Monday, July 26, 2004

It just dawned on me that Francis Slay and Jim Shrewsbury's support of Barry may pull some of Carnahan's core support in the city, helping Jeff with what should, by now, be a fairly solid base among inner-core county liberals. The 3rd Congressional could still shake out as a very interesting race. I wanted again to write about the lobelia, how clearly I know now how to grow the plant - with not just exactly the amount of sunlight, but that sunlight just out of reach, almost as if it must face some hardening challenge to thrive. The lobelia with too much just died. The lobelia with the right amount of sunlight with ready access to that light live, but in a more stagnant state. The lobelia in the shade simply maintain, slightly withered, but alive. But the lobelia that smell that light just around the corner, grow thrice the size of the others, and look upward bound still. I have the perfect shot of all three of the last plants growing side by side, with otherwise the same soil, same water, same curious gazing. I wonder if some of the light theory explains why they do so much better when planted in the spring, the longer days quickening their hunger. I realized tonight, in again feeling limbic impulse, strong limbic impulse, shooting up my brain, switching off, diverted into positive energy, that there may be a way to harness that energy. Then I realized that the ultimate energy, the ultimate simultaneity, beyond synergy, of the duality is to recognize the whole experiece within that very moment. That you then, at least in those moments, conciously, or unconciously, embrace and quantum reality - to be observing self in many places at the same time, knowing both velocity and place at the same time. Maybe that's really the only way to understand quantum mechanics, to understand that the trick to knowing both the where and the when of electrons isn't about trying to find a better observational framework for that moment, but to get beyond the framework of trying to observe the electron in one place at once. Some of the ongoing convergences of art and science and spirituality, often seemingly at odds with one another, are all after the same question, to some degree, if we don't get crazily, irrecoverably off track as species, and that is how to achieve oneness with the universe. I see artists as messengers from some of those higher states, like Ray Johnson, challenging us with messages our present cognition cannot comprehend, complicated as those messages are by the influence of fashion and consumption - although that itself could help maintain the meme. Science, for more or less obvious reasons - the pursuit of knowledge, marred as it is by politics and human foible. Spirituality, in seeking answers to the unknown from the without that is within, complicated as that is by some of our primitive urges manifesting themselves through institutions.. I hadn't really thought about some of the layers of struggle brain integration that that schema parallels. But that whole thing makes me think of my dad's sermon on unification theory, and how when the final equation is run, the answer will be God. Which is what all of us essentially seek. Or should seek. In whatever way that feels most comfortable. Sitting there in a  baseball stadium reminded me of how civilized that all feels, and how wonderful it would be if there were someway of creating civil societies everywhere where people could sit out in those numbers without fear. And I thought of how a mujadeen might react - more realistically, the religious leaders, saying that to enjoy such is to enjoy excess, and not seek God. Without getting too much into the theology, I would have to say phooey - that part of experiencing God head can include, and should include, enjoyment and diversion, the fullness of life. The injustice of it all is not a difference of religious doctrine, but that despite the abundance of the world, not every human being has enough to eat, let alone baseball games and fireworks and skyrises. And until we are all eating enough and not living in fear, we can't focus as a sentient species on what we do to adapt to reality. To truly adapt, to, as the Buddha says, as Christ demonstrated, escape suffering and death. 12:04:57 AM