Love is Metaphysical Gravity

Buckminster Fuller,

From Critical Path:

          Since 1927, whenever I am going to sleep, I always concentrate my thinking on what I call "Ever Rethinking the Lord's Prayer." The Lord's Prayer had obviously been evolved by a plurality of deeply earnest and thoughtful individuals whose names we will never know. My latest rethinking of it follows.

          I am confident, contrary to the Russian assumption that science invalidated all possibilities of the existence of God, that, as specifically argued, my following declaration constitutes a scientifically meticulous, direct-experience-based proof of God.

                    EVER RETHINKING THE LORD'S PRAYER

                    July 12, 1979

                    To be satisfactory to science

                    all definitions

                    must be stated

                    in terms of experience.

                    I define Universe as

                    all of humanity's

                    in-all-known-time

                    consciously apprehended

                    and communicated (to self or others)

                    experiences.

                    In using the word, God,

                    I am consciously employing

                    four clearly differentiated

                    from one another

                    experience-engendered thoughts.

                    Firstly I mean:--

                         those experience-engendered thoughts

                         which are predicated upon past successions

                         of unexpected, human discoveries

                         of mathematically incisive,

                         physically demonstrable answers

                         to what theretofore had been misassumed

                         to be forever unanswerable

                         cosmic magnitude questions

                         wheretofore I now assume it to be

                         scientifically manifest,

                         and therefore experientially reasonable that

                         scientifically explainable answers

                         may and probably will

                         eventually be given

                         to all questions

                         as engendered in all human thoughts

                         by the sum total

                         of all human experiences;

                         wherefore my first meaning for God is:--

                         all the experientially explained

                         or explainable answers

                         to all questions

                         of all time--

                    Secondly I mean:--

                         The individual's memory

                         of many surprising moments

                         of dawning comprehensions

                         of an interrelated significance

                         to be existent

                         amongst a number

                         of what had previously seemed to be

                         entirely uninterrelated experiences

                         all of which remembered experiences

                         engender the reasonable assumption

                         of the possible existence

                         of a total comprehension

                         of the integrated significance--

                         the meaning--

                         of all experiences.

                    Thirdly, I mean:--

                         the only intellectually discoverable

                         a priori, intellectual integrity

                         indisputably manifest as

                         the only mathematically statable

                         family

                         of generalized principles--

                         cosmic laws--

                         thus far discovered and codified

                         and ever physically redemonstrable

                         by scientists

                         to be not only unfailingly operative

                         but to be in eternal

                         omni-interconsiderate,

                         omni-interaccomodative governance

                         of the complex

                         of everyday, naked-eye experiences

                         as well as of the multi-millions-fold greater range

                         of only instrumentally explored

                         infra- and ultra-tunable

                         micro- and macro-Universe events.

                    Fourthly, I mean:--

                         All the mystery inherent

                         in all human experience,

                         which, as a lifetime ratioed to eternity,

                         is individually limited

                         to almost negligible

                         twixt sleepings, glimpses

                         of only a few local episodes

                         of one of the infinite myriads

                         of concurrently and overlappingly operative

                         sum-totally never-ending

                         cosmic scenario serials.

                    With these four meanings I now directly

                    address God.

                         "Our God--

                         Since omni-experience is your identity

                         You have given us

                         overwhelmingly manifest:--

                         of Your complete knowledge

                         of Your complete comprehension

                         of Your complete concern

                         of Your complete coordination

                         of Your complete responsibility

                         of Your complete capability to cope

                         in absolute wisdom and effectiveness

                         with all problems and events

                         and of Your eternally unfailing reliability

                         so to do

                         Yours, Dear God,

                         is the only and complete glory.

                         By Glory I mean

                         the synergetic totality

                         of all physical and metaphysical radiation

                         and of all physical and metaphysical gravity

                         of finite

                         but nonunitarily conceptual

                         scenario Universe

                         in whose synergetic totality

                         the a priori energy potentials

                         of both radiation and gravity

                         are initially equal

                         but whose respective

                         behavioral patterns are such

                         that radiation's entropic, redundant disintegratings

                         is always less effective

                         than gravity's nonredundant

                         syntropic integrating.

                         Radiation is plural and differentiable,

                         radiation is focusable, beamable, and self-sinusing,

                         is interceptible, separatist, and biasable--

                         ergo, has shadowed voids and vulnerabilities;

                         Gravity is unit and undifferentiable

                         Gravity is comprehensive

                         inclusively embracing and permeative

                         is non-focusable and shadowless,

                         and is omni-integrative;

                         all of which characteristics of gravity

                         are also the characteristics of love.

                         Love is metaphysical gravity.

                         You, Dear God,

                         are the totally loving intellect

                         ever designing

                         and ever daring to test

                         and thereby irrefutably proving

                         to the uncompromising satisfaction

                         of Your own comprehensive and incisive

                         knowledge of the absolute truth

                         that Your generalized principles

                         adequately accommodate any and all

                         special case developments,

                         involvements, and side effects;

                         wherefore Your absolutely courageous

                         omnirigorous and ruthless self-testing

                         alone can and does absolutely guarantee

                         total conservation

                         of the integrity

                         of eternally regenerative Universe.

                         Your eternally regenerative scenario Universe

                         is the minimum complex

                         of totally intercomplementary

                         totally intertransforming

                         nonsimultaneous, differently frequenced

                         and differently enduring

                         feedback closures

                         of a finite

                         but nonunitarily

                         nonsimultaneously conceptual system

                         in which naught is created

                         and naught is lost

                         and all occurs

                         in optimum efficiency.

                         Total accountability and total feedback

                         constitute the minimum and only

                         perpetual motion system.

                         Universe is the one and only

                         eternally regenerative system.

                         To accomplish Your regenerative integrity

                         You give Yourself the responsibility

                         of eternal, absolutely continuous,

                         tirelessly vigilant wisdom.

                         Wherefore we have absolute faith and trust in You,

                         and we worship You

                         awe-inspiredly,

                         all-thankfully,

                         rejoicingly,

                         lovingly,

                         Amen.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Old Blue

This Byrds song from the album Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde, released after the seminal country-rock progenitor Sweetheart of the Rodeo, is a psychedelic rock-tinged country song that jubilantly celebrates the life and death of (presumably Roger McGuinn's) old dog, "Blue".

My childhood dog, a basset hound named Opie, died this year. He was very old, and in a lot of pain.

I've been listening to this on repeat for an hour. Not only is it simply a great song, but in this video you can see why Roger McGuinn has been called a workaholic by various other musicians. (That means he's addicted to workohol). Look at his eyes when he's singing harmony around minute 1:20--he's completely locked in, and he looks so happy.

"Well, I had an old dog and his name was Blue
Yes, I had an old dog and his name was Blue
Well, I had an old dog and his name was Blue
Bet ya five dollars he's a good dog too

Old Blue chased a possum up a holler limb
Blue chased a possum up a holler limb
Blue chased a possum up a holler limb
The possum growled, Blue whined at him

Bye bye, Blue
You good dog, you
Bye bye, Blue
You good dog, you

When old Blue died, he died so hard
He shook the ground in my back yard
We lowered him down with a golden chain
And every link we called his name

Bye bye, Blue
You good dog, you
Bye bye, Blue
You good dog, you

My old Blue was a good old hound
You could hear him hollering miles around
When I get to Heaven first thing I'll do
Is grab my horn and call for Blue

Bye bye, Blue
You good dog, you
Bye bye, Blue
You good dog, you"

Pedal Steel

Charles Olson - Mayan Letters

Mayan letters; by Charles Olson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a fantastic little volume. What an amazing undertaking--to try to wed correspondence, poetry, history and archaeology in one push! What stands out for me (as in The Maximus Poems) are Olson's gestations on the idea (his words) of "destroying historical time", and how he sees the successes and failures of that charge in Pound's Cantos and WC Williams' Paterson. It comes as no surprise that Olson cites the assertion of Pound's ego in The Cantos as being crucial to its success: "...of the Cantos, viz, a space-field where, by inversion, though the material is all time material, he has driven through it so sharply by the beak of his ego, that, he has turned time into what we must now have, space & its live air..." He goes on to draw the distinction in the operations of Williams' Paterson thus: "the primary contrast, for our purposes is, BILL: his Pat is exact opposite of Ez's, that is, Bill HAS an emotional system which is capable of extensions & comprehensions the ego-system (the Old Deal, Ez as Cento Man, here dates) is not. Yet by making his substance historical of one city (the Joyce deal), Bill completely licks himself, lets time roll him under as Ez does not..."



Fun, as always, to wade through Olson's prose, stuttering as it may sometimes, be, with all those, commas. What is with that? In his poetry he uses it to his advantage, as the diligent pausing, retreating, retreading, and reforging of a probing intellect, but in his prose it can just be laborious. Doesn't stop me from giving it five stars, though!



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