Cover your eyes if you’ve already given up on my little journey into space as reported in a few previous entries. Otherwise, follow me in (and simultaneously, out) this trail:
My description of the immediate space of my backyard, bordered by what was within my range of sight, was an attempt to confine a space that was manageable to use as an example. By the same token, I mentioned that the sky, for one, went up into infinity. What I didn’t mention, was while my house was behind me, what went beyond that, as well as beyond the treelines and into my neighbor’s space was infinity as well.
From here we can go to a post at The Great Lettuce Head, “Scales and Image,” regarding The Aleph, a story by Jorges Luis Borges that describes a small sphere that contains pretty much the universe.
Admittedly, this is a difficult one to swallow. However, in trying to comprehend at least a glimmer of this mystery, which is indeed never going to be totally conceivable, I can at least relate it in a small way to this post on the space of my backyard. While this small space can be imagined on a flat plane, it can also be imagined as a spherical world, and along with the sky and peripheral vision, it can also be extended downward into the earth. The center or core of this space would be where the viewer is sitting, and could be imagined as extending into the sphere we call the earth. After all, the infinity of the universe is just as much a part of my backyard, as my backyard is a part of the universe.
Going back to The Great Lettuce Head with this: “…just as Schopenhauer tells us that the Will expresses itself entire in every man and woman . . . if one were to believe Tennyson, everything would be–everything. . . “
It reminds me of a post I wrote in a more poetic mood that said this: “Because in truth, with all that you see, there’s so much more beyond it that it’s everything yet awesomely nothing at all.”
So maybe, little bites at a time, I’m coming to taste just a tiny ort of the feast of knowledge that’s offered us.
ADDENDUM: A tune that Willie sings, with lyrics by Mike Newbury of Supergrass (which kind of explains it), called “Condition” was going through my mind the entire time I wrote this post, so I broke down and add it here:
“I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole,
And then I followed it in,
I watched myself crawling out,
As I was crawling in,”
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology