CATEGORY ZERO
--- check out ---
Yesterday we were driving down El Camino when the idea came ~ nowhere! Who writes about that? Or nothing, that's another.
At this point it's hard to imagine what might make interesting reading. Labels at BevMo? No longer relevant. OK Google, take a leap, fly fishing in the library of congress – Trout fishing, Fly casting . . . Gaah! Hint: How about a Zoltar dive into the stacks?
Doing nothing? Logging into Santa Clara Library I find an electronic book, available through Hoopla. Sign in, select it, and get back, “Yikes! Something wrong with your library card.” But Hoopla is displaying exactly the number shown on my card.
Snookered. What a fine pickle! And yet, here's the beauty, doing nothing doesn’t depend on anything else. It's not an overdue book. It has no form, no function of the usual five senses. And when it's happening, it seems like doing something.
--- instructions ---
Grandfather had requested reincarnation again, and made a jaunty wave from atop the roller coaster. There was a cloud borne gathering of rainbows, but he missed the brass ring. As the sky cleared, however, he looked down upon El Camino and became ecstatic.
Our family genetic pool ripples with piano tuners and musicians, one of which started playing with emails that self-erase after a couple of days. This was OK. But when one of them got forwarded our garage door started opening on its own, which was troubling and raised speculations about aliens.
We heard his autobiography will be on You Tube. There will be captions, bells and whistles, a street marching band with piccolos adapted from John Philip Sousa's little known experiment with bumble boogie, and of course stride piano. In the display window of the leading limo look for the mirror I lent you in that dream. You will see a collection of rare stamps selected by Publisher's Clearing House, carefully mounted on glassine hinges. If you face it with another of exactly the same dimensions and march along without worrying about whether you're in step, you'll be fine. But don't think about it or you might disappear. Word to the wise. Fair warning.
--- embarcadero ---
The current trope is to note that it's all interconnected.
Getting off the train was somewhere else in buffalo town, but not much place for it in this backyard. Though sometimes when the breeze flows right a BART horn makes it through the distance. The overtones resonate. On straight tracks cars are coupled in rows, and underneath hobos get off at unscheduled stops – Chattanooga Station, all aboard!
This backyard in no echo chamber. As distant BART mumbles off, memories tumble to insignificance. Hobos hop onto the next train. Quiet.
Saturday. A few doors down the street is the swimming hole. Kids at the Cabana Club are yelling and having a good time. Squirrel's on the fence, looks for the walnuts, says hello, jumps into the bird seed dish. Twinkie's gotten used to this, not even lurking underneath, having so far not ever caught a bird. The swoosh of traffic on Benton is like a fan one no longer hears. Mr. Finch has come for a dip in the bird bath.
The concatenation all rolls along until that lonely moment when suddenly Andromeda, the permeation of background microwave radiation, the Big Bang, all in their Pullman cars with black and white memories --- suddenly everything is the center.
--- speculation --
From chocolate drops to copper pennies, the quality of truth is dawn from the poop deck of the cement ship at Davenport. In the hold were cotton bales either historically or politically correct. These were not polished rocks, which require little maintenance, but rather cherry blossoms in the orchard of dreams, and they have released a fragrance of waterfalls, streams and mountains. For the time being an unscheduled storm will convert drought to mud, celebrated by our local high school marching band with its new tune to play. Without it copper pennies tarnish, sheet music scurries off in the breeze.
The drum major lifts his baton, a rude finger, and that's when it really gets going.
--- bedrock ---
Logic crawls on caterpillar legs, all of which must operate in order. Ask a caterpillar to explain how and see the confusion. The workings of logic are both obvious and inexplicable. But don't we need them?
Fill a glass with water. Set up another of exactly the same size. It can be predicted that the contents of the first glass will exactly fill the other. An experiment will prove it is so, but it's unnecessary. And why? Because it's obvious. We already know, and it's not a matter of the ratio of one glass to another, equally sized or not. It's down to intuition, knowledge that is not inferred. In the end, an explanation of logic ends in self-contradiction. Except we need it. In practice, it works.
It is an administrative truth best accepted as declared.
But is this not, most fundamentally, The Ministry of Truth? It offends Jefferson’s self-evident truth, key to independence, freedom, and self-realization. These American rights are not logically established by any train of reasoning, with cause entraining effect, but are inherent in human nature
-- category zero --
The International Prototype Kilogram, during weigh-ins that used to take place every few decades, had been found to have lost around 50 micrograms in mass, equivalent to about an eye lash. It was, regardless of how you like your tea, scarcely detectable.
The weight of a hummingbird wing compared to that of a dove might be enough to tip it. And that would be a category zero event.
