Chapter 1 

Talking with Ull produced exquiste defenses in myself that I used for other social purposes. He would speak as though you were nothing but a blank piece of paper. He used his hands frequently and even if he let you say something he'd run over what you said with aplomb.

"Even a young guy has participated in a few archetypal situations!" Ull was saying. And then he ticked them off one by one without an explanation.

• a medieval hermit
• a father in suffering joy
• a man concerned for the well-being of all life he sees
• a lover broken by his love
• a stranger in the middle of a group
• a man of appetite
• a man of ideological swagger
• a man rejected by the world
• a man rejected by the devil
• a dreamer who brings all things into the plasma of his dream
• a scientist manipulating objects under a method
• a man in prayer
• a man in nature
• a man in fear
• a man of the Earth

"Societies, like people, dream and become disillusioned; refashion dream from some obscure opportunity and move toward this opportunity with vengeance. Where opportunity does not yet exist, the dreamers step forward.

Notice that there are two types; the social person who surrenders to convention and opinion and the psychological person who abstracts everything in himself to protest the conventional, to gain a kind of supercilious personal identity. It may be necessary. But that base was a common one for both types. The desire for power or, even, the desire for immortality. The conventional type surrenders to objects of convention believing them to extend into the future where his or her personality re-enacts itself through the convention. The psychological person surrenders to advance thought believing the same thing. And believes a kind of equilibrium in the present is a kind of immortality."

"I want to be free of all this," I said. "My first loyalty is to my creative spirit and that finds its fullest expression in making language speak out the powers, pains, and joys of having a spirit. It works in conjunction with an ineffable opening spirit that best goes unnamed."

"Certainly your greatest desire is to compress and compel experience toward a healthy future by opening up knots of obstruction that keeps the streams of nature damned up, concealed, and riddled with demons of every sort. Oh these frustrated human beings! Here in late 20th century with all its expansive techniques and its variety not able to consummate even one desire to bring life up to its ripe and profound richness!"

"With study I take a bath in pools with shadows and glint of sunshine through the leaves, over the water."

"Youth discovers in the nick of time it is cursed with a double-nature swimming off in opposite directions and if he isn't careful will simply obey the desires of other people.

A nation created out of thought expects its adventuresome types to experiment; many failures and successes will follow, at the end of which comes understanding that will bring on more experiment, further experiment will bring on more failures and success, more understanding to the end of time. The paternalistic equation says, "material growth = freedom." Only a nation filled with refugees and immigrants filled with sentimental souls would believe in it. You can detect the bitterness in their voice as you can with orphans. What other nation started with a thought? A thought conscious of itself as a thought. A thought at the end point of experience."

I couldn't argue one way or the other. Ull had obviously spent time thinking on these things. He was trying to convince me of something that eluded me. Society was a simple thing for me. It would see me die at some point and move on. It would put some demands on me and make me laugh from time to time. Ull had an ulterior motive as if he were using me to test out ideas he had cooking. I knew enoguh about the society to realize that his ideas were useless but I didn't tell him that.

David Eide
January 24, 2014