Flossing a Fantasy

Even while George Jones is singing She thinks I still care, I am creating another life. In the bathroom mirror, while I am flossing, I am hearing my son crying, he is only 6, my life spread out before me, useless as that was, it was a pearl before swine, I see that now, but then it seemed endless and forever. In the bathroom mirror I see my teeth are going all to pieces, or is that George Jones singing? Just because I went all to pieces....yes, it is George saying that. I am saying "god i have to floss every day, not once a week." Flossing was invented by a sadist. It is the most boring job in the world, bar none. To stand in one place and run a thread back and forth thru your teeth, one side at a time. thats lets see, 34 and 34 is 68 times. do we have 34 teeth? anyway, there i am flossing and a new life opens like yesterdays papers...or wait that is Mick Jagger speaking, i was standing there and a new life opened like a flower, like a book.
This life spread out, i was waking in the hospital.
"You have twins!" the six doctors say in unison. I open my arms, spread out two thousand miles i spread them, watching the tide roll away, no that is Otis Redding, watching the children rolled away to Intensive Care. even so, i get a second chance i get a second chance. just like a Smokey Robinson hook. second second, i second that emotion.
My other lives, lived in quick glimpses, caught here and there, are all redemption themes. I am forgiven, I am allowed to try again and do it beautifully this time. Sweet baby, purple flower, smelling you for hours... oh that is Lucinda Williams. She wrote four great songs, and here is one of them on my Itunes. But she speaks well enough for me, sweet baby. Then I am finished with my teeth and the other life pops like a balloon in a cartoon, and I am here in the sad life. I have written a lot of songs about the sad life. This painful place where the kids are grown up and don't...and don't. don't say it. Even so, sweet baby, I got my teeth flossed. If it takes creeping away from the pain for a moment to fulfill my little chores, then that is what I will do. After all, I am not dying in a foreign country, like a Tom Bissell character. I am only dying in my own self.
Tom Bissell wrote a very good story in his book God Lives In Saint Petersburg. But the title story was not my cup of tea. Tea is one of the worst things for your teeth by the way. All that tannic acid is very bad for enamel. As if you care, right? As if you brushed, and then went alllllll to pieces....

Babbling in the rain

I meant to write often. I had planned to review/essay another book, but one book led to another, time got away from me, my sadness consumes much of the day. So it has happened that the blog I began became the very albatross I sought to expunge. I left Einstein and picked up a book at the salvation army called Shaherazade Goes West, with a racy wonderful cover looking like something out of 1001 nights. It was a very good book, odd in it's tongue in cheek, but very good, with wonderful insight. The woman writer was both chastising her countrymen and defending them, as she traveled in Europe. She was in search of Woman. Of Shaherazade, of the ideal wife and friend of Man. It was insightful but also hopeful perhaps beyond where truth lies. Ha, a dubious sentence in itself. But from reading most of 1001 Nights over the past five years, the Heritage version with Richard Burton's translation if I remember correctly (I have not got the books with me....) I did see clearly that the Arabic/Persian IDEAL woman is highly intelligent whereas the western ideal woman is young and stupid. Western thought is to liberate the veiled woman of the east, turn her in to the silent naked woman recognizable here in every magazine. Remove her veil and shut her up. One wonders which woman has it worse. The problem lies of course, with Eve. She, being to blame for everything, was not only cast out but also made to long for Adam to subjegate her. This longing causes woman to happily accept the role of nothingness, as long as man desires her. Yet once that desire is gone, she is left invisible and without voice. Alone in a sea of life that is not meant for her. Once woman has lost her place as mysterious beautiful female and childbearer, she is expected to get off the planet.
I read Haji Baba, a funny parody of Shaherazade written by an englishman I think, who lived in Persia in the last century. There were some brilliant passages, some hilarious moments, and often a lack of understanding of Persian culture. But overall, having been written by a western man, I was impressed by how much he had observed. In the introduction there was a letter from a Persian who had befriended him during his time there, and who was disraught over the negative aspects of the book. It was a moving letter, yet the introduction made fun of it, leaving a decided distaste for the whole book in my mouth. Never the less, too little has been written about the magical mysterious poetic world of Iran and anything which is not military oriented gets my attention.
I am less interested in the plight of women than I am of the plight of us all. Sometimes I go to a house where the family is Jewish and observant. I watch them using different utensils for milk and meat. Or wearing certain head coverings. And sometimes I am visiting strict Mormons who cannot drink tea and must wear certain underclothing. Or I am visiting somewhere else, where I am required to remove my shoes, or put on a scarf, or cross myself, or bow my head... all these rituals and customs but little humblings in and of themselves, yet holding enormous meaning to those who practice them. And way up above the buildings and the cities and the countries, God sits watching. It must be quite a sight, seeing the rabble arguing over what you would want. Killing eachother, thinking it will make them the winner in your eyes. Hoping you will come down and smite the enemy. Hat or no hat. Dancing like the shakers, or no dancing as required with the 7th day adventists. Wine for the catholics, no wine for the Arabs. Tea for the civilized, or no tea according to the mormans. 77 virgins or polygamy. The jumble that God left behind, and sometimes watches from the seat of Eaven.
It is a wild wind and rain storm. It has been going on since yesterday. I lay awake last night hearing the wind banging hard against the windows and wondering if the brick building I was in would hold... not minding the thought that everything might at any second collapse and
be destroyed and I with it. Or considering the idea of a second flood. Or hoping that someday, we who are abandoned to this hell will be released. It is the wind that causes this sort of thinking. One does not wonder these things in a snowstorm, or even in quiet rain, but in the power and the unpredictable behavior of wind. The free-will part of God. The part of God that does what it pleases because it simply decides to.
oh but self, i beg you, enough of god. Ail or alef allah or elohim and all the els of angels oriel and raffael and gabrielle and triangle. The L's are in hell, and in the mathmatics of the universe, that one long poem in which all roads converge no matter what the angle.

Brief Note

Some days are Einstein-less. Today for example, I am packing up and going back to New York City, after a week end in the country. I spent last night reading, and was disappointed to see the whole world war two wrapped up in a few pages. From the scientists fleeing the nazi's it went straight to the bomb being made after Albert wrote to Roosevelt and urged him to have people invent it. I somehow imagined there would be references in there to loss of kin, or friends, but it seems that either did not happen, or the biographer did not feel it was pertinent to the book. Instead, I watched him rambling down the street in Princeton with no socks on, and coming up with incorrect theories on unification of the universe. And believe it or not, the United States considered him a possible communist. What dopes. Governments are all alike really. The Germans threw him out for being Jewish. And the United States wouldn't let him help make the Nuke even though he suggested they make one, because he had been against war. It is so ironic isn't it? That the man who discovered it all and helped the USA would be left out of the final act because they didn't trust him.
Today is without Einstein. I have packed my book and am about to carry my bags to the car. Last night, in my sleep, a woman bent down to say to me, "It's time you went back to your own people." I thought she meant that I was on another planet. Or perhaps just sequestered away somewhere. When I woke up, I remembered her being sort of grudgingly nice... as if she was being nice to me inspite of herself. I think she also told me I had to be friends with her even if I did not want to be. Perhaps she is that shut-away part of myself who has stopped trying to reach out to the world. Perhaps that self is saying it is time to try again.
Or maybe not.
Einstein said he could not stop trying to figure out the unity of all. He said he might never be able to, but that did not prevent him from trying. It was the seeking for truth that was so precious, he said, not so much attaining it. This is what I feel, too. I have looked high and I have looked low. I have slipped through hells gates and risen to the heights of heaven, and I wander always through Middgard, eyeing the bridges and tunnels and listening to the singing of the birds. It is in humans, and in nature. It is in the painted sky and the vast earth we live on. It is hidden in letters and numbers and places obscure. It is in the languages of the world, and sometimes it is right there before us, shining, and sometimes it is concealed by the great veil... that female covering that hides her beloved secret.

The Insanity Uncertainty

I woke this morning very excited about the uncertainty principle. I had actually meant to go to church today, sometimes i do that. Sometimes I pick a religion and go to it's services. There is God within all of them, which is not to say God is not also without them as well. Anyway my alarm had unset itself. In this house where I am staying, the electrodynamics are constantly inconstant. And all this to merely say I woke and rushed to the book I am reading, Einstein his Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson, New York Times best seller. I have been mulling over the uncertainty principle which annoyed Albert so much. It states that a particle cannot be observed as is without altering it vastly, actually Einstein says causing it to explode, the book says making the Atom decay. Either one, decay or explode, explains exactly what I have believed for the past ten years. Only I have put myself in the place of the particle or Atom, and it is I who am decaying from observation. And the observation is exactly what was underlying Einstein's scientific beliefs; that greater force that is beyond our ability to see or understand. I would often say over the recent years that I could see beyond the veil. Simply because what was beyond the veil was seeing me. And it altered me tremendously. Who or what can possibly be oneself if one is being observed closely and not supposed to know it? If I was so altered, why not too the particle? Decaying, yes, because the very act of being watched is decaying, destructive, peeling. A breaking down of all that one is. It is nearly impossible to explain. It must be experienced to be understood and to experience it is to die in a way. In so many ways.
Einstein said, if we cannot know whether or not what is out there is actually out there, if it is left to chance or possibility, then what is physics? If there are no laws and absolutes governing reality, then....
Then the reality is life is but a dream. And I do not believe that either. But I do believe that we are being governed. As did Albert. He believed that we had no choice, no random ability to change the way it would be, no free will. And I agree. It is all planned, all laid out, and we are observed. And most of us do not know that, and those that do are kept from the rest, as a virus might be kept from the healthy. Alpha and Omega= anagram of Planned Game.
I wonder if Einstein would have thought this nutty. I am a simpleton with a nutty belief, in a world that believes in a father God who sits on a cloud and judges us, while everything else is governed by natural normal laws. There is no such thing as ghosts, or invisible people, or flying without an airplane, or magic. But the computer chip is ok. That's been approved by the media, so it is not magic.
Everything around us is magical in my opinion. But this is probably because I do not understand science and so it appears to me as magic. Well, what is the difference? Others do not understand this theory that I live in. So they think I am nuts or believing in magic, when in fact, it is absolutely real. As real as picking up a plastic box and holding it to your ear and hearing the voice of someone 3 thousand miles away. That can be explained through wire and satellite. And my communication can only be explained through my experience. I do not have the backing of the community, I am alone in my observations. And precisely because I am alone, I am able to experience it. And precisely because I experience it, I am kept from being believed.
Einstein was able to be believed. He was not your run of the mill person though. He WAS from beyond. But maybe he didn't know that while he was here. Or maybe he did. He had the shine of God. Those persons who ellicit adoration and bring greatness to our planet are all from there. They carry the peculiar light of God, like Jesus, causing people to be overwhelmed with love. I have experienced that. I met my observer. I rose out of the petrie dish and had dinner with reality.

Two particles Walk into a Bar...

To put in to words what I am thinking while reading. That is the rub. I just was reading about two particles, revved up and then sent off, and one is observed and the other is not. Is it possible to know where the other will go by watching the first? Science according to Einstein according to Isaacsons reporting, is based on reality being there, observed or not. There for, if it is real then it has rules and laws which if observed and followed can be used to calculate and predict. Which I am totally with him on. But quantum mechanics does not go this way. It goes the way of random or possible or maybe,maybe not. It is free will in the micro-world of particles.
Last night I lay in bed until 3 in the morning, unable to put down EINSTEIN his Life and Universe. I was enthralled as usual, but I was also antsy, the way one gets when one is reading a page turner like Creighton. You are loving it, but are almost willing to tear the pages out in order to get to the gist of it. And the gist of it is dangled before you, enticing you along, while you are fed almost unimportant information through hundreds of pages, until finally you get to hear what you wanted to hear from page one. In Einstein His Life and Universe, almost every page is gripping but the underlying knowledge that the reader brings to the book is painful, particularly in light of the fact that it is not mentioned right through over half the book. One KNOWS he is German, he lives in Berlin, all his friends are jews, and that he will work on the bomb to end the holocaust. But when? How? Will they all make it? So even though each page is chocked with science and friendships and awards and some tidbits of his personal life, one is only partly satisfied. One has to keep reading through the night, it becomes absolutely necessary to find out this information as soon as possible. But the biographer draws it out. Finally, well in to the last third of the book, Hitler has taken over Germany and the family is slowly all moving to America. But what about his poor ex wife? What about all his Jewish friends and why, if Hitler was so intent on destroying Albert, didn't he go after Alberts ex wife and sons?
The theory Einstein posited regarding those two particles was that they could not know what the other was doing, nothing goes faster than the speed of light, it would HAVE to be a wave between them to alert the other.... But isn't this not taking into account communication? Why do humans persist in thinking if it doesn't look like a person then it can't talk? I have witnessed trees communicating. I have seen animals in conversation. Why not particles? Couldn't one particle shout to the other? Or if sound is a wave, then how about esp? I witness that all the time. What about the queen bee? She need only touch an egg and it is born believing itself a queen. What about animals that know when their baby is sick the minute it is born? What about those monkeys of Darwins that knew when another monkey learned how to use a tool, and they lived on another island and yet they began using that tool too, as if they also had been taught? Our knowledge of how it all works is hampered by our refusal to believe what we already know to be true.
So these two particles walk into a bar. One says to the bartender, "hey gimmie a shot of M C squared, will ya?"
The bartender says, "Don't you want some E equals too?"
"Naw," says the particle. "That leaves me hung over. I'm happy with just some MC squared, and leave the Mister-E to Einstein."

Or maybe it should be: two particles walk into a bar. One says to the bartender, "Gimmie a shot of bud-light for my friend, Mr. M. C. Squared, here." pointing to the second particle.
The bartender says "Sure, one light for mr. M C Squared." then he looks at the first particle closely and says, "Sayy, aren't you E equals?"
The first particle looks around nervously and whispers.."SHHHhhh. That's a Mister-E to you, fella."
Which proves I am a simpleton and cannot do math nor come up with a good joke about physics. But for hope springing eternal, you can always count on me.

By the Moon Uncertain

I woke at 4 in the morning because the moon was shining on my face. It was as bright as the sun and as round. It shone too on the book I am reading, Einstein His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. And I saw for the first time the sticker on the book saying it was a New York Times bestseller. I don't know why I hadn't noticed that before...it is my simpleton-ness I suppose. But I can see why it did so well. The fact that I can almost comprehend the elusive theories of physics by reading this is astounding. While riding the subway home the other night, I read about the Uncertainty Principle. Now this made sense, I thought. Just as I have felt for a long while, nothing is the same as when you are observing it. When observed, it changes. As a believer in two great forces controlling the whole, I can accept this completely. It is almost the physical spectrum of what Shakespeare said, "nothing is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so..." So too nothing is neither there or not but seeing makes it so. And so we are back to Keats who said, "Life is but a dream".
The thing about Einstein is, he was so adorable looking. He was as charming and appealing as Charlie Chaplin. How could the greatest brain in the world ever have been so cute? The photo's of him in this book show his broad shoulders and sweet face, a face that does not seem to age much. While his hair gets whiter and wilder, his face remains darling. His wife Elsa looks more and more like a German frou though and that is depressing. I wish he had stayed with the brilliant Mileva Maric. She was strange and interesting. But according to this book, he opted for comfortable surroundings and German food. One wonders. One wonders how much he lost by leaving the scientist. On the other hand, Elsa was his close relative so she must have been very intelligent herself. It's also tragic about his son Edmund, who was stuffed away in a sanatorium. So far all that is said about him is that he was sickly. Never mind, the point is to stick to the point, and that is The Uncertainty Principle.
The moon shone in the window like a powerful flashlight. I sat up at four in the morning and considered reading by moonlight. But instead, I covered my face with the blanket and fell back asleep. I have always believed the puzzle of language has to do with the puzzle of the universe. And the fact that Albert said God doesn't play dice with the universe seemed to me a telling remark. After all, the basis of God is built on our getting to Pair a Dice. Even so, which is true? A place that is constant whether or not we are looking at it? Or a universe that comes into being by observation? Einstein wanted the former. Quantum mechanics is the latter. So as far as I have read, it comes down to light jumping. The big world is ordered and the tiny world of electrons circling the atom are, for lack of a better way of putting it, free will. I wrote a novel once that supposed this... How we were nothing more than tiny particles within a dust ball in a giants house. It stands to reason does it not? Everything breaks down to the same circular thing... even the universe is circular. When we finally find out we are just a tiny something which is part of a bigger something belonging to a bigger something, perhaps the wars will cease. Or perhaps the wars are merely the functioning of our tiny selves to conduct energy to the slightly bigger picture. Maybe thats why we cannot get along. Maybe we are supposed to explode, and in that way assist the larger atom way beyond our vision.

Hilarious Reading...

Sometimes, like today while sitting in a coffee shop in Manhattan, I begin to laugh at what I am reading. It is so heady much of the time, so complicated to try to understand this general theory and relative theory and special theory, and then all of a sudden I will come upon some hilarious remark and I am falling off my chair laughing. For instance, in Chapter 12, Fame. At one point, when Einstein's theory concerning a light arc from stars, shown by taking photographs of a total eclipse is proven, the New York Times comes out with the most humorous headlines. "Stars Not Where They Seemed to be, But nobody Need Worry".
One reviewer for the Times said, "Scientists who proclaim that space comes to an end somewhere are under some obligation to tell us what lies beyond it." It seemed so funny that I couldn't read anymore for the day. One really has to give Walter Isaacson credit for making this biography not only understandable to the lowly simpleton like me, but incredibly entertaining as well. It really would make a great movie. Not that movies are all that great. Nothing can replace the joy of reading a great book. And I admit I am finding this book all that.

Walking Off the One-Cup Path

I started to write about how sad it was for Mileva Maric, Alberts first wife, but then I got bogged in my blog and could not express it right. My loyalty lies with Einstein, despite the dark story of his scientist first wife and her sadness. No, what I had started writing and what I ought to be writing did not jive. What then am I to muse on? The dull life I lead here in the Bronx leaves little to discuss. I wake, I eat a bagel, I drink coffee. I sew a bit, I check online things, I clean. It is of little import that I happen to live in a historical building complex. Good grief my english is deteriorating. Is it AN historical or A historical? I feel as though I should say AN but I am not sure why.
I live in a place of great history, though the tenants now do not reflect that. In the apartment below me, Marc Chagall stayed for a few months back in the 1940's. It was a building of Russian Jewish immigrants. They all moved here around the turn of the century (1900) and built this group of buildings together, and even had a library in it where they had poetry readings. It was one of the first Co-ops, and they had enthusiastically decided to become socialists or communists. Now it is a building mostly full of people from the Dominican Republic. The hallways smell like a Mexican restaurant. And although they seem like nice people, I wish it was still full of that intellectual group of Russian Jews. I was told they even had a theatre troup that met once a week on the roof, and a that the basement had a room for dancing.
I live in an historical setting, in a borough of New York City which has produced many famous people. And I myself am not your run of the mill person. Even so, I did not discover anything of merit. I gave no great contribution to the world. And whether or not one is supposed to get gloomy when reading a biography of a Great Human, I admit I cannot help but look at my own shoddy existence and wonder. Not that Albert was a human, I think he was a gift from beyond. Although I am sure his poor children could not have thought so, he seemed to be a lousy father at least as far as I have gotten in the book I am reading on his life. He reminds me at times in a not-good-way of my twins father; Indifferent, self absorbed, insisting the kids be sweet and loving to him despite the fact that he sees them once every few years. And in the way he gets enraged if they defend their mother. How he thinks spending 2 hours on the train to see them is too long a journey. And yet... he contributed hugely to the world. True, he was indirectly responsible for the horrific destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...neither of which is probably spelled right. And his close friends were all gung ho for world war one. And another friend was responsible for inventing the gas that killed men in the trenches and probably was connected to the gas in the gas chamber horrors. How ironic life is... Germany so anti semitic and.... well, this is not a blog about the horrors of the world, is it? It is about trying to understand science. Of course the religious right say that Mathematics is the devils toy. And I have always felt that the Alphabet was Gods. And isn't science somewhere in between those two, or am I just trying to connect in order to make order? The alphabet is after all communication, not nature itself, although the Aleph was originally an ox head, and each subsequent letter represented some form or other of matter itself. Shin was like teeth. Dalet a door through which poverty could enter. Blah blah, it is Sunday and a day of regressing for me. I keep wandering off the One-Cup path.
I took a long walk in the Bronx today, Usually I avoid walking here, it is rather depressing and grubby, but today it seemed damp and not too cold when I started out, so I decided to find a coffee shop. I walked 12 blocks until I came to one, and by then it was sleeting and windy. I sat inside and read Einstein his Life and his Universe while drinking a cappucchino, sorry that is spelled wrong- I read how his wife got sick, how his children waited to see him and how he canceled his trip to visit them at the last minute. I read how he claimed his wife was faking her illness. And then how he himself got very sick... (We never know when our own errors toward others will come back to teach us a lesson...) While I read I could hear everyone around me speaking Spanish and for a little while it felt as though I lived in another country. Usually I feel as though I am on another planet but today it was merely that I was on holiday in Barcelona or something. On the walk home, I thought about Albert. How his hair was all wild. How he was known to be so gentle that he refused to even play competitive games. How he tried to start a peace movement during world war one but only one person joined. How basically isolated he was, despite his many friends. In this way I pacified myself regarding his indifferent parenting, and I felt enormously connected to him again, even though he was one of Gods great geniuses and gave the world so much and I am a simpleton who merely watched it all through blurred vision.

A Fat Person on the Couch Theory

I spent an hour going thru other blogs and was horrified to see so many, so much religious babble, so many people writing about what they did and where they are on vacation and how old the baby is now. It is shattering to peer in to so many heads. My own blog here is daunting... surely it will never be read, only by me as I write it. And yet the desire to post my every little electromagnetic connection going on in my head is overwhelming... So to begin with, I must bark at Walter Isaacson for his occasional snooty description of Albert. I have read biographies before, and they are often superior sounding in the same way... Is it because the biographer is upended by the genius he is blogging or because of something else? "The proud little patent office man wrote to the eminent professor..." says Isaacson (and I paraphrase but that was the gist of it). In the book, Albert has just published his paper on the theory of relativity and Isaacson has just called him "Bitter" in so many words..."bitterly disappointed that no one paid any attention" says Isaacson repeating what Maja Einstein reportedly said of her brother... I mean talk about third hand information! Ok, so Einstein is bitter and then when Planck writes to him he is the "proud little man from the patent office". If that is not insulting I don't know what is. It is one thing to describe the anti semitism that crept in to the picture... I am using a lot of dots here, in my vague unsure way of showing my ambivalence about being critical toward Mr Isaacson. Its just that often the language sounds squashing. Proud Patent office man. Sort of diminishes Albert and his paper. Well anyway, this is the way biographers write. They DO diminish, in order for the reader not to be swallowed up perhaps. Maybe if they did not diminish their subject, the reader would feel small and insignificant reading about such flawless greatness. Perhaps the psychology of it is to show their baser human aspects, in order to make them palpable. Einstein, who discovered the make up of the universe, was a proud and bitter man who worked as a lowly patent office fellow. Nobody special...in fact, lots of people helped him and his wife might even have done the math for the theory. So don't feel bad, he was a conglomerate.
I am rambling. Not a good thing to do on a blog, what with all those millions of other blogs out there to compete with. After all, I have my audience to think of. My audience consists of me. I am the only one signed up for my blog. But it is not about OTHERS, it is about UNDERSTANDING. And last night I sort of understood the E equals M C squared thingy. I have never understood what it meant, and thanks to Walter Isaacson, I actually think I get it now. It used to be L equals V squared, which meant light is the same as velocity squared. Now admittedly, I still have trouble with the squared part, but I think it means times a lot. So energy in light is equal to mass speed times a ka-gillion. The bigger the mass, the bigger the energy contained. So I figure a fat person sitting on a couch is a ball of energy unreleased. This makes dieting and exercise much more understandable. If this is ever read, I suppose they will be shaking their heads in wonder at my simpleton-ness. Wow, that such ignorance is possible, they might say. But I think I do get it. I think I do.
It is the train that still stumps me. I was sitting in the Bronx yesterday on Broadway, outside a little tavern on a bench, when the subway went by above ground. I watched the train roar past, I considered myself at rest there on the little bench, and I pondered the theory. Who was moving, me or it? And I have to say no matter how I blurred my eyes, IT was moving and I was not. But on the train, a man looking out at me saw me disappear in the distance. I got up and shouldered my bag and my bag of groceries, and began the long trudge back to my apartment, humming a little tune about energy and velocity and feeling the very mass of me plodding along, expending. Was I walking toward my apartment or was my apartment coming to me? Again, I felt a certainty that it was I who was putting out the energy to reach the apartment and not the other way around.

Either Ether Or

Just a note to self here. Several issues I brought up and considered, I found when turning the page of Einstein his Life and Universe, were way off. In my small and dim-witted manner, I thought the Theory of Relativity to mean all space and time is relative. And almost two pages later the writer cautions "Einstein did NOT mean everything is relative. Nor did he mean everything is subjective..." and again I am paraphrasing, but I don't like to quote directly. Why bother? You can buy this book for 18 dollars at Boders or Banes and Nobe. I misspell them on purpose you understand. It isn't that I do not like them. I actually love both stores. But they have run the little bookshops out of business and so I feel they are not fair. If only they would share! It is interesting to note how every parent on the planet teaches their 2 year olds to share. "Now bobby let Timmy play with your truck" NO! "Bobby you HAVE to SHARE." Bobby screams. Timmy screams. "Either you SHARE or I take the truck away." Bobby and Timmy continue to scream. The parent removes the truck. "OK then no one gets to play with it," says the parent. And yet Boder and Banes & Nobe did not learn this. Actually no one learns this. At 2 years old, the child is forced to share, and the parent thinks they are "Teaching". But really all that has happened is the child has learnt resentment.
If Boders had one store in every state they would still make lots of money. And the same for Banes and Nobe. But they have to have a store on every block in every city. They have to be greedy. It is supposed to be the human condition. To be greedy we are told, is to be human. "Bobby you are being greedy. Time Out!" Bobby is sent to a space where time stops for him. He must wait until he no longer feels greedy. But this will never occur. He will discover instead to lie and pretend. He will learn the tricks of the trade. "Are you ready to share?" "yes" says Bobby. He is brought out of the warp and time begins again for him. Anyway, Timmy has gone home. Bobby sits by himself on the rug playing with his truck while his nose runs and his hands no longer love the shiny feeling of the fender.
Really this has nothing to do with Ether or Einstein. OR by the way, is the Hebrew word meaning Light. Let there be Or. Let there be either or. Either you understand this relativity or you will remain a dimwit through out all four dimensions. Einstein Einstein why hast thou forsaken me? If time is different depending on whether you are in a train speeding fast or on the embankment at rest (and god knows why it had to be an embankment....) then why is EVERYTHING not relative? Why is that not correct either? Einstein discarded the Ether theory and in that way discovered this relativity thing. I have to assume ETHER is in some way the passing of time... the blob we march through thru life. So that we can look back in to the ether and say "that happened..." and without that blob we have gone no where. Is THAT the ether? Or is that just time? How can discarding the substance invisible that holds all together bring about the theory of relativity? Einstein according to this book did not call it relativity. He called it the invariance. I had to look up that word to be sure, and it means "something that does not change under a transformation". Don't you love the way this sounds nonsensical? Like it was a word invented by a dimwit. Something that does not change under change. Ok. Like when I put anti aging cream on my face? I have changed the surface of my face but the skin remains the same, wrinkled and spotty. This then means my wrinkles are an invariant. Anyway, moving away from the Self here...
the invariance theory. The unchanging-despite-changes theory. One note here for those people who are actually concerned with aging, since I did bring up wrinkles. According to this book, if you remain on an airplane your entire life, you will have aged less than other people... exactly 5 seconds or something like that. Not all that much... But it's a start. On the other hand, I find airplane travel to dry out the skin and make me weary. So frankly, I don't believe that theory. It might have been made up by the airlines.
It was good old Max Planck who came up with the word Relative to describe Einsteins calculations. I don't know about you, but I just love Max Planck. I have loved him since I first heard his name... and with a reverence reserved only for those closest to God. He's the scientist who came up with the idea of the big bang. And what better way to describe the beginning and the end? the alpha and the omega? It's just as I wrote it in one of my novels "Old War Wounds". The heavens will copulate.....
Reading this book, I see how cozy it all sounds. Einstein and Planck and all the other scientists and mathematicians cozily coming up with information to change the globe. Just as Van Gogh and all the impressionists were chumming around together in France coming up with all the great art of the era. Or how the writing gang were all one herd of great writers...
In a way relative and invariance are similar. A relative, say your child, is from you yet not you. You have changed yet you have not changed into something other than human. Something that does not change under change. Well maybe it is a stretch. Like Ether... ether was considered a stretchy substance.
Walter Isaacson wrote this biography of Einstein. He also wrote a biography of Benjamin Franklin, another illuminated one who came to earth to bring about great change in this invariant place we reside. Benjamin Franklin brought with him the printing press and the theory of electricity, which helped greatly when Einstein arrived. Benjamin Franklin also helped establish the free country of America, which later brought Einstein over the waters to save him from Hitler and also to help make the bomb which could eventually take us all back to Planck Time. (see my unpublished novel Old War Wounds)

Ether continues, day 2

I am a simpleton. Unable to read more than half a page of Einstein at a time, I fall into adoration or irritation almost immediately. For instance, today on this rainy unusual january sunday, I open to the writer giving an analogy of light speed versus sound... the light would carry faster if the vessel was hurtling toward you at 10 miles an hour, the light would go ten miles an hour faster.. but the same is not true of sound... if a firetruck is racing toward you the sound does not carry any faster.... And I am of course paraphrasing here. But that can't be true. If a firetruck is half a mile away and screaming, you hear it faintly. If it is racing toward you, you hear it louder. is not LOUDER the very sound coming faster toward you? I say yes. But I am a simpleton.
The other issue I had in this brief reading is that the light would not actually be going any faster if it was in a vessel which was itself going ten or a million miles an hour. Despite the speed of the vehicle carrying it, the light would be going the same speed. the vessel would be also going, and how can one add them together and say one is the same as both? I suppose though, on reading it again, that the writer meant relative to an observer... In that case, how can one measure light at all? If it is coming from some THING then isn't the speed relative to the THING and not the light itself? If starlight travels at a certain speed, does it have anything to do with the stars movement? Well, since this has all been factored in and already figured out, I am a simpleton for wondering. It is as if a dim wit were asking me how I know one word on a page from another, if that dim-wit could not himself read. If I explained the word STEIN had four letters which each carried an individual sound and together made the word STEIN he could then say that NIETS was also the same word. Or EINST. And I would have to explain that only in ancient Hebrew mysticism was that a possibility, but otherwise LIVE is live and EVIL is evil and the two are not the same. "But what about Anna?" he might say. "Or what about Eve? What about, 'a man a plan panama'"? The dim-wit has a point. Nothing it seems is absolute or without variables and exceptions to the rule. Does this mean then, that the theory of relativity, which I do not understand at all, is possibly with its own exceptions?
I have not read the whole book yet, obviously, but I already had formed an opinion of Albert Einstein long before I began it. Several years ago it occurred to me that "universe" is a compound word One Verse. Einverse in half German. And Paradise is pair a dice. and that while making things secretive and hidden so that only the chosen few could figure it out, the master architect threw in the letter H to mix it all up when in fact H is rarely sounded. The Cockney English knew this from way back. But we persisted in believing it was an essential letter. Any brickie in the British Isle could tell you Hell was Ell and Heaven was Even.
Simpleton as an anagram by the way is limp stone, which is how this is sounding. Limp and without form. Formless and without meaning. This is what I meant yesterday when I mentioned my ability to write compellingly was lost in the ether..Which brings me back to UNIVERSE. one verse. One. won. pair of dice. Even. a long list of words which coincidentally all sound like they are part of a game. Alpha and Omega as an anagram is Oh Plaa Game. But how does this relate to Einstein? He said "God does not play dice with the universe". Then with what DOES he play? a deck of cards maybe. Would he have a full house? Would he lay down a pair of aces? Would He always win? And we his fold. Did he fold when he got us??? Afterall, he's got the whole world in his hand. But what has this to do with the theory of relativity? Theory comes from the root Theo, meaning of God. Theology and all... and relativity must be relative, which is relation, kin, cousin. So the theory of relativity is nothing more than the understanding of our relationship to God. our lineage. Atom and Adam. Which leaves Ether...or that which we cannot see but is there, that which is solid but allows matter to pass through. The veil. or if you are the dimwit, the anagrams that are made from it.
It is obvious that the average person cannot fathom Einstein. I take his name and mix it up, his words and break them down to simple things. This is a poor attempt at learning science. To lead it like a sheep back to magical properties and code words for supernaturals. But today when I read that Einstein imagined two bolts of lightning, one striking point A and one striking point B and a person observing in the middle that both hit simultaneously... and then another observer on a fast moving train just between the points seeing the lightning strike point B first and then point A, thus making time relative. That there is no absolute, is what the deduction was...But I say if a timer put in both striking places measured the exact moment of impact, then whatever the observers saw was irrelevant...the timers would say whether the impacts were simultaneous or not. Afterall, if a person with 20 20 vision saw something and a person with poor vision saw the same thing, one would describe it differently but it would not make the object two different things, it would merely mean that one person had lousy sight. or would it mean that the object truly was two different things? Is lousy sight not really lousy sight but instead ALTERNATE sight? a different sort of sight? Maybe the world actually is blurry and at first we correct that and after we get older we stop bothering to correct that and begin to see it for what it really is...blurry and without all that glorious detail? maybe we grow closer to reality rather than farther from it. But this is impossible to know. As impossible as Einstein's calculations are for me to comprehend. Although sometimes I think I do, and sometimes they seem as simple insights... but of course that too is impossible.

Without Ether

it is difficult to understand science. What does velocity in a container mean? How can a measure be taken of something invisible? And why have I become so stupid? Believing in magic rather than logic, rather than science. But how can one believe in something one does not understand? It is easier to understand that several superhuman-whatevers are making things happen. That they are the great discoverers and artists of the world. That they steal the good ideas and turn them in to their own. That they keep me from success. Now of course, success is impossible. I cannot win now, I have become dumb. I have lost my talent and my ability. I am blind and lonely and without. Ein.
Once I saw the world and described it in piercing detail and understanding. Once I knew how to translate the mundane in to the essential. It grieved me so to lose that. But now I am content again. I eat my chocolate bar and drink my caramel color aspartame. I sew a doll blouse and watch television shows for hours on end. And sometimes, if creativity bangs against my teeth like chattering, I make a video of the television shows I am watching. In this way, my afterlife drifts onward, through the ether.
There is no ether. That was discovered in 1887, by two fellows who got named after the non-existence of it. Originally, the greeks thought Ether was a substance through which matter could plow through but electromagnetic waves could not. Or something like that. I am too ignorant to understand the concept of ether, let alone that in 1887 it was discovered to be not there. In fact, Einstein used this fact of not being there to do something even more important, though what that was I cannot tell you as I grow dimmer with the very mention of his name. I know that Albert is a pen name for God. I know Ein means Without because of Ein Sof, which means without number, or without end (in Hebrew). I know Ein means without and that Stein is a mug in German, and means Stone too, but I think it means Stone only because Stone was Stein until going through the gates of Ellis Island where the authorities changed Stein to Stone as it was easier to pronounce. So in that way, Stein does not mean Stone. Stein means cup, or vessel. Chalice if you will. This is the stupid human talking of the brilliant Albert Einstein. Al Ein Ein really, if you take out the S and the T. Or if you say Es Tee within without. Because ST is within the two words without. That would also be correct. Albert ST within-without. or you could see ein as the german word for ONE. ein svi dri fear feef zex zeaven ocht nagen teen. His name then becomes albert one-cup. Kind of gives him a native american feel.
You can see how I spend my days, can't you?
Long time anagramming and sitting chewing my lower lip. It is a reaction to hell. Its possible that this is not hell, that this is like, purgatory, or near-hell, or hells-kitchen rather than hells formal dining room, where the real torture goes on. Here is painful and sorrowful beyond your wildest imaginings, but who am I to say it is the worst?
I am nobody, thats who. And even in my dim-witedness, I know that is a line from emily dickenson. I'm nobody who are you? Are you nobody too? People recite that and find it cute or funny or even trite and abysmal, but I find it tragic and telling. She must have been tormented like me. At least she was able to write all the time. At least she had that.
I have no friends, no life, no purpose, no job, no love, no hope, no family, and even so they won't let me write. they took my tender bloody lifeline thingy, that corpussel or artery thing that connected my eye to my heart and my heart to my brain and they bashed it flat. I access it, but it is flat and often nonsensical, and always sad.
they stole my humor. even while god was telling me the funniest things I had ever heard in my life, they sucked my irony wire, my visionary comic tragedy, and my magnetic loop right out of me. I no longer attract. The irony now is all religious. I no longer am even visible.

A Blog of Original Fiction, poetry, videos, clothing/lampshades, and art work

Hello from the other side! This site is being constructed and will be up and running shortly. I will be posting my original work.