

The thunder crackles.
Lightning sears the horizon.
Startling, but utterly timeless.
A little gasp, heart flutters.
I never cease to be surprised.
You'd think I'd realize that
It was sneaking up on me again.

The soft touch of a beloved hand.
The quiet whisper of a breeze at dawn.
Crickets knitting a slumbering quilt.
A brook laughs past me,
Against the haunting, dusky,
Call of a turtle dove.
Waking to rain and snuggling back.

It is all a bit of a vicious circle,
Or, perhaps, more a mandala.
Somehow an awareness
Of the perfection of the universe
Flashes across the millions
And millions and billions
Of synapses in your brain.

And you want to capture it -
That celebration racing inside.
Along side a quiet trembling,
Colors and tastes, sounds,
Emotions, cascade in the
Exhilarating symphony of life.
And yet, all the right words have fled.
.

A Williamsburg Ramble

.

Having again fled the discord of the 21st century, we are, for awhile, ensconced in Colonial Williamsburg, a town forever caught in the 1770s. This is a place that still articulates the America that was dreamt of a few hundred years ago.  I usually find it invigorating. But against the backdrop of the venalities of contemporary politics up the road in Washington and the global insanity that drives the constant braying of the unending news cycle, today I wonder if any compassionate social movement can ever succeed. It seems that we can only unite around huge generalities; freedom, peace, equality, things like that. Does the fact that even those universally condoned endstates seem always beyond our reach, prove the social impotence of the species?

Lately I have considered that perhaps a successful "social movement” shares the qualities of a secret: it can only truly be realized by one person.  Hence, I muse, if you would mold the world, concentrate on yourself. Strive to be your own best self.  Notice I say your best self - not some idealized self advocated by a politician, prophet, or philosopher. We are flighty souls, prone to missteps, especially when we seek to follow another's path. If we keep our eyes on the heights, our heads in the clouds, our focus on sunrise and sunset, it is inevitable that we will occasionally lose track of our feet, that we will stumble.  So be it.  To do so is to be human. So, get up. Smile. Better yet, laugh. Think again of your best, most harmonic, self, and walk on, perhaps even skipping a bit, if you remember how.

Still, I would advise against turning your personal skipping into a wider movement. There will be those who, while supporting the concept of skipping as a good thing, will question whether it is wise to start on the left foot, or perhaps the right foot. And arms, my god, what should one do with the arms!?  So while they stand behind skipping 110%, they, sadly, cannot fully support skipping as you have chosen to define it.

See what I mean? A movement of two will make you crazy. So - be your best self. The only chord you can tune is your own.  Skip on!  That is the objective.  If your skipping inspires another - well, consider it collateral Harmony.

.

Mapping Meditation

.

Music makes maps for meditation.

So every night I slip into my headphones

And glide off across the meandering paths

Of space and time.

It is not like piloting a speedboat,

Though no eddy of the universe

Is beyond reach. Still,

Even a currach lends greater control.

On these nightly voyages,

You close your eyes, open your heart,

And shove off, letting the music lead.

Such musically augmented meditation 

Means surfing on someone else's Harmony.

They created it, you are just borrowing

Some of the better bits.

Through the lens of note and lyric

You glimpse again the stuff of memory.

Precious places and people take your hand,

And then are gone again.

Your deepest hopes, and hidden fears

Are revealed in a stranger's words.

And then you are saved by a symphony

Or some new age noodling, 

Music's answer to doodling,

Sound that is somehow quieter

Than silence.

You slip down an arpeggio,

Sheltered by a minor chord,

Momentarily confused by a

Rush of rain, inserted no doubt

By some Moog accolite.

And then quietly, without you 

Really being aware of it,

You are someplace quite calm,

Quite peaceful, and the music

That you brought along, gives way

To the Harmony within.

And there you are,

Finally flirting with transcendence.

.

Parsing the Sig

.

As some of you have seen, the signature line on my email currently reads:   "Who we are is a quality of the moment. What we have done in the past cannot be undone, and what we have promised for the future remains but a promise. So live each moment in the awareness that it defines you." I have enjoyed stealing pithy quotes from my literary heroes in the past, but it is my signature after all, so using my own words seems more appropriate. Hence, I will continue to use it for the time being. Still, like any piece of prose, it is open to interpretation. Let me claim the author's right to a first sortie. 

At first blush one might think that I'm advocating a life lived in the perennial present, like those poor souls with anterograde amnesia who cannot form new memories, and so start each day with no past upon which to base a mindful present pointing to the unpredictable future. No, that's not it. Another possible misread might be that I assume we are free to ignore the future ramifications of our current actions, a sort of "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" approach to life. Nope. Finally, one could wrongly assume that, because I acknowledge that it cannot be undone, we should simply forget the past and, temporal blinders firmly in place, plod stoically into tomorrow free to repeat the missteps of our youth. Yet again, wrongo!

With these straw men neatly constructed, allow me to hasten their demise and tell you what I really meant.

The imperious arrow of time declares that our life is a hopeful history. It is a history because we are defined, in the end, by what we have accomplished, not by what we promise. It is a hopeful history in that we desire it to be a continuing series, one that gets renewed for next season. Certainly we realize that a pratfall down the stairs or a texting-obsessed teen in their parent's monster SUV could declare "That's All Folks" at any moment. Still let's stay with the "hopeful history" which like any history, is cast in the past.

When I say "What we have done in the past cannot be undone," I am not, as I have already said, advocating life in a perennial present, with the past forgotten and ignored. Rather I am advising us, and when I say “us" I mean me, to see the past not as an unalterable template for our life, but rather as a guide to the future. And it is a guide - strangely - the lessons of which are taught most clearly by our regrets. 

Let me clarify. If you have a past totally free of regrets, I feel sorry for you. Our regrets often stem from those times when we gave into our vices. But keep in mind that our vices tend to be our virtues run a bit amok. The excesses of our youth often, like wine and philosophy, temper with age, taking on a depth and richness that nonetheless mirrors that youthful exuberance.  Our regrets then, upon reflection, are opportunities to fine tune our virtues. Regrets teach us the location of the line that marks the point where virtue becomes vice. If you have no regrets, you have yet to learn the location of that line, and some painful stumbles lie ahead.

Let me compress one of my favorite Mark Twain stories, which seems somehow apropos, though I’m not exactly sure how:

Twain is strolling on the veranda of a pleasant hotel when he encounters a matronly lady, obviously distressed.

Twain: It is such a lovely evening, m’am. What can be troubling you?

Lady: I just visited my doctor and he says I have less than a year to live!

Twain: I can be of help! First, you must give up cigars.

Lady: I have never smoked a cigar in my life!

Twain: Then you must give up whiskey.

Lady: Alcohol has never passed my lips!

Twain: Ah, now I see the problem,

Lady: What?

Twain: You have neglected your habits.

Which somehow leads me to this seemingly contradictory bit of advice: let go of your regrets. And this is the "what we have done in the past cannot be undone" piece. I am not saying to forget the lessons of your regrets, but neither should you cling to them, mooning over a dusty photo album of lost loves or missed opportunities. Let them go. Move past those moments and forgive the complicit individuals who accompanied you across the line that separates virtue and vice. No amount of regret can uncross of the line, nor can any amount of midnight anguish clarify who pushed whom. Such thrashing defines the retarding and destructive past you must leave behind. It cannot be changed. Step away from that past.

But it is the insightful lessons of the past that should lead us to peaceful and mindful behavior in the all important present. There is an old saying - which I have seen attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Einstein - that stupidity is when you keep doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results. True. But the aphorism plays on two levels. The more obvious interpretation is that we should change our strategy. Seek the desired result with new behavior. Again true. However it seems to me that we might also want to consider shifting our objective. Think about it. I might practice the piano for years and years with the same teacher without success. The solution might not be to change teachers, but rather to try the clarinet - or golf. 

And that takes us to the slippery relationship between the vital present and the future, which like the past, is hopeful, but uniquely uncertain. Hidden in the call to live each moment in the present is the heady lure of hedonism. After all, we could reason, the present quickly becomes the past and is best forgotten, while the future is uncertain and this opportunity might never again present itself.  .  .

I suppose it comes down to planning your regrets, or at least realizing that your present pleasantries, when past, could, in the future, become regrets.  I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist writing that sentence. It just felt good, seems accurate - and will do no one harm.  And that, maybe, is how we should see the present. We need to consider the difference between that which makes you feel good, and that which makes you a more harmonic person. Our path to that harmonic self will be unique. As I “‘peat and repeat,” the only chord you can tune is your own. Which, surprising none of you, brings me back to my mantra - Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. If, at the end of each day, I can say I hit one or more of those notes, then it has been a worthy time in the present. The future can look after itself, and the past can remain in the rearview mirror.

.

What is it About 3 O’clock in The Morning

.

What is it about 3 o'clock in the morning?

Bing! Your eyes pop open,

And there you are, staring up at

The soft underbelly of the universe.

Those billions of little tiny colored dots

Dance in the middle distance and

Swirl around, tracing the path of something

That must have rushed by a instant before.

"OK," you say, "It's 3 o'clock in the morning.

Close your eyes." But bing! Dots again.

Time to reach out to the Sentientness.

"Hello God, it's me, you know, Robert.

Have a minute to chat?"

"Hello Robert. Your call is very important to us, 

But come on kiddo, it's 3 o'clock in the morning

And we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes.

Your approximate wait time is until hell freezes over.

Requests will be answered - or not -

In the order in which they were submitted.

Or if you prefer not to wait you can go to our website at . . . . . 

www.GodBeMe.com/FAQ for 24/7 attention."

By then you have forgotten 

The nature of your particular supplication.

This side of your pillow is too hot.

And you have to pee.

Also at 3 o'clock in the morning, brains shrink.

Celebrities and Gen X, Y, and Zers, incapable 

Of lucid speech or basic mobility

Decide to drive home from the club,

And hang the Lamborghini,

Or more often, their parent's Ford,

Up in the low hanging branches of an oak.

Its grill, their career, and their lives,

Have all sustained major damage,

Or been put on permanent hold.

The dead engine gently pops and pings 

As it cools in the chill of night.

Then suddenly you become aware 

That if you lie there, oh so quietly,

There are still crickets somewhere.

Rain falls softly just beyond the eaves,

The wind sifts through the house.

Your love rolls over and now

Sleeps, softly, quietly, almost silently,

And life becomes calm again.

Ah, you notice - no wonder. 

It's now 4 o'clock in the morning.

.

Just a Little Hibernation

.

I wrap the Snowman blanket snugly 

About my perennially frozen feet,

Its twin ready to soften the armrest 

That will soon lie beneath my head.

Next I select Nature Sounds or Spa Radio 

From the Pandora list and stretch out 

In the corner of this leather expanse

Called a Conversation Nook,

In which conversations, beyond comments

On plot and performance, rarely occur.

I close my eyes, which only serves to highlight 

The phrases marching behind their lids.

They refuse to hold hands and become sentences.

Rather they are content to circle like 

Incompetent clusters of crows that

Lack the will to become a murder.

I am surprised to be awake.

This is, after all, nap time 

When I, no less predictably 

Than a two-year old, should rub my eyes 

And blink off to Nod or some other nap world.

Instead I lie here, concerned that 

More will be expected of me, come evening,

Than my nap-deprived self can deliver.

Conversation - even repartee?

Decisions of which I will be barely conscious,

But to which I will  be committed?

I feel a strong sense of kinship 

With a bear I have never met.

Still wandering snow-swept slopes 

In November's deepening cold.

Unable to find a snug cave for winter's nap,

He grows anxious that, deprived of hibernation,

He may never see another Spring.

.

Patchwork Quilt

.

There are those, I suppose,

Whose lives roll out like

Fitted sheets upon an antique bed.

Neatly tucked about the corners,

All covered with an elegant duvet.

Needlepoint cushions, and perhaps a cat

Lie artfully arranged at the headboard.

Mine is more a patchwork quilt.

Laughter and tears stitched together 

By scattered threads of memory.

Far more pillows than necessary 

Cushion the lingering lumps.

And a dog's sleepy eyes wink down 

At distant unfinished edges.

.

Meditation on a Shooting Star

.

I was first struck by how deeply those of us who dwell in cities are afflicted by light blindness. Here, floating in a midnight hot tub at a friend's cabin midway up the ridge above a small town in West Virgina, the sky blazed. At first it was just me, the soothing water, and the luminous sky. The tub's jets were off. While the pulses would have been welcome, the hum of the pumps would have marred the tranquility.  So I floated there, feeling very Van Gogh-ish, but without the angst. Then suddenly the first one flashed behind the ebony branches etched across my field of vision.  Giant lightening bug? Too bright. Airplane? Too white. Shooting star? Yes, really. 

So I stared up, focusing on everything and nothing, the way you do when you are trying to see one of those optical illusions in a book or magazine. "Look, but don't focus," the instructions read.  Another streaked by. More "unfocused staring without looking" and two others played connect the dots across the Big Dipper - or maybe the Little Dipper. Astronomy is not my strong suit and the constellation was so bright.  .  .  

I am currently reading Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality as well as a couple of magazine articles about the restarting of the LHC and chasing the particles that could confirm supersymmetry.  So you'd think this celestial show would lure me down the seductive path of cosmology, multiverses and the like. Strangely, no. Instead the shooting stars led me back to a high meadow in Northern California, where, half a century ago, under a similarly staggering sky, I had futility pursued the affections of a bewitching French exchange student. Tonight that recollection brought a smile to my face, where, 50 years ago, the tears of teenage heartbreak had been angrily dashed aside. I had been young enough to believe that "real men don't cry."

So as I floated there staring up through the steam I sought not astronomical events, but the manifestations of memory. The heavens did not disappoint. With a randomness that felt regular, more silver streaks knitted up the night. Faces and places from times past and at varying distances, drew as close as the more stationary stars caught there in the branches swaying gently above my head.

Way back in 1957 Perry Como urged us to "catch a falling star and put it in your pocket." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5t_PDU5RmBw. It is a pleasant "oldie," that pulls you back to soda shops and poodle skirts, saddle shoes and The Hit Parade.  But Perry would not recognize these celestial visitors. These were not falling stars that transfixed me. Falling stars, one assumes, fall back to earth, and we would notice - as did the dinosaurs. Rather, these are shooting stars, born in memory that beckon me forward. Shooting stars transcend, reviewing for us pure harmonic moments, treasured souls who; for minutes or hours, days or months or years, held our hands and hearts as, together, we harkened to the infinite song of existence.

The show faded slowly, as if my starry friends has somewhere else to be.  I was sad to see them go. But as they blinked out of sight, it was as if they were winking back over their shoulders. "Patience," they whispered. "We'll be back for you. For now you know what you must do. Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm."

.

The Luxury of the Long Form Composition

I was, thank God, raised in the old "sage on the stage" era. For those of you outside the academic world, that means when you went to college most of the classes were lectures. If you did hands on things like cutting up frogs or building sets for King Lear, those were specifically designated as "lab sessions," often overseen by "lab instructors" who differed from the professor who delivered the lecture. Lectures were lectures. You went in, you sat down, you opened your notebook, you listened to someone with expertise in the subject area, and you took notes - or at least you pretended to. I always divided my notebook paper in half, one column for notes, the other for doodles - which, research asserts, focuses our attention as opposed to distracting us. But the lecture was the main event. Sometimes it was painful. Not every prof understood the difference between oral presentation and droning. But it was part of growing up, of learning. Big Bird had not yet convinced us that education was supposed to make you laugh.

Nowadays it is much more in vogue to be the "guide on the side." Those who practice that version of the craft of pedagogy are far better able to describe it than I. I believe it involves presenting the skeleton of a task or concept to a class, and then nudging them to fill in the missing pieces for themselves. There are those who swear by it. At least I don't swear at it, I am just driven to follow a different model.  You see, there is just so little time. Let's say they are taking a "3 hour class" from you. In my world that means that, in theory you see them for three hours a week. But an academic hour is actually only 50 minutes. So a three hour class is really a 2.5 hour class.  Furthermore, given "settling in" time and "shuffling before leaving time" and taking role, etc, let's call it 2 hours and 15 minutes a week. 16 weeks quickly becomes 14 or 15 with Spring Break and weather and whatnot. When you run the numbers, that comes out to about 31 or 32 hours per semester. About three-quarters of a "normal" work week out of their entire life!

Given that stark reality, I simply cannot settle for nudging. I need to use that brief burst of time we have together to share with my students whatever I might know that could ease their way in the world beyond college.  It is possible that I would choose a different model if I taught small clusters of eager, more mature, grad students. But my audience is for the most part 18 to 20 year-old undergrads in groups of 75 to 150.  It is theater. And they are younger and far more callow than my own children. They are close to half a century younger than I. If I do not know far, far more than they about the subject matter under consideration they should sue me, the department and the university for academic malpractice. My job is not to explore with them, my job is to teach them what I have learned in that half century. So I become the sage on the stage. I lecture.

A lecture is a long form composition, a performed essay, crafted just as carefully as any piece of prose, any poem, play or painting.  Like these posts I send to you, which are usually long form compositions, a lecture may recount the Renaissance, the standard model of particle physics, the nature of being - there are no boundaries to the objects of its attention. It need only, in the end lead the audience, if not to a conclusion, then at least to a reasonable new beginning.

I should point out that lectures, essays, any long form compositions confront the current, digitally-influenced norms of communication and conversation. Literature would lead us to believe that, in earlier eras, the pause had a place in conversation:

Darcy: But surely, Miss Bennett (He pauses, turns aside. Turns back. Pauses again.) Surely you can see why .  .  .  

Try that at a dinner party today and four people will jump in with their contributions, related or not, a second course will have started, someone will be googling something, and the nuts and wine will be passed around - leaving you with your mouth open and poor Darcy and Elizabeth forever estranged by their pride and prejudice.

But of course we must realize that the models for conversation presented in literature or on screens large and small have nothing to do with real life conversations precisely because those media models are all embedded in long form compositions - novels or movie scripts. Hence, the written narrative controls the random vagaries of real short form conversational bursts. Yet even the long form occasional gives in to the short form's need for speed. How many times have you read some version of this phrase: "and the conversation dragged." What does that mean? For me it always calls up the absurd image of a question somehow cross-dressing as a declarative sentence. A conversation in drag needs lots of sequins. The more common interpretation is that the phrase implies that the characters have ceased interacting with the suave glibness of Noel Coward or the intricate byplay of Ms. Austin - both masters of long form composition. Even long form compositions, it appears, occasionally feel the need to "pick it up, pick it up."

That is not to say that the long form composition is without it's own illusions. Primary among these is the illusion of attention. The poet Billy Collins encourages his book Aimless Love to "stay out as late as you like, don't bother to call or write, and talk to as many strangers as you can."  One does not go to the effort necessary to construct a long form composition, and a book of poetry certainly qualifies, without clinging to the belief that someone will attended to it; read it, view it, listen to it. When I videotape a lecture for my students, or for you, or for DistilledHarmony.com, in my mind's eye I see an audience of one or hundreds, enthralled, pausing only to laugh or cry or stare thoughtfully off into space before diving back into the composition before them.  It is a lovely and harmless illusion. 

My life-long love affair with the lecture, with the essay, with the long form composition is not without its drawbacks. You see, with so much I feel moved to share, I have trouble remembering that others, too, need their time upon the stage.
. 

Nighthawks

.

At first glance it doesn't holler Edward Hopper. 

But it whispers "Nighthawks" as I sit here having breakfast. 

It is a rare snowy morning in central North Carolina. 

For once it really does make sense to close the schools. 

The danger comes not from the snow itself, 

But from people unaccustomed to driving on slippery streets. 

Arcade "bumpercars" with real cars. 

I have made a steaming bowl of oatmeal with raisins and maple syrup. 

The breakfast nook has two walls of windows, and I raise the blinds. 

Now I sit in a bubble amidst the bluster. 

Snow covers the bushes, and the pampas grass sways in the wind. 

I am doing "other things." Reading, working on a lecture, 

Checking my email to see if my classes have been cancelled. 

But the whisper persists, drawing my attention again and again 

To the empty bird feeder at the edge of the "natural area" behind our home.  

It has apparently been empty for a while, since it attracts no hopefully patrons. 

And perhaps it is an unneeded adornment, here in a soft Southern lawn. 

But today, as the snow rattles against the window, I can almost see them. 

An early robin, a resident blue jay, and a marauding squirrel 

Sitting there together; yet glumly spaced. 

Wings and paws wrapped around the lonely comfort of a cup of coffee.
.

Dreaming in the Seams

.

In the spirit of full disclosure I should confess that this is really where the two previous posts began. The problem was that I kept hitting a point where I had to admit that "this won't make any sense unless I explain that." Hopefully the last two posts contained enough of this and that to make the current post less bizarre than might otherwise be the case. One final proviso: the last two posts argue that we really know so little about the nature of the cosmos that it would be foolish to rule anything out as impossible or absurd.

So, regarding the STEM idea that we can understand the nature of the universe via the graceful application of mathematics, alas it cannot be. Alfred Korzybski pointed out in Science and Sanity back in 1933, "the word is not the thing."  The word is but a representative of a deeper reality. General semantics would also assert that "the equation is not the universe" points that way as well. Furthermore, the hinky Heisenberg uncertainty principle, adds to the slippery slope of a purely STEM defined universe. To what extent are our "normal" dimensions simply the product of "convenient observations?" Front-to-back, side-to-side, up and down, now then tomorrow - those certainly seem to be the easily measurable spaces in which we live our lives.  But Heisenberg might well ask if our observations were themselves coloring our what we see. Does the act of observing change the universe we see? Still, as I ask in the previous posts, is it any wonder that the scientific method followed those seemingly precise pathways as we sought to measure and understand the world in which we live?  What were their options? And today their descriptions grow ever more precise. We get better and better at defining the "what" of where we live. But as Panek pointed out in The 4 Percent Universe, those definitions are somewhat a paper tiger. We can observe only 4 percent of our local universe, and nothing of any other universes that may lie beyond ours. Are we to trust universal conclusions based on our observations of that 4 percent? Please.

Think about it this way. Let's say you were conducting an experiment to determine the average height of all 4th graders. You go to the Middle School down the street that you can see from your mailbox. You walk into the front door and ask for the closest 4th grade classroom - the one under the most convenient lamppost. You go to that classroom. There are 25 students in the class. You take the student (1 is 4 percent of 25) closest to the door and measure his or her height. The student is 4 feet 7 inches tall. And on the basis of that observation you declare that the normal height for all fourth graders in the universe is 4’ 7".  There may be other 4th graders elsewhere in the building - or the universe - but we cannot see them, so we will call them "dark 4th graders," and leave it to other researchers to find and measure them. I know, I know, that is just so wrong. But the analogy is frighteningly apt for the declarations we make about the structure of the universe based on our observations of its closest observable 4 percent, the data which lies beneath the single bulb of the most convenient lamppost.

But even as we turn our energy to addressing the flaws apparent in our quest for understanding the “what” of the universe, we allow the question of “why” the universe exists at all to recede.  And I don't mean the "why" of how the physical elements evolve or come together, I mean the why of our existence.  If you believe we are simply an accidental by-product of the evolution of the "what" - well, that's fine, I suppose. But for me, it's a bit of a curiosity killer. No less a curiosity killer is the other extreme of the great existential debate - an acritical acceptance of ancient writs that place some prophet or another center stage as the mouthpiece for the existential Godfather; who is either open-minded, compassionate and forgiving or ruthless and vindictive, depending upon your prophet of preference.  Setting both those dogmatic "certainties” aside I prefer to reposition the "existential why” as a dominant, but frustratingly illusive, question that, while possibly illuminated by consideration of the STEM guided examinations of “what,” is quite worthy of consideration in its own right. 

I also argued in the previous post that harmony is the dimension that unifies the Multiverses, that unites the seemingly disparate and distant.  If that is true, could a perfectly resonant chord be a version of general relativity’s wormhole, linking all the manifestations of that resonance? I would argue that we touch these chords, these moments of significant harmony, these possible wormholes, all through our lives. They put us, however briefly, in touch with and in tune with, the harmonic dimension that defines and encompasses all existence. The tricky part is recognizing them, and remembering them as something special, and considering what they have in common. Some are fairly easy; the classic falling in love at first sight, the piece of music or art that stops you in your tracks, the feeling - mid-sentence, or mid-dance, or mid-brushstroke, or jump shot, or nine-iron, or flip turn, that you are “there, in the groove” - in tune with the universe. At those moments we rarely stop and take notes. The challenge is to recognize them, to remember them, to seek ways to recreate that harmony.

Theater has delivered more than its share of those special moments to me. I must acknowledge that it was my father who nudged me into the Wittenberg University  - then College - production of Mrs. McThing when I was perhaps 6 years old. I played, I presume, "the lonely and put upon lad" featured in the Playbill.  My memories of the event are vague at best. But I do remember the intense shifts between light and dark - between being "on" and watching from the darkened wings. Each perspective was equally powerful.

Ever since those early days, theater, some type of performance and observation has been woven into the experience of my life.  In those “pre-enriched everything for children” days there wasn't much organized theater to sample until high school, but once there I benefited from the fact that my high school's theater and music programs were far more advanced than our sports teams.  That was fine with me, as my athletic skills were merely average even in our less-than-championship seasons. Deep down, I really didn't care who won, and running into other people in pads and spikes held no attraction for me. But put me on a stage, and -  well, that was different.  There are those, I suppose, who must be taught to find their light, to gravitate to the place on the stage where the light is most intense.  I, on the other hand, was something of a human light meter. If there was a spotlight on the stage, I was in it.

When college rolled around, I never actually considered majoring in anything but theater.  Why would I? I was good at it, the women were on the wild and crazy side, it was the sixties, and I was captured by a feeling of belonging "out there" in the lights.  But here is something you may not realize if you haven't been "out there."  And the "out there" to which I refer is the traditional "fourth-wall, proscenium arch" type theater.  You are on the stage, and the audience lives beyond that invisible fourth wall.  But here’s an interesting tidbit - the invisibility is a one-way phenomenon.  The audience can see you, but you cannot see them.  Some actors will explain that with some Stanislavsky/Actor's Studio rhetoric: "When I truly merge with my character, the world outside the play vanishes." (Close eyes. Slight exhalation.)

Yeah, maybe so, but it sure doesn't hurt that the spotlights are shining in your eyes so you never really see the audience. For me, until I finally got contact lenses, I couldn't even see to the footlights, let alone beyond them. The point is that the center of a spotlight is a perfect hiding place.  William Purkey wrote it: "You've got to dance like there is nobody watching." Well, that is an easy fiction to maintain on stage; in the center of the light you can't see anyone, so it follows they cannot see you, right? So, go for it.

That then is one vital dimension in theater, "out there - hiding in the light."  The second vital dimension is the one most commonly experienced - the experience of the audience.  In this dimension the audience is looking in from beyond the fourth wall, observing and sharing in the illusion being created on the stage. The "success"'of most performances can be measured by the degree to which the audience accepts or shares the illusory reality created behind the fourth wall - on the stage. Did they believe, if only for a little while, that they were transported, sharing a slice of another life? Another existence?

The third dimension is one rarely encountered but equally, if not more important than the other two. It is the catwalk dimension.  There is a magical space in a theater from which one can see everything and yet not be seen - the catwalks and fly spaces above the stage. Famously popularized in The Phantom of The Opera, dramatists have been using the catwalk world for centuries - stretch back to the Deus Ex-machina characters of Greek drama, when an actor portraying a god would be lowered from the catwalk into the midst of the other players to set things right.  My idea of this third dimension, this catwalk world, is sort of like that - but not completely.  

When seen from the catwalks, the theater becomes a terrarium.  The actors are still caught on their side of the wall and the audience is still restrained in their seats. But you, up in the catwalks can silently glide across the barriers that compartmentalize the world below.  In Dicken's A Christmas Carol, the spirits of Christmas past, present and future - that narrative's version of the catwalk people - can mingle invisibly with the "on stage" players, and can share that ability with Scrooge, hence obliquely affecting plot and outcome. In Greek dramas deus ex-machina characters interact directly with the players, changing plots overtly.  So on one hand the elevated perspective of catwalk world seems a case of a harmless dramatic device - unless one considers this theatrical view of the world as something more than a metaphor, but rather as a wormhole; one of those rare intensely harmonic spaces elevating our perspective. 

OK, now I’m going to get a little weird on you. [I know, I know - just now?] Remember the cube we can see from the catwalk? The life that unfolds on the stage? Let us imagine that that cube is our real, everyday, walkabout job, kids, taxes, etc., etc., life. Now look beyond that cube - because up here in catwalk world we can gaze down into "cubes without number." The world of our everyday walkabout world on the stage below continues to unfold and a la the Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead we can see beyond the exits and entrances, to the life that unfolds offstage. But as that reality continues to play out to, and other alternate existences, that you can see from the catwalk also reel out below you, spilling over into different versions of the drama.  Maybe one is the life that I would have lived if I had majored in Art instead of Theater, or stranger still, had I studied Physics.  What if I had gone to prom with Veronica instead of Betty? What if I had been an only child? From up here on the catwalk, all those optional versions of my existence play out in some cosmic multiplex. The dominant harmony remains the same, but the progression of chords vary infinitely.

Self-centered? Well, what in your life - or anyone's - is not?  Consider the most selfless person you know. Can we not assume that being selfless makes them feel good? So even a selfless existence is self-centered. We make choices that are ultimately in our own self interest. The choices that let us sleep at night. Even those choices that appear to be for the "greater good" advance the self. Mandela, Ghandi, King, good men all - who could not have chosen to behave venally, ignoring the world they knew to be flawed. They were compelled by their own chord to foster harmony. That does not lessen their accomplishments one whit - rather it makes their inherent goodness all the more exceptional. Those were finely tuned chords. But that is not the point here. The idea here is the possibility that the unknown 96 percent of universe can take any shape, employing any dimensions we can imagine.  

In my chosen dimensions, as I peer down from the catwalk watching all those dramas unfold, the metaphor shifts. Lurking in the wings of one unfolding drama, I catch a glimpse of the edge of "the universe of another consciousness."  It strikes me that each of those unfolding dramas is also the creation of each of the other players in the drama. So my father in his "Reality 47" also has limitless alternative dramas spinning out from his catwalk.  All those terrariums start bumping into one another. Sharp edges and corners collide. Ouch. A better metaphor seems to be soap bubbles.  Like an immense bubble bath, universe after universe slipping over each other in superconductive limitless space.  OK. Seems logical to me.  It also seems a potential invitation to the nut house. If there are uncountable multiverses out there, what makes this one I walk around in important? What makes me worthy of consideration in these brave new soap bubble worlds that have within them creatures without number?

Harmony. No surprise there, right? The multiverses are all manifestations of a singular harmony. Your chord, tuned as it is through both inheritance and experience, is unique in all the universes, and makes a singular contribution to, and in doing so becomes part of, that universal harmony. As those other manifestations of yourself play out their lives on other stages, they become variations on "themes from the transcendent you.”  Your current task in that cosmic tapestry is limited to manifesting the four tenets of Distilled Harmony in a way that embodies the best you of the moment.

But in all likelihood it doesn’t stop there.  To place ourselves, and our seemingly fleeing lives, at the center of existence is a quaintly “pre-Copernicus” view of things. In my mind, for any of this to make sense, the harmony that unifies the universe must be self-aware; it must be sentient, conscious. We, in our most fortunate moments, glance down the wormholes and glimpse that harmonic consciousness, and mysteriously name it God or Allah or Yahweh, etc., when, in reality, we have glimpsed the universal harmony of which we ourselves are an integral part. And we will move on until we do find transcendence enabling us to move consciously among our various existences, fitting our notes to that existential harmony. And in doing so we open our - being, soul, existence; you choose - to experiences of which we can now only dream.

And there it is, “dream,” the by now almost forgotten first word of the title of this post.  I would be amazed if you do not occasionally pause as you read these posts and wonder “Where does this stuff come from?” and "Is he seeking professional help?” Nothing so dramatic I assure you.  In large part these reflections arise from what we often call dreaming. Between meditation, Reike, drawing, listening to music, staring out the window, and various states of semi-sleeping, I spend perhaps half of my life in a state of, I believe the term currently in vogue is distraction. I prefer reflection.

And much dreaming lies therein.  I have read fairly widely in both the scientific and psychological literature on dreams. It is often entertaining. But is at odds with my unique experiences, and those, of course, are the ones that I seek to understand.  Forgive me if I occasionally revert to theatrical terms, as the dreams are, after all, visions from the catwalk. In my dreams I am always “at home.” By that I mean I never find myself wondering where I am. The setting, no matter how strange, always feels familiar. Similarly the individuals, while often bearing no resemblance to anyone I know in my waking world, never feel like strangers. Whether major intimate players or minor extras, they are “known to me.” The plots, I have come to assume, are instructive as opposed to representational, since they do not arise from my current existence. They are rather scenes from beyond the seams. Seams? What seams?

Good question. Remember the soap bubble universes? That immense bubble bath, "universe after universe slipping over each other in superconductive limitless space?" Go run a bubble bath or fill the sink with bubbles, or perhaps more conveniently, imagine the bubbles. Look at the places where they run together.  There, those are the seams. If you watch the bubbles break down you will occasionally see a larger bubble swallow up a smaller one, or move across some surface, pushing the smaller bubbles out of the way. At any rate the seams, are as much “seems” as “seams.” They are porous. The bubbles sliding over one another now joining, now discrete, but all part of the same unified entity.

Dreams, I would again assert, are scenes from beyond the seams. Our lives playing out in different manifestations of the universe. Then what good are they right? Perhaps a great deal. The bubbles, remember, are part of a greater entity joined by a common harmony. We, in our current state anyhow, are limited to creating our most harmonic self in our current “here and now.” Our eventual and larger task will be making a unique contribution to the larger entity. Scenes from across the seams give us more data. While the dreams themselves are playing out as lives in another bubble, they may well provide insight into our behavior in this one. Was I pleased with how “I” behaved in that last dream? Can the dream teach “here and now me” - through imitation or avoidance - to better Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm?  Hamlet ponders:

"To sleep - perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?"

I would counsel the Prince that perhaps it is not a sleep of death, but a sleep of life miraculous where, to turn his on words back upon himself, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

.

Into Hidden Dimensions

.

The third tenet of Distilled Harmony is “distill complexity,” or “keep it simple, stupid.”  And yes, I am aware that my last post strayed a bit from that path. So, before moving on to the other dimensions, let me try a brief distillation of that previous post.

First, it seems clear that our "best guess" as to the physical nature of the universe is not a very good one.  While our methods of observation continue to get better, most astrophysicists and cosmologists will admit that we get obtain reliable data from only 4 or 5 percent of the universe. That is the part we can "see," the part under the convenient lamppost. We call the other 95 - 96 percent “dark energy or dark matter” because while we are reasonable sure that something has to be out there, we don’t have a very good grasp on what it is.  

It is not terribly surprising that the scientific community, tied as it is to the notion that one must have data before one declares conclusions, has remained myopically married to the 4 or 5 percent of the universe that we can see; they keep their focus on that which lies below the most convenient lamppost. That is what "is." The rest remains guesswork, conjecture, our "best guess" of the moment - but seeming subject to radical revision by the latest data stream.

Perhaps it is the knowledge that so much remains unknown that keeps the STEMites so focused on the “what” of the universe. What is made of? How do the various elements - the unimaginable large forces of  black holes and galaxies, and the incredibly tiny bits of string theory - work together? Or do they? How do all the puzzle pieces fit together?  So much to learn and seemingly so little time. It really isn't surprising that, comparatively, precious little time and treasure has been spent on the question posed in the last post: what does it mean?

Another analogy: Let's say you have a 5000 piece jigsaw of a Jackson Pollock painting, a frightening thought in its own right, but further complicated by the fact that the picture on the front of the puzzle box shows you only 5 percent of the final image.  After a millennium or so of trying you manage to put 250 pieces together, revealing the 5 percent of the picture depicted on the box cover - or something pretty close to it.  You now slave feverishly over strategies, theories and algorithms that will allow you get the remaining 4,750 pieces put together. 

An uninvited stranger walks over to the table and looks at the 250 piece fragment.  You step back and smile with pride. 

"What is it?" asks the stranger.

"It is 5% of the whole," you reply humbly.

"The whole what?"

"The whole universe."

The stranger gazes at the fragment for awhile.

"What is it about?" the stranger asks.

"What do you mean?"

“Exactly - what does it mean? What's its story? Why should I care?"

"But it's the Universe!" you sputter.

"So you say. (Pause) Anything else to look at?"

"No. This is what we do. We try to figure out the structure of the universe.”  The stranger walks away and you turn back to the table looking for a corner piece, or at least an edge.

So the STEM community continues to try to figure out how the rest of the pieces fit together.  I fear we are trapped by the unspoken assumption that the remaining  4,750 pieces necessary to complete the picture should fit into a pleasant rectangle illuminated beneath a convenient lamppost. But couldn't the lamppost be a bit more baroque?  Multiple armatures supporting clusters of lamps? String theory, a recent darling of parts of the STEM community, demands as many as eleven dimensions, some tiny, some rewrites of our notion of time. Ah, now there is a lamppost worthy of consideration. But how do we design such a consideration? How do we multiply the paths we might follow? Paths suggested by these baroque clusters of potential illumination?

A pure STEM approach suggests one option. The December 12th, 2014 edition of New Scientist magazine has an interesting article that considers taking a STEM perspective to thinking about these higher dimensions - that stuff we cannot see. We are most comfortable thinking about "reality" in three dimensions length, width, and height - and then we toss in time. The New Scientist article acknowledges that most people have trouble imagining a reality beyond those dimension. But not, it seems, if you are a mathematician: "simply add extra dimensions to your equations, supplementing the standard x, y, z and t with extra coordinates, say w or s. 'In the end there is always mathematics.'"  So according to that model we can "create" new dimensions at will by slapping on extra coordinates and keeping the equations balanced.

Despite the allure of that “fun with numbers” approach to defining the universe, it just feels so wrong.  You can't, it seems, keep pumping the the universe up with abstract coordinates without at least considering the what those additional dimension mean.  Eventually we need to define those "dark dimensions." What mysteries might they measure? What is there beyond length, width, height and time that we may have overlooked simply because they are so hard - seemingly impossible -  to measure? Excellent question and you will hardly be surprised at my initial response: harmony is the dominant dimension.

Remember, Distilled Harmony, this theory of everything I bandy about, has its roots in the very STEMy notion of string theory; in the assertion that the smallest unit of existence is a tiny vibrating string. Those strings, Distilled Harmony goes on to assert, either cluster or repel depending upon their degree of harmony or discord. Everything in the universe then takes all its characteristics from relative states of harmony or discord. Could there be a dimension of greater importance? And, assuming there is not, why have we spent so little time investigating it? I would assert that it remains untouched because it is, at the moment, invisible beneath STEM’s single lamppost. The strings themselves are simply too small for any type of direct observation and strategies for indirect observation lean strongly in the direction of music, art and philosophy. Last time I looked, there were not many calls for research proposals out there that echoed those chords.

The next dimension I would add to this expanded view of the universe is something I call “vitavis” a nicely alliterative Latin compound for "life force." It has intrigued philosophers and physicians for ages, and is there any wonder why?  Leaving belief out of it as much as possible, at one stage of life we have a large cluster of cells, that left alone, will die and decay.  But with assistance - either from the mother in a "normal birth" or from some helper in any variety of c-sections or less invasive assisted deliveries - a breath is drawn and the cluster of cells "lives" and we sigh "Welcome to the world little one.” At the other end of the spectrum. Something stops. Heart, brain, whatever. Something, along the spectrum of physical function and cultural norms, is no longer present, and the large collection of cells "dies." And hopefully there is someone there to murmur "good-bye."

Yet, while medicine can define a series of measurable points that, in theory, distinguish between life and death - brain activity, the ability to “live” unaided, etc., - that proposed line is anything but clear.  Modern medicine can reach beyond the intuitive “beginning" and the apparent “end" of life, sustaining in both "ultra-premies" and those adults in "vegetative states" the potential - however slight - of life.  So what is that “thing" that marks the difference between alive and not? Ah, there is one of those topics that you don't want to bring up when the extended family gathers for a holiday meal. Plainly "the answer" currently lies beyond “just the facts," living much more comfortably in the realm of belief. The medical field has, to its credit, struggled with this issue, bringing in ethicists and religious leaders to advise the healthcare community on the complex issues of both sustaining and terminating entities that possess the potential for life, but exist on the fuzzy edges of what we can recognize as “alive." The conversations go on, but unanimity still lies somewhere far, far away.

Still it is undeniable that differences in vitavis exist.  Stephen Hawking should, according to most medical models, have died decades ago. Yet he lives on, probing the very edges of the dimensions we currently acknowledge. Babies with no discernible maladies “fail to thrive” and die. In my mind, the explanation of those seeming anomalies lie not in the impressive world of modern medicine but rather along the largely unexplored dimension of vitavis. I am enchanted by the notion of “work left to be done” along the vitavis - the life force dimension.  Hawking has work left to be done, as do artists and musicians who seem to expire only after the completion of great works - Beethoven’s works in the face of encroaching deafness, the arthritis-ridden Renoir’s assertion that he continued to paint because “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” 

These are the echoes of the why dimensions of the universe. They do not argue for a suspension of the STEM-based exploration of the what dimensions of the universe. Rather they ask us to consider what other dimensions may lie beneath the illumination of a more baroque lamppost, and to expend greater time and treasure in the exploration of why.

.

First, Ask the Right Question

.
I apologize if you have been missing your “dose of strangeness from Schrag” recently, but I have struggling with the third tenet of Distilled Harmony, “Distill Complexity" for several weeks. While I usually cast Distill Complexity as the third among equals in the Distilled Harmony theory of everything, the fact that “distilled” is one of the two words that define the theory itself speaks to its importance. To distill something is to reduce it to purest state, and that is where I have been running into problems.

I’m not sure when the current object of my obsession began spinning around in my head, but when I began peppering the essay with subheadings and “note to self: bring in the part about .  .  .” I realized that any progress toward "distilling complexity" had taken flight. In hindsight that is not terribly surprising as the subject of my current consideration is "why does the universe exist?”  To release you from any suspense let me put the “spoiler” right up here at the front: The raison d'être for the universe is maximizing Harmony. I have paraphrased Dr. King's famous quote several times, because you should always steal from the very best. My version: The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward Harmony.  

It is in trying to explain to you how I reached that conclusion where complexity rears its frustrating head.  It has become obvious that this particular distillation occurs in a number of steps, and even I am having trouble following my transitions. So that is where I will begin - cutting this kudzu-like post into more understandable pieces. The posts will probably appear separately - again in the interest of distilling complexity. This initial post I will call:

First, Ask the Right Question

I remember encountering general semantics as a young Ph.D. student in Dr. Ray Ross’s class in communication theory. Dr. Ross, who also believed in stealing from the best, would thunder, “The word is not the thing! The map is not the territory!”  Or as I chose to remember it: A description or depiction of something, no matter how artfully constructed, is necessarily different from that which is being described or depicted. [I know, I know - that sounds like the opposite of distillation, but it is for me a necessary inflation as Distilled Harmony asserts that descriptions and depictions - particularly in art and literature - can contain elements of the original. But that is for another time and another post. You see the problem I’m having?]  But Ross’s “purer” assertion [he did cite Korzybski] works better here. The map is not the territory - nor is the equation.

Two incredible minds, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, report agonizing about getting the math of the universe right. They have walked us down fascinating paths into the “what” of the universe. Mass, energy, black holes, wormholes, the intriguing possibility of time travel. These are glorious minds, awe inspiring intellects. It seems almost sacrilegious to assert that they may have led us to the wrong lamppost. You remember the old joke - I use it all the time:  

It's midnight.  Drunk is down on hands and knees, searching for his car keys under the lamppost.  The beat cop comes along, offers assistance and asks "Are you sure you dropped them here?”

"No, I dropped them back there," the drunk responds gesturing back into the shadows.

"Then why are you looking here?" inquires the incredulous officer.

"The light is better here."

There are a number of excellent reasons to read Richard Panek's book The 4 Percent Universe.  But the one that never fails to make me stumble, when it crosses my mind, is his well-articulated assertion that the science that defines the four percent of the universe we can currently observe and gather data from is - especially considering the academic politics that reigns it in - fairly solid. Yet, Panek observes, we cannot escape the equally solid conclusion that what we know about the remaining 96 % is, if not simply smoke and mirrors, pretty much pure guesswork that we label dark matter and dark energy because we don’t know what it is.  Equally inescapable then is the realization that even geniuses like Einstein and Hawking are looking under a very, very small lamppost.

But wait! That’s not all! We can’t forget Heisenberg. He is the guy with the cat in the box, the strange "neither dead nor alive cat." The cat we either kill or resuscitate just by peeking in the box. In Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle our observation of an event affects the event.  That being said, it seems fair to ask to what extent are our "normal” conceptions of space and time the product of "convenient observations under the nearest lamppost” which are further distorted by the very act of our observation? Does make your head spin a bit, not?

Still, front to back, side to side, up down, then-now-tomorrow - those are the easily measurable spaces in which we live our lives. Is it any wonder that the scientific method followed those precise pathways as we sought to measure and understand the world, solar system, galaxy and universe in which we live?  The telescopes get better. Scientific descriptions become ever more precise. We get better and better at defining the "what" of where we live. But remember, those assertions are somewhat of a paper tiger - and possibly a paper tiger in a Heisenberg box. Remember Panek’s  point: We can observe only 4 % of our local universe, and nothing of any other universes that may lie beyond ours.  So, are we going to trust results based on our observations of that 4 %? That makes me a tad nervous.

Think about it this way. Let's say you were conducting an experiment to determine the average height of 4th graders. You go to Local Middle School down the street from your house. You walk into the front door and ask for the closest 4th grade classroom. You go to the classroom. There are 25 students in the class. You take the first student closest to the door (1 is 4 percent of 25) and measure his or her height. The student is 4 feet 7 inches tall. And on the basis of that observation you declare that the normal height for all fourth graders in the universe is 4'7”.  This is about as flawed as an empirical design can get. Even a poet can count the ways: There may be other 4th graders elsewhere in the building, but we cannot see them, so we will call them "dark 4th graders," and ignore them. There is another public school across town in a very different neighborhood, but we don’t go there. Private schools and charter schools and gender differentiated schools all exist, catering to specific groups that may reflect taller or shorter gene pools. They too, don’t count. We stay under this 4’7” lamppost. I know, I know, that is just so wrong. But the analogy is frighteningly apt for the declarations we make about the structure of the universe based on our observations of its closest, or most observable, 4 %.

Strangely, that is not what concerns me most. Einstein and Hawking do the best they can with the available information. You cannot make-up data that you do not have. Well, you can, but eventually your articles will be “withdrawn” and you will lose your job. Scientists can only make their best observations and attempt to marry those observations to the theories best articulated in the literature. That is the scientific method. It underlies all the terrific toys and terrible weapons of our world. It is the current king of the educational mountain. STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym] rules. And that is a shame, considering that the universe is vast and our lamppost is so small.  The sad reality is that despite our best efforts, a STEM-centric exploration of the cosmos not only brings us questionable results, it also stifles our exploration of other, and in my mind, more important questions.

Let me again retreat into analogy. Let us say that STEM allows us to slip the surly bonds of Earth and trek off across our 4% of the universe. In true sci-fi fashion we encounter a planet on which we find the ruins of a magnificent structure. After years of effort and amazing amounts of money, we manage to reconstruct the edifice. A tour is arranged for all of Earth’s leaders. They wander and wonder down glorious hallways, through rooms huge and magnificent, and into smaller architectural pearls.  After the tour they enjoy a banquet back at the base where the scientists and engineers have lived during the reconstruction. The Project Leader shows a holographic presentation of the entire reconstruction process - truly an engineering marvel.  After the presentation the floor is opened for questions. Much cooing and fawning results.

Another guest rises and asks, “What was it for?"

Project Leader: “Huh?"

Guest: “What was it for? Why did they build it?"

Project Leader: “Well. Ah. That’s not really my area. Maybe, George can address that. George?"

George, it appears, cannot be found.

A simplistic analogy, I admit. But the question remains. Why does the universe exist? The current obsession of the scientific community appears to be creating the equations, getting the math right that describes what the universe is. Much effort and treasure has been expended on those equations. Nonetheless, those best efforts still seem to leave us with two significant unanswered questions.

One: Can we derive, and trust, and generalize to the universe - remembering Heisenberg as we answer -  conclusions based on samples of "observational convenience” drawn from 4% of the universe? And,

Two: Even if we can put some faith in those conclusions, are we asking the right questions? Is the “What” of the universe the important issue? Should we not be far more concerned with “Why?”  And I don't mean the simple "why" of how the physical elements evolved or came together, I mean the existential why.  Why are we here? Do we have purpose? Do our lives have meaning? If you believe we are simply a by-product of the evolution of the “ what” - chemicals combining in a fortuitous accident, well, that's fine, I suppose. But for me, it's a bit of a curiosity killer, as is the other end of the great existential debate - an acritical acceptance of ancient writs that place some prophet or another center stage as the mouthpiece for the existential Godfather; who is either open-minded, compassionate and forgiving or ruthless, vicious and vindictive, depending upon your mouthpiece and text of preference.

Personally, from a Distilled Harmony perspective, I have come to believe that we are here as free-will, intentional participants in a universe that is itself sentient, and that, as I said at the beginning, bends toward Harmony.  It is a perspective that, perhaps strangely, might gain significant support were we to add some additional data into current scientific examinations of the nature of the universe. STEMites, for the most part, draw their conclusions regarding the nature of the universe within the solid boundaries of the traditional dimensions; up down, side to side, back and forth, and time - then, now and in the future. Those STEM-oriented observations and conclusions create the equations that we mistake for the universe. Interestingly, those same equations may point the way to a liberating, more encompassing view of the universe. I will share my thoughts on that expanded view with you in another post - hopefully not too far down the path into the future.

.