Photo: ‘Unassembled, Mildly Afraid’ by Kranich17 – Pixabay
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SPACE WITHOUT DIRECTIONALITY…
Ken’s poem… or playful inquiry, as always, invites me to a space… where a tentative order could cohere, where incipient structure could begin to formulate… to source, to origin… a depth where seeds of knowledge uncurl. The field is perturbed, a wave manifests movement… I playfully entertain what unfolds… and am reminded of this quote…
“If you travel far enough, it will no longer make sense to attempt to refer your movements to the original point from which you began or to any other fixed point. It is important to get clear on this point experientially, so allow yourself time to imagine the travels through space that lead to this outcome… As you continue, your sense of space and its spaciousness may shift or open, or there may be other subtle changes in the feeling tone or quality of your experience. Let your experience and your inquiry expand in the direction of these changes.
Whether the universe is open or closed, it seems that space as such cannot come to an end, for if it did, there would have to be ‘another space’ beyond it. How can we understand this unbounded nature of space? For instance, we say that space has three dimensions. How does this dimensionality relate to the unendingness of space? Would it make more sense to say that space is endlessly flat in all possible directions? All possible dimensions? Again, if space has no end or border, can we say that it has a center? Could we reach this center? How can we link our conclusions to our own sense of being at the center of space?â€
…..’Dynamics of Time and Space,’ by Tarthang Tulku, p. 275-6
OUT OF THE BOX
By Ken McKeon
I kind of lived before the first order
Lonely, unassembled, mildly afraid,
I, free of form,
A jam box of particles,
No legs, no arms,
Not even tubular possibilities of trunk or neck,
Just stray notes floating,
But no song being sung,
No jazz bent shepherd
Riffing on a flute
In a play to call
All the loose sheep
Back to the fold,
The openness of starlight beamed on through,
Could have been
Klieg lights on parade,
Could have been on a stage,
But no such luck,
No way, no how,
Possibilities might exist without the knowledge of anyone,
But one hinges on the other,
And neither were around,
And then under the vastly open entablature of time,
A pillar showed beneath me like a god,
And I could stand,
Atlas held,
A world of my own,
And I thought to take myself
Out for a spin,
That’s how my life began.
