I imagined that's what light must look like when you outrun it.
Traveling alone puts me in a special mood: lonely, nostalgic, carefree, and meditative—all this at once with an itinerary. I was driving home during one of those evening snowfalls we've had this winter, when I noticed—once again—the peculiar path a snowflake takes to avoid an oncoming car. When you travel faster than snow falls, it seems to fly right at you. I imagined that's what light must look like when you outrun it.
I was on my way to pick up my luggage and take it to the train station. I spent the next three days between here and The Netherlands making a few notes about falling snow and some other things I've noticed before but never thought to mention. Maybe you've noticed, too.
Sanity checks around the table from my left, please.
Perspective
Have you ever driven into falling snow?
You travel faster than snow falls but slower than time rises.
Moment by moment, the universe curves toward you in the distance.
Each flake becomes a star; each moment, it’s own universe.
You drive across the multi-verse.
Movement
Have you ever had a flying dream?
You fly, but you don't know how.
Lighter than air, you glide across the worlds of dream: the wheel.
You must only concentrate to move, but still, you must concentrate.
Otherwise, you wake.
Imagination
Have you ever watched a white cloud boil?
Slowly billowing bounds of cumulus inflate at the top of the sky.
Focus on one billow closely for one full minute.
The standard unit of imagination is the billow-minute.
A billow-minute is the amount of imagination released from one billow of a white cloud in one minute.
Encounters
Have you ever seen faces in the bathroom tile?
They appear before you, conjured by your stare.
They become what they are and what they will be, what they have always been and what they will themselves to be.
Their features weave themselves into a mosaic of expressions, each visage with its own personality.
Their histories are hidden behind the tile.
Communication
Have you ever understood a language spoken without knowing the words?
People speak to you in a babble, and you reply in the same.
You speak, and they comprehend.
Thoughts flow between, one through another, to you, and on to the next.
Ideas are constructed on a point where three lines begin and end.
Tragedy
Have you ever fallen into the gap?
Between the platform and the train, a false step is made in an instant.
Terror, embarrassment, sadness, melancholy—successive waves of emotion carry you through.
Important moments passed fall away into the ephemeral,
Never so important after all.
Curiosity
Have you ever eaten alone in a crowded restaurant?
Shoulder to shoulder with strangers smoking cigarettes,
Do you sit with your back to the wall, facing the crowd?
Or do you sit with your back to the crowd, facing the wall?
Do you?
Inertia
Have you ever looked at the darkness through the window of a fast-moving train?
Darkness, darkness… darkness goes by as you speed through the void.
Suddenly, lights—close lights like comets, far lights like planets.
Towns in the distance pass like moons in orbit.
You become the center of the void.
Systems
Have you ever held a plane in the air with your regard?
You watch an airplane cross the sky, its contrails flaring behind.
Nearing the horizon, it will pass behind a mountain.
Someone else must take over.
Think to call ahead to the next watch point, would you.
Existence
Have you ever noticed your own shadow in a mirror?
It will be there if you go look, but at the moment, you can't remember ever seeing it.
It's the reflection of your shadow
And the shadow of your reflection.
This is the Third Principle of Convergence.
Consciousness
Have you ever appreciated the beauty of perspective?
A pair of parallel lines curves into the distance, like a river rounds a bend.
Or an irregular triangle lies flat on a plane—at its corners:
A rock to the fore and right, a tree in the middle left, a hillock behind.
Follow your awareness, drawing lines to connect your thoughts, and so, map your mind.
The Obelisphere
Have you ever admired the Eiffel Tower from a Paris suburb?
Ever-present on the horizon as you travel around it.
Ever-present in time as you travel through it.
Its light shines across the wheel, casting reflections and shadows.
It is the center of all things, of all places, of all persons.
Perspective squared
Have you ever been in two places at once?
You identify common landmarks in each local environment to triangulate your relative positions.
You begin to see other possibilities and new opportunities in the geometry of the wheel.
You become what you are and what you will be, what you have always been and what you will yourself to be.
Your perspective, though, is made up of all six senses—wakeling knowledge being the sixth.
Wakelings
Have you ever had a known reference to the axis?
You can calculate your coordinates on the wheel
Then calibrate your movement with its turning.
Since you are in two places at once already, you can be in three, four, or 24 or more:
Perspective to the power of infinity.
