10,759. RUDIMENTS pt. 294

RUDIMENTS, pt. 294

Making Cars

Even as a kid, I was never

convinced of Reality being

real. I felt events could be

influenced and changed. I

used to have a theory that

if I could 'picture' something,

I could make it happen. These

are outlandish ideas, even

though currently people make

millions from them in the

vast totemic industry now

arisen, as 'self-help.' Books,

lectures, New Age recordings

and pep-talks. Crazy as ever.

When you come right down

to it, I was crazy as a loon.

One day I was thinking about

x-ray vision  -  from Superman

comics or something  -  and

I realized all you'd see was

bones, nothing at all to do

with seeing girls beneath

their clothing. See what I

mean? Talk about 'if I could

picture something.' I was part-

time idiot and full-time jerk.

Mostly. I wonder how much

of it was like that for others;

I never knew.  My friend,

across the street, Donald, and

his brother, they had a treasure

trove that  -  once I found out

about it  -  bowled me over. I was

never a comics books kind of

guy  -  never liked the colors, the
way the cheap paper absorbed

and killed the tints and hues so

that your eye got the 'idea' OK,

better than black and white, but

without any semblance of a good,

book-quality paper. I didn't like

the words in thought-bubbles or

whatever they were called, and

the whole superhero thing, I felt,

was pretty lame. I always preferred

a book  -  Robinson Crusoe to the

Three Musketeers. Anything.

But, in their attic, these two guys,

on a large, planked open-floor

area, had a stash of probably

a thousand+ comic books. All

sorts, and many dates. At 7 cents

each, I think it was back then,

I guess it was pretty easy to get

a bunch of them going quickly.

Once we got into them, one

Summer, Donald and I were

gone. I think I read 600 comic

books that Summer. Maybe I

was 9, perhaps. I can't really

remember. There are writers

now, Brooklyn and New York

guys, like Jonathan Lethem,

who often weave this whole

comic-book reference thing

into their tales and stories of

those days. I've got to be honest

here, and say it never works for

me, comes off as lame and as

immature, and seems kind of

Mama's-Boy, Jew-Boy stuff from

1950's Brooklyn. It's the sort of

thing that's way to easy to make

work; carrying as it does half the

weight for the writer already, the

nostalgia, the innocent naivete,

the looking back without honor

or harm. Reading a comic book

is about as one-dimensional as

you can get. I stand by that, even

though I already know there's a

large cohort of people ready to

take arms in defense of today's

'graphic-novels' as they now

put it. Ho-Hum. Not for me,

thanks. I demand more.

-

In any case, I felt the need to

at least think I was in control

of what I wanted. It was all crazy

stuff. Like maybe I'd drunk too

much of that Jim-Jones kind of

Kool Aid that rips your head into

believing the old Walt Disney

Show crap about when you wish

upon a star, your dreams come

true. Sickly, cloying tune. The

realist within me wants to say,

'how'd they get away peddling

that crap to kids back then?' while

the other part of me  -  right-brain

hemisphere stuff  -  nods in a form

of intuitive advancement and

approval. The only thing my

childhood ever taught me was

that the most of what we see is

pure hokum  -  dumb effects, and

made up crap advancing a cause.

That's how reality is made.

-

Physicists these days - and I've

known a few through my time

at Princeton : they're a weird,

talkative lot, especially about

imponderables  -  would be none

too careful about filling me in

about the non-representational

aspects of reality; of things not

being what we think, or even

where we think they are. Rather,

by appearances here, they could

actually be there, or twinned with

another variant of themselves

being made manifest in another

location entire, and often with

an alternative outcome  -  some

rendered force of local color

having affected enough the

'realism' that comes forth. Shades

of being two things at once, all

of this. I think maybe this whole

thing can best be summed up with

that old adage about 'If a tree falls

in the forest but there's no one

there to hear it does it make any

noise? Today's answer might be,

'No one there to hear it? No tree.'

-

I grew up in a wasteland, and I

made it my own. I still claim

ownership to it. What it was 

was a post-logical way of thinking,

one in which I had to first convince

myself that what was underway 

was OK. I was never a 'normal' kid,

or at least not after the train wreck

brought me back from something

more or less indescribable and

without duplication. (Here's a rub:

Scientists often say that any form

of experimentation that cannot be

duplicated, laboratory conditions

or not, is invalid. I'll, right now,

take volunteers, thanks, for people 

to leap in front a train....). And

I'm not now a normal 'adult,'

by any conventional terms. The

weirdest and hardest thing right

now is to see how the leapfrog

effect has come into play  -  one

in which religion leapfrogs 

over science and then science 

over religion and then again 

and again. They keep trading 

places and end up pretty much

 the same. The unspeakable,

incontrovertible fact is that it 

all comes down to language. 

And even as a kid, I saw that. 

Werner Heisenberg said 

'Atoms are not things.' Neils 

Bohr said, 'There is no 

quantum world, only an 

abstract quantum description.'

The world only jumps into 

existence when we try to 

measure it. The conceit of 

Mankind is that, first, there 

is something to measure, and

second, that it presents its mass 

and matter to us willingly. That 

may be, but only because it first 

accepts our 'willingness' to 

believe. It doesn't really change 

anything in terms of what we 

call reality. When we want to 

find out where an electron is 

in space, its 'position' - we 

find it. It's a particle. When 

we then go to measure that 

particle's velocity in the 

cosmic-consideration we 

helplessly call 'space/time' 

we can't  -  it's a wave, an 

energy flow that doesn't 

coalesce into anything at 

all until we measure it. By 

all this the world exists? 

Nothing exists until we 

measure it, until then it's 

all potential. Only? So 

what is that table you're 

resting your things on 

anyway? You remember 

that comic-book x-ray 

vision thing I mentioned? 

Sure, she was a 'vision,' 

until I tried really seeing 

her. (To put it in comic 

book terms).

-

I hope that little bit helped. 

A Cornell University physicist, 

David Mermin, said : "We now

know that the moon is demonstrably

not there when when nobody looks."

In other words, observers create

reality by carrying out the act of

observation. Until we look for

it, it doesn't exist. At Princeton, 

a group of those guys were hard

at work with the Cern Accelerator

experiment, deep underground 

in Switzerland or Italy or 

somewhere. Smashing atoms,

or their evidences anyway, at

extreme velocities to break them

apart, to blow matter sky high, as 

it were, if it were. To find the

mysterious 'dark matter' of the

universe  -  which is the multiverse

out beyond our universe, where all

'things' have ended, but also have 

 not ever begun; and all that

exists is energy, the energy of

all possibilities, multiple versions

of everything that could, did, did

not, or could not, be  -  or its

alternative, not be. That, my friends,

we are finding, is 'God.' Every version

of every event. Past, and future, all

as one. They invited me to go there

with them (true story). Princeton 

has the accelerator for six months 

at a time every so often. Deep

underground in Italy, miles.

And miles of accelerator tubing

and velocity equipment too. I'd

have had to quit my job, or at least

get a six-month leave, depart

from home and family, and live 

there, with that group. Working
a bit with them, as crew-member
at the experiment-site. No

guarantees over what might 

occur. And after six months, 

it would be over. I'd have to 

re-integrate into my old society 

and ways, until maybe next

time. Maybe not. If I existed,

if I made it back. If anything

was really there anyway.