Chapter 1 

Ull wanted to tell me his theory of consciousness late one night as we watched a baseball game on a small black and white TV propped up on a leather chair. "The first fact is motion. After this fact the other facts are merely pleasurable. First, the motion of the mind in its first act of discovery. Next fact is the motion of the Earth in rotation and in orbit around the sun. This fact leads to a pleasurable sense when contemplating the facts that exist on the surface of the planet. Next fact: The motion of all the planets, the sun, the galaxy, the universe itself as a whole in and for itself, expanding, all these motions simultaneous and in concert and with mystery on mystery. Next fact: Distance followed by the treasure of discrimination. The universe takes on the form of a cube with the eye in the center, able to carry in it depth and the relation that creates depth.

One imagines the Earth, then, suspended and suspended not on or by anything substantial but a play of forces. For the sake of perception one imagines the light years below the ground one is standing on, the light years above and to the sides and the fact that science and probing make things tenuous. There is a strange and liberating feeling to construct the universe from the "big bang,"to the expansion. And finally, isn't it true that religions are society and static while science is individual and therefore progressive and adventuresome?" I answered him, "Well Ull you seem to know more about this than I do."

"I traffic in facts, I am a fact-finder."

"

"Playfulness exists to fend off a society that doesn't want the mind to get too far out of hand; so it doesn't divulge too much. And the rest is a sorry tale!"

"Have you noticed Ull how the women compete? It is a hard thing to watch."

"Oh women, let them go. They have their own destiny, don't worry about it."

"But if women are competing like the men where will wisdom come from? Wisdom that is credible to the kids at any rate?"

"In America only the well-made thing is wise. It can be a giant, rolling an inflated ball around in an enormous field grinning madly and childishly at all the intracies crushed below. And then it sulks and goes mad another way. Wisdom can retract the claws of the animal; the politics in things. We don't give up on America. It is just something "in you," and you either find out what it is "in you" or else surrender the beauty of it to the sighing thugs. Or else throw ones loyalty in the direction of a rather heinous sort of authoritative state. Why do you need women if you understand this?"

"But isn't woman protector of the soul? What happens to the soul if women, as women disappear?"

"Don't call it soul! That's a discarded word thrown around by nineteen year old singers. It is a mysterious word. What is important are the visions and dreams generated spontaneiously within the whats-its-name. It is not a room where items enter identified by desire. What-it-is doesn't like sentimentality and is explicit. In speaking ambiguously about this-thing we defer to its infinite variety. But here is a problem. What-it-is has a long history, it has attained an identity now in service to a will in love with techique and power. The identity sports with thatthing. Ah, the intellect see's its own death and forms images of itself where it can! The other-thing understands eternity and so forms images of past and future!

Men are nuts in this way too: They look down a narrow tunnel when viewing the accomplisments of their ancestors. They repeat mistakes until something rears up out of control like a scientific monster. And once the monster is out there is re-awakened within human beings the "choice that wasn't made." Evil pursues.

David Eide
January 24, 2014