It’s A Vision Chart for your Mind, Neo

Do you know how to use a computer?  I bet none of us really do.  I wager I am correct that you navigated on your own to this smidgeon of tenuously-real bits some would call a blog post, so we can eliminate that meaning from the list of possible interpretations of what I am actually saying.  

Here’s another.  

I’ll even break my own so-called “rule” and link to it.  So, click here, as they used to say.

For those of you still here, the software is called Teskinoo.  It is an alpha release, so I bet you can break it if you tried.  But why?  It’s so much more fun to let it be the wedge that cracks you open for a minute or two.

A Raft Takes You Nowhere

Jim Chambers pushed his shaky wooden raft along with a long branch he had broken from a fallen tree. The bottom of the pond was only a few feet below him, but he didn’t want to get his one set of clothes dirty. No one came out this way, but he was more proud than broke.

As he passed, green dots of algae dispersed from larger congregations like children streaming out a of church after a long sermon. Birds sang courerpoint to the sloshy rhythm  of his improvised propellant moving in the water. His panting drowned out any nuance to be heard. He wiped is brow, removing the result of his physical effort meeting the monsoon season.

Just one more pass, he thought. Every day this summer he arose, dressed in his lone outfit, and headed to the lake. Every day, he expected to see her, just as he imagined. After all, everyone else had seen her there. They couldn’t all be lying.

Could they?

As he neared the shore, his heart began to sink. She should already be there, he thought. He could clearly see her footprints now on the damp shore.

Every day he had come this far. Every day, it seemed that he had just missed her. The sun turned the reclusive mountain peak a golden shade. Jim snuck a peek through a crack in the curtain of trees, then looked again at the shore. His eyes began to adjust.

His momentum carried him past the point of his furthest penetration. His body usually took control by now, routing him back to the remainder of his day, through its apogee, and back again to the lake shore. Now it did not interfere with the anarchy in his mind.

His thoughts became stuck in the molasses of the moment. Somehow, in crossing that invisible line, he had slipped beyond a fog of sleep into a world alive in his senses. A world alive in his soul.

They were there all along. Just a bit further on the shore, her footprints led to a path through the trees. He waited long enough to be sure he would only be sacrificing his pants below the knee to the dark waters. He stepped off of the raft, slipping enough to value his dryness even more by the time his feet touched the dewy ground.

He stood still for an eternity, waiting for his story to continue as if his godlike author had fallen behind. Soon, he felt time move once more like a train on freshly laid rails. This is knowing, he heard silently.

Jim Chambers followed the path into the trees, tasting her steps with his eyes until the lake dissapeared. He did not look back.

I Dream to Dare

Sitting in her midst, it seemed likely that I would remember the book names that she was reciting. After all, I had asked. I held her eye and relaxed, letting her words and the sound of her voice soak my brain like cool water in a dry sponge.

Then I thought, “What if I forget?”

And I did. All but the second title and the last.

Why? Sleep, of course. Real remembering is connecting pieces rather than adding things to a shelf. You know the difference between the memory of the pizza joint phone number and the sight of your first child. Never had one? You still have things that compare. They’re almost invisible, forming the web of your essence. They just are.

The first book title caught me lifting the blinds, the second came through the open window. Then I slept, dreaming that I had forgotten the titles. I awoke in time to catch the last one. Laying on the sandy bottom of a shallow tidal pool as the sun filters through passing waves, I sleep. Feeling the cool air on my cheeks as my face breaches the surface, air filling my lungs with the scent of the salty ocean, I awaken.

Does that mean I was absolutely awake? What does that mean in the realm of dreams? That level of being is nothing special. We all have it like a magic wand in the hand of a sleeping child.

What are you dreaming about?

Change Will Do You Good

 

Stepping from one world into another can be quite chaotic.

In The Terminator, the Governator drops from the sky – naked, as does Reese, Sarah Conner’s protector.  This wasn’t just to get buns on screen.  It emphasized the transition of state from future to past.  

Take it home into your own space:  If you could zap through your cell phone and instantly transport to wherever your caller is – but only if you’re naked – how often would you do it?  I’d buy stock in fitness and weight loss centers.

State transitions are chaotic.  Don’t take my word for it, ask nature.  After all, if this world is really made out of the nothing you had to create it, wouldn’t it mirror its interior structure somehow? 

Does your shape have anything to do with your bone structure?

Winter turns to spring.  There’s always that one last snow, the one that comes later than anyone expects.  Or else we find the early spring, followed by a late frost.  

A watched pot never boils.  Until it does.

A sonic boom.  The beating of notes when tuning a guitar. Finding a station on an old AM radio.  What, you never had a rotary dial?  

State transitions are characterized by rapid swings back and forth, like a flag flapping in the wind.  First, there is one state, then wild oscillation that almost touches either possible state, then another state.   The planets and stars do it, the earth’s magnetic field does it.  The markets do it.  So does your state of consciousness, and your level of being – not that anyone of consequence is judging.  

Change.  Isn’t there some kind of book of changes?  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Change is.  Change does.  Change is as it does.  Time balances change.  Change is the flow of time.

Life is change.  Change is life.  You can point at their artifacts, but you can never catch them on film.  They belong to the present, which has no dimension.  

Being nothing, they can only be experienced by nothing.

There is no where without dimension.  There are no directions in nowhere.

Yet, there’s exactly enough time for everything to happen in the future, and exactly enough time to fit the past.  And don’t worry, the present will never lose your luggage.  

You can always pick it up when you get somewhere.