Less is more

The more we learn, the less we know.

WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic

Random probability

"Tell everyone you know: "My happiness depends on me, so you're off the hook." And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they're doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel - and then, you'll love them all. Because the only reason you don't love them, is because you're using them as your excuse to not feel good."
 - Esther Abraham-Hicks
transcend  Read more…

"Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organized structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond.

We make our living by catching electrons at the moment of their excitement by solar photons, swiping the energy released at the instant of each jump and storing it up in intricate loops for ourselves. We violate probability, by our nature. To be able to do this systematically, and in such wild varieties of form, from viruses to whales is extremely unlikely; to have sustained the effort successfully for the several billion years of our existence, without drifting back into randomness, was nearly a mathematical impossibility.

Add to this the biological improbability that makes each member of our own species unique. Everyone is one in 7 billion at the moment, which describes the odds. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surfaces of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You'd think we'd never stop dancing."
 - Lewis Thomas
Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
running after my hat  Read more… 

 

Chaco Canyon

Anasazi creation stories echoed on the wind.

In the Plains Indian culture, Trickster is the bad news messenger capable of speaking any known or unknown language. The Trickster is vain and deceitful, obsessed with sex, loves to make pranks, falls in and out of trouble and always recovers their stasis. Trickster taught me Keres, the language of the Pueblo, the middle heart space between earth and sky.

Languages are my specialty. Lost tongues.

Down in the southern province of Suhag in Egypt where King Scorpion lived 5,300 years ago I worked with archeologists discovering clay tablets recording taxes on oil and linen; a special material ancient Egyptians considered ritually pure under the protection of the goddess Tayt. The hieroglyphics, line drawings of animals, plants and mountains revealed stories of economies and commodities.

In Nevali Cori we found 9,000 year old shards of pottery depicting dancers.

“These images,” said a team of metaphorical diggers, “reveal a fictional common ancestor created as a way to integrate their community.”

A camel hairbrush cleaned pottery shards. “Anything else?”

“Well,” said one digger on his hands and knees, sifting dust, “we surmise these images established a collective discipline in their community. See how the figures are holding hands? What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space,” said Omar.

Down washed out rocky New Mexico roads sixty miles from Aztec is Chaco Canyon. It is twelve miles long and one mile wide. It is a complex Anasazi Pueblo culture community nation from mid-800 until a fundamental shift left it abandoned around 1115 due to overused land, a lack of trees, drought, and failing crops. It was the social and economic center of life, an American Cradle of Civilization in the San Juan Basin. Their physical wheel of life reflected the pueblo worldview.

They were master builders constructing stone villages and six large pueblos of multiple stories with rooms larger than previously known. They began with simple walls one stone thick using mud, mortar, rubble, and the veneer of facing stones. Later they used large blocks of tabular sandstone chinked with smaller stones set in mortar and later covered with plaster.

The largest of the big houses is Pueblo Bonito 800-1200, four stories high with 600 rooms and 40 kivas. A kiva is a sacred religious area, a circular room without windows with a smoke hole at the top where the men of the village would climb down a ladder to sit, smoke, and share history and legends. There was a raised stone bench reserved for the “Speakers.”

Once a year to prepare for the Earth Renewing Ceremony, the Masked God Society would whitewash the interior walls of the kiva and repaint sacred symbols on the interior stone pillars.

Chetro Ketl, dating from 1020, had 500 rooms and 16 kivas with a large plaza. Ketl had a great kiva and remnants of carved birds, prayer sticks, arrows, and discs.

Pueblo del Arroyo had 280 rooms and 20 kivas. The Kin Kletso Pueblo, built in two stages around 1125 had one hundred rooms with five enclosed kivas.

Chaco was an advanced social and trading hub. Raw turquoise was imported from distant mines. People made necklaces, bracelets and pendants. Seashells, copper bells, and the remains of macaws and parrots suggested they traded with Mexican cultures, perhaps the Toltec.

Chaco Canyon was a spiritual center. Journeys became pilgrimages. Residents were in direct contact with elemental cosmos life: mountains, clouds, thunder, air, earth, and sun. They were connected with mysterious truth and beauty.

At one time 10,000 people lived in 400 surrounding settlements. They developed 400 miles of engineered and planned prehistoric roads connecting their communities. 

A Century is Nothing

Practice

My body.

My breath.

My practice.

Leaving early

On September 1, 2001, Mr. Point was wedged next to the window of a puddle jumper flying over the Cascade Mountains. Next to him in economy was an overweight happy couple anticipating their future first class flight to London out of Georgia. Ten days before people on, from and inside cells placed long distance calls from caves.

“We own a travel agency. We’re meeting friends,” said the wife, an alcoholic, “and then,” her husband chimed in, “we’re sailing down the Danube for a week, drinking good wine and enjoying the food. I’d like to go to Costa del Sol. I’ve heard the culture is wide open, if you know what I mean,” rubbing his secret jewels and winking to the stranger.

His spouse wore enough jewelry to feed Bangladesh. Their combined girth was conspicuous consumption. They exceeded their weight limit. The scales of justice were balanced in their favor as they spilled wealth.

“What do you do for a living?” her husband asked.

“My friends call me Mr. Point. I work for The Department of Wandering Ghosts Ink. 24/7,” he said with a straight face. He was a survivor, Vietnam 1969.

“Busy, busy, busy,” he laughed. “Yes, I am a mercenary of love, an unemployed fortune teller if you must really know. You might remember me from the Academy of Pain and Anger Management if you have a need to know. If your top-secret security clearances are valid. The more you know the less you need. 

“I’m heading to Morocco to meet my female nomad lover and extraneous fascinating strangers. Here’s a dirty little secret. One of our classified missions is the Extraordinary Rendition Program, allowing intelligence agencies to transfer suspected terrorists to various friendly foreign countries for interrogation and torture. We use Gulf Jet Stream jets based in South Carolina operating under fake companies.”

The shadow of Little Wing, a weaver, passed them.

“If they don’t talk to us our friends start by removing their fingernails. If that method doesn’t get ‘em talking they boil them alive. We chain them to walls and play ear splitting rap or country music twenty-four hours a day to drive them crazy. Stale bread and rancid water. A grisly business, but hey, it’s a paycheck.

“We also set up off shore accounts for clandestine agencies, or fronts if you will. We collect raw opium in Afghanistan, process it in Asian labs so street addicts get their fix. Along the way we collect Chinese harvested internal organs and upright pianos to sell in Hong Kong. The market is diversifying. Pick em’ up and lay em’ down. No women or kids. We have to draw the line somewhere, eh? Business profit has never been better. Ain’t nothin but the blues baby.”

They cut him off after this truth.

His one-way air ticket to Morocco and Spain promised another road, village, town, city, country and continent offered simple psychic potentials. The KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, principle. Just leaving was a wise decision as it turned out. Speaking of history.

“Beyond, beyond the great beyond,” he’d whispered to someone, somewhere on the spinning rock when they asked him where was he was going and why he did what he did with the who, when, and howdy doody yankee doodle dandy stick a feather in your cap crap paradigms.

A Century is Nothing