Monday, January 26, 2009

What Happens To Snow That Never Falls?

The following chapter from "Or So It Seems", a novel by Paul Steven Stone, picks up at a point where the narrator and his son are coming off a disastrous Pinewood Derby, which if you don't know is an oftentimes hellish father/son cub scout competition.

ADDRESSING THE QUESTION OF WHAT HAPPENS
TO SNOW THAT NEVER FALLS

My little boy is sleeping.

Lying next to him in our shared bed I hear him rhythmically drawing air through his open mouth.

A week has passed and we have not yet spoken of the Pinewood Derby. Truly spoken about it. We have of course mentioned small inconsequential matters relating to the event but only in the peripheral way one talks about the condition of a sick person when he is close enough to overhear.

"Bad break," I said to him later that day when we were seeking distraction from our sorrows at the South Shore Plaza Food Court. "We almost went all the way."

"No big deal," he answered, choosing to focus on the Johnny Rocket cheeseburger in his hand rather than the unstated issues in the air.

The fact that neither of us was ready to bring up the real cause for our discomfort is a good indicator of how tender the wound still seemed.

And what could I say? "I am sorry Old Number Two (our terminally ugly model racecar) looked like such a fruit salad?"

I do not think so.

Which is why a week later I have still not made any effort to clarify and explore that traumatizing experience for my little boy.

Not that I would know what to say.

If the purpose of life is to reach some understanding about the meaning of life I will probably have to retake this Do-It-Yourself Workshop a few hundred times before I am ready to graduate from the program.

To me the meaning of life remains as unfathomable a mystery as it ever was. Perhaps even more so the closer I come to seeing how things work.

I may need to leave it to someone else—to a future Paul Peterson in a future embodiment—to figure things out. He will have to penetrate the false facade of Automatic Universal Misunderstanding (AUM) to discover why I was repeatedly forced to experience something as upsetting—and weirdly ironice, considering my history—as the public humiliation of my only son.

What could be the purpose of that?

And what meaning could it have?

Especially when I recall how often I was told that AUM, Automatic Universal Misunderstanding, is merely an illusion; an illusion shared by almost everyone on the planet. A very believable illusion for sure but an illusion nevertheless.

Maya, as the Hindus have termed it.

"The Great Pretender's greatest game of make-believe," The Bapucharya calls it, adding, "He has only to sound the precise vibration and—ohmigoodness!—the physical universe disappears and we are all becoming (pause for giggles) out-of-work actors!"

No I do not enjoy the flavor of my GUM—my particular view of this Great Unrevealed Mystery—and would rather chew on something else. Something less emotionally destructive.

Simply put, I have had enough of…

I feel a soft blow against my shoulder.

It is Mickey's arm flailing about as his body shifts under the covers, turning from one side to the other.

Without asking permission a smile spontaneously takes control of my facial muscles.

My little boy is facing me now!

Just look at him lying here next to me, his mouth half open, his eyes fully closed, his brow starting to crease in irritated response to the glare of the lamp. Look at the way the eyelid twitches as if a few errant light beams have already stolen their way in.

If the past provides any insight to the future he will soon grow irritated by the glare of my reading lamp and turn back onto his other side. But while he is facing in my direction I will take advantage of this fleeting opportunity to breathe in like a sweet breath of oxygen the spectacle of his unguarded innocence.

Have you ever seen anything more beautiful or with more power to pull at your heart? Lying here propped against my reading pillow, staring over bifocals that have once again dropped to the lower reaches of my nose, I realize how fortunate I am to be given moments like this. Moments where I can reach out and touch him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

He would of course shake off my hand even in the midst of his slumbers. But he would shake it off automatically the same way he would shake off an annoying fly. He would not question my right as a bothersome, affectionate father to touch him, to reach out in the night to assure myself he is real and alive.

Why a father would need to do such things is another story, one he would not easily understand. But he would never challenge my right to claim that intimacy just as he would never question the right of the fly to land wherever it chooses.

For twenty three years I lived in the same apartment as my father until he died of a heart attack at the age of 49 and we never shared a bed together, much less one of life's major disasters like a Pinewood Derby.

I had this thought; actually it is more like a fancy than a thought.

Yesterday here in Boston it was supposed to snow. The weather forecasters had predicted eight to ten inches with a foot more expected up north. What we actually experienced when everything was said and done was an unseasonably warm day in the upper fifties with the sun shining through high wispy clouds. A day as it turned out where thousands of snow shovels were sold in what was possibly the year's last frenzy of winter storm panic shopping.

Of course weather prediction is far from an exact science, especially in New England, but there is still something dramatic and momentous about a predicted snowstorm that never arrives.

When I was a child growing up in Brooklyn and would watch snow falling I can remember thinking that snow was some physical substance that collected in the clouds until there was so much accumulated it finally broke through. Almost like a mathematical formula describing the inevitable result of supply exceeding storage capacity.

One time when I was in elementary school we were told a major snowstorm was on the way but like yesterday's storm it never materialized. I recall wondering if someone might have made a mistake about the amount of snow that had accumulated in the clouds?

Maybe enough snow had not yet collected, I reasoned?

Or maybe they were right about the amount of snow piled up but wrong about how much the clouds could hold…?

Well whatever the reason, I was certain that the snow which had been predicted—the snow that did not fall—was still up there, high in the clouds…waiting. Waiting for more snow to collect. Waiting until the clouds were so full and sodden with snow they had no choice but to burst open.

Then of course all the snow would fall down and cover the asphalt streets of Brooklyn in a numbingly soft and pure whiteness.

As a child such simple ideas were the foundation of my understanding about the way things worked. No different, I would guess, from the assumptions and beliefs of most children.

Today when I wander through memories of my father, my mind approaches the subject with the same childlike innocence. And somehow I believe that the love I never received from my father was like the snow that never fell from the clouds. It did not vaporize or cease to exist but was merely held over. Waiting for enough love to collect. Waiting until so much love accumulated it would break through all restraints and finally—freed at last—fall like a gentle snow upon my life and the lives of my children.

As childish as it sounds something in me wants to believe that love builds up in the course of human experience so that if it fails to shower down in one life it will inevitably find release in another.

That same inner part of me knows that the love I share with my children has been made large and overwhelming by the love that never fell from my father's heart.

That hunger for a father's love must have colored Dad's childhood as well, since his father—my grandfather Izzy—was notorious for being a stern and distant parent. Is it any wonder then that Dad,  being so unfamiliar with love and how to get it, searched for it so relentlessly outside the boundaries of his family?

Searching for it in his work, his friends, even in the company of strange women.

My father's tragedy was that he never saw the abundance lying nearby for the treasure that was always beyond his reach.

I believe we are all waiting for snow that never fell. Some of us, the lucky ones, learn to create that snow for ourselves while others only learn to imitate the loveless behavior of their parents.

"Dad," Mickey mutters, squirming under the covers, "would you turn out the light!"

"In a few moments," I promise softly. "Turn over now and close your eyes."

He makes an angry noise and turns over as instructed.

"Thank you, sweetie," I whisper, tapping him softly on the shoulder.

"Grrr!" he answers.

"I love you," I tell him softly, almost singing the words.

"I love you, too," he grunts back with a testy shake of his body.

In scarcely a moment my little boy will be sound asleep again.

Most likely he will never remember waking up.

Most certainly he will never even know it snowed.


*********


For more about "Or So It Seems", visit OrSoItSeems.info

"Or So It Seems", a novel by Paul Steven Stone, is published by Blind Elephant Press, $20. It is available on Amazon.com and in a limited number of bookstores in the metro Boston area.


Wednesday, January 14, 2009

A 10 Minute Discussion On Why Time Does Not Exist

The following is an excerpt from "Or So It Seems", a comic breathtaking romp through time and space. Speaking of space, here is...

A Ten Minute Discussion On Why Time Does Not Exist

Though I never fully understood what they meant, The Seekeers For Truth often told us that time as we know it does not exist.

If there is such a thing as time, according to The Seekers, it does not occur in linear progression as we think it does but rather all at once, like an explosion caught in a video freeze frame. And if we are unable to experience it that way it is because of the deficiencies of our sensing mechanisms rather than the essential nature of time itself. It all goes back, they tell us, to AUM, to Automatic Universal Misunderstanding.

Think about that.

Time does not exist.

Everything in your life, every memory, every relationship, every assumption you make, every day you spend on this planet says just the opposite. That time not only exists but is a cruel and relentless taskmaster. That time not only serves as the backdrop and common medium for all our experiences but is the only way we can order our lives to make any sense of them.

If time does not exist could I really be 45 years old? Could I have been assaulted by moody teenagers on the streets of Brooklyn when I was eight years old, kissed by my first girlfriend when I was 10, had my first and most confusing sexual experience when I was 19, been married at 29 and divorced at 41?

I mean how can all of that be occurring at the same time? In the same moment?

How it happens I do not know.

That it does happen—is happening now!—of that I'm certain...

***

Am I capable of understanding any of this?

Are these answers waiting to be uncovered on my ILE (Individual Life Experience)? Or will I have to wait until my next embodiment or a dozen future embodiments to pull all the pieces of the puzzle together?

Perhaps just like time, those questions can only be understood and answered when viewed from deep within my being. From the CPU, the Center Point of the Universe.

Or within close proximity thereof.

Ironically it is only moving far into that deep inner space that one can find release from the full scale Broadway production of "Life As We Know It" produced by the Automatic Universal Misunderstanding. A show that you will no doubt recall runs 24 hours a day is enjoyed by the entire universe of God's sentient creatures who believe it to be real.

And since AUM is wholly responsible for creating the illusion of time as part of that show the only way to make some sense of the non-existence of time—to really experience it in the moment—is to step free from the powerful grip of Automatic Universal Misunderstanding.

But remember also that AUM creates more than time; it creates an entire universe of illusions. So when you step free from the power of AUM, you step free from a lot more than time.

You probably do not realize it, but I have only recently been gifted with this ability to move deep within myself, to sit extremely close to the CPU where time moves so slowly it does not appear to be moving at all. Remember, this is my first-ever Do-It-Yourself Workshop, as sudden and new to me as it probably is to you.

Because of this newly acquired inward mobility I can also move backwards and forwards in time with apparent ease, free to explore the language of my my ILE. Something else that is entirely new in my altered range of experiences.

Though in truth, as I have already stated, I have not moved anywhere except inside myself. All my connections with time have occurred in just one place—in the present moment.

The Sacred Present Moment!

The same present moment that runs through all moments in time like an old-fashioned record spindle runs through all the 45's stacked upon it—do you remember vinyl 45's? Anyway, for some reason I now seem able to move freely across that freeze frame image where time explodes all at once; not to some earlier or later moment in time but to a different place in the overall frozen tableau. Like an ant who can crawl across the surface of a photograph and into the depth of the image as well...

***

That is why the mountaintop analogy works so well to explain the expansion of your perception as you move within yourself. Because when you move toward the center of the mountain you also move toward the top. And the higher you climb the more you can see of the landscape below. So when you finally reach the Center Point of the Universe you are at the highest vantage point, from where you can see everything in all directions! All at the same time.

Most of us are only capable of living our lives at the base of the mountain so we move blindly on the lowest plane as if there were no higher, more integrated, point of view; as if life were nothing more than a series of images, experiences or moments that unfold in linear progression.

That linear presentation being all we see of the universe, it naturally becomes our reality.

But as I said at the beginning of this workshop, when we are standing on the mountaintop we can see the movie in its entirety; we can view the entire chain of events leading up to this moment in time and all those events that reach out from this moment as well...

To follow up on this brief discussion, turn to "Or So It Seems" by Paul Steven Stone,page 299: Lesson 31, "A Ten Minute Discussion On Why Time Does Not Exist"

"Or So It Seems" can be purchased at Amazon.com
For more information about Paul Steven Stone, log onto: PaulStevenStone.com
For more information about "Or So It Seems" log onto: OrSoITseems.info