:-p

do you remember HS chemistry class? of course it MUST have been updated since back in the day, but... remember the model of the atom, with protons and neutrons forming the nucleus, and the electrons zooming in orbit around in the 'electron shell'?  remember how we learned that there was space even btwn these sub-atomic particles?  well, when i learned that i realized that this was how superman (from the 40's/50's tv show) could, in theory, pass thru solid walls - because of the space that existed between the molecules, atoms, and sub-atomic particles both in superman's body and in the 'solid' object thru which he passed...  well, we also learned how every atom vibrated, and that the frequency of the vibration was directly proportional to the increase (decrease) in temperature... for a long time i thought about these things, especially about the vibrational energy of the universe...

well, along came String Theory > which postulates that the entire universe is made up of vibrating strings... which made me thing of sonic vibrations, and pitch... which caused me to flash on that character from walt disney's 40's movie "Fantasia", where sonic vibration was actually a character... and so now i think of the entire universe as comprised of music -- singing to me/us.... almost all sound has pitch for me, in particular things with regular vibrational frequencies, like motors (which made car repair fairly easy, btw...) ...

which brings me to our old friend, Eckhart:

"the Unmanifested [Being] is not separate from the manifested.  It pervades this world... If you know where to look, you'll find it everywhere... Look for it in the silence, out of which the sounds come, and into which they return.  Pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds.  Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence... Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence.  Silence enables the sound to be.  It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, every word..." (p. 135-136)

"Just as no sound can exist without silence, nothing can exist without no-thing, without the empty space that enables it to be..." [peut-être le néant d'Ellul?] "... even inside every physical body there is far more 'nothing' than 'something'.  Even seemingly solid matter, including your physical body, is nearly 100% empty space, so vast are the distances between the atoms compared to their size. What is more, even inside every atom there is mostly empty space.  What is left is more like a vibrational frequency than particles of solid matter, more like a musical note..." (p 137)

So, Eckhart points towards the basis for String Theory - the theory from physics that has all the universe vibrating - no, SINGING - to you... 

how glorious is that?  God's ultimate love song... the love song that permeates all of us if we are open to it... and to the one i love, if u read this > and to you...

my friend, Ces, and i are having a discussion about adultery.  i am struggling with the idea that thinking sexual thoughts about someone is the same as doing them -- you know, the whole idea of intent... first degree murder/adultery and all...

Ces feels that what occurs in the mind, stays in the mind, although he admits it would be hurtful to find out that his significant other was thinking about other ppl... i am not sure how i would feel about donathan thinking about someone else...

i have worked so hard, since i was an adolescent going through puberty, not to think about any one in my sexual fantasies - everyone is always anonymous and pretty generically male or female... the theory being that if i was not thinking about anyone in particular, i was not having sex with anyone in particular, therefore there is no way it could be cheating.  now i am not so sure if that is a cop out.  the very idea of thinking about thinking about cheating might be the same as cheating.... this is making my head hurt.

perhaps it is as simple as - if there is someone in particular about whom i want to fantasize, there is an element of desire more than normal, and that would definitely invoke the prospect/propensity for cheating.  otherwise, if there is no one in particular about whom i want to fantasize, then there is no desire/opportunity to cheat...

but Ces insists that by acknowledging that sexual thoughts exist, accepting that they exist without judgement, and then moving on, he is not cheating.  he reminds me that a thought is just that, a thought, with no action behind it until an action is taken.  he says thoughts and emotions just happen and are; they come and they go, and should not be judged...

but i know what i think... and i am not so sure...

Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity

"At the end of the third century Christianity became fashionable.  But this presupposed a movement of elucidation, of general response.  In effect, theology, instead of being content to expound revelation, began to be interested in questions of all kinds and to do philosophy.  Thus it wanted, for example, to show a correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul, etc.  Discussing problems of the day was the price of success.  Success was achieved, but there then came what seems to have been the inevitable and tragic reaction that whereas the good news had been first published for its own sake with no concern for success, now ineluctably success brought, as always, a desire for it from which Christians were not exempt.  The only reproach that one can bring against them is that they were not aware of what was happening, namely, that society was inverting Christianity instead of being subverted by it."

Sunday after church in Perth Amboy, i went to see Christo's Gates in NYC... met my cousin, barb, at penn station, and we went uptown to 72nd street.  at first it is hard to see what the big deal is, esp when you come to any of the large entrances to central park - the Gates there are generally larger, more of them, and v. crowded with all sorts of folk milling about.  there are 'souvenir' stands of sorts, selling pamphlets and postcards etc, but at least those proceeds go towards a new york charity, and are not crass comercialism...

once you choose your pathway and walk into the park, you get a better sense of what is going on... not all pathways have the Gates, and the Gates are not completely along all pathways, rather, they are spread more organically throughout the 23 miles that they cover.  as we ambled through them, we decided to take a predominantly northerly course along central park west, mostly becz the buildings there are more interesting... and becz our pathway was chosen at random, we saw alot of v. cool things...

all around us were the typically driven new yorkers, going wherever they were going, with the Gates being merely 'window dressing' along the way.  then there were the tourists, who felt they 'should' see the Gates while they were in the city. finally there were those, of whom we were two, whose sole purpose was to view the Gates.  viewing is the wrong approach, it soon became clear -- it is so much more than viewing -- and yes, that is what all performance artists say, but it was abundantly clear in this case.

first, the park in winter is mostly brown mud, gray leafless trees, and white snow, all surrounded by gray/brown/brick buildings.  the orange of the Gates looks wonderful against this backdrop.  secondly, it is way cool to look at how the different ppl react to the Gates - what they say and do, and even which path they take through them. my cousin and i were ambling, most were city-walking, and some were even running.  some were taking pictures, some were looking around going "i don't get it"...

it was the 'i don't get it' crowd that really had me pay attn to what was going on around me, to see what there was to 'get'...  this made me think about gates as a metaphor, for things that close you in or open to you...and how the billowing fabric of the Gates let everything through, without obstacles, ebbing and flowing, coming and going... and when you saw the wind moving through some of the gates while the rest stayed still, that was very awesome too... the wind moves where it wills, and so could/should we...

as we walked up to 103rd street the park gets rockier and hilly-er...there are streams and stone bridges that become picturesque in the snow which i would normally not have seen... there is a miniature swedish chalet that houses a year-round marionette theatre we ran across that bears checking out on its own merits... standing on top of an escarpment, and looking back over the park, it was around 4:30 - the sun was down enough so that the park lay in a bowl of shadow, with patches of brown mud showing through the snow and trees, with the orange Gates swooping down the side of the bowl in front of us, running across the park, and up the bowl on the other side to the foot of a skyscraper - and at the v. top of this skyscraper the sun still shone on it, glinting off the windows as if they were ice....

that is what the Gates were about.