A 3D 1:48,000 scale model of the Cybercabin Land, Built of 1/8" foam core board and rubber cement, April 2003 October 2003 Cabin Diary |
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2 October 2003 -- Nowhere, really, to go
Oh, but it is a bright day today across the clearing and up into the still-higher hills! The temperature is over on into the "crisp" range, and the foliage now confirms that the growing season is winding down. It has a ways to go until someone might actually go out of his way to look at it, but the color is still undeniable, as green is successively displaced by those reflected and diffused wavelengths that are lower on the incandescent range. It's all grinding down, so I figured I'd come out to the chaise lounge, wearing my field coat, and absorb what I can of the radiation that still has its place, for as the pop astronomers will remind us, we are nothing, in the almighty sequence of our sun. This, of course, is just the simple platitude that is made, while the schedule lurches on, telling the element of the system that he must make every hour count. When I become fully removed, having emplaced myself up here by this formerly lush and humid field of another microclimate, an hour can actually be a rather difficult thing to "metabolize" sometime. It could well resemble being made to wait, except for the saving stipulation that there are no strings that can reach me here; I am free to go--or to stay. The camp is now the kind of strangely-incongruent presence that summertime quarters become, even though the wintertime ones have yet to open their doors. I am therefore left to the saddening compulsion that I must be moving on, but seeing no doors in the structure to accomodate me. There must certainly be something for every mortal man to do, however, for life in its finity begs the question of "why are you just lying there?" It is a stress, which creates a strain, to see everything so badly "out of place", but with little clue as to what the proper "place" is. "I am just low on inspiration", I tell myself, for when the great charism of spontaneous motivation returns, it does not need to ask such a question, for the objective involved is itself the origin of the impetus.
There is remarkably little in the way of wind today, so something else eats at me instead, telling me to "get going!". It is the making of motion where it is not suggested that marks the man of initiative, only it's usually possible to boil down the whole mess into some one or thing that is at a stood-off distance, but nevertheless imposing its own idea of proper performance, upon the generally-resistant core that happens to contain this unfortunately-cognizant bodily prisoner. "It is just the terrible insufficiency of the nearly-broken flesh", goes the reminder. Your goal, of course, is the Kingdom of Heaven, whose rations of those other merry delights is always just. Underlying the uncertainty of a moment that is free while it is also bound, is the higher order; the "upper room". But that does no good, when the flesh has the kind of recurring weakness that does not allow the discernment of what is above to be made, much less acted upon. The Kingdom, therefore, must have its moments of sadistic pleasure, when work that is so utterly repugnant is forced down the throat of a drifting and reduced character that cannot escape it. Why, anyway, does the higher order need to insist that I "belong", but accord me such meager membership materials? I am so tempted to seek the wider way at such times, that great sink-hole into which so much pitiful lust is sunk. This is why realization and actualization fail. Who would be so stupid as to do what is so out of the style of living great and majestic moments in one's own "thing"? The structure will inevitably catch up with its fugitives, who then need the penitence of the lesser life. "I was never given any knowledge of which is the better," I complain, "so I picked up the yoke only because an agent external to myself assured me of work now and play later". I am not amid the number of the fantastic few, for whom play also makes a good living. My heart's desire is instead a filthy and decadent hell-hole, and if there's anything written on that heart, it is a text susceptible to the very slightest of factors leading to illegibility.
Oh, but I do have at least this freedom, wherein I could do some of those wacky actions that do not contribute towards the mark of others' high calling. But what weight do I assign such a propensity, when it looks like sustaining such a course will only require some stern atonement at a later date? Does the Master really like coming down out of hiding, every so often, and tinkering back to viability what had been so recklessly neglected? This squarely defines the frustration, this needing to hear of my majestic creator and duly-deeded "owner" on a second-hand basis. I turn to one side on the chaise lounge, as the hour continues to tick by. It's number 107 of 168, as the calendar has it, that reminder of the need, even, for the creator to take a break. "Oh, yes, this is fine kettle of rainbow trout. I'm supposed to follow some one or thing that itself has weakness." The flesh is a curse, to be true, but then who dreamed it all up, anyway? Therein lies the negligent culprit. But then I catch myself: to call the King himself a fallible miscreant means that once the whole nasty ball is rolled together to make what is "one", it will in fact be less than one, with a balance due for totality that simply cannot be accounted for. That must be the void, that fraction; the empty set that is still a discrete element of any set. The conscious being is anomalous by its very nature, for it can conjure no end of ways to subvert existence itself, and deny that what is, is. There is no pleasure in holding such a view, at least in general principle, for the rampant natural flesh then gains justification for its lack of action. No, it is better to hold the view that nullity is only an option, and hardly any kind of place to be for one who is, after all, one of the one. Otherwise, a man can begin to drift, once guidance is specifically and deliberately denied on account of its apparent cruelty. Without the continued insult of compulsory direction, I am able to note the scars I've obtained, in fighting to pull the load. I've been created with the ability to be healed, but that directly requires that the world contain its share of injury, too.
This wicked, wicked flesh, and some of the ways it leaves me feeling! It's all just neurochemistry, of course, that crass interaction between the more elemental of flesh's contents. How much, really, can I "get away with?", I wonder. Is it enough to drift, when the vessel itself is so unsound? I'm always stuck looking from the inside towards an outside that in fact should be seen within. Unity is always its own solution, but it still requires division like I feel at present as a member of the less-than-fully-repentant. It is so much the annoyance, when even my heart refuses to desire, and I am left craving within the house of plenty. The "mighty high" usually comes along in time to "save me", and then I see which of my steps in the darkness were the correct ones. It is good enough, to have goodness preached my way, but then they forget that I cannot assent to it if I cannot hook in to their own blessed inspiration. None of this has any direction, for indeed, I am describing the problem of pointlessness, and the local temporal paucity of self-installing rectitudes. I am like the rocky soil that has left this clearing as it is, and what seed perseveres is good for its time but typically ephemeral and out of place. I suppose I have a firm footing in the kingdom of the empty, and am thus a child of less than zero; that identity that is not even to the point of having a real component. Yet it is true; the set {.NULL.,1} = {1} binds me to obey that other more excellent member of the cosmology, and that is the hopeful inclusion that lets me carry on, anyhow. At times the empty set grants pleasure, but only at the expense of some resource siphoned off from the set-singularity, normalized to unity, that supports it. The fact that I can so often be a child of the empty kingdom means that "something" is still there, or else what I see would no longer be recognizable as "empty". Thus it is, that adversity bespeaks what is better, for it is easy enough to recognize that it is not what I desire. I should only hope for a continued dwelling place, in the land where there is no discernment, for I still retain by such awareness that the remnant existence remains.
"Bo"
14 October 2003 -- The true and the real
It is grey today, and decidedly colder, with substantial numbers of leaves now on the ground. The wind is there, combining with the now-plausible suggestion that the trees really will become bare, to leave a person susceptible to the morose to have that feeling of entering a long and arduous strictured section of the annual journey. It doesn't get at all easier with the familiarity of so many cycles under my belt. I've built something of a fire in the hearth, perhaps more to ward off the mid-day darkness than to remedy the temperature. For cold, I've always got my ample wraps and covers, but mustering light does not come as simply. It is rather like being in a room of an ordinary city-dwelling in which the electric lights have been uniformly quenched, and I can imagine that 18th- and 19th-century American life had a generally darker cast to it in the temperate zones. The land spreads out so terribly far from this isolated settlement, and it is barely "settled" at that, that it is easy to become duped; to sincerely deny the reality of that evil industrial abomination that contains my ordinary daily circuit. Humans can become so incredibly inculcated, by the strength of immediate superficial context, that they typically rest in complacent assurance that all is well. It is most likely a case of false pride, when I make any representation that I see to farther consequences than the average person, but there is no comfort in knowing how closed in I really am, despite the deliberately-developed hawkery behind civic accommodations and niceties. I look at the flames, which are now underway behind the shield screen, and I become acutely aware that this is hardly "enough". No, satisfaction is much more the internal consequence than the external provocation. Still, there is "reality", like it or not, and its nature is independent of the perceptual image that so many take as the "true" form of that which exists.
At a point where summer is so thoroughly dashed, the impatient part of me would just as soon have the snow arrive and get it over with. The year has moved on, into the darkness and the grubbiness of human folly, which does not look attractive under any amount of artificial lighting. I should be glad, of course, that I indeed have such a non-critical immersary at hand as the carefully-crafted initiative of civilization, even though it is completely consumed by its love of money. Neither the meek nor the wise shall inherit the earth, but instead the rich. It can be "entertaining" at times, too, especially when I have the budget for a ticket. I feel the heat now; that fraction that emerges from the flames' radiance, as I lay stretched out on my sleeping bag on the wood-plank floor. Prior to mass media, pretty much everyone had to sit around like this in hours away from duty. The thought then of entering the darker seasons must have had a larger share of their conscious process, so that they'd have to invent diversions like Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas to chase the inevitable blues. Away from the compulsory structures that force my hand--and my body--, I notice what a mass of symptoms now emerge from that overgrown temple; that "world-head" that my soul uses when it's looking in. I've not been the best of hosts, when it comes to admitting my fanciful ethereal extension, though it never works its way loose. It must now be looking at what remains of its artifice and branch office, only its seamless integration into my self of vanity does not permit it much freedom in criticism. I can be insulted and reprimanded repeatedly for acting out of a lesser interest in my soul's well-being, but the implications of flesh-bound inadequacy are not a legally-accepted tender, when it comes time for reparation.
I become aware, at this point, what a tired and shop-worn term "the soul" has become, and I would quest long, given a chance, to see it for what it really is, if it is. I must not have it, if I have to ask, but then the evidence of emotionally-experienced acceptance allows for much more explanation than irrefutable science and reason. I must again protest, however, the folks out there who go around hugging their truly-"true" subjective realities, for they make serious abuse of the word "real". We're talking for the full skeptic's need for proper method, such as repeatability and absence of experimenter bias, before anyone dare declare something to be "true". I suppose, then, that my quest is not so much for the incontrovertably true as it is for what is to myself acceptable. This is the self-engendering, self-enclosed recursion of causation that makes up the basis for one's own conviction. I think that's where right and proper joy finally enters the picture; when the result induces the method, and conduct is pulled rather than pushed. Developing more from less is by necessity a costly and often-painful procedure, but to be drawn from isolation into union is to follow a gradient having the opposite algebraic sign. The "soul", then, is nothing more than one's all-purpose remedy, in the one that is only called "one" because we remain as "many". I hear the wind working slightly against the panes of glass and the outer Cabin structure, in my efforts during lesser times to enkindle the opening of the golden door, to the place beyond that is already here. Humans fight on, into the darker months, in their grand battle against death, but their instruments are...wouldn't you know it...the very agents of death itself. Still, their love can only suggest to the lesser-endowed that they are indeed being pulled from above.
I thus attempt to anneal from this tired old hulk the unfortunate tool-marks of the exuberant, whose non-rational yet "correct" visions of greatness have demanded my complicity in their game. I know such time, even at this condition of advanced agitation, to be valued, only we are talking about the timeless, and not the temporal. I should ask forgiveness for those who have built the fearsome monstrosity whose image I carry with me even to these woods, since basic intentions tend to be good ones. At the basic base, exists the singularity of singularities, which is causing them to act as they do. My convictions are at least to the point where I could not imagine a world that is filled to the brim with folks cast on such strident missions out of sheer frustration and incompletion. Oh, yes, how I should jump for joy, when joy is not mine in the here and now, for by repeated practice of this rote drill, I'll eventually be induced into the state of grace wherein joy in sorrow is truly possible, out of recognition at all times that the illusion that feels real is the ultimate victor over the provably real. I sigh deeply, attempting to dispell something of a headache. I should go get a pillow from the bed, over on the far side of the room. I've only so long to go, before inspiration's invitation is retracted. What a thing it is, to be sparked into life, but what a crushing blow, when individual character does not allow the flywheel to keep on turning after the door has closed once again. I just grow tired of my supplication to that stingy muse who hands me my access to the motivation that even beats out death itself, to carry the wheel around as it must turn.
"Bo"
20 October 2003 -- In tide and time's throes
Well, it's truly getting cold now; the old "frost on the pumpkin" days are upon us, though I have no real use for such gourds, nor do I for a goose that might be fat--well, maybe for the down in my comforter. I have a respectable fire burning tonight, a grand conversion; a mighty engine, whereby nature is short-changed of the propriety of decay that is the usual practice in the fallen woods. I know I tend to go off into flights of futile philosophy at moments such as these, when my mind is so juiced with the consciousness transmitted forth over those media channels. Is this how the "normal" get their jollies; is this their "mighty high"? Oh, but I like to think, supposedly, for myself, as if this were some form of "patriotism" in the face of the overpowering content-river. It is dark inside, as usual, with the kerosene flames and the fire, but of course, my Mag-Lite and SureFire tactical also at the ready, filled to the brim with alkali and lithium, respectively. Shoot, I could go out to the truck any time I want and turn the high beams and fog lamps on! King of the Forest, I suppose I am, by the way it seems ceded to me. The physical must bow, to the slightest chance that the feeling sentience has, to wield a mechanical advantage. Am I looking, though, to conquer or embolden? There must be any number of "causes" in the great pluralistic America that would take such a creature as I. But alone I sit, yes, alone. The waveform that dampens on an evening like this is nevertheless imprinted by the poles and zeroes of my own personal transfer function.
I'm sitting in the armchair now, studying the fire, as if in a tantric meditation. Fire is great, in that it embodies the imposition of chaos, as any good engine will do. Sweet entropy, how I do feed on thee. Oh, but that's a bunch of bull. We're looking for the "real thing"; the authentic "mind", my only potential source--or sink--to tie on to the manifest glory that abounds in the minds of the so many. "Be quiet", I tell myself, "and rid your thought-train, yes, of its locomotive and all its rolling stock." The rails are the answer, as are the creek-beds, the more eternal, in their interface with the clearly temporal. Supposedly, I can stop the talk and do some of the walk, like old man Cain of '70's lore. Yes, and I hear you, John Travolta, that's a bum. I'm not to the point of plumbing bums for some hidden knowledge; I have gnoses of my own to deal with. In the silence, when it finally takes root, will flow the fuel for my own process; when the talk damps on down, quivers, and dies. Talk, indeed, is an across variable that deifies the subject-object duality. Yes, a fine bunch of monk talk there, fitted to a mechanical framework. That is how the mighty become that way, but my performance ratings have yet to bear out such a capacity. I sit some more and watch the fire, as it heads on down. The woodshed is full, of course, from the fellow down the hill who enjoys cutting wood and makes a respectable living from his labors. In the "sportsman's creed", I suppose, is the real might of American progress, but alas, it lacks coherent direction, and is thus the very wood that I burn in its effigy tonight.
When "significance" arises, indeed, is the time that an effect becomes manifest. I think to my own capacity, realizing it's not going to amount to much. I can admit a gross "failure", in the 6 years of Cabin visits, of adding much value to the overall, and overflowing, heap of content. Were I Ptolemy, or even, dare I say, Archimedes, then would my influence issue forth. But what's the point of any of that? I need to hear more, of the true calling, where my feeling's rubber hits the fresh-laid asphalt pavement and sprays my vehicle with bituminuous crud. The interface is crucial, but not necessarily in its use. It is just something to ponder, many a time, as I "do more work with my ears than with my mouth". See, on this pitiful stage, how the great Paul Newman and George Kennedy may be summoned? It's all a replay; a regurgitation, where the wiser man can take his stomach-ful and push the other way. I'm invoking now the image of the pylorus, and not the esophagus. Jonah, in the big fish, must have seen both paths, but he chose the latter. Back on out, the way I came, is about all that's left for me. The mightier alimentation, alas, is not my province, until I am finally claimed and subsumed. Oh, the imagery, but oh, how it fails. Where the art meets the technique, is the proper pursuit for any man who claims individual prowess. A professional, by definition, professes. That's pro-fess, not confess. I see enough in the way of confession, all about me, when I'm swimming in the lower waters.
I'm supposed to be sitting here, watching a fire, and shutting myself up, but the internal drive of dopamine, serotonin and epinephrine push me about. The system has hold of my physical plant, this is pretty clear. They want me to dump in what I'm holding back, but all I see is the substance being flushed away, when the excessive participant has finally consumed enough, kneeling to worship the porcelain god. Oh, to reverse the flow and head up to the source, which is, to render productive and fertile results. Dr. Freud, great Wiener that you were, you'd see clearly what I'm getting at, but this is a "family" page. I just want to disperse my product into the total mechanism, as a term in the configured--not pro-figured--psychohistorical model (credit, Isaac Asimov, wherever you are, within the total Foundation). I want to count, but they just want me to be a resonant tank; a lattice of so many partial differential terms. The linear "solution", of course, is the problem, for that is a harsh framework in which to build one's model of reality. "Fool!" I say to that schemer, "just shut up and listen." There will never be enough terms, even with the 0.1 Tera-minds that have floated along in this meta-analytical melding of everything Jungian and Gaian. I have to say, I get a taste of the water at times, like I have in the cistern back in the dark of the kitchen, taken from lands up to 5040 feet high, and some of it from springs. Alchemy, alas, needs reliable water, in its own fantastic model. David Suzuki, I see you out there, you're still pitching fine. Maybe the Blue Jays can use you, in the ironically-named American League.
This is all unsustainable, for one day the woods will be so full, of many cabins and their fires, and we'll wind up with a scene like Haiti or India. Too many cooks will always add too much to the broth. I suppose that should be my inspiration to put some chow across my terminals. Horsepower, when integrated with respect to time into energy, is neither created nor destroyed. Conversely, differential permanence becomes horsepower, when creation or destruction in fact result. Yes, that's thermodynamic Law 1, despite the fringe scientists' claims that they've found loopholes. And that Law 2 is always the problem. Great is the psycho-mechanical babble that could be developed on that thread. I just want to wind down, is all. I need to settle into a slot for awhile and be carried. A railroad engineer, führer that he'd be on that section of the Eurail, still must submit to the overall authority. "It all comes down to C-notes, doesn't it, Lord?" I ask. I must accept the issue of fiat reality that has been my forcing term in the overall [A][x] = [B]. Influence only exists in linearity, but the more excellent terms would even deny that they are terms. What, truly, is a man's soul? Need I ask that again? Not in this condition of receptivity to the settlement of evening. Feeling and awareness; why, that's what all the furor is over. I will sleep well tonight, or so I might imagine. The chaotic inputs can never be digested by the individual schemer and his matrices. It is always an overflow, and order, like it should, will develop again, as the original creation is extrapolated. "The jejunum will simply have to wait," I say, to my piscological pal.
"Bo"
29 October 2003 -- The call to stay clean
In the dim light of the hearth and the kerosene lamp on its hanger near the woodstove, I have brought out the washtub, to attempt to gain a hold on some of the abject dirt that will accumulate, wherever a man lives. Now, I realize, that the soil I pick up from the woods themselves can't be the real culprit, for that is pristine humus and must somehow sanctify me. It is the admixture, rather, with my own unpleasant presence that makes "man-made" soil, the stuff, only of death, brownfields and Hanford, WA. Man does not, in fact make, except as he destroys, and destruction lies in my wake, having despoiled because I still had some "influence". Oh, but it is my city-life potential that is my wellspring to the almighty throne of disbursement, and to approach that particular court requires immense decorum. I work at some of the stains, from times I can hardly remember in my ramblings around up here. I guess, when I step through the mirror into this space, my clothing must also change, into duds that need to do this particular circuit. So, then, comes the need to heat a tub-ful of hard-carried cistern water, that product of the watershed above the clearing, and apply good old castile soap and plenty of elbow grease--though the grease from my elbows may well have contributed to this assortment of disarray, in my disheveled field of operations. It was supposed to be so gol-darned simple, the original idea, yet even here, have I imported my woes. The sentient soul cannot rid itself of its nature, by any abstraction, for it resides in the twistedness of individual self.
Yes, I hear the call, as I begin hanging the fresh sporting gear on the clothesline before the fire, while a real frost has descended outside, the kind that will make the grass crunchy in the morning. The call is that one to denial of self, for therein lies freedom. But "freedom", alas, needs a subjective presence, thus smashing one's escape route. Would that I could continue to plow the row that I'm upon, with the farmer's full awareness of the topsoil that he is condemning to the ultimate silt-pile in the sea. I should, having put hand to the plow, not look back. That is fundamental, for I would at times think myself capable of participation in that grand and glorious kingdom of heaven. "Oh, we're getting on to the nitty-gritty now!", I say to myself, as I grind away at a soiled denim knee from some job long done outside. "They're looking for my great conformity; a making pure of my devotion--to them." It all gets so incapacitating at times, when one's very soul cannot endure within its own millieu of lingering effluent. When I pour the water out at last on this job, down the drain field and back to the stream, at least I'll have some good old dilution on my side, that benefactor of every sanitary engineer's confidence. It's all a mater of sanitation, for else we cannot be in one another's midst. In placing my little shelter above so many other supposedly-sentient folks, in this analogy that borrows fully from the real world, I still have to think of them.
What kind of man is it, who will wallow, and without taking notice? He has the mind that is driven to isolation, no matter what the cost. It would be so simple, yes, to tidy up and do right, like those other men do. It is by the assertion of one's deeds, indeed, that one's place is kept in the mechanism. I cannot far wander, from the track; the groove; the rut. Mindless action with one's full mind is all they want. To propose self-negation is key, abhorrent as it is to the one who still holds faith in reason. I'm about finished now with my field gear, and it's all hung. I drag the tub over to the drain, and away it goes, suds, filth and all. My footprint here is substantial, as a stain on the hollow that has been laid over the last seven years. It is impossible to "leave no trace", for full accountability requires a trace, and an auditable record, kept in good order. It's all about getting the double entries to balance, and to shift the liability-to-capital partition as far up as possible on the sheet. I must be as the squirrel, who knows his work in the face of the harshness to come. Self-interest, I observe, abides even in such a creature as that. I begin now the lament of the "instantiated"; as a person who is condemned to reside in a single, high-maintenance shell. I must work, always, on its interface to the machine, or else the technicians will duly replace me.
All of this over a load of laundry; I am set somewhat aback. Am I simply run down, and do I run these meaningless threads that have long ago been coordinated within the grand fabric of man's fellowship? When I grow, finally, to such putrescence in my ways that the cultivator notices, then I'll be chucked into the abysmal heap. Therein lies the still-offensive offal that no one dare bury. No, that is no way to go; reason suggests that, given the premises of participation. I must be in some perverse rush to deny myself, only in a re-tributive, rather than con-tributive way. Virtue, alas, has been thrown my way, as a rescue from that sheol below, yet what I would do, that I do not do. Paul's lament rings true; what a wretched man am I. But what, really, is the call? Why, to continue on that row, on the good earth that is my assignment. It's a row, for goodness' sake, just the form of a line. Nothing else is there but that row, at the moment I've got to lay aside its clods. I see that I am being employed in some sort of sedentary "agricultural" mode by the machine's designers. There is hardly room for the nomad; I've been given my plot. I guess I'll grow tired soon and hit the sack. Facilities for proper disposal are at hand, while still, I discern myself from what is not myself, realizing how I am but a feedstock for a higher refinement still. Will unity someday be restored? "Not so long as the self must be," I tell myself.
It is time to put in a new crop, I think, and that will mean further soiled clothes.
"Bo"
Ahead to November 2003
