UAP As An Inexact Copy of Tasking

An Unworkable Classification System Based On Appearances Alone

One of the issues involved in anomalous experiential reports is the central issue this post highlights that of the enormous variation of forms and images observed in UAP reports.

All of which are surrealistic and inexact copies of common concepts held by our species.

That if one removes the binding identifiers of language and associative concepts,what is obvious is that we have many similarities to discrete identifiers ( humanoids, spaceships, angels, etc etc) that are incommensurable to a classical explanation yet we have a filing system that runs on appearances. If this were so, snow is separated from rain, fresh water from saline. etc. There would be no shared genetic material among species using this type of surface analysis. I am thinking of Arthur C Clarke's Second Law in terms of what this possibility of a unifying principle behind disparate images could portend in that he said "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

Shared Characteristics of UAP, Consciousness States and Latent Constructions

Four years ago, I complied a list of behavioral characteristics ( 15) that ( using just two out of many examples ) that are shared by UAP and classical ghost phenomenon. The only divisor is what they appear to be. yet they are not what they appear to be by combining classical physics with quantum physics.

In the latest version of a theory that unites the two versions of physics we have a new model of copying energetic information called “Constructor Theory” In other words, the universe is like a big book of tasks that can be copied in classical physics.

However in a quantum state an exact copy cannot be made which introduces uncertainty which is organised by the nature of the observer, a sort of general relativity of form and so, is it possible to make an inexact copy?  Consider this to be a parallel of a dream state whose experiential nature entangled with their observers have no task that could be equated with a waking state, much like UAP phenomenon.

In other words, I also see a correlation between the inner world of the human mind and the outer world of our environment , meaning that the sum total of information stored in the mind is not used to perform a task such as making a cup of coffee or eating a sandwich. The information selectected is chosen to perform a task. The same does not apply to UAP which does not follow the same copying pattern of selection of information by task rather it is randomly arranged by the access of an unlimited potential seen as extreme variability. There seems to be a lack of exact copying much as we experience in a dream state.

This tasking or what is allowed by the environment as a behavior can be copied, or used behaviorally as many times as required. In other words, we use this choice to manipulate physicality in a direct manner.

However the sum total of information  in the mind remains in a quantum state of latency. This reminds me of the nature of dreams which is similar to a quantum state, we cannot make copies of dreams in a classical manner of physics as a task to be seen outside of their environment  which is the mind ,which is in a latent state. On the other hand we can make inexact copies of dreams in translation and one wonders if the observer of both dreams and UAP share a common state that cannot be directly correlated to either the realities of the environment ( the possible) nor to the realities of dreams ( experiencing the impossible).

Perhaps then the UAP phenomenon could also have a key characteristic of being an inexact copy that bridges both the dream state and the waking state that has no task in the pragmatic sense, no purpose other than to be a representation as a projection.

An Autonomic Selection System

. A transient macro-quantum effect? The locality ( context ) of the environment and what is uncertain as to what is witnessed creates an inexact copy of what is anticipated that lasts only as long as a feedback exists which can vary as well as how widespread the consensus of anticipation lasts and it’s strength of force. Hence you have waves of types almost resembling the classical archetypes of Plato that evolve over time. A proverbial mold. I suspect this requires several environmental variables to fall into place like cuts ( geologic atmospheric and other energetic states ) in a key that must conform to the lock that precipitates the event, much like weather preconditions prior to rain  etc.

At best UAP perhaps can be characterized as "like or similar to .."rather than a discrete purpose that we embark on through our existence, full of latent possibilities without a transferable purpose. To be experienced as one would experience a dream whose tasking has no translatable activity to the classical world of physics that we inhabit. It may be a proverbial field of dreams whose appearances are based upon who happens to be looking, or for that matter, who happens to be interjected into such a energetic field.

What Do We Want?

The Word of The Day Is If...

Several times I have been at the edge of physical death whether it was a heart attack, two bouts of paralysis cancer or simply being frozen alive and I have have never had an issue with facing death but I have had an issue with life. I was watching some forgettable program about some marginal subject when an advertisement soliciting funds for children with cancer came on. Their innocence, courage and maturity struck me like someone had thrown ice water in my face to roust me from a stupor. Their situation was an encapsulation of a gestalt that revealed in me contradictory emotions of anger, depression empathy and worst of all a sense of deep injustice of not knowing much more than when I began this journey.

This background tension of something being off kilter has followed me all my life and while others have found rest in whatever they found or accepted, all this, as they say, has kept me on my toes in a sort of vigilance, perhaps it’s neurotic, or some sort of undiagnosed malaise

I also had the sense that this something was hiding in plain sight and for lack of a better way to describe this something would be a simple answer attached to a purpose for the suffering of others. What I had found in all my reading was that the answer is not on page 24 of a book and that most of it while marvelously well intentioned, appeared upon close examination to be in reality, elaborate rationalizations of the human situation as being one between stations, a proverbial ghost concreted in a sort of hopeful amber of misplaced rationality applied to an unknown, a profound X factoring.
In all this architecture as wonderfully wrought as human beliefs can be is what Arthur Lee wrote in his "Listen To My Song".."All it was was just a question in my mind, all it was was just a portion of my time.."
And the operand word is If.

Hence off into the shadows into the liminal the transience of what is only fleetingly observed, the frayed rips of consensus, looking for patterns, clues, hints and inference. The more the contingent patterns emerged the larger the questions became only they were simpler in their formulation. Why do I bother to write about this journey?

Because I suspect I am not alone in this. The bravery of every one of my fellow creatures is a silent reminder placed against irrevocable loss and hardship. This is one tough neighborhood in more ways than one.

I keep having the same dream over and over and over in about as many variations as you care to imagine. I am trying to get home and don’t have the faintest clues where home is. I get lost and caught up in elaborate detours and adventures, What am I doing? Looking for some kind of balm for this?

No.

Its a contradiction unlike any other. It’s lodged for the paranormalist between having a massive enough ego as an assumption we can figure this out and, on the other hand, acknowledging we no nothing and are open for suggestions.

We press on out of a simple necessity a sort of compulsion to turn every stone over to see what is hiding underneath them.

I recently has an experience concerning a photograph of a very clearly delineated ghost taken by a family member. Through the assistance of a fellow writer, it was sent off for analysis by a well known expert on such things. He said it was either an apparition or a hoax. What was I expecting? This robed cloaked figure with a beard became a sort of fly in the ointment for me. Whats the point of this and what exactly is the point of this apparitional figure?

This fly in my soup is that I will never know.

Does this call into question the possibility I am on a fool’s errand? It may but what are the other options? One writer called this the art of mountain climbing upon a euclidean cliff, whereas any perch is preferable to humanity, regardless of where it is located. Or as Gurdjieff wise cracked, "if you must sleep, sleep well."

We press on, camp and break down our camps like gypsies over some invisible horizon either toward home or over a cliff. Call this a public self examination, an exorcism of an undiagnosed malaise, knowing full well there just may be an answer perched under my nose or at least , a better set of clues...a something more workable. What exactly is it do we want?

I have a suspicion we don't have an answer for that question. Social movements of doctrine , edifices of political activism, religious heterodoxy,alchemy, physics, etc let alone the ambivalence of defining justice both in a existentialist and pragmatic framework all are dependent on who happens to be looking and the results are wrapped with sociology, more so the the penetration of fundamental issues regarding the context of transience. Perhaps it is surrealism that has captured our entrapment in our own tool making all of which revolves around procreation and death as Freud would say.
The latest trending is the critical assumption that the application of technology is a panacea whether it is the quest for immortality in a singularity wherein the metaphor of human beings as intelligent machines becomes encapsulated in plastic and wiring or robotic drones, the wings over the world as HG Wells prophesied, and yet no one or more accurately few see any contradiction in this obvious cross purpose. A tough and strange neighborhood full of more ghosts than living beings encased in a membrane of flesh..welcome to the neighborhood.
.
If I recall this correctly the scene from a particular film based on John Keel''s work was set in a Chicago library, and wary Alexander Leech turned to him and asked " ..some kind of trauma..And what happened to you Mr Kline?" The premise behind the question was a matter of sensitivities and in this revisionist film adaptation the moth in question was a matter of a natural ecology to which the vast majority was blind, meaning that death had as much purpose as life within a entanglement.
Reward and punishment have nothing to do with outcomes. Mr Kline and the loss of his wife drew him close to the vacuum of death as a gravitational attractor ,as Ouspensky put it, the Freudian mix becomes your mother's voice, or your wife's or significant other as a sort of perverse nurturing factor of Death which wears as many masks, the moth being vivified in darkness in a play upon light.

This is the seduction by the anomalous that pulls us from our errands, our self created universes prodding and provoking us perhaps toward the old hat trick of death meaning that for centuries humankind has sought the purpose of life in the possibility of immortality which strikes me as just another contradiction and this is simply fuel added to a silent conflagration of blood and sinew attached to a something we cannot name and yet we have ourselves probing beyond broken barricades and if caught, we become fodder for the agencies of some nameless and incommensurable process. Who goes there? Perhaps the night watchman, perhaps a deer flitting across the forest or perhaps something else we can scarce guess at as we seem to supply as many masks to this something as we can find in our wardrobes of the psyche.
Yes, he says to himself, truth and fictions. Fictions that have a kernel of truth and truths that have an equal share of fiction at their core.

I think at some point I noticed something and in turn that something noticed me. Whether it was loud raps awakening me at 2am, the strange voice garbled over a radio that had turned itself on, the strange voice of the answering machine warning me of "nafarious", etc etc and now this robed figure..I suppose it falls under the word provocation and if I applied duality to this, I would say I either provoked or invoked that something or vice versa..yet it may be a matter of entanglement, a sort of wrestling match that has nothing to do with winning or losing.
Odd is a good word to characterize this game.

I suppose I could seek shelter under the general umbrella of pronouncing everything to be an illusion and like my Buddhist friends work hard at keeping an arms length from any slings and arrows. Maybe take up golf to rid myself of secret sharers. Your guess is as good as my own from a viewpoint of agnosticism 

Then the question may be what does this something want? That is to be determined. It may not be a matter of want, it may be need, it may be..... it simply "is". Or as one poet said sufficiently, it is 'the terrible beauty of the universes",
The common denominator of fiction and truth can perhaps be encapsulated in one simple word.

If

A Matter of Personal Demons

The last few posts are examples of the material that not only interests me but also serve as a means to recharge my proverbial batteries by exploring issues other than anomalies. The documentary posted below examines Brian Wilson’s struggle with self doubt and depression in his wrestling with bringing his most complex work to fruition over a period of decades.

Looking back from the perspective of age, I know that the most insurmountable challenges are not physical, but rather struggling with one's psyche.

At the end of this film, we we see his collaborator, Van Dyke Parks wiping away the tears from his eyes. I was wiping my own watching this highly personal and moving story of a man confronting his own demons as well as having the courage to expose them.

The Watchers Over Eden

Information is a double edged sword prone to the uncertainty principle as it tends to organize itself depending on who is watching as well as the fact that any pattern found does not necessarily signify a meaning which is sought as in Chaos Theory.
Having begun with those considerations, I recently found myself in the midst of three synchronicities over a period of just under three weeks duration, all centered around a singular Sumerian image. These three synchronicities, in turn, revolve around a very recent anomalous event that I cannot reveal the details of for personal reasons.
The last of these possibly meaningful coincidences led me to the video I have posted below, which is, if anything, interesting from a archaeology and mythological perspective that also has ties to the advent of the first agrarian civilization being founded as a matter of history.
It may mean much or it may mean nothing but I found it interesting enough to post here as a proverbial Rorschach lodged between coherence and chaos all centered around a theme I have explored before, specifically through "Hamlets Mill" that is more of a question. Do mythologies contain a kernel of historical truth? More questions than answers...

 

The Tiny House People

The ingenuity required to do more with less has always fascinated me, even as a child.
In simple terms, it’s more of a challenge than the alternative of having unlimited boundaries whatever they may be.
This would appear to be on the surface a contradiction to the majority of theoretical and philosophical subjects that also fascinate me as potential expansions of certain self imposed boundaries but that contradiction in of itself is a part of what makes me tick.
I have acquaintances, for example, that tinker with clockwork mechanisms to expand their capabilities whether they are used to create automaton devices or synchronizing triple springs to store more energy...that sort of thing.
This documentary you may or may not find fascinating as I did, but I am posting it for those who may find the ingenuity of young people who are also very thoughtful ..who have come up with what is called “the tiny house movement” an interesting subject .. as an alternative to our mindless corporate media fodder.
If you have an interest in the philosophy of architecture as an art form welded with craftsmanship, it might also be interesting..a change of pace that I am experimenting with to expand the scope of this blog.
For what it's worth.
 

Arcania

Aside from this blog one of my hobbies is the restoration of vintage children's toys.

As a tinkering cobbler of discarded toys that clutter an already cluttered workshop full of various bandages and tools as well as a devotee of the discarded and forgotten..it's always heartening to know there are kindred spirits within the arts and crafts of the arcane. Imaging a couple in full regalia dancing to this brings a smile on a rainy day. To be inclusive, not everything has to be in the present tense and it brings to mind that today's state of the art is tomorrow's attic find. 19th century heavy metal..per the wonderful music video posted below with both a sense of humor as well as irony.

What child played with these now memories held by an adult and what became of that adult? What stories are untold? When I restore these items this art acts as a meditation as well as an act of faith against time,

I ask “What remains and what is seen and what cannot be seen?”

What ponderous image of our own competence weighs us down only to find ourselves smiling at our own naivety that is a double edged sword?

There is a profound innocence in all that is perishably human. Those of us who are the voluntary caretakers of old lost toys to pass on to some adult who was once a child, feels a continuity rather than a break in a line of transmission that is unnamable. The arcane and the what will become arcane is like the shedding of one skin yet to don another,

In all this, it brings a smile in the face of my own naivety that just might be a saving grace.

The Dragons of Ufology

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
-Joesph Campell

It is difficult to imagine a entire world as it existed centuries ago that did not have and could not imagine the technologies we have in our possession as their descendants. Yet, as noted by others, human psychology has little changed over the centuries in terms of the power of mythology that superimposes the mystery of our own origins against forces that seem incommensurable to our mind as organising “powers” of creation.

One could reasonably say we inhabit a house of mirrors of our own constructions as projections but then we might be leasing it from dragons as a oddly persistent symbology that is indelibly etched from our earliest recorded history up to the 21st century.

When did this become that?

Whether it is physicists in search of a “god particle” with mathematics or the magicians armed with tripods, magical correspondences with the aim to invoke superior knowledge, the hunt continues for a definitive and conclusive origin tale.

Of course logic would seem to tell us that there may be other species in a ill defined elsewhere who have acquired the keys to our common origin and since one of our key characteristics is tool making, one can easily also imagine these distant cousins wielding incredible tools. That being said, one knows that dreams are metaphors.

Have we remade the dragon reptile in our own image unknowingly? Have we a shadow image of a psychological profile? Not of them but of us? A further exploration of this possibility is due as well as the threads that weave this tapestry together in order to ask, is there discernible pattern in this specific motif ?  Is this motif hiding in plain sight? Those hugely popular Grey Reptilians want to know. You know them, the shadow creatures that invade dreams. The "Greys" are the ones we love to loathe.

I suggest to you that they are us, a projected shadow that expresses a fear of technological science.

Consider the once pervasive and global dragon mythology. How do we account for a common creature found among all global cultures that “breathed fire” across the atmosphere? How do we account for the same “fire” in what were once called UFOs now more reasonably termed UAP?

Dragons were thought to be wise with a prescient knowledge much like extraterrestrials. Much like extraterrestrials, they lit up the atmosphere. So powerful were they thought to be that this assumption prompted the Chinese emperors to adopt this erstwhile creature as a emblem for their own power.
A game of association.

One thinks about our own mythologies in their earliest formulation as in The Epic of Gilgamesh where the protagonist confronts a dragon in contest. You could say nature itself could lie behind this situation, the survival of humanity against the all powerful natural world of our environment.

In other words, a contest against a foe much like the later variant of Melville”s “Moby Dick” which not surprisingly was based on the sinking of a whaling vessel.

Compare these older superimpositions to our own times as the ancient instinctual fears surface via Professor Stephen Hawking who prophesied that "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans". His reasoning is simple; an examination of how our species has evolved, and how we have approached colonization of our world, should serve as a lesson for how a more advanced alien species might consume our tiny planet and its resources.”

Extraterrestrials as Dragon lore, swooping down to consume our crops or perhaps even ourselves as hapless bystanders in the face of overwhelming power based not surprisingly on our own species psychology. In Persia, the dragon was used as a banner of war. Biblical accounts in Christian texts equate dragons with pride.

All of these associations take us to the present where it is interesting to note how this affected Ufology that have a mirror image in our culture, primarily in film. A distorting lens. Theories as emblems of combatants and then there is the dragon’s association with pride. Yet we have two global variants of the same atmospheric phenomenon which could be likened to mysterious fires in our atmosphere as if it were all some vague alchemical transformation that brings out what John Keel thought were demonic forces and of course, mythological demons are rooted in our own uncontrollable compulsions and weaknesses. A sort of feedback loop of projections based on sociopathic interpretations of our own nature as well as that of our environment in which we are in the midst of a contest for survival at any cost.

One example of global dragon culture as tied to survival is found within the Vietnamese people as the dragon brings rain, essential for agriculture Dragons abound everywhere in this sense of the word. In ancient cartography an unexplored landmass was full of dangers arising from the natural world hence the notation, “Here there be dragons”. Perhaps outer space now sufficed as a modern day equivalency in SETI anxieties.
Dragons? They never left us.

What was once fire ………...now to our eyes, at a distance, resembles a plasma. The satirical legacy of Swift from Gulliver's Travels found a home in David Ickes characterization of the powerful as dragons in disguise. Of course there are the reptilian "Greys"who exercise similar omniscient power as modern day humanoid dragons.

Dragons above, so below? Which side is reflective of the other? Does a mysterious physicality create a bizarre psychology that is a house of mirrors we inhabit? Or is we have by nature superimposed a pattern that symbolizes our fragile place in the universe simply based on our own demons?

Can mythologies contain a buried kernel of truth?

Perhaps they are prophetic as in the myth of Prometheus and his subsequent fate due to his theft of creating fire, a fire from the sky or that tree of knowledge from whence the apple came and the subsequent banishment from the natural world. Of course, the temptation came from a reptile.

Perhaps all of this has an element of alchemy to it as portrayed in another arcane symbol. The snake eating it's tail...a sort of mythological genome that we carry unawares of it's profound yet buried circular path.

Are UFOs Macroscaled Quantum Effects?

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” 
― Arthur C. Clarke

In this post I am asking readers to determine for themselves if a theory I have synthesized matches the characteristics of Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomenon. This theory has been in formulation over a decade in various differing observations but never as a coherent totality. Is the UFO / UAP phenomenon, a macro-scaled quantum event, a result of the entanglement of matter and energy?
We know that leading edge science is discovering new relationships all around us. This concept may or may not explain the reasons why this phenomenon is both transient ( very short in duration ) as well as appearing in "waves" of activity.

This randomness that appears on the surface of their fleeting manifestations may be due to the transience of several factors that must fall into play before an effect is achieved. Their ( at times ) nearly instantaneous appearance and disappearance as well as the impossible velocity of their  movement strongly suggest this  aforementioned concept as well. It would also account for the impossible variety of shapes and sizes due to the social consensus of anticipation regarding appearance creating a macroscaled quantum effect.
If we take into account individual variability in relation to the transfer of inner anticipation superimposed on consensus, these virtual forms of a semi-solid nature ( if we make an analogy) are very much the "things" dreams are made of.

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently – instead, a quantum state may be given for the system as a whole. One approach to the UAP / UFO enigma is to consider it to be a transitory quantum effect caused by the interaction of several fields that represent a system as a whole. The word "quantum" comes from the Latin "quantus", for "how much" or how many interactions there are as derived from the original meaning of measurement.
I have tried as best I can to make it easy to read and understandable. I am expressing the very strong suspicion that UAP is a previously unidentified form of transitional energy that arises and is in a feedback loop in conjunction with both an energetic environment and the aggregate sum of the human mind as a energy field. One field is entangled in another.

Science accepts as foundational that all permutations of matter whether this matter has physicality or not has as one of the characteristics of their manifestation is energy.

Specifically, electromagnetic energy. Students of science are taught that energy is transcribed as information.

Is there an intersection wherein energy and atomic structure as well as molecular structure are influenced or steered by the energy of an information field?  A good example is the mind \ brain relationship. Does this occur elsewhere? Apparently it does  in a macro-scaled  manner as demonstrated by scientists  through a quantum entanglement effect. In other words, our natural environment is not a matter of distinct or discrete divisions between matter and energy. This intersection includes various interacting energy fields. One field is our atmosphere, another is the human energy field, both of which contain information as energy.

Jacques Vallee has taken these two accepted postulates as a foundation of the universe is energy as information. Anyone can easily observe our atmosphere is energetic and that radiant energy from our solar star is transcribed into molecular matter through it’s medium. Dr Michael Persinger extends and places Vallee's theory in relationship and within the context of the human consciousness field.


 We also know and can easily accept that the human mind as well as various formulations of animal or non human minds are an expression as well of energy and more specifically we can more easily observe that the human mind is an exemplar of energy and information being equitable, and Dr Vallee has described this relationship as being the same above as it is below, or in other words, information as energy is present in our natural environment as well.

One could also safely say that energy has differing states of physicality as well as saying these states are either in a form of storage, being transformed and exchanged, therefore we could say that this is true for information.

The atmosphere is a medium of exchange as previously noted.

This is the medium by which unidentified anomalous phenomenon take place. Previously thought to be spaceships simply because they appeared as such.

However, rational folks have come to question this concept due to the spaceship’s enormous variability in appearance, their having no discernible purpose, as well as having no contact with humanity. Also noted is that there is no direct evidence found over many decades that these atmospheric manifestations have physicality in their being material.

The manifestations of UAP while not having physicality in it's evidence does exhibit strong electromagnetic force as evidenced in the interference with electrical devices has demonstrated.

I suggest to you that they are information as energy superimposed on the energy field of the atmosphere.
They are not sentient in of themselves. They are sentient in their source as well as the manner by which they have variability which is the human mind as determined by a shared form of coherent energy which is consensus.

As evidence for this, it is well established that their appearance is dependent on the belief systems of whatever civilization has as a consensus of anticipation to observe in their nature and appearance in manifestation. This has been true over a span counted in centuries.

I suspect the atmosphere that is our environment is a energetic mirror of exchanges of energy fields that are entangled, an active, not passive screen.

Consider this, Quantum science has proven that by human observation with inherent anticipation being present which is also a form of energy as information can literally steer the transition of energy while it is between states. The results conform to the specific results that are anticipated. This is by way of input when a specific outcome is undecided in of itself.

What has been anticipated has changed through the centuries and the atmosphere as said earlier is a medium of transforming one state of energy to another.

We know that matter as a form of energy can exist in a transitional state.

We can affirm that the behavior of UAP is descriptive of a state that is neither a solid or simple irradiant energy. They are molecular but organised in a manner not yet recognized.

Note also that UAP mimics weather phenomenon or behavior.

It comes in waves much as pressure fronts create waves of weather.

This may or may not be due to the ever hanging state of the atmosphere as it is influenced by the necessity for pre-existing conditions to be present such as ( as an example) solar or other external agencies to create a favorable medium, This is much like the various series of conditions that need to be present in order to manifest ( for  example) rain. However other factors may be required to fall into play to create these superimposition's as further outlined below.

Note as well that Princeton University has measured global consensus in the human mind as a form of energy that is triggered by cultural and social events. One recalls that John Keel said as much in terms of UAP waves occur when major human events occur.



A comparison...Keel and the concept of a Global  Information Field...Keel is correlating major UFO waves to major events in society which is also a correlation made by GCP as measured by worldwide RNG devices. Is this simply a coincidence?



I am aware that this answer has no details but it is an outline. An outline that is more pervasive and persuasive than another. Our atmosphere is a mirror of the human mind that transforms reflects and projects in a transitional manner, energy as information.

In terms of the degree of strangeness this erstwhile theory which it appears to fit together n assembling various pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to my mind, is far from any definitive answer but I have the suspicion that as well that physics will eventually unravel this phenomenon, not "Ufology" as a social movement. If this puzzle is solved , I doubt it will be solved directly.

More than likely it will be solved by discoveries in other areas.of exploration.




,

The Die Cast Skeptical

http://jimharold.com/the-paranormal-podcast/randis-prize-with-robert-mcluhan-paranormal-podcast-333/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=randis-prize-with-robert-mcluhan-paranormal-podcast-333

Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

In the post intended to be a tribute to Ambrose Bierce  which was entitled "The Extraterrestrial Crucifixion of 1866", I postulated that an extraterrestrial encounter would more than likely, not end well.
As per the usual these days,  by way of coincidence or synchronicity, an academician weighed in on the same issue and came to the same conclusion.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/people-arent-ready-to-meet-aliens

Of course all this issue as many revolves around "What if?"
Isnt that the question of our question ?
As paranormalists, surrealists or fantasists imagine a sentient creature from a distant world encountering us to ask a question. It may not be about our technology, our historical events, our religions, our beliefs.
What is it like to be human?

This post is about time and whatever meaning we derive from time. To make matters worse, time is now considered an inaccurate term in of itself. Now we have space time. How we use our time seems to be a theme of mine lately as per the post containing a link to an insightful BBC essay;, "The Death of Purposeless Walking" .
The point buried in that essay was that time itself as it is counted by the rotation of our planet as posed against our star has not changed and yet for a significant majority of our fellow human beings, time appears to be accelerating, leaving little time to consider much of anything or to observe much of anything except the expedient. What makes this topic fascinating for me, this acceleration of time is a human invention. One thinks of Marshal McLuhan's prophetic book, "The Medium Is The Message" wherein he postulates our evolution is an extension of our tool making. Shoot first and ask questions later might apply to tool making itself 9 as he suggested ) as well as a more literal interpretation as contained in "The Extraterrestrial Crucifixion of 1866"
Perhaps is there were more rather than less purposeless walking which requires an appreciation of time as an evaluation of how one spends it, or owes a debt to it, perhaps this would lead to regarding the profound mystery of our place in time.

“Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. 
By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone. The stars that caught our blind amphibian stare have shifted far or vanished in their courses, but still that naked, glistening thread winds onward. 
No one knows the secret of its beginning or its end. Its forms are phantoms. The thread alone is real; the thread is life.” 
― Loren Eiseley, The Firmament of Time

A photograph in many ways can be called an apparition, a representation that is open to associations stored or perhaps even sought. These associations sometimes appear to be a confluence. One could say this confluence of associations represent information as an energy that organizes itself through the minds eye. Or not. It depends on who is looking. A photograph could also be thought of as a ghost, either rooted in memory or prone to the superimpositions of what they cannot relate much like a story untold, the who, what and why of an image.

One could say that the anomalous images captured through the lens of a camera have several layers that could be said to bridge both our inner and outer environments always subject to subjectivity itself, leaving in it’s wake a surfeit of answers to whatever question we have in mind. Such is the nature of our own nature and relationships. What we have at best are clues, hints, inferences that are self steering according to the relationship we have with our surroundings. Images of time.

Whether you call this a personal center of gravity or a quantum entanglement is simply a play on words. Yesterday, I was searching for more information regarding a long since vanished family business and the individual associated with it. Henry C Duensing and his soda factory once situated in Chicago Heights. A correspondent of my other blog was kind enough to alert me to his finding a glass bottle inscribed with his name that dates to the 1900’s which is now in my possession. Why I wanted to obtain this hundred year old glass bottle leaves me clueless as if my desire to obtain it was more of an instinct than that of a family curator. During this internet search I knew that the simpler the search key, the more results I would gather, although that meant a great deal of culling through “worthless” information. Then I came upon the unexpected. A Facebook page begun by my son just prior to his death from an enlarged heart.

The red headed kid with the cool sunglasses was once Matthew. He was a very social gadfly, unlike yours truly. Since his death, I have a heightened sense of empathy for all living creatures, knowing they could vanish in a blink of an eye and they do. Sooner rather than later, we need no proof of this.
It's been nearly six years since I found him lifeless on the living room couch.

Simultaneously in my mind with the reception of this photograph, this apparition if you will, I thought to myself  Who knows where the time goes? The another association, immediately came to mind , the late and nearly forgotten Sandy Denny who wrote my question long before I had asked this of myself. Another footnote to an indecipherable notebook. A young lady clasped by an apparition of her voice now silenced yet not at rest, posing a question far beyond her own age. Call this presentiment, a question asked in advance of the passage of time written while in transit.



Within this same mindset I wondered what happened to the young musical lights of my teenage years? Some are in their seventies or more. Grace Slick was recently interviewed on the nature of spirituality and one of her observations stuck with me. Religion requires repetition.It also requires ( according to Grace) not going outside of the box it is contained within as a packaged reality so as not to stray from it's outline or to go off topic. She further said that many of us from that generation intentionally went off topic, strayed from the outlines we were tattooed with the inherent hope that our being impressed upon was indelible.

All of this was yesterday's confluence and as a consequence of the predictable, yesterday remains enfolding into today as I type this as a correspondent for the unseen.

Sufism has at it's heart as a religion a requirement for belief in a invisible world. That also comes to mind as "who knows where the time goes?" becomes a literal positioning of a kind of indecipherable transference of where does this go unseen?

I do not believe in zero. There is no zero anywhere I can venture. It represents to me that everything has to be something to be nothing and it is a strange sort of intuitive duty to go off topic in the manner that we did with more questions than answers in hand after and before the passage of what we call time. That in of itself is remarkable to me as a situation set up perhaps as a result our shared universe is asking itself. I am but what am I? What am I like by comparison. A incommensurable God to some full of questions, the universe as a mirror as if to compare what is in between the mirror and what is reflected.

Who knows where this began or perhaps leads in a transformation that reels beneath our feet while we revolve on this ball suspended in space, unaware of it's turning?

Perhaps this is a erstwhile confession of a amnesiac with a question of time on his hands who lingers in a shadow wondering as I wander or it's time to get back to work, work meaning that perhaps my observation of time and my involvement with it needs some fine tuning that requires effort.

 

Purposeless Walking

An interesting perspective on human nature as well as a commentary on the escalating trend of equating productivity to materialism rather than toward self awareness. It seems we are heading toward a hermetic sort of individualized bubble on a treadmill. While this view might seem cynical I think it is worth considering beyond who has the advantage in the propaganda wars. All this reminds me of Warren Zevon's lyric:

"You've got an invalid haircut
It hurts when you smile
You'd better get out of town
Before your nickname expires
It's the kingdom of the spiders
It's the empire of the ants
You need a permit to walk around downtown
You need a license to dance"


Of course, then again, social criticism is like shooting ducks in a barrel. It affords a certain self deniability.

The essay is here:

.http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27186709

Welcome Home

I think the most interesting time in a man’s life is when he is not in the thrall of his hormones, compelled as if in a trance to what has been called “ a debt to nature.” There is an honesty in that time that seems to wane with the slings and arrows of time. There is also a unique lack of self examination as there are emotions there that are inarticulate. But they are there nonetheless.


At that age there is a clarity never to be regained no matter how much knowledge one packs into a suitcase as if hoarding and collecting various facts, theories and observations of the world from others could bring that clear vision back.


I some ways in adulthood and into the final years, I am looking for simplicity, an elegant solution.


What I find is complexity, buried truths and a great deal of lies. You just can’t quit and join another species. Sometimes I wish I could.


What do I remember and what did I forget becomes secondary to what became of that kid and more importantly way beyond that, what became of the others I knew? Somehow we were all waylaid, set up and processed like so many string beans placed into a can and that strikes me as just one detour, that is, working for a living. One among many.


Some folks barely tolerate working for a living as an abstraction while others, nearly their entire identity is built upon what they do as “professionals”. Some resist, some fold. At the same time we call those who live in the natural world and pick or fish their foods without a profession, primitive.


What strings this all along are the stories we tell ourselves, our own world of mythologies, some are original. some are borrowed. Some are hateful some are wistful. In all this, stuff that was once a part of us is strewn alongside a highway like litter. No recycling bin for this stuff.


Some grow to loathe themselves while others fancy themselves to be geniuses in disguise. Some use too many words some remain distrustful of words themselves. Some adopt a persona carefully crafted in a intentional manner and some play out a role that someone else wrote for them.


All this rolls along down a dusty country lane shaded by trees today bordered by old ramshackle houses, remote outposts lined with fences complete with barking dogs and roaming horses. These places I have an affinity toward. Not exactly a full retreat but a need for the solace of nature. No severe right angles as found more and more today all around us. No more broadcasting without the speaker having the ability to receive signals.


My ambition is shrinking as is my world as is my interest in investing a great deal into anything other than being among trees or sitting by a river and of course, the scrapbook I carry around in my head. The culture around me is obsessed with productivity. I could care less.


Maybe that innocence is returning as well as that clarity. Be a passerby. What others think of me hardly ever crosses my mind as my time shrinks and yet the universe expands under my feet.


An ant becomes a work of some exquisite unknown art. Maybe the less we are, the more we are.


Voices here in the South have a musicality to them. I hear people singing as much as I hear the birds praising their creation by songs, too many to recount. You have to hear them for yourself.



I went into a diner last night and an African American woman behind the counter greeted me with a broad smile.

She said “Welcome home”


Somewhere out there in the universe in a place unknown...a circle was closed.

A Close Circle of Friends

My mother was never meant for the remote wilderness of what was then the unexplored territory of suburbia. We moved from the heart of Chicago where everything was at hands reach and a car was not a mandatory necessity. 

As a result of her comparative isolation she became a one woman neighborhood watch. Not looking for lurking suspects or evil doers combing the dark shadows of alleys but rather, she seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of what anyone was up to. I suspect to some extent, suburbia was boring for her.

One morning I entered the kitchen only to receive her report last evenings doings and this particular soliloquy was delivered with a heightened sense of mystery.

“Last night I watched and parked right across the street was this black limousine..” So?

“Don’t you think that’s odd?” Unusual yes, Odd, no.

Flash forward in a haze of deja vu and as I sat eating breakfast in our small kitchen Mom reported the same doings overnight. The same black limousine parked in the same spot, which according to her, was there as some sort of sentinel “all night long”. Again, according to her, someone must have been inside watching something because the interior lights were on.

Hmm.

Accordingly at some point in the early morning hours having to use the bathroom, I happened to remember Mom’s reports and wandered over to the living room window, pulled the heavy curtains apart just enough to peer out to see what was probably an empty street.

There it was, the black limousine parked where she said it would be. The interior was lit with a dim greenish fog. Out of nowhere in the midst of the drab regularity of rows of uniform houses, someone or several someone's were either watching or waiting.

When I reported that her sighting was confirmed by yours truly she blithely responded with “I told you so” and began vacuuming.

The following night my curiosity remained with me and so I set my alarm clock and went to the living room window only to find an empty street. So much for mysteries in the hum drum of routines.

The next afternoon I arrived home to find my mother absent mindedly handing me a larger than usual envelope. “This came for you, I wonder what it could be ?”

Upon unsealing it, there was a card with a floridly depicted bouquet of flowers. It read “With Sympathy” Unfolding the card I found a scrawled personal message that was unsigned.

It was a death threat. “What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing” I took the card and immediately stuck it in my pocket. My mother was known for being what is now called a drama queen, or at least to her children..meaning myself at that age.

At the same time, my mind began to run in circles. What had I done? Of course if this would occur in the present, my reaction would be, to say the least, an entirely different one.

That afternoon my friend Pat reported she had received the same card. She had the same reaction and tossed it. I guess we assumed we were invulnerable at that age. The best analysis or reaction we could come up with was that the card gambit was very “weird”

Shortly thereafter in the evening Pat called to tell me that Cathy , a mutual friend was upset as a good friend of hers was found dead and had apparently hung himself in his bedroom on the day of his birthday. She ( Kathy) had recently spoken with him and he seemed his usual self. While this was disturbing, she thought it was murder but as she said at that time, how could someone enter his home and hang him?

Bob was Cathy’s boyfriend and a mutual friend to the rest of us. He weighed in that it was the result of a dope deal gone bad, I rejoined that of all the ways to get revenge this was ridiculous and beside that, according to Cathy he didnt smoke what was then called “weed”

Another day passes. Bob says “You are not going to believe this..a guy was found hung at a construction project ( more suburban building). He was our age. “Bob knew the guy as a friend of a friend and according to Bob he was “ a normal guy”, whatever that meant.

“Weird”, we said

Sure enough the following day I spent a dime and bought a copy of the “Independent Register”. Not that I did not believe Bob, but rather it seemed that one strange occurrence was following another in a short span of time.. What was going on?

The hanging was in the paper. Police were investigating.

There the story ends.

As 19 year old's, we never were concerned with such things enough to make our curiosity on these events an indelible mark.

At the age of 63 I wonder. I guess from a distance this conglomeration of strange events within a brief period of time was akin to a wave among a close circle of friends. Naturally, having read since that time the seeming mythos of black limousines being the portent of real or implied threat, there will always be a question mark in my mind. Where did these death threats come from? Were the two deaths a homicide or a suicide or both?

My friends since that time like many friends of long ago have dispersed far way. Bob is a retired school teacher in California. Cathy is a data analyst for a Chicago hospital. Pat moved to England and continues her involvement with rock and roll culture.

It has been several years since I have spoken to them. Do they remember this? If so, how and why?

At the time all this occurred, I had telephone another friend in Pennsylvania by the name of Ed who now runs a coffee shop. I suggested I might be better off over in his neck of the woods.

I wonder why I had never asked him if he recalls my reaching out to him so long ago?

Some things that occur to us seem to be suspended in time. Some stranger than others. This one falls between structure and anti-structure, between fact and appearance.

Our nonchalance decades ago. makes this a story worth repeating.

The Extraterrestrial Crucifixion of 1866

Our story takes place in 1860 era during the Western incursion of settlers into Indian territory, and as a result, war soon appeared.  A young boy is orphaned as a result of an Indian assault on a settlement and by necessity, is taken to an outpost of the U.S Army. He is then adopted informally by a certain Major much to the consternation of his superior who thinks that their outpost in light of the war is no place for a young boy. The Major turns to a sympathetic bachelor settler who also happens to  be a fierce fundamentalist and yet has a soft spot fairly well hidden.

He knows this settler could use some help around the ranch.

The settler agrees and takes the boy in. Shortly thereafter the settler confides in the boy that something keeps stealing supplies and grain from the ranch. This has him puzzled. There are no traces of anyone entering the ranch on horseback and the closest Indian settlement is some distance away. After his chores, the boy has a habit of going to a nearby grove of trees by a river to fish.

He is startled by bumping into a disheveled stranger wearing a rumpled hat who confides in the boy he is in hiding and is the perpetrator of the thefts from the ranch. 

The boy comes round to ask why he is hiding. He says he is not from here but rather some distance away from the stars. He removes his hat and the boy is startled to find this fellow has small horns protruding from his head.

The boy becomes the strangers co-conspirator and takes supplies from his benefactor’s ranch which makes the settler come to the conclusion that this is the work of the devil.

The boy is thoroughly confused.

Shortly thereafter, an Indian attack on the settler’s ranch occurs and as the boy tries to make good an escape while the settler defends his territory he is captured by the Indians as a hostage.

The boy is held by the Indians with a knife to the throat with the demand that the settler leave.

The settler refuses and a tense stand off occurs.

In the midst of this the stranger appears which surprises both sides and doffs his hat and his horns are apparent to both sides. The Indians back away. The boy is released. The settler drops the stranger to the ground with a single shot.

The crumpled body of the stranger with the Indians on one side and the settler on the other.

Postscript:

I wrote this story as a parallel to the cloying film" ET: The Extraterrestrial" as well as a homage to the sardonic Ambrose Bierce , author of "The Damned Thing", which is a story about the foibles of human nature as well as human nature being confronted with a "paranormal" event...something outside of their own experience." Strangers and the strange as a cause for alarm much like the contested West in 1866. Add to this the possession of territory in their minds.
The two groups were strangers to each other much like many of the differences that cause conflict as I type this. 

Bierce also penned the "Devil,s Dictionary"a must for those pessimistic regarding the fate of human nature. Thus the short outline was developed on a extraterrestrial theme.

I thought it was a diversion as well as a metaphor for the complexities we earthlings face as well as that of some hapless extraterrestrial who was foolish enough to face the psychological conflicts we entangle ourselves in as an innocent bystander. I thought anyone who read it would naturally assume that it was fiction. Not so.Someone asked where this story originated. Another said you could not be crucified by a bullet.  I beg to differ. Surprising or not surprising were the admixture of those responses. 
You can decide for yourself how the truth can take as many forms as there are individuals whether it is figurative or literal....