A 3D 1:48,000 scale model of the Cybercabin Land, Built of 1/8" foam core board and rubber cement, April 2003 January 2004 Cabin Diary |
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6 January 2004 -- My place within the flux
I come in from the woodshed with another load of this fine old oak, to keep the fire alive on a bitterly cold night. My fuel was duly split by that hardier worker than I, from what he had harvested from his own "back yard", down there along Route 735. The true woodsman, of course, needs his sizable allotment of woods, after all, or his impact will be out of proportion to his surroundings within his "developed area". I like to think that the flow of the forest "passes around" me up here on the several thousand acres, folding back as it was after it clears my little camp. Even the clearing was a natural formation, caused by an unusual density of undigested rock, which was fortunately placed within a short climb of the river. "Oh, yes, the river still flows well," I note to myself, as I pass through the side yard along the footpath through the now crunched-up glaze of the snow-surface. It has not been cold like this long enough to begin the kind of freeze that really gives the forest a problem in the spring, with all the run-off above collecting at the ice-dams, only I suspect the forest itself was predicated upon such patterns, long ago in the times of the neoliths. Of course, the truly striking feature out here is not the land itself but the brilliant, near-full moon, which the almanac says will pass that maximum sometime tomorrow. Sharp it is, and with no ice-halos amid the cirrus layers to predict oncoming inclemency. With the nominally diffuse and specular albedo that the snow provides, it is bright enough out here to see the entire shape of the Cabin building, whose internal kerosene lamps seem born of another, lesser energy font. It would seem that the closer we Terrans get to presenting an actual solar cross-section, the more it moves us. Thus could begin the fretful bestowal of woe, upon anything so contrived as a fossil fuel lantern, much less a motive torque generator so inefficient as the 260 horsepower V8 in the truck.
So I'm thinking now about the amazing circuits through which the more fundamental sources pass, these being the result of some weird combination of selection and preference, undoubtedly aided by the self-interest pursuit of the individuals involved. I come to the front door and rapidly close it behind me, shaking loose ice crystals from my feet, where they soon descend into amorphous ignominy on the wood-plank floor. It is quite the job, to keep any kind of livable heat going on a night like this. But then, my footprint is really rather small, and my ascendancy to a fully-human, sentient manifestation demands of the external at least a nominal level of comfort. I suppose I could well be overstepping my bounds, in keeping two domiciles alive; the one here in the woods and the other back in the city, where one does not dare let the water pipes freeze. Ideally, and in the proper relegation of that dastardly "self" to its rightful perimeter, I should cast all constructive pretext aside, as would the Franciscan in his descent to insignificantly humble glory. Yes, I should really just "close things up", in the style of proper conservation, and let everything that should flow around my cowering, minimal hull, with the least possible resistance. But then I cannot, by definition, be a closed shell; no, the kids in high school were right about the inadvisability of my hermitry. Those were the folks, who had wide open portals, in and out, and were ideal conductors of the flow as it passed through, and not around them. I stand before what is left of the fire, placing the latest load of wood onto the fieldstone hearth. "What is the point of this," I ask myself, "when so little is really done?" There should be no comfort in comfort unshared; no. The free-flowing connection, to that inexplicable flux that some would imbue with the M*L^2/T^2 dimensions of actual "energy", is obviously the duty of the just man.
So I just have to wonder, as I center in to my evening before this fire, with the moon only a faint reminder that appears outside the windows, just what this bigger "justice" is all about. In all of this, there is manifest a "plan", for we get plenty of signs when we're bucking its progress by reducing either aperture of its contributive transfluence. Oh, yes, but there is a "plan", and to know this and obey is indeed the beatific and righteous "way". But no one ever put a real gauge on the flux, except through the observations of the test-entity that they have, "feeling" but not truly "observing" it. The almighty order cannot be but correct and imbued with inherent quality, for everything that has breath can tell "it's there". The testifying instrumentation at work is indeed a profound embodiment within the unlikely tumult of nervous complexity that is our species' claim to pre-eminence. Supposedly, right and proper stewardship resides within its purview. The just man knows what is good, but then forgets that he ever knew it, in his central immersion within it. "Yes, that's nice," the ones having a "soul" will tell those of poorer spirit, "now let's get on to some real problems". "Oh ye, of greater soulful stance", I lament in their midst, "sing me a more righteous song of that ambient Zion, as I sit above the barren willows of winter, above the icy waterway". It is not a regretted sacrifice, no, that they make, those ones of higher order, for they knew at the outset what was behind it all. But I, on the other pathetic hand, would dare to establish in eternity something so foolish as a "self". This will not do. I sigh deeply, as I sit in the armchair before the flames. I cannot deny what I am, and that is one upon whom duty is implied. It is the riddle of the Sphinx at the junction, as to what kind of creature should be demanded to do with his will what will ultimately fail.
I suppose I'll get tired in awhile, and want to hole up over in the sack, on the far side of the room, as the fire burns its predictable way to a lesser state. Parameters and operating procedures are all outlined in the owner's manual, and I'm not referring to those particularly pompous modern texts that purport to be such a reference, in mere pursuit of a buck. You don't read it in a book; you live it. Yes, I should be all that I can be. These are tired aphorisms, when instead the "one" is the current exaltation. There is no end to the writing of books, for those who should rather be merry as they eat, and who know youth and do not waste it. Thus go the philosophical imperatives, from the ones who have passed on to other states of individual grace. I think if I ever got truly square against that almighty flow, I'd be blown flatter than a reed in a wind tunnel. I know that I'm configured to present what I must, in this jeopardy of my "exposure", for there'd be no life per se in the alternative. There is no point to the differentially-established, yet the "force" that mediates the "energy" (obviously, then, a direct implication of some kind of "speed" and "distance") is a fact of life. There is up and there is down; good and evil; rich and poor, all the little axes of duality that unfortunately populate that extensive space. I have to wonder, being in the imaginary realm up here in these so-called "woods", if I have any better access to that complementary world; the one in which all of that analogous mechanism resides. But I am so foolish, to look in such a direction, when my simple heed to the simple callings proves good, in that I could recognize "good" at all. That is the fundamental underlaying upon which sentience is advanced, as in a Teilhardian pursuit of some "omega point". But what am I? I'm pretty much on alpha, still, though I hear the great Hellenic strains well enough, in the remainder of that alphabet.
"Bo"
17 January 2004 -- The reality of the incorporated
Visits now to the Cabin have been uniformly cold these days, with every opportunity being exploited by the meteorological agents that so firmly suggest the ultimate "heat death" to 0 K. This is the main winter event,as everything settles down into the verifiable "pit" of winter, amid the barren trees and frozen surroundings. I cling now to the fire, yes, the fire, which I stoke as if I were on some sort of "mission" against the greater entropic principalities within the mile-wide hollow. I do not like to think of the fire dying, for then I see those morbid analogies to my own fire, whose refractory containment will have to cease. It is night again; Saturday night, when the TV isn't worth watching, anyway. What a thing it is, to shut everything down and out, except for the basic comforts that befit a "creature" such as myself. There are times, of course, when I am tempted to install proper telecommunications portals in this wood-frame shed, but then I've seen my share of country shacks with new dishes outside. I begin to think of the elemental basics of the whole enterprise, up here in the woods. I have the dwelling, and means for sustained survival. If the need came, I could even obtain the proper game permits and go out to live off the land. But I am no survivalist; when reasonable disorder arises, I suppose I'll have to expose myself to its trivially chaotic means of entering me in the statistics. When viewed statistically, the whole mess has an amazing vigor of its own. I'm starting to think of the psychohistory of the Asimov Foundation. It must take a lot of inspiration, to obtain such fine results in differential equations that I hope contain a good many non-linear expressions.
I must keep to the mighty and proper "track"; that general correspondent to the "straight path". This is all I have to go on in reality; my standing and my credentials. Though the Grim Sweeper has his broom at the ready, I should rather think that he'd pick me out of the dustpan, as a recognizable "asset", to be put back on the shelf where it belongs. I know that there are plans behind the titular "democracy" that justify the pseudo-tyranny of the representative electorate. The overall machine is a wonder, as might have been displayed in the British Crystal Palace, before it burned down in 1939. But there are greater governing mechanisms that the righteous would beseech me to experience on my own, and not as a second hand client of mere human servers. I wonder at times about how to latch on to the almighty production chain, the one that pays in full for the pieces that come off "made". Is it some form of tantric meditation that is called for here? Must I always ask, that I be entered into a lesser-capable "trance"? This is why the on/off vol control is so preferably advanced to the fully-depressed position, to watch the electron spew peter out into the classical center-dot of the old-fashioned receivers. There is a central simplification, where what looks like "one" is really a wildly-dynamic point-mass. It is hardly massless, for it is one. It is the agent, that "one". It builds from the singularity implied at some contrived model that is my own unification. The "one" plus my "one" yields the paradoxical result of "one", meaning we're not dealing with Euclidean arithmetic.
I know the central attraction of the Cabin narrative is supposed to be one like Thoreau's; of "Life in the Woods". Why, if I could get out there in snowshoes and romp about the hillsides, going back to the trails I marked so many years ago and find reassuring joy in a terrain that shows every promise of return in the spring, I could have a better connection to that unification that is my implied postulation. It is an alternate-yet-consistent fabrication, this woodland, like some sort of superceding impression that forms the validly-subjective Aristotelian perspective. But no, I don't see things that way. I am instead the Platonic descriptor, who will not rest until he has laid forth every bit of underlying form. That is the problem I face, of course, in keeping this daydream-world as my own. All I have to work with is a miserable set of these small visions, which do not yield readily to meaningful explanations. The follower of this thread will somehow become ensnared in what I so earnestly seek to escape. It is cold outside, and that's a fairly simple observation to make, and factually supportable. But why is it this way? "Not more of that psycho-babble about 'chaos'," I warn myself. It's a fine explanation but hardly a prescription. Let's see here--there is the object, and then there is its transportation, courtesy of the subject. The "subject", in this case, should fulfill its name and truly be "sub". I get so tired of spewing this kind of stuff. It's not doing anyone any good, and it's all been said, with great spillage of ink.
I huddle by the fire, not caring to think about the wonderful opportunities to die by exposure that reside so fully in the surrounding hills. It takes the determined individual, to hold out even this far north. The tropics of course look mighty appealing to someone whose roots lie imprisoned in such cold hard ground as this. The circulation flows back into the vitals, at times like this. I make a point to warm my extremities, which have that way of giving out under such a thermal challenge as this. Oh, but how the cold beckons forth! "Come," it says, like to "the man" in London's To Build a Fire, "and I will simplify things for you". But simplification like that always leaves abruptly-terminated vascularization and enervation. I suppose I'll be hitting the sack soon, once I've developed a solid and reliable coals base in the fieldstone fireplace. Maybe I'll toss the sleeping bag out on the wood-plank floor, which itself has grown so cold as to warn off the casually barefooted. I should like to see just where the extremities end, then cauterize the whole assembly in a parcel as efficient as an old-fashioned swaddled child. Yes, that is the goal, to be bound into the suspension of the capsule, only I am not the seamster needed, for such a sewing-up. I spend some time just watching the fire, a focus that is not always the greatest for holding an attention span that offers so few places for meaningful solid supports. I sigh, as if I'm about to do those "relaxation" maneuvers, in the great plugging-out. "Oh, it's hardly that bad," I tell myself, as the bone-chilling cold even enters here, and without regard for what it finds in the way of surreptitious heat.
There is a certain wind out there, and maybe there's some more snow on its way. Yes, the globe is warming, but only as an overall statistic. The diverse variety that characterizes the significant lower-order terms in its series have plenty of leeway. I wonder at times about the ones who have become properly "centered". Do those folks really have satiation and peace of mind, so that each moment blends in a single stroke that will be interpreted as their lives and their leavings? Overall, I seem to be exhibiting a pretty good statement of form, so I should disregard all these petty pertubations, like the ones in the entertainment media that attempt to influence us. I look down at, and into, myself. One, of course, is a fine Arabic numeral, but one must not forget that other gift of the preservationists throughout the Dark Ages, the one of zero. It all adds up to "one", every time, like the properly-normalized histogram that is its description. It is a very rich spiritual envelope, that lies under that curve. Therein is mediated the great exchange, the one that drives our ambition as "subjects". It could touch me right now, were it not for the hastily-severed pathways that I neglected, in this last time that I've run from the inexorable mill.
"Bo"
30 January 2004 -- The directors and the directed
I simply look for the sense that I am following what is "right", as I hang around the Cabin today. We have social revisionists on every corner, and critics of culture, who declare the middle-American orthodoxy to be as hollow and full of wind as this snowscaped setting I look out upon, as I do the one thing they agree upon: nothing. Not to do certainly has its value, until it becomes willful again as negligence. There is no escape from the charges; no camp that simply accepts. I go to chuck some more wood into the stove firebox, which is probably doing more to heat this shade-enriched space than is the fireplace. It's certainly hot enough to cook up some chow, but that is not foremost on my mind. I am still pummeled by the impassioned pleas that erupt from every mouth that can be miked. What kind of man is it, that is so easily swayed? Is this what men have come to, when they do not measure up to the standards of the other side of the line, where the leaders lead? I go back to stretch out on the sofa, with a mind as disheveled as the assorted throws I use to tolerate this colder part of the building. I feel, of course, that dreadful inertia within, wondering just what its trajectory would be if it were allowed freedom of motion. I try a little of the breathing routine, which was so fashionable back in those carefree hippie days. Oh, yes, I must cast off the mantle of "self", and render moot the distinction between subject and object. That is the hateful twinning that is necessitated by the need of the world. F = ma in this place, where we should instead see the single F/ma continuity as its own wonderful and dignified expression, yearning to be a member of the anointed sainthood. F divided by ma, of course, is unity.
I drift along on a basically disorganized track, that I lay only a short distance ahead through the wilderness, as might the Transcontinental builders have done, or even more so, the Trans-Siberians. There is such a vast space out here; indeed, "space is very big". How dare I even think that I can co-opt anything "significant" within that daunting realm? I lay here, my arm draped carelessly over my heaving hulk, just wanting it all to turn off. Yet the implicit "mission" remains, as it does for the beneficiary who is given a parcel far greater than he has the manpower to work. Wilderness is wonderful, in that it's self-regulating, as is the humble bar of soap that Mr. Seinfeld calls "self-cleaning". You just let it sit, and it obeys its own course. A tree falls, and not only is there no one to hear, but there is nothing for it to fall on. That is how so much of the thousands of acres of this plot are arrayed. One day, I'll have to get a proper survey done, so as to reach my understanding with the authorities that grant me this dominion. I know there are authorities, for there is no freedom in reality, except that which is ceded. As far as I know, the upper "property line" is the high divide, and the lower is State Highway 735, all those miles downstream. It is necessary, of course, to speculate upon a landscape that has been almost purposefully allowed to get "run back". The unimproved, this all is. Improvement is the cornerstone of the economy I must bear in real life, for with no improvement, there is no escalation in commerce, and thus no growth. How does one deal, then, with the thoroughly backward inclination I have on this mid-winter day, simply to let what is not improved be "enough"? I am certainly disorganized, in this thought-passage. There is no sharp and driving point to any of this; no, it is not a tool, but rather, the shavings that lie in a heap on the workshop floor.
I'll have to put in my appearance, soon enough, in that gilded creation that still does not want explicit worship. I will have to pick up my implement and continue plowing that row, without looking back. That, of course, is necessity. It is alien and harsh, to any reasonable person, to endure such stipulations within the social contract. I sigh deeply, thinking that might help. I just sit, like the idle tool in the shed. I want to let myself run "free", to whatever forlorn place this unstable craft will find for its foundering. Yet the critics still ring in my deep hollows of resonance. I am making a hideous wretch of myself, in such wanton carelessness. It is time to jump back on the train, yes, the one that's headed for canonical glory. I have proven, time and time again, that I cannot be any kind of master, true though the call is of the moralists to "master myself". Maybe I should go over and find some chow, only the act of cooking is too much to imagine here. I have plenty of stuff in the pantry that requires nothing more than fingers adept enough to open the box so as to leave a flap to tuck back in the slot (of course, after rolling the bag down to the level of the contents). That package is measured by weight, not volume, and some settling may have occurred during shipping. I guess I'm not feeling fully my "best" at this time, and the voices of consternation will strike me down in an instant, if I should dare admit it. "Oh, snap out of it," they chide, "and get yourself some rest and clean living." I must observe the signs, unlike the ones who know of summer's coming but not of the analogous progress of the Kingdom. In an attempt to smother and ameliorate these rough edges to my expressive envelope, I wander listlessly to the pantry and begin to rummage about. Here we are; Kraft Cheese Nips, definitely a better cracker than the Cheez-It.
I take the box back to the sofa, having already begun my munch-quest. All this malfunction could be simply a matter of glucose and endocrinology, and those are decidedly "lower" on the sentience scale than the mightier matters they nevertheless can pre-empt. Yes, sir, some good old carbs, of a higher order than syrup, moderated by portions in the Nutrition Facts section that Dr. A. might actually exhort, from the great beyond. The only cheddar flavored Cheese Nips they had at the general store down by the filling station came in the form of Nickelodeon Rocket Power shapes. Depicted are youths of the "sk8" culture, obviously riding a proper path as they assert themselves as yet more individuals. I see not the impression they seek to make, in the fanciful shapes of these victuals. No, there is of course nothing more than the underlying form, for the dispassionate and the uninspired. Of course, in this I do get to avoid the pitch of the food industry, which seems bent on building a ghost of cannibalism, in eating so many graven images of the truly living. I feel myself settle in to the physically-satiated state, which is really better in the long run. My need to follow has me wanting to fast and wear torn Levi's, no matter what the season. Is that where I'm headed this year; towards some great "come-uppance"? Thinking to my ethnological heritage, this is Ordinary Time, so I should be jubilant. "Everybody come along / And join the Jubilee", as the Gershwins' merry-makers say after their Ship has come Sailing In. I continue chowing these shapes that only contribute to my satisfaction when they are suitably masticated. I have to laugh, at times, about the way I skip over the tops of some of those faddish furrows. I suppose it is like Ông dìa, the laughing participant, the great Earth Buddha, who fully sees God's humor in setting things up to be the way they are.
I do not really want to offend the ones who do not fight their enclosures. A cowboy will not be fenced in, but certainly we know the kind of neighbors a fence can make. It is better, just to ride along on the range, that vast operative ordinate that comes from a proper appreciation for the abscissal domain. I suppose I'm describing excitation here, in some sort of crude analogy to the quantum conditions in the abysmal spiritual poverty of the single atom, that workhorse for us all. It is time to ride some more, and possibly gain a little air in the process.
"Bo"
Ahead to February 2004
