WALKING ON THIN ICE

too long dues blues

Conversation 30 May 2007 Essaouira Morocco

“So. You said you don’t believe in God.”

Nope. I don’t believe in a long-haired Dude sitting up there knowing everything, judging everybody, picking at his penis. I mean, if there are Gods, He-She-It says to us, “You’re born weak and broken, but if you don’t shape up and do everything We say Our way, we’re gonna kick you around your entire life, and then you’ll burn in Hell forevermore after you die.”

That presents two problems. Either God didn’t know enough to make us right in the first place; or, if accidentally on purpose he left something out, he really shouldn’t punish us for not fixing it ourselves.

“Kinda like a manufacturer’s warranty.”

Except there’s no return. There’s no repair shop. There’s no frigging manual, and it’s very badly designed, this body of ours. We’re basically piss and shit machines. And like any idiot engineer, he runs the sewer system right through the pleasure park.

Which brings us to the Gnostics. They believe we’re ruled by a mad god named Samael. Insane Samael. And that there’s a smarter, kinder god above him who wants to help us. But of course being further up the chain of command he can’t very well let Samael know he’s not doing a good job, so he sent the Snake to the Garden of Eden to tell us the truth — that we need to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good AND evil. For just like shade and light, you ain’t got the one without the other.

‘Course, good old Sammy’s been punishing us ever since for that one.

Gnostics also think Good God tried an end run around Bad God with Jesus Christ. But we fixed Him. Killed him and turned him into a church run by pedophiles.

However, since I’m entirely inconsistent most of the time, I daily try to say my Buddhist chant “nam myoho renge kyo” which I purchased for six dollars in San Francisco in 1966.

“I hear you saying that on the shitter a lot.”

Now, before we go into that, I have to say I find the Cosmic Order or the Universe or the Big It to be aware, with a hell of a sense of humor.

It communicates with itself along channels we do not know, but do have scientific proof of from the first Bell experiment in non-locality, run with particle colliders in 1972. Seems there’s a disagreement between Einsteinian Relativity Physics and Heisenberg Quantum Physics. Einstein says nothing can be known outside of locality. Locality being if an event happens, the carrier wave that takes that data away cannot travel farther or faster than the speed of light times time duration.

Heisenberg Particle Physics says that such information is available to ALL the Universe immediately.

I’m not educated enough to know these things, but apparently once electrons are paired, however that is done, they remain paired and whatever happens to one electron instantaneously happens to the second electron, no matter where, when or how far away it is.

The Bell experiment tested this premise by separating paired electrons, probably using divorce lawyers, and smashing the shit outta one of them with really big hammers.

This reversed its spin, whereupon the separated hostage electron really far away immediately reversed its spin as well, even though it was not being bombarded by the same forces. Ergo, the Universe has some way of communicating with itself that is faster than light, that is in fact instantaneous. The implications of this are astounding: the Universe always immediately knows what’s going down.

Now, to get back to what I believe — before I knew any of this stuff, I found I could talk to Reality. Sometimes it would answer. Frequently it would play jokes on me. And it seemed to appreciate when I laughed.

“You’re some kinda funky holy man.”

Yeah, I got holes all over. Also, my own life would cause me to question my incredible string of luck and adventures. I shouldn’t be alive, and if I should have been, I definitely shouldn’t be here having this much fun.

So, to get back to Science. In the Heisenbergian Universe everything is true simultaneously all at the same time — there is no yes or no but yes AND no AND all the possible maybes in between, just like in the famous thought experiment with Schrödinger’s Cat in the box. You seal a live cat in a box with a glass vial of poison and one decaying atom. The atom decays at a known rate but you have no idea where the decayed particle will go, although if it hits the glass vial of poison, you have Dead Cat.

Heisenberg says until you open the box and actually look, the cat is a) alive, and b) dead, and c) at every other possible point in between. It’s not until you ask the box, “is the cat dead or not?” and look inside that Reality collapses all the realities that are into one specific result to answer your question.

“Freaky.”

Another good example of this has also been tested. Say a star blows up really far away and the light takes millions of years to reach Earth. Now, I don’t know the intricacies of this, but light seems to be composed of both waves and particles, which is impossibly because they are totally different constructs which act differently. But if you choose to measure this blown star light using particle equipment, you find light is made of particles; if you test it with wave equipment, you find light is made of waves. It takes millions of years for that light to get here, so certainly your question isn’t going to cause something millions of years ago to do one thing or another. So both of these conflicting paradigms are true simultaneously. Your question forces reality to collapse to A or B. Now this has all been very very crudely put — I’m not a scientist and I’m not a philosopher (I’m more a class clown) — but everything I’ve said can be checked and verified by the curious.

I started off praying to God as an adolescent, then turned Atheist. Later I turned hippie-dippy flakey, and eventually morphed into a Flow surfer, which is half-way between the three.

Forgetting all that for a second, every single thing you do — every action, every thought process — can be done better or worse. You might say more efficiently or less efficiently, with more or less grace, more or less efficient correlation to whatever Actually Is. The possibilities are endless — if you do things Better, you’re gonna fight less headwind from the Cosmic Flow; if you do things Worse, you’re gonna create more turbulence for yourself and others. There may not be an ultimate cosmic Right or Wrong, but there is a Better or Worse way to Be, that will cause you more or less pain. To get back to Heisenberg, what you get from Reality depends on what you ask for, what you See rests upon what you Expect.

I’ve found that my Own Personal Universe has a tremendous sense of humor. And it won’t hurt you unless it has to. It’s not vicious. I add that last sentence because essentially the universe is indifferent.

A lot of people have said this basic stuff a lotta ways, from greeting card to serious: the power of positive thinking, do as you would be done, don’t do as you have been done, etc. Buddha and Confucius and the Sufis had it down pretty good.

What you have inside your head–how you are and what you’re taught–affects how you see, what you see, and what you do about it. Let’s start with an imaginary totally neutral Thing. If you have bad eyes, a hateful mind, and a wicked heart, you’re gonna see a threat where none exists and do bad things, stupid things: you’re gonna turn this neutral object into an Object of Evil fulfilling your own expectations.

But if you have a good heart, a decent mind, honest eyes, you’ll see it as neutral or perhaps even as something positive. You won’t see bad so you won’t do bad so you won’t cause bad. Of course there’re limits on everything. Just cuz you see a bus coming at you and think it’s a fudge sundae don’t mean it ain’t gonna squish ya flat.

“I see it as the potential for individuals to reach some type of constructive Being by being together in a healthy way.”

You create your own reality. You are responsible for your own reality. As I said once before, if your corner of reality is a shit hole, you’re the feces.

“What does that mean about our situation here in Essaouira?”

We’ve cleaned up this shit hole we rented. And if by some sick trick reincarnation is true, then the owner of this place is gonna pay down the line. We’ve already been rewarded – we’ve brightened the corner where we are. We’ve become more happy, less miserable as a result. You don’t like something, don’t whine, do something about it.

But if something’s wrong, don’t keep quiet just because you don’t think anything can be done. If enough speak, evil listens. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin proved that about slavery. Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring defeated–sort of–DDT.

Saw a movie called Virus once. Pretty good sci-fi horror. Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland. Energy being came along from deep space, saw what man had done to Earth, studied history, saw the Middle East was once a gorgeous forest but we came along, ate everything, killed everything, poisoned the rest… decided Mankind was a virus, a cancer. Decided to save the Earth by wiping us out.

I have to say, except for Jamie Lee Curtis, I was rooting for the virus killer. And even though it’s too late now to save the earth, even if we tried, which we ain’t gonna, it still comes down to how long we can keep our nest livable. And how miserable we’ll be during this time. Do good, last longer, suffer less. Makes no difference to Mother Earth, cuz after we’re gone, she’ll rest a while and seed a new garden.

We’ve turned the Garden of Even into the Valley of Odd. So if we’re wiped out, fair is fair.

“My death doesn’t really matter to me. But the idea of mass death is horrifying.”

I don’t much care about either, mine or mass. The only sadness I have would be your missing me. And we’ve had a close and good enough time, you have part of me always. We already have more in a short time than most get forever.

“I know I’m satisfied. I finally have love, faith. I discover another universe in you.”

I’m never satisfied. I can always do more; I can always be better. Like Camus says of this prison sentence called life, ‘the sentence starts the day you’re born; it ends the day you die.’ See, I’m committing one of his sins. I still hope for inner peace, to live up to myself, to do it right. And hope is one of his sins, because there is no hope. There’s only living this life as aware as you can, as full as you can, in as many aspects as you can. I got that part down fine. If I could just get rid of the fucking Hope.

“Well, that’s back to your question again.”

What question?

“The question you ask determines what you receive.”

Well, I have a right to be hopeful. There’s no way I should be alive or have had such a wonderful life along the way. I have more stories than anybody. My first motorcycle ride I left the road at 100 mph and didn’t get hurt. Fell off a cliff when I was seven. Jumped off rooftops when I was four. Fell out of trees, rolled my car in my own driveway… I shot up for 30 years, I’ve overdosed, I drank myself to death, ran from the cops, two armed robberies… yet I’ve had wonderful friends, accolades, art shows, poetry readings. And the best friend and wife in the world.

“Aww…”

I hope for the best; I look for the worst. And I found in situations where there’s no time to think I do everything I can to stay alive. Yet I would not keep my life if I had to dishonor myself with another’s death unless the asshole were attacking me.

– Smith & Lady, May 30, 2007, Essaouira, Morocco