A 3D 1:48,000 scale model of the Cybercabin Land, Built of 1/8" foam core board and rubber cement, April 2003 May 2003 Cabin Diary |
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4 May 2003 -- The receipt of content and creation
I have been active lately in real life, to the point where you'd think I'd be quite tired on this visit, but I guess I've been sleeping my fill, so I'm doing all right. A body just likes to stay for awhile in a certain state; thus, the hypnotic power of so much of that "entertainment" content that comes to us from the California Republic. Oh, if everything could just conform to the community they envision, then we'd traipse along merrily, knowing we're among friends. I just can't make the passage to their orthodoxy, though. Instead, I'm out here in this cedar-sided, pine-panelled spruce-timbered structure, amid some of the finest cellulose that has ever been grown. It is so different, when the medium becomes the content itself, thus replacing the information-measure it ordinarily conveys to the rendering end-user device. The structure itself exhibits quality, and can be involved in any number of whimsical mind-games, such as those where the snow is deep and drifting, yet the fire burns on and the continuity of existence triumphs. It's hardly that cold out there now, however. It's more like the "season" is finally promising to open, so that the outdoors will not be so far outdoors. I am reminded of those miles-long, halfway-negotiable paths I've seen, to other parts of the great rivershed basin above the village. I bet there are some fine campsites at the tops of those hollows, only something keeps me from trying to drive and/or hike up there. The fellow who cuts wood and does handyman work for my place lives up just such a road. One day I'll have him over for reasons other than business. He looks like the kind who could sit quietly, just like me.
But I'm not after any great and glorious "interchange" at present. I'm instead after the intrinsics of the environment immediately at hand. It was quite warm today, as I was saying, and I nearly wanted to strip down to shorts and slippers for walking around the clearing. Most of the mud is now aired back into proper soil, so that I can get about on foot. I've not been to the falls in some time; that will be one of my first mini-expeditions. Were I truly the wanderer, I suppose I'd go scout some of those hollows "next door", only then I'd be thinking more about distance I need to cover on the trail than the merits of my arrived-at location. I guess I really just need to be still for a short interval here. I'm pressing my luck, when I think I can get away with so much frivolity and play. That is not the course of the proper "man". I have some components surely made of iron / So I can do my job, and never shirk. At times, though, the kind of stress implicit in purified and worked ferrous material is an apt metaphor for the kind of load I've needed adaptation to carry. This is all so silly; arms of iron, cabins of wood, woods of mud-made-dirt. It is an attempt at prescribing material aesthetics of such wondrous combination that they become "art", only the rights for propagation cannot be obtained, for so much of it is a property of nature, established and owned by nature's god. I look approvingly to the sentience implied in true creation, and not the ephemeral kick of distributed and received publication. It would seem that the proper curator could easily preside over an original collection as great as any hit sit-com. A thing does not act; it simply is.
I must therefore cut down on the sensational content I'm so fond of absorbing in city life. It is always better to be directed by one's inner conviction, for self-leadership is the vocation of every functional human, man or woman. I'd so like to sit for a very long spell the way I am now on the chaise lounge, which I pulled from the shed and set up on the weathered planks of the front porch. I see that the shadows are now extending outward into the dooryard, which means sunset is imminent. The weather is good enough for a campfire in the stone circle out there, only I'd just get worked up, and tied in to a "job", if I actually built one tonight. There is authentic "content" in great abundance anyway, when my internal processes supply the vision that is the clearing, and beyond it, the grand arch of the ridge, which is bigger, even, than Hoover Dam. It is rather quiet out here, except for what I can hear of the river behind the back porch. Would I truly prosper, given hours on end that are not configured by schedule-mongers and the merchants of timed presentations? Without cues, I might be set so fully adrift as to lose my contact with the real world, with a vision that extends into an illusion, and then, finally, degrades into a delusion. I'm not out for that kind of affective anarchy; I acknowledge that the handcuffs are still on me. They will have their piece of me, no matter what, and blessed is the man who can recline at table, while the main course is his very soul. Comedy and tragedy; they're all drama. Forget the sections at the Blockbuster store.
I doubt I'll get the main body of the "vision" to pour through me just now. My portals for handling any kind of inspirational proceeding are worn pretty thin by the extremity I've had to host at the information appliance feeds. I have had my share of being influenced, by those masters of fluency who possess license to the one and only true source. Those folks act without error, and at their final asymptotically-approached pinnacles, finally make their broadcast gifts, containing a fraction of their spiritual genomes. Thus is the man, a grafted monstrosity of so many member-sources. Great is the fan-in, but most nodes are just made to be leaves. Now there's nothing really wrong about being a leaf in the distribution chain, for there is little work to do. The important part is acknowledging the tie to life's tree, for one's embodiment of creation is only as good as the vascularization at the site of initiation. Am I having some sort of beef with the concept of dependent living? The illusion created by my handlers is one of having been specialized into irrelevance, yet still issued the iron pizza-plate and potato chip bowl, so long as I stay. It is a long way, yes, from May to September. Oh, the times that are sure to come, when all is bright and joyous! I am at a beginning, whenever I take time to notice my progress. They're not letting me out to play, though, those manipulators of serotonin and dopamine. I cannot reasonably afford the time I'm burning up here. Oh, I feel the ardor of integration's difficulty, as I'm commanded to pick up my toys and behave.
All I really need to do is rest. The system is a generous one, really, even in the worst of times. The mind knows well when it's finally time to put on a show. It is not my stage, though. I am not an actor; I am a direct object, and if I'm lucky, I might become the recipient of something in the way of indirect objects. This is how case becomes assigned, and ultimate cultural enrichment is propagated. I better sit still and try to get back into the plot. I don't want to miss my next cue.
"Bo"
10 May 2003 -- Encamped before the door
I have had that noble "inkling" in the hours of this day, to develop entry to my envisioned space, be it "sacred" or not. Perhaps it is a precocious attempt at achieving a truly "unique" revelation, only I have too much in common with the billions and billions of others to come to a unique conclusion. Maybe the best I'll get is a split with my virtual carbon copy mind out there, according to Feynman's fine structure guarantee. But what in the world would that ever get me? I am nowhere near unique in this yearning, the one that has me sitting before the campfire on a balmy late spring evening. Good God, but the stars are out! As noted by the Old Farmer's Almanac, the moon, close to first quarter, is high overhead, its partial light a full testimony that the sun is still out there. Where would we be, without the moon? It is the end of twilight; with the sky a nearly-dark blue, suitable for any form of navy. There will not be Venus to corroborate this tenacity until she appears as the morning "star". Indeed, the heavens are perhaps the link-in-common; my real world and this world must conform to its layout, for I am still of the Earth. The monism of the "universe" cannot be totally divided. So I posit my fragment and furtively occupy my seat in the old metal chair, as the fire conducts itself skyward, in the best style of a radiative source that is fixed in a dreary local potential well. "Good Heavens", I say to myself, "I cannot cast you unless I subscribe to the greater whole." But the fire, well, that is separated unto myself, and it has physical significance, just like the nasty little tempests in that wicked cauldron of my skull form the separate unity that I defend; my own personal constitution. I was founded, yet so often I founder.
Really, it is time to enter states of greater authenticity, as I climb out of the hole I'm waking up in. There would seem to be a portal floating around out there in the sky, a golden door, as it were. To think of it, a door of gold bullion would have to be one massive thing, even discounting a net gravitational component. I do the breathing routine before the fire, which takes care of itself. "Ohh," I exhalingly exclaim, "ohh. It is gold, is it not; something right out of Scripture". But alas, I dwell in prehensile idolatry. When will I grow up and meet the true Man? God is man, huh? "Ye are gods", and among the "many brothers". Can there be such humanism, within in the single soul? I must find access and accession, for I cannot dissolve the union that is my source. I breathe some more, seeing the door before me, except that I will not buy such a pig in a poke, when I may very well be "poked". Ask any man who has repaired radios and televisions; you get "poked" when you are unsure of the way to a malady and its resolution. Oh, yes, there is another image, that of the vacuum tube circuit, built in the days of electronics artisanship. But that isn't the way. Instead, I could draw closer to the door, as darkness becomes complete and the fire throws its stream of sparks and heat to indicate my mastery of this little hole in a very contrived space. Who on Earth do I think I am, anyway? Mr. Gore claimed such prowess, but the the chads did not fall. Am I at all the maker of a world, or simply a homesteader in a mighty synergy that has reached the central backplane and thus carries me along? "Ohh, yes, that's the way," I breathe softly, "but my homemade contraption can hardly compare to the stock rigs that others have put up". Virtual reality is interconnected, so trite, so 1990's, that is.
I feel the call to submit to the mighty unification, oh yes. Up there is the Man, somewhere beyond that door. I will not write any theophanies into this text, for one has to be much more the "apostle" for that. It is a secondary image, the great and massive door, so full of inertia. I feel a sweet submersion, as I am lifted in a tide that would please our dearly departed President; a benefactor of the ever-so-evident supply. "Oh, my", I breathe. It is so gorgeous, what love has wrought! But goodness, they are just stars and those are just hills. The moon, though retrograde, is still predictable. My skull is such a container of resource, needing only to attach to the bigger machine. But the door is so frightening to look at. Do I really have to step in there? So often have I crawled out of that hole, on the morning after the approach. I feel my entrails settle nicely, and cop a decent quantity of autonomic energization. I'm probably doing all right on my qi, except that philosophers differ on whether it connects to the external. I must share where I can; that's one of those "I learned in kindergarten" precepts. It is as if I were to pick from these wobbly, flesh-bound components a fine hero's portion, and cast it upon the flame. But no, that sacrifice should be to my rear, and back down the road to reality. There are no real portals in these desolate woods, except to the extent that I can resolve and promise to be a better man on my return...to them. I breathe some more, yes, that's it. The final place of rest, at least for this night, is beginning to reveal itself. I just ride down the slope, I've passed the crest. It does not matter that my artisanship in imagination does not reach the proportions of that wonderful centenarian amid so much cash flow in Kissimmee. The best fit is just me, not some half-baked cuisine from a kid who likes to show off with the Easy Bake Oven.
I sit, still, with the flames continuing in a solemn, solid motion. Kinetics are present, as are dynamics. Fire is mechanical first and chemical by its teleology. But in the sweet by-and-by, various laws of physics will not need to apply, will they? A massless entity, by definition, can only be acted upon by zero net force. F = ma. When I've chucked the whole load, how free I'll be, but only if I'll be, and that is the question that has been answered by so many who have walked on. There are ways, of course, to connect to who they were, by their leavings. I think of the accumulation that lies in my own wake, only it might just be the reason to order a dumpster. I seem to be losing my visceral charge, the one that reached out and embodied so much. "Oh peritoneal contents, vitals of vitals, join in the chorus and perform your act!" I close my eyes briefly in this darkness, with the first quarter moon overhead. I'm so glad, for so much, yet I complain and build my fortress on the high hill. When considered in the larger context of the land, I'm essentially on the mountaintop already. I think I may have become too "serious" in all these attempts at influencing my pleasure receptors, while continuing to let the load impinge on the other receptors, which should be telling me that something is wrong. Oh, the fire; that fine solid oak from the woodshed, it becomes a focus unto itself, inanimate though it may be in ultimate spirit. I feel like I could be broken on the one hand or restored on the other. It's all up to me, as I ponder what kind of labyrinth lies beyond that heavy door. I dig into the claim I have to imagination, meager though it is, for I know that the path to the central "connection" is there, by definition. What kind of kooky resistance is this, anyway? The reality of woe's easy entry opens beneath me as the chasm, the abyss, the great sheol, from which no praises arise.
So what do I do? I have to celebrate, for life itself is too much to ignore. This is really a rather tacky space up here, compared to some folks' private grounds. Ordinarily, such dwellings would be the temporary home of the itinerant. I just want to slide under, and bring the stars close to my heart. That is the vision that seems to hold the most promise of re-uniting what is left of me and my life. I work at the fire some with the tending stick. This is me, but there are they.
"Bo"
16 May 2003 -- In search of the center
Well, what have we come "to be" on this later-day visit to the secluded-yet-concentrated den of my inquiry? It's been a bit colder lately than one would expect in the Merry Month of May, except that the altitude explains a lot. Sometimes the low clouds come through here, at those times when no one sees the peaks. Sometimes there's that feeling like you get, visiting the 102nd story observation deck of the Empire State Building. Sealed up, and perilously placed, is the casual visitor; the real work in this exotic world is done by a differently-motivated kind of man. It's certainly lush and green outdoors now, provided that the sun appears. Tonight, however, one look out the window reveals that, yes, I'm socked in by some sort of accumulated and matriculated water vapor. I guess the cedar siding doesn't really care for the prospect of inundation, and the timbers indoors are probably shivering, too. Oh, but it's a stout and majestic planting, this engineered structure that has been erected on such a fine assortment of fieldstones! I have my capsule and my transport, through thought's meandering itinerary. What absolute completion there would be, if only I could carry through my many and diverse individual ambitions, but this never gets a chance. I run a life full of checkpoints and way stations, as though a totalitarian regime had assigned me to contribute according to strangely-asserted deposits of capability. Strength, indeed, accompanies the man whose accommodations are sufficient and whose powers of self-determination are not subjugated to some weird notion that came at a wrong time.
I would ask, though, just what the correct number of diversions is. Since the disposition of one's state of mind supports variable numbers of plausible attention-targets, the supply must be kept high for the lean times. It is hard to picture the act of merely reaching into the attraction-hopper and pulling one out, to make it my whole life's center. There is no "center"--that's 20th century gospel. Moving to General Relativity, then, I could imagine being held in nasty little potential wells around hostile objects, and without the fuel for a good burn into the free and clear. The ridge at the top, in generally-free nano-gravitational conditions, is always the goal. I hear now the call to discernment; I should heed the teaching that the material is fallacious. Oh, yes, it's time to hunker down, as I continue loading truckloads of packed-out garbage for the dumpster at the general store in the Village. I carefully stuff myself into a transportable container when I see lean times coming on. These intervals do not reflect the overall effect of life-in-full. I guess that times are pretty lean right now, as I content myself to sit in the armchair and tend my entertainment-value fire. It's dark in here, with only the kerosene lanterns that have to be burned sparingly on account of the CO. It's pretty much like being inside a tent here at night, and I find myself using my flashlight in many places where the incandescent flame has no effect. Who knows would could be creeping around under the wash-basin or behind the cistern? I have to decide here pretty soon if I'm going to shoot for a "focus" to all of this or not. Though multitasking can get a lot done, the underlying motivational resources cannot be conjured up by will alone. No, you have to be in the right place at the right time, and therein would lie your datum.
I'm just not going to get any kind of "break", where I might collapse into ecstatic arrival when I finally find the light. Yes, I know about the hymn. God is the best model we have in the current running, I figure, for the entire universe is but the change in his pocket. Local effects may be quite spectacular, but they serve only to the point where the bridge is crossed from the land of reason to the land of faith. I am not one to knock reason, and not by a long shot. If you exist, if it exists, and to the dismay of the patriots against state-ism, if they exist, then they're part of the syndicate. There's no escaping it, when the fragments of universal hydrogen and its higher-numbered impurities finally coalesce into an object or a thing. Newton, who was also an alchemist and religious scholar, clearly would not put up with local versions of physical laws. Any place, any time, there will be a unity of effect. Subjective enclaves of opposition melt, and the overall pot is stirred some more. This is always a good feeling, when I can pour some of my hoarded resource down the filthy drain that nevertheless consecrates the offering and puts a bigger plaque on the wall of the temple in my name. It is difficult to put much hope in these dealings, however, because they disperse hard assets into the development of soft flesh. Better suited is the one whose wealth is arrayed like the Sparrow and Sidewinder air-to-airs on the hard points of an F/A-18 Hornet. Why dig so many holes in search of the perfect retreat, and not bother to fill them back in? I sit for a moment with my eyes closed, listening to the crackling flame. I then sigh, in the realization that everyone is compromised, in relative terms. Never has lived the human who has not found "challenges" in ordinary life.
I am nicely settled up here above the ravine and below the ridge, places the fog won't allow me to see outside the windows. I have a whole lot going on in the Cabin, it does seem. If only I could narrow down the channel count, while widening the individual occupiers of medium bandwidth. It is like venous blood circulation to the vena cava and the right auricle, just as it resembles the drainage of rivers across this land, into the substantial flow that passes the village and snakes its way down to the sea. When I arrive at the final "big pipe", I will experience something of the notion of monistic incorporation. The whole of the traffic will be managed by that sectional node, built as it is of sturdy steel pipe. That is always the hole to pick, on the distorted elastic of the 2D analogy to 3D gravity-curved space. I'm not too good in the discernment department, however, and sometimes I just have to chuck it all and dream up a new approach to entering the closer precincts. But rabbi, note that my name is inscribed in a fine brass plaque, right behind the sparrow merchant. God has been good enough to me, that's for sure. Do I have a good seat for the service, I wonder. I better sit in the back row. The sermon is one of grabbing around whatever girth of involvement is behind one's life, then tease out the wires that are just passing junk. Of course, the junk clients don't like to lose me. Maybe I should include them in my reckoning., though, for this is supposed to be a pursuit of "peace", which derives directly from "truth". I sigh again, realizing that I have some time on my hands. I'll be able to go to bed before too long, and I'll get to skip a lot of the nonsense that is beamed to the conscious hold-out. Blessed is he who sleeps, for everyone needs a break once and awhile.
I suspect I will sleep very well tonight. I seem to be hung up on the notion of "time", though. It is a result of being diverted by too many apparitions that appear from the deep, as when Mr. Wile E. lights the fuse on his 1.3G-class skyrocket as his approximation of rapid transport above local escape velocity. He should have his hands on some of those JATO units, as in the urban legend. When launching oneself into the bumpy fabric of that abstracted 3D gravitational reality, there will be places that were before my eyes all the time, yet unnoticed. I think that "happiness" is fairly equivalent to lowering the threshold of acceptance. This setting, however, is something that is not readily accessed. The designers wanted a single rate, only the flow varies with worker output. In all those materially-bound entity-representations, the material man is shamefully dismembered. "Who do you think you are? You barely qualify as a man", he says, as though the true untermenschen had already been identified. It's a wild ride, through that mentally-modeled space, in which all of the settings require administrator approval for changes. Well, who do we call, that wonderful administrator? I will bring my entire, lurching system to land on a single focal point, only it is hardly clear which is the correct box on this Treasure Hunt. Relaxation is good, to the extent that the accommodations are livable. I'm held off from reaching the sweet spot, which I can already smell, by systemic and regulatory loads. To take a fix on just one place, even if briefly, will beat what's been going on instead in this age-corrupted set of cortices. Dispersion is death, but the source of the spread is still duly registered.
"Bo"
24 May 2003 -- A challenge, in the space beyond
With the opportunity I have today, I suppose I could wander off on one of those so-called intervals of "discovery", where the ever-so-elusive state of satisfaction might exist. I'm just here on an "ordinary" day, as if the issuance of so many days that are the same implies that they are indeed without number. I'm outside on the chaise lounge, at the edge of the dooryard, with a substantial sun that is still accompanied by the haziness that denotes non-completion. There is something of a wind, and since summer temperatures have yet to arrive, I do feel something of a chill as well. I have been put in this place, thinking as I am right now, and I am tempted to write it all off as a practical joke on the part of the "equipment managers" that would outfit me thus. Circumstance is supposed to pale in the light of things eternal, only being put in any position with any responsibility is its own yoke, to be endured if not transcended. I seem to be using the approach today of throwing myself to some lower level, where nothing that then happens can be credited to my own folly. I'm making an attempt at "shaming" the great dictator into granting me some form of better accommodation and occupation. Despite what the good Puritans might say, work is hardly the ethic I wish to embrace. I am instead after some sort of "enchanted" state, ironically one in which I end up doing work anyway. Something so unusual as a human being should have singular emplacement in a privileged spot, only the mass numbers of us remove any hint of a special status. Thus, in being ordinary, I am made to be burdened, for the truly great man should not have to ask for his place.
Oh, how puffed up I feel, to have invented something like this, but oh, how trivial this line really is. It would be better to dream up a soap opera concerning the folks from town and the adjoining woods, than to describe anything inside of me. The ongoing tale, of course, is of my own search for some sort of abiding and euphoric "peace", for this will pardon the rest of the nonsense. The world of the satisfied man has no troubling loads, great though the yoke might actually be. I'm supposed to learn some sort of ultimately forgiving way, I should think, in which I lay prostrate and as nothing. Then at last the finite quantity I do have will be enough to stand tall as the "real me". I cannot dispel the nonsense, though, and it is denying me what some might consider ordinary human rights. Endowed by the creator, yes, is the equal man, with rights. It now starts to sound like some sort of fantastic legal case, where I go up against a God who sounds like the "Judge" in Pink Floyd's The Wall. Yeah, that's an old groove, nearly a quarter century old, and most LPs from that era are scratched to perdition by now. Oh, mighty font of justice and right / Look at this creature, in your sight / He knows not what he does, it's true / But justice, after all, is what you do. There is a joy, so deeply sequestered, below me, as it is also above me, all about. The space by which it separates me from justice should be no trick for this powerful authority, who has topmost access to the kind of root I can only hypothesize about.
I shift some on the pad of the chaise lounge, with my boonie hat in its characteristic placement over my face. In the space my cognition must traverse, my eyes are about as bound as they are by this ripstop fabric, through which glints of sun tell me it's day. I should let the false and fragmented structures fall away, even if I do not get a fair hearing "up there"--or out there. I am in and he is out, so thus do I make myself a recipient object of his transitive effect. "No!", goes the rebellion of the one who thinks he at least knows nature's god a little, "we're really all just one. I should walk in those forbidden zones as one who has been pardoned and his record wiped clean". But still I am up against this defiant captor, of the kind who likes to watch me moan in this way as some sort of song of Zion. Babylon, sweet Babylon, how you invite me to your own party, the one where I can stay where I am and live it up. A party is always at hand in the land of the reckless, yet even the best guarded of private events will still be monitored from without. What a day it might be, should my captivity end, even if I'm not an authentic member of the twelve tribes. The font could well be approached by the liberated outsider, who for so long thought he was just an insider-type, encapsulated in a hull and set in his space. No, the border is convex, not concave, and the spheres of osculation do not enclose me at any of the portals. I am the woeful wanderer, who happens upon a city on a hill.
I can tell pretty much what the trouble is; I just don't want to knock. That's the answer to those who say that being answered in response to such a query is a no-brainer. There are actually folks who would rather take no step than the first step. But there is no fixation out here in the without, and the center is on the other side. The central attractor, within the now topologically-correct container, is rather querulous for existing at all, except I know that I would have no substance at all, without that instance that got carried away and built a kingdom. I am wandering, even as I lay here in a heap in this one spot, with the various weeds threatening to grow up to meet the lounge. There is a certain cognition that seems fundamental, and it does not change with anything that comes my way. This viewpoint is the one that will finally see a viable way, and a passage that indeed leads to the well-instituted glory of the inner realm. There is an answer to the question of "what lies beyond the universe", when the partition is enforced so ruthlessly between the meaningful and the pointless. How did I get out here, anyway? Is this the troubling fate of the flesh-bound, wherein duality allows the frivolous to wander outside the one true reality? The image now is of a good-old-fashioned Venn diagram, made as it must be when this curious and fallible material insult is allowed any chance to permit a space that is "false".
I am still at a loss, oh mighty denizens of the carefree majority, you who have escaped your having been pitched like Jeremiah into the mud. It is all so pointless, so empty, but then what would a person expect, of something that doesn't even have the dignity of real "space"? When you talk wilderness, you invoke images like this, ones that are so totally bereft of useful reference as to cause panic as to how you'll ever get out. I'm just supposed to ask, and it shall be given. But what is the mode, by which a man addresses such a mighty authority as even the doorman to the household of peace? There must be some trick; some common test, some shibboleth, by which the password is embodied in the very substance of the rightful associates. Is the barrier really so fast and firm? Am I no longer familiar with the techniques of the gate, from having been so long away? I am thoroughly stumped at all of this. I still see the wall as concave, as though the within and the without have defied all properties of space, yet I'm always on the other side. Oh, what to do? I need to move on to a new position, and a new relationship to the barrier, howsoever it might truly curve, in the space that matters to flesh-founded examples. Matter itself, and the intersection of physical constants at work that stand behind it, is something of a cruel joke, actually enough. I am put here in this confounded incapacity so that I might enter the gate, only I'd rather be on the other side, where the gate is no longer the issue.
"Bo"
Ahead to June 2003
