My copy of 2013: Raising the Earth to the Next Vibration, by Richard Grossinger, arrived this morning. I'm suffering extreme pangs of anticipation! I haven't peeked past the introduction by Daniel Pinchbeck yet, so in lieu of the book proper, here's a taste of that:
"My personal hope for 2013 is a visceral revolution of the human spirit against domination and oppression, against the sorcerer's spell of Illuminati technology and endless virtual distraction-prisons. The spiritual counter-culture that is developing a deepening awareness of the psychic and synchronic order could meld with the grittier layer of baseline struggle for human survival and dignity that we meet in movements like the Zapatistas and recall from the satyagraha and civil rights struggles led by heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. My true concern is that if we do not help bring about this uprising on behalf of the multitude, if our intellectuals and textual wizards and artist-shamans can't figure out how to sacrifice their own ego interests to serve this larger emancipatory project, our species will soon discover, as Marlene Dietrich informs Orson Welles at the end of the great, seedy masterpiece Touch of Evil: "Your future's all used up."
2013: Raising the Earth to the Next Vibration is published by North Atlantic books:
http://www.northatlanticbooks.com/
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
"... we have argued that, as Wheeler’s picture of positrons as electrons moving backwards in time suggests, P-CTCs might also allow time travel in spacetimes without general-relativistic closed timelike curves. If nature somehow provides the nonlinear dynamics afforded by final-state projection, then it is possible for particles (and, in principle, people) to tunnel from the future to the past."
The grandfather paradox (go back in time, kill your grandfather, prevent yourself from existing in the future) may not be a barrier after all...
A reader-friendly summary can be found here...
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25494/
and the full paper is available here...
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1007/1007.2615v2.pdf
The grandfather paradox (go back in time, kill your grandfather, prevent yourself from existing in the future) may not be a barrier after all...
A reader-friendly summary can be found here...
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25494/
and the full paper is available here...
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1007/1007.2615v2.pdf
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
A Heaven Round the Stars
This is the opening to a novel that I started some years ago: A Heaven Round the Stars
Sunrise
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Dylan Thomas, THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER, 18 Poems
The world is very quiet in the hour before dawn. Across the valley floor, a scattering of lights pick out a vague outline of streets, the gossamer night-web of the hamlet that has nestled there for half a thousand years. Soon, the rising from sleep noises of the small community will wake the valley from its own slumber, but for now, the silence is almost complete, only the tiny, snuffling grunts of a female mouse pig in the underbrush breaking its perfection.
Across the western rim of the valley, down the wide dusty road that is its only link with the outer world, a tall figure comes walking, its stride loose and confident. The mouse pig freezes immediately, but her presence has already been registered; her nature identified; the fact that she is nearing oestrus noted; and the delicate hormonal trail she has left during her night’s quest for food traced and mapped. All this takes a moment, and is not even consciously apprehended. The information is unimportant, except as an indicator that the valley is at peace and normality still reigns, as it has for 500 years.
Another, shorter shape steps out of the shadow of a nearby beyab tree and holds up its hand in welcome. Neither is surprised – if the presence of a mouse pig was so obvious, the life signs of another Neos are a beacon to those with the eyes to see. The shapes draw near each other, still vague in the dark before dawn.
“Well. You took your time.” The voice is ageless and sibilant, as caressing as the night breeze. “Was there trouble this time?”
“No, the plains are peaceful, now the Trader rivalry has been resolved. Peacefully, for once. No intervention was necessary. I walked as far as the Threshold to see what the Shriekers have made of themselves.” This voice is deeper, but shares the other’s sibilant quality. To ordinary human ears, both voices would have sounded like the wind hissing through tall grass. Such ears would not be able to distinguish the words that had just passed in the night.
“And what have the Shriekers made?” There is a touch of impatience now, though this is an old game between these two, and the other will not be rushed.
Sunrise
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Dylan Thomas, THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER, 18 Poems
The world is very quiet in the hour before dawn. Across the valley floor, a scattering of lights pick out a vague outline of streets, the gossamer night-web of the hamlet that has nestled there for half a thousand years. Soon, the rising from sleep noises of the small community will wake the valley from its own slumber, but for now, the silence is almost complete, only the tiny, snuffling grunts of a female mouse pig in the underbrush breaking its perfection.
Across the western rim of the valley, down the wide dusty road that is its only link with the outer world, a tall figure comes walking, its stride loose and confident. The mouse pig freezes immediately, but her presence has already been registered; her nature identified; the fact that she is nearing oestrus noted; and the delicate hormonal trail she has left during her night’s quest for food traced and mapped. All this takes a moment, and is not even consciously apprehended. The information is unimportant, except as an indicator that the valley is at peace and normality still reigns, as it has for 500 years.
Another, shorter shape steps out of the shadow of a nearby beyab tree and holds up its hand in welcome. Neither is surprised – if the presence of a mouse pig was so obvious, the life signs of another Neos are a beacon to those with the eyes to see. The shapes draw near each other, still vague in the dark before dawn.
“Well. You took your time.” The voice is ageless and sibilant, as caressing as the night breeze. “Was there trouble this time?”
“No, the plains are peaceful, now the Trader rivalry has been resolved. Peacefully, for once. No intervention was necessary. I walked as far as the Threshold to see what the Shriekers have made of themselves.” This voice is deeper, but shares the other’s sibilant quality. To ordinary human ears, both voices would have sounded like the wind hissing through tall grass. Such ears would not be able to distinguish the words that had just passed in the night.
“And what have the Shriekers made?” There is a touch of impatience now, though this is an old game between these two, and the other will not be rushed.
Monday, July 19, 2010
2011
2011
The line is drawn, the circle squared, the time
swings round upon itself, a pendulum
that mortal hands and minds cannot arrest.
We are done with guarantees of Heaven
and Hell is not our fate, except in dreams
and the unanswered smoke of prophecy.
Dogma fails us, so does Faith, unworthy
guides when the world is ground to dust and we
must live without a net across the void.
Unknitting, time lets loose a flood of days,
tumbling the rooms where we store our sleepless
harvest – fear grown huge and all-devouring.
There is no guide, no chart, no formula
to keep us safe. Our heart’s the Map, we are
our own Star and Compass, our own way home.
We are circles: measure us where you will.
We end in our beginning, that place where
dying Alpha and Omega give birth.
The line is drawn, the circle squared, the time
swings round upon itself, a pendulum
that mortal hands and minds cannot arrest.
We are done with guarantees of Heaven
and Hell is not our fate, except in dreams
and the unanswered smoke of prophecy.
Dogma fails us, so does Faith, unworthy
guides when the world is ground to dust and we
must live without a net across the void.
Unknitting, time lets loose a flood of days,
tumbling the rooms where we store our sleepless
harvest – fear grown huge and all-devouring.
There is no guide, no chart, no formula
to keep us safe. Our heart’s the Map, we are
our own Star and Compass, our own way home.
We are circles: measure us where you will.
We end in our beginning, that place where
dying Alpha and Omega give birth.
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