Tricky Pattern
Going to Space means having to build your own ship
Bergamo shapes himself. He feels his feet on the ground and balances over them with his knees, and balances over his knees with his hips. He balances his back and stomach muscles to rise cleanly upward from the basin in which he is planted, and he distributes consciousness equally, so that his mind is in the shape of his body.
When you don’t have an immediate sense of quality, you have to have something between thought and action to provide guidance, and that takes time. You follow an external guidance system, though there are many competing systems, all shot through with viruses. There are predatory systems which take energy from those seeking guidance.
If it’s wrong to do things that you are going to do anyway, it isn’t you who does them. Another part does, but you don’t identify with it. If it’s wrong to have certain thoughts, then you learn how to go unconscious when you are thinking of something you aren’t supposed to think about. Your reflection coming back from the external systems splits your identity into a million pieces.
That reminds me of when the Buddha had a hot dog stand in Nepal, and made me one with everything.
Objectivity is the most pleasurable state imaginable. The great doctor and hypnotist, Milton Erickson, described this experience as one of, being an object in Space. Joyce might call it the moment of aesthetic arrest. To Maslow it is peak experience. To a saint it is a rebirth in Christ. To Bergamo it is continuous orgasm. Nothing that requires a cleaning crew, it’s removed from the organic realm and becomes a background vibration which provides constant guidance, so long as you do not look back, and turn into the proverbial pillar of salt. “Cows are coming. Prepare yourself.”
It passes through his fingers into the keyboard, and it is transformed into a spermatic atmosphere.
The train makes no sound as it comes floating along the poppy trail, and the flowers themselves flash with light. It is a silent process. The only sound that is native to Ash Fork is the clink of Bergamo’s spurs. They are circles cut through from the top left with a jagged streak of lightning. The circle is the sound wave emitted outward from the flash of light.
Bergamo brought the sound with him. Birds and wind and rain and insect sounds begin to stabilize Ash Fork. Without the sounds it would be a dream. With them this world fades to a dream. The senses come to agreeable accommodation with the scene. This is the bass line. Over the top of it is the rhythm of life, the practiced routines of trade and domestic affairs. Beyond that there is the lead guitar, the improvisation, the story to be remembered and retold, because it contains at its core a connection to the infinite.
Lewis had magnetic center. He was pilot material. He could use the force.
Bergamo watched the young man, who was concentrated on the keys, and who seemed to read his mind. “I’m comfortable holding the rhythm of life,” he said, “but I’m afraid of the passions that will get stirred up by starting a story line.”
“Without a story you can’t remember yourself.”
Lewis nodded. “Tricky pattern.”
