From conversations with Kathryn.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 14:08:51 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: of heaven and earth

On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Kathryn La Barre wrote:

> > Thought you might relate somewhat. Seems the issue is not so much
> > what you do and how you do it, but feeling connected. The scary
> > part of that for me is that I'm very much doing the wrong stuff
> > if what I'm supposed to follow is some kind of earthy connection.
>
> More please.

Most of the time when I get satisfaction from something it is
sort of off by one, it is through a membrane, slightly at a
remove. It's evident in the ironic tone I frequently take, the
humor that we talked about in relation to John P. Usually that is
with activities of an intellectual bent.

I like them in the way that they are abstract: my connection to
them is by will. I imagine that if they go away, my brain, being
extremely adaptable and perceived by me as an abstract platonic
thing will adjust and not have too much in the way of lasting
damage.

(I know this to be false in some ways, but it remains a thread in
how I interact with my activities.)

I privilege, in some fashion, these ethereal, brainy, network
development activities. I'm creating brain. It can be seen, but
it is there in some way.

At the end of the day, however, what do I have? I have a pulsing
network of ethereal stuff craving more, hungering, yearning. The
hunger will always be there because the network exists in an
abstract, dimensionless space. It will always grow, there will
never be any boundaries.

So, there's a connection, from an abstract me to an abstract
thing. Hard to grasp, hard to get the pulse.

An earthy connection, to me, is exactly that: it involves dirt,
it is the stuff that you can feel, in the way you physically
interact with it. In the way it can sometimes hurt you. For me
that's rock climbing, ceramics, physically intimate
relationships, smelling (yes, smelling) the outdoors.

That abstract space of heaven avoids the dangers of the physical
world (that cross over into the abstract world), but offers
little in the way of accomplishment and lasting satisfaction. It
does, however, protect me from the ugliness of place, like Gary,
Indiana or the cracks between buildings in cities, or the noises
of the great mass of humanity grinding the gears.

I'm addicted, without doubt, to feeding the hunger of the
heavenly world.

I fear both places, and the loss of either would be desolation,
but presumably there's a middle ground? How can I reshape the
earthly world without spending some time in heaven?