SERIOUS GRAVITY (A SANITY PRIMER)

  After falling asleep in his usual spot - ensconced underneath the juniper bushes near the steps opposite the library window on the south side, they brought old man Edgecomb back to the facility somewhat kicking and screaming. Eventually he calmed down. (Such forays to his favorite former place of higher learning were not entirely unusual.)  At the "positivity session" the next day he was adamant - I want it known that I have opinions - yes,  many many opinions - strong opinions - some might say harsh  opinions - yes, some of them, blunt,  old-fashioned, hard-wired, convictions that some of you would not like - if you heard me utter them out loud (ha, ha) - and i have learned over the course of many decades to bury those opinions, to keep them carefully wrapped up and held close to the vest,  to censure and self-edit myself as a survival strategy.... but now - just when i am at an age where i figure - hey why not - it's time to share these opinions wily-ni...

  At the Tuesday "positivity meeting" in the evening at the facility where the patients gather weekly in the dolphin room and Dr. Cressgold and Nurse Amanda pass the microphone to whomever wants to share with the group, the elderly Synderman (real name Przywara) was on a tear trying to explain his view of this, our perfectly just and orderly universe, based upon his understanding of infinite numbers of angelic intelligences working behind the scenes, rushing to and fro, working like dogs - as he never tired of saying, invisible, undetected, like so many clicking wheels or crickets chirping at some higher frequency, appearing and disappearing into momentary crevices in the space-time vortex - at various coordinates across the known universe, tweaking and repairing, calibrating and adjusting relations among entities so as to - in his words - "keep everything in balance..." These "friends" of ours - unbeknownst to us - are laboring tirelessly on our behalf - ...

 Before forgetting large portions of his previous life - Q had been an archivist - at the university -  collecting papers, artifacts, souvenirs, materials spanning the fields of politics, philosophy, psychology, sociology and theology... nowadays perhaps he would be labelled a hoarder - or at the very least a collector of papers - his concern was of course the problem of evil and suffering - of so-called failed or wasted life-spans - his method - to "connect the dots" and "map out all of the possibilities" of humans interacting with other humans...  Flash forward to the present time with Q explaining himself to Dr. Gregson about his preoccupation with the demographics of suffering - needing actual numbers and statistics on lives that end poorly... And Synderman his confidant - going on about the vision of clarity he acquired after his first stroke - travelling through the yellow tunnel and communing with angelic intelligences - We have no idea what labors are being ...

The doctor usually came in to the patient area happy, upbeat, humming a tune - saying how are my patients - my wonderful specimens - looking around at the usual crew, Q (real name Stanislas), Synderman (real name Pryzwara), Nurse Amanda, Xena ...But today...t he doctor sat in the lounge area of the waiting room, distracted, sipping water hastily from a cup, staring at the storm-drenched window as Q and Snyderman (whose name was really Pryzwara) played a silent hand at cards. Q could not but notice the disconcerted air on the part of the good doctor and intervened... "Rough day at the office - doc?" - "Well it should be fine... I apologize, should, be really... sorry... it's just this patient of mine - a sad case you might say..." - "Too many of those to speak of - these days - eh?" - "Yes...you might say that. Oh I'm not usually affected by the array of cases - strange you know that I should react this way..."  - "And what was his (o...

Life is still full of wonders, yes... and change is constant... the ebb and flow of fortune, clearly...  one cannot always see the big picture...... one scene gives way to another... from disparate scenes - our identities push through... and many do well in life...yes - and spend decades building and providing...working, toiling away, raising their families and finish with proud legacies...... but the vast spectrum of humanity... one cannot help but wonder about... the sad forlorn cases... ordinary anonymous folks who outnumber the few lucky ones...what is the NUMBER exactly of those for whom IT all proves too much - for whom IT ends badly... I would like some actual #s - the demographics of suffering...  because this is a stumbling block for.... that affirmation that one would like to have towards the universe... what are we to make of the sheer volume of all the sad cases... lives full of misery and regret... derailed careers, failed relationships, depression, despair......

  At the lecture from the previous day, the professor with the bow tie and the pointed loafers had said something to the effect of ...  " even granting for arguments sake - variables existing within the realm of appearances... liable to cause diverse perceptions and interpretations, and able to produce divergences in methodologies with regard to theories of knowledge currently in play, we arrive at a set of possibilities that can be mapped out comprehensively ..." That part which Q quoted verbatim in his mind was music to his ears -... The mapping out of possibilities to the nth degree... He seemed to have stumbled upon a kindred spirit... This professor had posited the A.M. as Absolute Mystery a.k.a. U.R for Ultimate Reality to cover all possible bases - pleasing to believers in God and non-believers alike... convenient for partisans of Natural Law, of Iron Fate, of Karma or Blind Chance, of Molecular Randomness, or Cosmic Evolution, of the Whimsicalities associated with Mul...

The flux of the mind continues - YES ... the feverish traffic of the brain, myself included ... we grant you this fact, Montaigne, so hold your horses - but also those deep obsessions - sources of continuity for me at least...  You have issues with Montaigne? The French guy?  Famous Skeptic, Stoic, Epicurean, nominal Catholic (very nominal and slack)... Inventor of the modern essay... All-around-"chill guy" -- Yes, yes, yes and more yes... He annoys you? Oh - he's so very relaxed all the time - isn't he? It's a pose you think? Well - how could it not be in part - writing during the wars of religion, living through the plague,  giving advice to kings, those episodes with kidney stones - and falling off his horse that one time - nearly died...  And? Oh - I don't know... the essays meander on for pages at a time...All those digressions - I have no idea what he's getting at half the time... So what is it? Well - he's the first hippie (philosopher) for star...

Standing on the steps of Stroud Hall,  the epicenter of the philosophy, philology, theology and anthropology departments @ the University of M_____ - the dapper professor in the bow tie and the pointed loafers, with a large tuft of miscreant white hairs wafting across his forehead - greeted us with a look of supreme confidence. His specialty - > that strain of deep thought referred to as natural theology - a conjoining of skeptical traditions (in philosophy) with mystical traditions (in theology) with the stated aim of reaching some absolute common ground between believer and non-believer; this man, so justly famous (among a select group of scholars numbering no more than 17) for his 897 page treatise on the Absolute Mystery -  a large umbrella concept meant to embrace the SET containing all possible speculations whether upon God or gods or higher intelligence/s, or cosmic underpinnings or  "Laws of Nature" or Mind/Matter dichotomies, overarching randomness, chance a...

 I t can be a wonderful thing to be a patient, because there at the hospital, the facility as we call it, @  people are there taking care of you; they tell you from time to time that things are "getting better," that a "cure" of sorts is in sight; there are other patients there to compare notes with. Such places can be inviting, or should i say, well-structured, living spaces with white walls, long corridors, vending machines, aquatic prints, fountains and garden paths; the food here is reliable if never delicious, the beds are high-enough off the ground, the ceiling lights adjustable. Coffee is available and with some effort kindred souls can be found here to converse with. That is encouraged in fact. And they promise people like ME field trips - to help jar the memory banks. Although I am quite old (as far as one can tell) I am suffering not from dementia, but from bouts of amnesia - i.e. having trouble holding all the episodes of my life together like a pack of c...

"How do things go wrong? How do calamities arise? ...And disasters... accidents...  common everyday mishaps...plans going off course... increasing of our human misery... there's a real level of stress - uncertainty - even terror involved...It is the terror of not knowing you see, what will happen next...b/c at any moment anything is possible... The pace of life nowadays - even in a backwater "bubble" such as this - traffic racing... kids riding faster on their bikes...The rush of deadlines... leading us on toward unexpected reversals of fortune...and like that - bam - a crash, an earthquake, an inferno... So what am I getting at you ask? Well - it's simple...We need a plan - a corollary to our intelligence quotient... something to carry with us, "something" to help us get by...There must be something to fall back upon...a sense of what is possible or impossible or most likely to happen or what we must do to avoid this consequence...So with our typical p...

  Q was taking one of his walks with Dr. Heinrich... and Nurse Amanda was there as well - seemingly appearing and disappearing at random intervals. He was trying to his latest theory about the sources of anxiety - and how "anything was possible at any time"...even in a placid backwater college town such as this one... we live with the dread and uncertainty of these infinite possibilities... You really think an earthquake could strike us, a volcano, a tsunami - aren't we safe from that sort of thing?" Nurse Amanda couldn't resist playing devil's advocate..."I don't just refer to the stress caused by one's current location - but the fact that earth as a whole is so vulnerable is still a stress factor....  Dr. Heinrich was overjoyed by the philosophical bent of the conversation. You're rehabilitation is proceeding splendidly ... you are a fine specimen. What an odd thing to say - Dr. H. was known for these little eccentric utterances that made h...

 Q had always said to himself - " You cannot find Enlightenment in a backwater. .." - but what place wasn't that - even within the college town of B_____  in which he had floundered for so many years... It's because in "backwaters" (towns, villages, suburbs - even large metropoles) so to speak everyone's concerns were so eminently distractible, time-bound, self-referential, fleeting, impermanent, driven by habit. In such places, there was no erstwhile mountaintop to climb, no desert to cross, no golden, mystical, oceanic shoreline to trek along - which is not to say that such exotic excursions were guaranteed to have the desired effect either.  Q had no intentions of making a long pilgrimage anywhere such as to Canterbury or a Buddhist  monastery in Nepal.  This town was filled with smart-enough folks no doubt, some even with a hint of spiritual knowledge -  experts resting on their little perches and pinnacles who made Q nervous and a good deal resentfu...

Q's  life fell apart on him at the very zenith of his career, back when he was a professor of Renaissance studies and official archivist of alchemical esoterica; it was in the wake of what became known on campus as the "le scandale de Vive" - a fleeting tragi-comedy which involved a modicum of good intentions,  some garbled miscommunication involving a troubled young soul, a sordid yet false accusation, formal inquiry ending with official demotion and blighted reputation; this needless and easily avoidable cosmic mishap sent Q 's previous good fortune into a tailspin, derailing both his career and his marriage and severing him from his daughter's love forever, the tragic aftermath of it all precipitating his nervous breakdown which gave way to subsequent years of despondency and embitterment, of generally being out of commission - years marked by days at a time of squatting in public lounge areas, staring out of windows, having fits  alternating between anger and ...

So many utopias that never come into being - these ideal scenarios with the power of logic behind them....A society operating on visions of order and harmony, shared wealth, distribution of goods and services, civility, morality, respect for the common good - a  world that simply moves on from outworn,  useless, backward practices, from inequity and injustice... the excising of stupidity and irrationality... One assumes: If such a world can exist in principle, on paper, it will exist, it must exist, it will come to be under the right conditions....when the stars and opportunities align...Logically speaking ....because what is to stop it? Why should fear alone impede the advancement of humankind? ....Looking around however - we see not utopias, but the ruins of various attempts... And with such consciousness, a  contrary notion asserts itself, namely that if such a place could truly exist, we would have already seen a successful form of it... something would have gained a ...

Growing up out west - we had what was known as the "endless summer" feeling - a moment in the summer when - not Time per se - but hectic, anxious, nerve-wracking time would come to a standstill. Change would still happen of course, things would continue moving, interacting, but at a slower, more predictable pace...the rhythms of summer would take over with sunny days giving way to balmy nights...a certain degree of repetition would lend structure to this seeming "pause" in the action...Clouds still move across the sky, waves still crash against the shore, traffic on the roads, people walking, biking, swimming - but all in a self-contained world over which one had some semblance of control..Long days at the beach, lying in the sun or playing tennis at the community college, watching the heat rise on the pavement, shooting baskets on the outdoor courts, sitting poolside at a neighbor's house, sitting on the lawn at dusk, staying outside on summer nights with no wi...