Transcendence

Lovely word and fascinating movie. All of us have ideas about what would make the world a better place. I do but I shape them more around what I can do to make the world a better place. I thought the most interesting thing about the movie was the ways it embodied the word.  A state of transcendence is described as the state of going beyond limits, exceeding confines, becoming more than what you were ever meant to be.  The movie was about life beyond death, and life beyond death reshaping life as it is irrevocably.

The irony about it is that the entire time the main character was trying to attain what they already had.  In many ways I think we as humans endeavor to do the same thing. We fight our confines just to attain what we already have. We all seek some form of liberation from our humanity. We limit who we interact with, who we allow ourselves to be seen as, we limit all things that push away from the downfalls of humanity. However it is the downfalls of humanity that spark the most vibrant and amazing aspects of being human.

Some of us do this by procreation. This belief that somehow creating new people will cement our transcendence. The irony is no one remembers the parents of a great human being. We rarely recognize the brilliance of a human when they are alive and demonstrating it. We often have other words for them. Anarchist, rebel, criminal.  It just depends on who is doing the naming in most situations.

Others do this through labor.  Work plain and simple. But the lure and the ultimate lie of this is that work has permanence. And in a way it does until someone else's work comes along to shatter it. In those situations all that can be done is to try and use work to facilitate well being.  When all is said and done legacy is a lie. Its a myth we tell ourselves to deal with what can be seen as an unfair lack of time bound in our human forms.

Its ironic that in many ways I believe our short lives are our only true gift. I believe the purity of who we can be and what we can accomplish are only possible because of the frailty of life. The things we fight for, live for, and die for define the sanctity of our existence. We move through this life this existence with hardly a clue as to what is needed or expected of us. We leave our callings to belonging and love.  We make connections and declaration based on tribal and regional affiliations. We find and discover things that bring us hope, beauty and joy. Some of us even deny ourselves the pleasure because of the fear of loss. Not ever understanding that the only thing lost is the moment.

We move through this space and seem not to understand that simple fact. We define what is important. We verify what brings us hope and joy. We dictate what love is and where it is spent. Now is the essence of humanity. Now is the world as it is. Now is the only truth.

What I always seek is to sing the song in every key.  Sometimes my notes are happy, sometimes my notes are sad. At times I wail and at times I moan.  From time to time I rise like the coming tide and crash like the coast ashore. I crest and hold for days, I swell and drop, I burrow and shriek, I cry in joy and in pain. Its in those notes in that phrase, in that bar, octet, reprise symphony is life. All that it can be, all that it shouldn't be all that it is and all that it is not. The point is not to control, regulate or build.  Those are distractions from your song. The point is to live and life can only be lived in one way now.

True transcendence is freedom from ideas that hobble, thoughts that condemn, habits that contain.  Transcendence is viewing hurt and pain as notes in the harmony of the concerto. Its viewing joy and happiness as the underlying melody that's always playing whether you hear it or not. Its in the rhythm of your beating heart. The lulling hum of your breathes.  The harmony of your flowing blood. The buzz of life singing around you.
 

So A Psychic and Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar

Clair finally asked. “Is there any reason to believe that someone would want to hurt you?”

He nodded quickly. “Yeah, this project that I’m here for is under much scrutiny and debate.” He leveled his impressive eyes at her. “There are people who would rather not see it done.”

“How pertinent are you to its completion?”

“There’s the thing Clair, without me, it doesn’t happen.”

“You want to talk about it?”

He hesitated for only a moment, “Virgin launch.  The ideal has been humming around the aerospace industry since we first got people on the moon.” His eyes started to glow again as he started talking with his hands. “What if we could charter people into space, like airline carriers charter people around the world?  It’s a huge undertaking because you would have to be able to eliminate a bulk of the physical limitations to being in space that astronauts train years for.”

“Okay.” Clair inserted following.

“What is the one thing missing from space that makes it so damn difficult for people?”

Clair thought for a second. “Gravity.”

Sergei smiled at her then. “I have developed a rather crude and preliminary gravitational system that would not alter regardless of the gravity, or lack thereof, of space. Currently it can be isolated to a single hub.” He shrugged, “So far I’ve only been able to stabilize a hub the size of a Lear jet, but that’s just the beginning.”

Clair felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “You’ve found a way to create gravity?” she said in a disbelieving fashion.

Sergei shrugged. “Sort of, I’ve mostly found a way to borrow gravity.  Gravity is one of the big four forces of the Universe, it just exists, the trick is tapping into it.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “Same way it exists now, orbiting bodies in a circular pattern, cyntrivical force meeting rotating atoms.”

Abruptly he grabbed a napkin and pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket.  He drew a crude looking cigar shaped vessel and drew several rings around it.  On each ring he attached various circular objects of varying size, and with arrows he displayed the directions each ring would move and the directions each circular object would rotate in.

He showed her the crude drawing. “Mankind’s problem is that we always think we need to reinvent the wheel. We don’t need anything new. The solution is in the application.”

Clair’s mind wrapped around it instantly. “A roving solar system, with the hub as the sun.”

Sergei nodded. “It would move in space just like our galaxy does, creating it’s own gravity as it goes.”

Clair shook her head. “That’s so simple it’s brilliant.”

Sergei nodded. “I had this thought for quite a while and I often thought that it really couldn’t be this simple so I never brought it up.  But people are chomping at the bit to get into space.” He shrugged. “So I put a little more time and planning into it, mapped out the physics of it all and I was able to generate a gravitational field on a model airplane.”

Clair was holding the napkin, staring at it blankly not really believing how unerringly brilliant this man was. “Talk about thinking outside of the box.”

“I find the only issues with science are all the rules. We’ve made things too complicated.  None of us can see the forest for the trees.” He shrugged. “God had it all right in the beginning, why mess with that.”

Her thoughts got captured by his mention of God. “Don’t tell me you’re a scientist that believes in God.”

He fixed her with a very serious look. “No true scientist can look at the evidence and not.  It’s too balanced, everything is.  I don’t know if religion has it right but I do know that something holds this all together.  We’ve broken things down to their smallest component and we have no ideal why everything doesn’t just fall apart.  That’s either magic or some other divine force.” He fixed her with a knowing look. “And I don’t have to tell you about all else in this world that is inexplicable.”

Clair stared at him more than a little transfixed. “You’re not surprised that I understand.”

His expression showed a large amount of confusion. “Why wouldn’t you understand?”

“I’m a musician.”

To his credit he laughed. “Clair you don’t play an egg, you play the piano and you compose concertos.” He shook his head. “The ideal that artists, musicians in particular, are not bright people is without merit.  Music is the finest thing math has ever created.”

Looking at her with a touch of awe he said gravely. “The ability to look at nothing and fill it with something that was only just a thought is the greatest genius of all.  Math, Science are easy, there are guidelines and charts, mapping and theories.  Creating something with just the raw materials given is what the pioneers of science, math, and language did, not us, we just work with what has been found.  People like you still dabble in actual creation, not us.”

Clair smiled at him as the waiter sat their plates in front of them.

“I stand by my previous assessment of you.” She said candidly after thanking the waiter.

Other Posts on this book:
That Scene with Sergei and Clair
Sergei
Clair Fair
Love is Queen
So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar

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