ARCHIVE

25 December 2000
christmas day

-|- wonder -|- musings of señor prod. -|-

and how it dissipates

So my days at UPC have ended, and I wonder if I ever met you there. I can't seem to recall, for certain, but, as Clinton says, my sense of wonder has been dulled; I seem only able to wonder at complexity. There are hints of it roaming around, a thread which unites the multifarious things which excite me, making my heart beat just a little stonger, or, perhaps, making me a little more acutely aware of its rhythm.

And so my stories are always a level of abstraction removed from the details and anecdotes of everyday experience. I've no concrete truths to convey, and no interesting plots to reveal, no penetrating insight into the things which happen in my everyday life, even accidentally. You know that I still question the memory of you passing through my soul.

The feeling of worship is partaking in the wonder before me, reveling in my connection to the transcendent. My grinding, spinning mind disengages its drive when I play music. Sometimes. In some songs, I know part of your spirit lives, because each time I hear them I shudder. Perfect notes. They tend to involve half-steps. Do you live there in the space between E and F, B-flat and A? Sometimes.

So I try to learn from you in your tome of wisdom; sometimes I hear you whispering it to me, sometimes it's Perry's voice or Andy's or Nancy's speaking your words; but sometimes it's these voices and others which give me cause to doubt your motives.

Abstraction upon abstraction upon abstraction. Everything is an equation to me; relationships, crises, friends, I've made it all seem to make complete sense without telling anyone anything. I've reduced each relationship and crisis, each circumstance and moral dilemma to a platitude, and then I've parsed it and spliced it and put it up here, for people to wonder, does he ever tell us anything? I've complained to some about others' disconnection from the world around them, that they simply do not consider outcomes. But then, I've realized that my species of disconnection is no less harmful, perhaps more harmful. I've made you out into this Author, writing a tale, teaching a moral code which is of no use. 'The only measure of what is right and wrong is whether it glorifies God or draws one from him.' Abstraction to the point of uselessness. There is no direction when all things are permissible.

I wonder if I met you at UPC. Perhaps I observed, disconnected as a scientist, what you did. Perhaps I measured you. The results were true, but served no purpose. As pointless as a complex theory which describes no system but is nonetheless internally consistent.

What fellowship hath the telescope with the heavens?

You say you want a Revolution? I should be careful not to make bricks out of marbles.