...please...
I have studied many subjects, read about more talked to many people who are very bright and yet what I feel about THIS DAY seems to be something I cannot connect on, or I am not listening well enough to hear the connection.
It wasn’t too long ago that the death of 200,000 or so people I would have noted, but there would have been little emotional reaction. I would just keep on doing.
That has changed. I think it is small sips of gin and talks with my wife that barely keep me on the sane side of sane. I just read an account of DT’s meetings of his “Task Force” on the pandemic and I want to kill the son-of-a-bitch. Is this a human being? Biologically it’s likely yes, but in every other way it is no to the nth power.
As far as I know people are nurture plus nature and by how these terms are defined, the two account for everything. Nature is, of course, the genes you are born with. Nurture is every single thing that happens to you. Every word, hug, lightening bolt, corn flake, friend, enemy, accident, illness, prize....EVERYTHING.
It is impossible to imagine what went wrong because dad and genes met again and again and the interaction must have been felt throughout the universe. But the problem is that stuff like this happens often, in round numbers to half of humanity. All different, but the output is two kinds of minds. Those that hear what is said and those that hear what they hear, or rather wish to hear. One learns. The other, in a way, becomes more stupid with each sentence as more brain cells turn to stone.
In The Beginning...
Which one?
You mean there was more than one? Well cosmology is a lot of fun (to me, anyway, since I was a kid).
There are two groups of answerers: scientists and non-scientists. Which is right? Neither. Which is wrong? Neither. What the hell is going on?....No one and I mean no one and that inclcludes every religion and physicist on the planet, knows. So how do I know that no one knows? Because I cannot in all my religions, prayers, science books, science courses, bibles, etc. have not found a way of knowning. Religion is, in simplest terms, a dream. Science is, in simplest terms, a hope. One cannot verify a dream, nor can one pin down a hope. So I (we?) float and fear and fail and flail and sometimes smile and laugh.
Yet there is something odd about these two classes of life experience: you can only experience one at a time and yet you live both of them all the time but it takes a few decades to realize that twenty years ago you never had it so good but didn’t realize it then. And now...you know that twenty years ago you never could imagine it could be this bad and knowing that it can and likely will, get much worse. Worse? I have a model for worse. My consciousness—just my consciousness, don’t need anything else, in the worst extreme state of terror, floating through the void for eterity and completely knowing this was happening. When this idea came to me in an ER withdrawing from 30 years of benzodiasopines, I asked ”Is this a kind unierse?” Could this really happen? Silence.
How did we get here and where are we going? The things that stick in my mind are: At t=0, the big bang banged. At t + 10-44 seconds the laws of physics came into existence. Then (see below) the universe began creating itself until about 4.5 billion years ago (and about 10.8 billion years after the bb) we find us. The universe is by now pretty big (about 15 billion light years around) but the only thing that matters is us is the space inside our heads, which is the most remarkable thing in the unierse, the most complex, the most cruel, the most capable of joy and capable of figuring this all out.
And on the verge of washing it all down the cosmic drain.
You figure it out. And the first person that says I have to have faith...they are right. In what? God. What is God? God is a name for countless “gods.” You tell me which one and why yours is better than that one.
This One...
...oh,,,
If I ever got to this place, and some one asks what shall we do, the following would come to mind, not in any particular order: 1. One of my great conversations with Susan; 2. An afternoon (or slide show click here) with our grand daughter; 3. Our son’s smile; 4. A Chopin ballade or a Beethoven string quartet. 5. And.... well there is a bunch but all would involve a friend or two. Ah! Take all the above and follow it up with Geoff or Jerry or Constantine or ... on the piano I found in New York that was made in the "Piano Factory" on Tremont Street in Boston where I first saw a dye transfer print made (irony?), in the house Susan and I found, with the acoustics it has that the builder gave us with the piano tech we have with the view we have and with the consciousness that has been given us so that this day...is.
Oh. One more thing. Snapping the shutter at the right time in the right place. And looking at a print. Which I am about to do.