I regret that some things are presented in the midst of fantasy. I understand that requires the reader to do some of the work. But before the reader has that option, the reader has to be here.
It's a delicate balance.
Today I present two portions. The first part was originally called Weaving Reality and the second was Picking up the rhythm.
The graphic is named Circuit. It goes way back, to when I first started experimenting visually after I was diagnosed with cataracts.
The Weavemothers were alternately bemused and perplexed. Weaving spacetime is a daunting task. But the die had been cast.
Those self-programmable units would have to be the answer. At least for now, the spot weaving of the tapestry would have to rely on them. If only they didn't have the bugs that caused them to sometimes go round and round in circles, sometimes get lost in mazes of amazing complexity, and too often fail to cooperate with each other in their common task.
And it was quite worrying that they seem to have decided to create rules which were limiting their progress, cutting themselves off from some of the capabilities they had been created to use. .
One of the Weavemothers noticed a spot. Every once in a great while there were units which shown brightly. Rarer still some of these units came together and produced the newness that expanded the possibilities. It might pay to keep an eye on this group, if only for the brightness it seemed to produce.
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My soul has been bared, naked before the Universe.
The web of my cognitive awareness is fragile, ready to crumble at any time. It only takes a brief stumble, a mental stubbing of the toe, as it were, to collapse the whole structure. We are ephemeral creatures.
All it takes is a little ice below my feet for me to lose my balance. For a juggler, that's a fatal condition. And it's not just one ball which will fall. Interruption of the rhythm will cause almost all of them to tumble down.
Will I really know the difference between diving too deep and falling overboard?
It is also dangerous to blindly mix one's metaphors.
This is the summer of my sixtieth year, perhaps thrice the number of years I once thought I would survive. It is a time of reflection on the past and the attempt to imagine a future.
I have striven to live a life worth living. Imagining that maybe it has even been a life worth relating, I have related it, as best I know how. There it rests, unstably perched on fading memories. Much of the support it needs in order to stand lies in the web of connections that have been made with others of my kind. Those connections are also will-o-the-wisp, ignes fatui floating above the tapestry of human existence, sometimes vanishing in an instant, sometimes eroding slowly from too much familiarity.
And there will be too many who believe that I am not one of their kind.
Awareness of the tapestry comes with a price. If one chooses the brightest colors, the threads can stand out, but the cost is dear.
I burn my candle at both ends,
It will not last the night.
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Why burn your candle at both ends, when you can attack it in the middle with an acetylene torch. There's less aesthetic value, but twice as many people can see the flame.
--Richard Fariña
...who may accuse you of being an exhibitionist and turn their backs.
--me
Will I know when the day comes when deterioration will begin to win out? Or how far I can go on beyond that point? Will there ever come a day when doubts about the worthiness of my weaving will not have to be actively repelled?
All I can do is take another step along my path and continue to weave. That is so much more enjoyable if all our paths are moving in the same general direction.
But what are the odds of that?
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So a color is selected for the thread of finest silk and woven both into the the infrastructure of the group, the structure of the Herenow and the superstructure of Spacetime.
And the Weavemothers may watch.
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Part The Second
The WeaveMothers rustled. Rustled? It's as good a word as any to describe their collective motion. A ripple of the fabric was often necessary since the units seemed predisposed to perform the same task over and over and over again.
Uncertainty happens. At least it is supposed to happen. One can't be certain that it will.
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Take one part eternal truth...
[We'll leave aside the philosophical questions about whether or not there can be eternal truths about truth and what their nature might be.]
Truth lies in the moment between the appearance of a thought and having words to express that thought.
Add one part political relevance (or not)...
Back to the 50s Movement.
They even snagged some crazy TV western dude to be the spokesperson for the movement. Part of the Buy-centennial Sell-abration. I guess Charlton Heston was busy.
So this crazy dude really weirded out the place trying to find his way back to the 50s. Unfortunately he convinced a lot of other crazy dudes to help him. After all, the 50s were the days of the military-industrial complex. What could be better?
And now we have these other crazy dudes who want to go back to the good old days of that really crazy dude. And they are joining the first crazy dudes.
And they are still trying to find the way to finish the loop. I guess picking a military guy is supposed to remind us of Ike. Substitute "terrorist" everywhere where the script used to read "communist" and we're all set. And we even have the name thing. John McCarthy? Joseph McCain? Something like that. We will persecute the people to the full extent of the our Father who art in Heaven.
Just revise the script of I Led Three Lives.
Add some tangents:
Loops in SpaceTime are dangerous.
The thing is that many of us have developed lives since the 50s, lives which could not have been lived back then. We will not be dragged back there. We will resist.
Resistance is never futile.
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The WeaveMother was amused...as much as WeaveMothers can be amused.
The long view revealed much more. A searching for connection perhaps. And some degree of sadness that the connection is always limited. The units did seem to be stubborn about maintaining their distance from one another.
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Perhaps there is backstory over here. Some conversations last until there are few watchers.
And there is more backstory over there ( ⇒ )
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The unit vibrated some threads in an attempt to set up a standing wave in its neighbors. Reach out, little spot.
It was rare to find units that looked back. The WeaveMother shivered its best laugh.
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Shake well. Or fail to do so. Oil and water and all. What do you call the third thing when three things fail to mix? Maybe some art needs making. Maybe another little impression of what the glimpse of the Tapestry revealed.
And maybe some words can be jumbled, tumbled, and dried, aligned to approximate as much Truth as can they allow.
A Thread
Tintinnabulation
Can you hear
the beating of the universe?
Have you experienced
the pulse, pulse, pulse of world?
When was the last time
you put your ear to the planet?
Listen closely now
The hour is getting late
Can you hear
your thoughts
before they become words?
The bell of Truth rings
too thin a tinkle
to be called a peal
Can you hear
how it extols us
to move forward
not back
Can you hear
the vibrating stands
of the Tapestry?
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--May 23, 2008
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The WeaveMother hummed along. Humming was one of the things WeaverMothers did best.