How far-fletched will your imagination fly with a hard pull at its bowstring? The concept life soars further. It is light years ahead of our very furthest shot. Even vapid mongers of the most tangible boring day-to-day existence ever conceived possible, send arrows the same relative distance as you. So-you thought your ideas were more fluid, straight, and piercing than theirs? Congratulations are never in order. Like an astronaut's random golf swipe, or football lobs to space, our blips of radio wave, and long-play gold-plate records of higher-tech CD ROM welcome, glued to space-born probes, assumes Earthling communication forms a self-evident universal. They (the other life forms) will surely be able to decode these arcane messages. I dunna. What do we miss right under our mostly-obvious noses?

Human brains exhibit one type of thinking in an infinite store of forms. As different intelligence surrenders to the possible geometries that hold it, so too, forms' variance protects all differing shapes from inner and intra-connection. As we know, each "organic" body sifted through the cosmos is a separate shard of a timeless fractal ONE. Because there is no complete overlap-we are different-we can not speak-so often, there is no recognition at all. Do we talk to plants and animals? At least they're visible. Will we ever recognize such innate forms of intelligence? Do we try? What makes us think we can jab eternity with a signature of radio-while our hubris brims-lip of its own basic question. "What if no other life forms bother with electromagnetic measurement?"-sending brainy blips and barks of jumping sinefleas, they (of the Slmiixz-liquid collective world, among others) assume we have no meaningful "intelligence". They operate in a world of hyper-intuitive signals, we'd find quite insane. They've been sending us blatant messages for years, but crippled human science measures smarts by machinery. Whales, and the krill they eat, measure it differently. We think about things in terms of squeaky windshield wipers make us crazy all the way to work, and the next television show we can't agree on, that conflicts with some other inanity, or mock viewer-rated event of an up-late at-home Saturday night could be, over beer and empty pizza boxes. Because we are too busy seeing the reflection a mile off the lower atmosphere, to argue about stars-how many there might be, and how we'd get there. Some are there already. Siddis levitate munificence to Ashramic mime, as "adepts" shop the squiggle-chip rack, and desperately try to decide which salsa brand delivers premium rancid oil hogfed picante with cold domestic forty-ouncer. As our daily till. The bell rings, and we grab at the cash. We replenish it every night, and rob it next mornings. It's event stagnation. It's the cultural-politico swank, swagger, and next-election sustenance. It is outside's in, where scientists follow scientist under-scientist ad-infinitum's long-dead tutelage. We build that kind of past-throwing delicate seeds in history's overrun fields, raising youngsters into all ways and means of old-time discoveries. We fudge little numbers here and there, ignoring mistakes unconsciously, hand the results to leaders of next generation's script before retirement. The truth is thinking. And to 'read all about it', is to become criminal. In the eyes of masses (who are told what to see) you have been dispossessed, if you look too hard. You've deviated from their straight-line course at mile one, rendering your ten-thousandth mile, several kilometers off-kilter. You are becoming another form of life, wanting to render down all minute mistakes through recorded history, inkling you're that answer as well. A standard deviation could be large. Very large. It could be the nearly-unintelligible dialect of what we've become. It could easily be a whole new language! Just a few missing records (or decimal points) can rewrite physical history. So check this out-I saw it on the side of a brick building in downtown Marysville, WA where a hacker wrote it in chalk. Funny, how copyrights don't apply.

The world demonstrates its differences

and its discrepancies in close approximation

to all other bits in its ongoing jigsaw puzzle we call "life".

Each small bit is a pod holding a course-approximation of whole

defying 'reason' to decide its one-and-only possible slot,

in an open-indexed infinity."

"Why are you writing this?"

"I'm not sure." I think I want to see it bigger, in case it made more sense."

What was he trying to say? This object of contemplation was probably posted on the world-wide web (the closest technical approximation of the expanding universe imagineered thus far) Maybe his scene was saying: "Life" is way bigger than a description of qualities. Him and I are alive, stumbling over this paragraph.

"My uncle just died." he said, straight form the cuff.

"Did you know him well?"

"No. I wish I'd taken the time." Neither of us looked at the chalk, because handling a corpse, questions your conscious existence. What's wrong with it?! It doesn't feel right. Chalk means nothing. Death tests consciousness' grade. . . Truck's brakes smoking, horn behind you blowing caution. . . The moment trigger finger pulls, or the knife goes in, you hit the gravel run-away ramp. What tidbits of mortality have you earned? No, chalk doesn't say that.

A lot of things are happening. A computer doesn't have the right drivers, the basement is leaking, your daughter reaches childhood sex age, there are bills to pay companies pretend are life-death matters, and your dog pisses everywhere the rugs are stained. Critical questions held at bay. Not only missed seeing the chalk of your run-away truck, it killed you in process of missing it. What are we doing here? Why do we act like we do? What other ways of thinking are relevant to salting these slugs; how do we get there, and what types of consciousness, already think them?

If,

What does she think of me? and What color lipstick should I apply tonight? block our view of the stars, there's no space to imagine such questions, let alone, fallacy in their "answers". Why would the aimless wanders of earthbound minds contemplate slime-mold consciousness in a barren waste of anti-universes where we'd underline hostile, due to pocked-planet wrong-electron surface withoutadoubt deadly? How will we prepare ourselves for eventual knowledge of other forms of consciousness, when we're busy thinking farm animals, cats, dogs, and (perhaps) different religious adherents represent life without ? Because if we accept any single thing's vie for the infinite, everything else be infinite too. Got that? So now I'll tell you our nemesis. Hubris. The one-word answer. It ruins exclusive clubs. We're so enamored with hubris, there is no room to validate the intelligence of flora or fauna life. Have rodents intelligence? What about crows? Maybe. Nothing like ours, of course (thank God). We are very intelligent; therefore; whatever doesn't value our way of being, is frankly inferior. I am, because I am.

Next non-question on the blocks.

Any last words before

we kill you?

What if-if is true?

Assumptions can be right.

There are things we can't see, beyond the tangible things

we barely imagine. Science hasn't invented machines to measure some of the latter you-knows yet. They might not be measurable-in other way's saying-we haven't dreamt that correct shard of fractal-reality yet, to measure. There are innumerable solutions poised in states of exhibit-hiding, where we nefariously claw cat scrapings, for our causally-deified points. Laws of the universe (or that impossibly small sphere we deem dub) become circumstantially exclusive. They are grizzled male board members of Wool-over-Eyes Club. Earthly culture follows a unique, systematically proven deviation at mile three, which culminates at juncture to "greater" reality's blind sides. This trajectory leads us over hill-dale, well out of shouting distance-yet. . . this major difference is the same general track, far as this dimension goes. A human's anemic "window" of electro-magnetic perception, makes all wavelengths suspect. Look at all the junk here! Might something else live outside the cozy, perceptive envelope? Might there be whole other wavelengths of possible resonant-residence coexisting with mutually-exclusive space? The universe may have several laminates of reality, polarized flat and compressed-a computer disk full of information, fractal above beyond and below. Like, what is omnipresence? A term we recklessly toss. Which layer of its fancy laminate do we inhabit? Which way is up, is this reality spinning, why is everything turning, is it possible to jump "off"?-if only for an instant-to gain some cosmic perspective? We went to the moon, so we could gaze wistful eyes back, get religious, and seek inner space. Gotta sidereal minute for it (them) (those damned questions) to catch up?

Everything we do is fractal.

What does a bicycle rider think passing stinky, oil-spewing late 70's car with freshly-applied bumper sticker: I/M 4-CLEAN AIR! ? What the car-driver doesn't think. Ironies mist an only-does, only-doesn't perception-a driver's left side windshield wiper doesn't work-and this the irony grows connective tissue Mother Earth needs to keep herself in place. Ironies keep reality afloat, in the relativity sea of other, less-intriguing cosmo equations. Like Planetary Darwinism learns from largesse of far larger systems-if not kites, flying squirrels, riotously-colored Galapagosians, fossilized dinosaurs, mammalians, or monkey brains, well . . then; ideas, paradigms, civilizations, different versions of reality, solar systems and universes. Do you grasp? We are evolving, vying forms for supremacy. Humanity foments for lack of a large, encompassing schemata. Creative competition drags us to death screaming, straight jacket stratifying our invasive remains in sandstone, in supernovas, and rare evolutionary gas. We are oblivious to this fate. We are ticks biting dog toenails, existing in the universe size of an anti-quark, that itself, similies tick, biting . . You know rest. We are lackadaisical fate-dumb rare forms of Tibetan deer, cut off in Himalayan equation sheer-walled, inaccessible rifts. We live our self-proclaimed content, falsely free of dire existential thought-by central conceit of Hubris-of being Deer, Instead of condors. We are this thing, nothing else in our valley is. We communicate, and know things collectively, other amino-acid assemblages (cloaked with fur skin or feather) do not. Unfortunately, we these deer are dying-dwindling, by perverse addiction to natural laws of selection-over centuries, and the screwed part is, the actual deer have done nothing wrong. We are being replaced, (stored, ground up, ground down) slowly but surely, by other, more "creative" forms of life. Perhaps, the jokes aren't funny anymore. We die within, and they are perishing without.

You see how cosmic policy dupes its participants? Humans don't know what's going on, any more than these animals do. And why are we so different? A human secretly loathes worlds beyond his or her isolated valleys-because these realms make organisms small. We ignore peaks, for modest glimpses of big picture-and tell me: Why are we dying? Don't want to know that. Because if we look, some part of us will always know the truth. Deer-Hubris could notice there aren't deer outside steep-valley walls. Deer Hubris becomes melancholy, and tries to return to through deer Shangra La, but it had become infected with existential fear something's wrong in here/out there. The collective ignorance has been compromised. A deer-individual knows this fact instinctively, so we don't leave our valley, unless we're starving, and maybe not even then. What do I mean? Look at the fractal. Straight on. What's the first thing you notice? It's pattern. It's solid parts. What's the only reason you can see these? Fractals are full of emptiness, as well.

So tell me: What is emptiness?

Further inquiry may be useless.

How many words describe empty space? What distinguishes one form of space from another, or are all words cunning synonyms? Space, emptiness, void, black, nothing.... not a lot of them. Consider the number of words dispeling gaps, or a lack substance-description. Open a dictionary. Point! "Faded", "Brackish", "Reticulated", "Black", "Oblong", "Quaint". . . there are millions and millions of corks to quell what empty space exhibits, in otherwise "solid" phenomena. Billions, with all languages considered. And isn't this a grievous oversight? Isn't this a lie? At best, our lack of syntax to "nothing" is profoundly lopsided, wouldn't you say? Eskimos with untold names for different states of snow-because they pay attention to snow. Modern man makes the unknown a temporary, if not villainous state of affairs. Emptiness is a condition to be rectified, coded, numbered and espoused. Without names making nothing something, (in a strange sort of way) modern life is the kiss of nothing at all. We boast 20-20 hindsight. . . bet you don't even see it.

". . . There were a lot of people standing around, watching waves. About a dozen were running the eight-to-ten footers. It was big surf, and I thought it out, before throwing the rig in the water. It was okay, I guess. Once I was into it, I felt sorry for those apathetic, nice-day boarders staring at me having fun. I'll bet they're wishing they could let go a bit, and take this chance, I was thinking. Shit. It was goood water; nice breaks-real predictable, and good for jumping . . . When I'd been out about an hour-no problem mind you-the BIG one came. Thought I'd fly up-n-off the bastard (at first) but as I head towards the sucker, I realize the goddamned-thing's eighteen feet of Fuck-you! starting to go. Next thing I remember, I'm underwater.

Not sure what happens to time, when you're caught like that. Seconds just stop. You're thinking I'm going to die-five or six seconds more, and that's it for my air, but time's not even moving. Five separate eternities troll past, and you think, 'Okay, maybe I can make it five more seconds.' That's when I open my eyes. Whenever I open my eyes [underwater] it costs me a hundred-n forty seven bucks. That's b'cause I wear special contacts; at that point if it'd cost a hundred thousand, I think I'd have opened them. To my acute and utter dismay, it's black as night and I had no idea which way's up. I closed 'em, and started counting real slow again; and I mean, Reeal-sloow . . . like, owe-nne-th-oouu-s-san-d-owonnn. . . [a big pause] o-nne-th-ouu-ssan-d-twoooo . . . and made it to six, before I opened my eyes again. 'Might as well have a good look around, before I drown!', I'm thinking, and what do you know! I'm seeing the surface. Waay up above me. A good twenty-five feet, which seemed like a million miles, 'cause it took 'zactly three hundred and thirty five years to get there.

I get out of the water shaking, thinking something like : 'Hole-lee-fuck! You just about bit-it, buddy-boy!!', when the sun broke, and the fly-boys looked pretty good up there . . ."

I'm lost.

"Who? I mean, where? (What?)"

"The para-gliders, floatin' round the cliff. Anyway; suddenly the sand felt greater-than great b'tween my toes, and my board didn't look so thrashed sittin' there covered with seaweed and shit from washin' up. Mast was slightly bent, the sail was a write-off, but hell; maybe it wasn't so bad after all, and I was just being a sissy. Shit does go down when you're windsurfing.

I go up to my van, and there's two cop cars right next to me, flashin' their lights-I'm thinking Ah fuck-probably left a roach in the ashtray! when I notice three blue-suits going through the Subaru next to mine, and two morose-lookin' dudes standing to the right of them. 'Bus-ted!' I'm thinking. So just to be obnoxious-(glad it wasn't my ass!) I ask what the trouble is Mr. Officer sir. Little did I know it, but the nasty wave was a million miles behind me.

"Fukkin-chill dude! Our buddy just drown!"

That's when ecstasy started.

A dozen, from fifty invites, showed for our party. In one hour, we'd be out to the edge of a wave, an'-up-n-over it, ridin' down its other side-in bird costumes-prancing and tittering runway landing in far-out fashion show with its "We need more bodies!" X-trippers wandering by. "Hey you-all!" "Yea?" "Come with us!" People change back-room bras to skin with costumes akimbo in face paint, lace, troll suit, bellows, and bird beaks. You wanna act? "You're on!" Fairies, prancing dolls, and dogs didn't even know us-"Put this on/Fabulous!/You look great!" points to the stage door, as big, synthetic doses collapse on us. The other thirty-eight humanoids, too afraid to observe a deep fear, watch from the comfortable TV audience, in warm living rooms, far from chaos, and runway walks. Their grieved surfing deaths… the ones, that didn't have to happen… Because ecstasy is dangerous. Its surf's too big.

They did not seize the day.

Carpa Diem's dark philosophy, every instant you don't.

(Safer not to seize, too often.)

A day's crucial elements (couched in collective moments constituting a standard-unit of Earth time) shipwreck in waves of foment. Or should I say, momentum?

That eighteen-footer was one fraction of a whole day

that holds how many such moments?

Get it?

We're not talking positive or negative. We're embracing circumstance.

People at the party are having a seriously good time. What about those people on the beach?

They saw serious drama.

They thanked their lucky stars.

The three dozen who were too afraid, are glad they're afraid.

They ask, then not hear their answer.

But man caught by wave's-wash, wasn't so sure.

"I don't know; it wasn't really bad or good. I'm kind-a glad it happened-now it's over,

in that weird sort of way."

His awe:

not necessarily bad or good.

Ahs and oohs of our trippy fashion show emphasized pity

the man before wave felt, likening his earlier-cowardice watching from beach,

what party-goers felt for missed opportunities, surfing the silver platter-

"Come to our rave! It'll be big fun!"

of total rejection. O watchers of TV movie-

Fun is your momentum, that makes lifetimes worth living.

"Be in our moment!"

religions preach, to hear themselves speak.

"Be with God!"

How can being in infinitesimally immeasurable time-devoid Zens-here-n-now

be anything but a stall, as wave-skimming para-glider spins to ground, from clear blue sky? How can it be but failure, when we as practitioners can't seize a single day of our lives?

What are our lives, to grasp?

A moment Inwards-

Big particles stand pop than little ones

and looking for theoretical itty-bits of subatomic theory

might get you nowhere. Nowhere, is where you want to kneel

at So what? if you find one?

How long till you find another one?

What if that (particle thro perception theory) isn't the same?

If you want life badly enough, you'll swim for 350 years, to break surface, to find it.

Maybe you will make cosmic moments happen, in the projection of Satori (bliss+insight+intellect=eternal) and all it's suppose to be. Happiness a day, not a second. It's a big particle; a bog-clump of sticky stuff you'll wade through. Large particles are easy to assimilate, and contain the voids of smaller ones. You can usually find them. Moments make minutes look long. Moments are a crushed-lungs I need a breath! Eternity, twenty five feet under, as someone tells you it's survival, not life you're breathing. . . not air. In Death.

Days aren't minutes.

Minutes disappear in seconds.

Days are chunks.

It's difficult to space one out.

Start counting.

o-nne-th-ouu-ssan-d-oone ....

o-nnne-th-ouu-sssannd-oonne twwooo ….

wo-nne-thoouu-sssaan-nd-oowoe.nnn .…

.

.

.

.

In less than a week, you'll forget you're suppose to be counting.

"She was sure we were pregnant." The ex-husband laughs. "That was way before 'we' ever got pregnant. She was pregnant then. Men had little or nothing to do with having a baby, except the obvious, of course." She winks, sipping his green-colored drink.

"The hospital said, no Maam, you aren't. I was only nineteen then, and Maam seemed like a big, grown-up word. But I suppose getting pregnant was a huge deal. Just as big a deal as betting on wedding rings' death do you part."

She stated this, as if man-and-wife wrecked some things.

"Testing negative was a letdown, and also kind of a relief. So that night we dropped acid. It was some kind of craziness I can tell you! But a week later when found out she was pregnant…"

"Oh-man, I took it pretty hard for a couple of days, until I thought: Well, if she (I knew the baby was a girl) is screwed up because we tripped, then I'll just take care of her."

"How did you know it was a girl?"

She was asked.

"I had a strong feeling, right away."

She gets a little dreamy.

"I thought, oww-shit, we really blew it!"

her ex chimes in.

"No; as soon as we did it (dropped), and the pregnancy thing really sunk in, I was sure everything would be all right, even if it 'wasn't'. Know what I mean?"

"She had way more faith than I did. I was scared right up to the delivery."

"Nope, after a couple days of freaking-out, I remembered how incredible the trip had been, and felt like it had to happen this way."

"So, what did happen?"

We're softened with giggles, playing the part of her ex-husband. She was the Haight Ashbury grandmom at our ecstasy party.

"I was very good for the rest of the pregnancy-didn't drink, smoke, or anything atall bad. Now that child's top of her class, and wants to go to Harvard for advanced degrees. Her professors gush about her-they call her up, and ask if they can help her do anything at all. She has lots of friends... She's really the greatest kid in the world; I think you couldn't ask for more in a daughter. God-knows, I never pushed her to be this way. I'm terminally-struggling designer, patron, and creator of the arts."

For no apparent reason,

conversation fell to death.

A geriatrics doc, an engineer, an architect, schoolteacher, nanny, two scraping musicians, a computer scientist, secretary, nervy stevedore (complete with pregnant wife) and slacker wander 'cross death, reeling and sloping their thoughts on its slippery, onyx steps. The motorcycle racer, sitting on grinning-wide porch, twitches throttle hand, and listens closely.

"Nobody gets it. You can die in your next ten minutes."

"I hear you." The physician exclaims. "Yesterday I worked on a guy whose dad dropped dead at age 40, but he's talking about his retirement-told me he's working hard now, to save time and money for things, when he can really enjoy them.".

"Bet you doctors call that denial, in clinical jargon."

"Should be dementia!"

"Take this party for instance . . ."

And everyone knew exactly

what she meant.

Why not? What do you really have to lose? You may lose that, anyway.

You may secretly want to lose it-so find out why. Present yourself with opportunities to watch your personal drama, to think hard about it, to keep going, and open your eyes one last time, to realize that twenty-five feet is your drowning. Now swim! Why wouldn't you? Realities are hidden in the relatively large particles, of a day's blinding moments, three feet from that bursting-lungs breath, in the lockjaw stare at the corpse, who didn't-thank lucky stars. I am living. This person is not. Why; and what creates the difference? Look long and hard there. Listen to pictures' stories, written throughout a space in our lines. Listen to the hardened radio announcers proclaim yet one more gruesome highway statistic.

What does it do for you?

Nothing?

". . . I took a sliding, power-on bank with one lap left. The caution flag goes in (light blinks in SELF PRESERVATION's check-box) adrenaline's riding high, one more friggin' rider to pass-first place is right around the corner! I've gone balls out to get this far.... don't want to…"

Listeners grip their seats. They're astride a o-nnne hunn-d-rred aye-tee horsepower demon, screaming towards hay bales n-corner.

"When I dropped one gear, an' fell back."

We squirmed.

He's suppose to beat the odds!

The brave motorcycle racer's suppose to seize the day, and go for it!

(He's a wussy wave-watcher! A Wimp!)

". . .A little oil-doesn't take much. I'm behind the dude when his front end washed-goes down at one twenty-five; bike hits him and slides off the course. Fuck. He's dead as dead can be. I knew it right away. Nobody had to tell me. I took the checkered at three quarters throttle, and gave the cash to his widow." Nobody knows who's going to cry first. The silence as mortar.

"It was probably the absolute worst, and best win I've ever had."

Tears are streaming down the face of an unnamed wife's contact-X high. She thinks of her son-(for she knows) and the things he'll choose to become. She instructs herself, not to control him, ("Accept those cues, a far-sighted fate shall bring!") because grandmom taught her something important. My imperceptible judgments slant opinions, from "perfect", to "imperfect". What is an imperfect child, or moment? She embraces what acid-trip brings, in peace of mind

imperfections are powerless to disturb.

Was/still-is profound.

She sips a little wine, for the first time in her pregnancy.

What did she need to say-right now, to her husband?

One falling crate, and

he's gone.

". . . It got deeper-more enriching. The longer she held out, the closer we became. When she was healthy (in her normal environment) we had zero words of solace, or kindness for each other. It was a typical mother-daughter thing, carried to the extreme. We wanted each other person to be someone different, while we each did the same things we'd always felt and done. It was a total Catch-22, and continued to be till her early sixties, when she announced she had breast cancer. At this point, everything changed. Although wasn't too worried at first-you know, there's a lot that can be done when it's detected early-her doctor called me up, and said, 'Your mother's a very advanced case, and we think . . .' Whaat!? I called her right away. 'How mom!? How could you have done this . . . (to me?)! I was more angry with her, than I'd never been in my life. I couldn't see her for a week. Then, finally, I drove over.

'Mom . . .'

(I tried to say things nicely),

'How could you have known, and not gone in?'

'I was afraid.'

I sat with that answer in silence

for a good five minutes.

'Afraid of dying?'

What a hopeless, tragic irony! I'm thinking.

'No. I was afraid of being alone.'

Her reply stunned me. I didn't even get it."

In our room,

the music only got better.

We began loving everything. The motorcycle racer went to his bike for something, and fondly strokes its tank. Thanks for letting me live till now-to live this day-his fingers seemed to say. Father stevedore listens to his wife's belly, and grandma sips a beer, gazing at rain-slicked leaf, on a large Maple tree. Sighs.

"You're like a friend I had in college;"

said the twenty two year-old.

"I left without ever telling her, that I lived for the time we spent together."

"Why is that?"

"I don't know."

Danielle said, knowing she had not seized

her days.

Somebody else speaks for her.

"When my dad died in the crash, I was only eleven years old. I remember I vowed I would grow up to make things safer-I remember it clearly . . . so other children wouldn't go through what I did. That's why I became an engineer. For so many years, I thought about how quickly and pointlessly he died. One moment he's IFR, and the next he's scattered across the frozen ground. Just like that."

He takes a thoughtful pull on the Harvey Wall-banger

whose ice clinked merrily.

"Then I realized something. No matter how hard you try to the engineer glitches out, shit still happens. Things go wrong. Pilots space-out normal safety routines, metal fatigues, ice accumulates, birds soar through engines… too many things to control. You can't chase every possible breakdown to a solution, not to mention the breaks of the fixes! In any given circumstance, there are simply too many things that might go wrong, to control all variables. Thus in my final year school, I decide the only thing you might truly engineer, with any sense of certainty, is your own life. And the only way to do that, is to live it fully. Completely. With as little fear as possible. You've got to."

Musician dips his head in ascent, says:

"Did you read about . . ."

Yea. The two men on Mount Everest, struggling with frostbite and altitude sickness, stumbling down to a snow hole 500 feet from a summit as murderous… when 90 mph, -40° winds closed in? (Sure didn't.) The first guy died during the night, before his leader ran out of oxygen. The man had a phone, strangely enough. Fellow climbers down the mountain took turns keeping the survivor talking through an expedition radio he was still somehow, able to operate. Three times, they patched him through to his wife, seven months pregnant with first child, in New Zealand, and she listens, to his slow-motion death. (She was also a climber, having reached Everest's peak with him, in '93). He told her he was trapped, and unable to move, due to frostbite through his legs. He admits he had no sleeping bag, no tent, fluids, or food but is certain rescuers can reach him, once the weather opens up.

"Hey, look... don't worry about me."

he tells her, towards the very end.

Twenty-four hours after digging in, the voice became incoherent,

and transmission ceased.

We wiped tears from our eyes

for the worst single loss of life Everest's 29,028 summit ever recorded.

They think eight people died. One fought his way down to 20,000 feet, where the world's highest-ever helicopter rescue yanked life from the brink of frozen extinction. "I'm okay. I'm much better now." he says, raw face and hands ice, trying to smile through large red blisters on his cheeks. He was in a coma, and left for death, but woke back up to save himself.

Those were some of the best climbers in the world.

See what I mean?

It was very big news.

Local boys died up there.

A radio talk-show DJ asked people to call, and ask if these sorts of things should be against the law. Think of the cost of rescue! Think of the danger! The motorcycle racer snorted.

Nepalese got within 650 feet of the two in the snow hole, and left an oxygen bottle.

They turned back, afeared for their own lives.

Do you think someone makes the Nepalese men do it?

"I think they shouldn't be allowed to go, if they have children."

One caller declares.

"He should have considered his wife, and how she'd suffer. What about their kids?!

Who's going to explain how they ended up with no father?"

Caller thinks: It's better to have a father who sold out, and didn't follow his passion, if his calling in life might disrupt domestic bliss. Caller wants (and probably has) someone so safe . . .

and you know the rest of the story.

Imagine, what his New Zealand wife thought,

having been to the top, and felt what it's like to be higher

than anyone else in the world?

Do you think she'll curse the man's name?

He could have made it farther down, and lived.

He could have stayed home, to be with his kids. The ones that weren't even born yet.

So instead, he stays with someone who's dying. He doesn't abandon a human in need-

someone who's very life depended on, whatever help he might muster.

Did he shirk his responsibility?

Will his kids live without him?

(Yes.)

They found another Northwest man tethered to a climber, in a coma.

He'd been to the top, gone down, and been back up, trying to rescue his friends.

Is this a stupid act?

"It's tragic."

Depends on who you ask. They left.

Some waves are more than courage. Look now.

Do you see the black? You either open your eyes, or give up.

"No matter what happens; no matter how thorough you are-how well trained, or prepared for bad circumstances-no matter how extreme the pretext of your equipment is . . . things go wrong. They go wrong, and you die. It is that simple. My dad's plane went down, and I suffered. He died, because flying's dangerous. But I wonder.

What if he'd been a 'safe' dad, like the radio caller's married to?

I'd be pretty different. Maybe I wouldn't be different… for the better

if you know what I mean."

"You might have a weaker character."

"Of course I would. I wouldn't be so sympathetic to people's emotions, because my dad hadn't died; nor would I be such a daredevil. My dad raced cars, flew planes and drove motorcycles. I grew up to the noise of engines being tuned for more power-and now that I think about it, that must have been my initiation to engineering. I can't even imagine what I'd be like, if my dad drank beer in front of a television, and lived for Friday nite football games."

Our secretary waiting to take the baton.

"I read the Mayans (or was it the Incas?) used to play this game, a little like soccer-plus-basketball, and at their grand-national showdown, held at some major festival in front of anyone-who's-anyone in this particular culture I'm not exactly sure of. . . anyway . . .what was I saying?"

"Basketball. Big finale. Rah-rah."

"Oh yea! They used to sacrifice the captain of the team that won."

"You're dinkin' with us!"

"Not a chance! And they didn't think it was anything but a highest-of-high honor, to have your heart cut out, right then."

"I don't get it. Why didn't the captains rig these game?"

the stevedore said.

"As I interpret, a victory in this circumstance was a height of offering. Their thinking was, no greater moment in a captain's life exists, than winning this super-prestigious honor-so in the moment of ecstatic, over-exuberant happiness, he was, theoretically, maximally fulfilled-more so than anyone else around, and thus, he's least likely to forfeit life for anything but the very utmost reason."

"God?"

"Or Gods."

"Heavy-duty."

"No-doubt."

(But look at the mountain climbers! Look at the motorcycle racer in front of you. Check out James Dean's legacy, or Robert Kennedy's; Marilyn's-Gandhi's-does all hero aura stem from rampant tragedy? Your father did not fade away-nor did any other passionate seeker of truth. They live on in a desire for beauty and experience, having died like Michelangelo, engaging in the very thing that moved him. To go out in ecstasy, trying to seize the day's events, be they positive, or blatantly negative.)

"Shhhhh!"

All such judgments arise from the eyes of observers.

"Hello? You're on talkline."

"Yea, hell w-you and your show. Who was that lady on the phone?! What'd you two want; a nation of eunuchs?! Just bacause a man's a father, doesn't mean he has to shit gold bricks, an' polish 'is tenish-shoes for a fuckin' motherin law! You wanna kill us all, making us bow down to yur-goddamned woomans' code?! Follow yur have-babies man-date; an let us men follow our own! We weren't born to raise chilren, and cooin your goddamm'd ears; we were mentoo work, an xplore-push boundaries-out-further an' further. You better wake up n-smell them roses lady! 'Cuz you're livin in a fuckin' fantasy world if you think men ain't supposeta climb mountains ta see if dey can get to a top, R'-go rescue sum dat tried but couldn' make it. Yu're only here in 'merica, 'cause we sailed ships and climbed its mountains n-every obstacle to git you and yur pansy-assed fuckin' shoppin' malls here! Don't you ferget it, lady! U-nYur frilly shit, men cut down trees, mined, and risked their lives, to make! You owe us the right to go out-n kill ourselves doin' sumthin new, if that's what we think we're suppose'te do."

That radio made us all listen.

Men nod their heads.

"I wonder how come they didn't beep out his swear words?"

"Probably a guy at the beeper control."

The secretary posits.

"I think he's right. I wouldn't respect a man who wanted to go do something, even if it was dangerous, and never did it. A man should do what he needs for himself; otherwise, he's totally worthless to live with."

Someone in the kitchen, protests.

The stevedore's wife, silent till now, lays this on us :

"He's a total bastard, if I don't let him out to play rugby."

We're caught mid-breath.

The big man's fists are solemn.

"She's right too!"

he admits sheepishly.

slowly creaks some HUGE grin.

"I LOVE a rugby scrum."

"You love everything on this stuff."

She accuses him.

"No; I mean-I really love rugby."

"And what about me?"

She half-pouts a protest, purely for fun.

"Oh. I love you too, hun."

"Isn't that great? Second team, in love's game."

Nobody laughs.

Everybody is laughing by not laughing

and it all sorta just

makes sense.

You can wait. Life might come to you. Life probably did, but you looked the other way, You looked with eyes peering from what you thought it should be. Life's should bes make fallacies. Should do's are killing you off. You're your own worst censor, armed with bureaucratic stamp of This isn't what I wanted!, as should be deviates from thoughts' think of what you could ask for. As if your intellect grasps the innumerable possibilities for innumerable solutions of any given problem. As if your memory calls coordinates of important stars in tiny regions of

galaxy-endless space!

"The saddest thing I see (and I see it twenty times a day), are survivors of long-term relationships who are totally stunned with not knowing what to do."

she laments. "Couples think they'll live their carefully laid plans for retirement, until the unexpected happens."

"Like what?"

"Sickness, death-the usual. Basically, the future the couple imagined, has already come and gone. It occurred sometime after the kids moved away, and before retirement's first five years. Dream house, dream trip, romancy moonlit evenings replete, with reflections off wine glasses, a mild-aching golf fatigue, cultural shindigs ahead of walks in the great outdoors-you can't imagine things that never get done. They've been too busy putting the future off-you see, saving money unknowns."

"Like when one gets sick, breaks a hip then flies off to heaven?"

"Here-here. I see it too, 'round my neighborhood."

Someone is frying something. We love its smell.

"A survivor's left face to face with dreams that never happened. The end moraine piles clicks of kitchen clock-ticks, wristwatch tinkles, and the drawn gasping breaths, of whomever they made the imaginary pact with. I want to tell everybody : the future is now; and the now's less-than-glacial-pace disorients minds used to putting life off."

"That's a tough prescription, doc."

"It's the only prescription worth signing. It's tragic when personal pleasure's been pushed below threshold for so long, patients can't follow it to a source anymore, to observe, and try to relearn, or at least see what can be done to save it-and this person its shriveled within."

"Wow."

"'Wow's right. Often, for no medical reason whatsoever, people just die when their future hopes are scuttled."

"But I guess, I agree with you."

He didn't say anything else, for at least a minute and a half.

We hummed a popular tune playing with the radio, and went to freshen some drinks.

As we float back to the porch, he begins.

"My grandmother wanted to live to be a hundred. We didn't think she'd make it, but on her hundredth party, she said to me 'I'm glad I made it. It was important to me. I think I'll be leaving tomorrow though, so you better say your good-byes now.'.

She died the next day. And she hadn't even been ill."

"That's remarkable; but it does happen. I don't mean to take away from it, but your grandmother's one of many stories like that. She was living her goal out, so to speak-I've seen it countless times-people willing themselves to keep living, for some rather arbitrary, or personally important milestone. Or; that opposite."

Grimly-nodded unison.

New speaker.

"I've thought a lot on this subject. My parents were so poor when I was young, that when I got older and they'd started to make good money, they couldn't bring themselves to spend it. Not only were they afraid to spend money on 'frivolous' things, even when they desperately needed to, they didn't even know how to do it! They were constantly saving for some future catastrophe-some financial, or hospital-related Armageddon that probably will never happen. Meanwhile, the cuckoo grinds on; reinforces a pattern of not spending any money that's getting worse all by itself. As that old age 'disaster' moves closer, it warrants further tightening of resources around their fear something bad's about to happen."

"Lousy cycle."

"They're afraid to imagine nothing bad has to happen, and to live it up."

"Ex-zactly!"

"Some of my patients have been putting off getting in shape and eating right for so long, they're utterly ruined by the time it's time to retire, kick back, and 'enjoy' life. They've planned active senior events, without any preparation of minds and bodies beforehand."

"In other words, they were so busy imagining, and preparing their futures, they totally forgot to live."

"That sums it up pretty well, I'd say."

How many times have you thought: "It's a great day to be alive."?

Ecstasy made us think that. It made us feel it. The day doesn't have to be sunny, and your favorite song won't have to be on. Every song's your favorite, and every time is the best time. Doesn't make any difference if it's three in the morning, or eight o'clock at night. AM and PMs irrelevant. Ecstasy forces you to keep feeling the miracle of life, from one moment to its fragile next. Ecstasy wears resistance down, pulls us out of deer valley, and infects human-hubris with big-particle perception. Part of us is so terrified, it is forced to take up arms, and fight this intruder.

It, of the I, is most afraid of change.

It is metaphor.

It's fun. How's that for irony?

You pay a price though. Fun isn't cheap.

X wears off, and your over-ridden-mind jams small gasping gaps, tearing them larger, wrestling back control. Mind is stronger than body. It forces nooks and crannies to existence, creates calamities to cling to, hanging precarious from an sheer friction wall. Mind damages the body, fighting it so. Don't forget-if mind can force you to live longer, and it can also shorten your life. A body will tire, before a mind gives up.

X starts to wear down . . .

And naturally, you'd like some more.

You'd like to feel the way you do did, every moment of life.

The mind is less than enthusiastic about this prospect.

It punishes the body that felt so. . . free

and then realizes

It can control you, through this substance . . .

this "emotion".

You want it?

The villainous bills to pay, the whole wide world of dirty laundry and retentive works to do to pay for all this fun plus-shouldn't you be feeling a guilty? How are you going to get to your car, why didn't you eat anything beforehand the refrigerator's empty is Monday's shirt ironed? Weren't there calls to make? You've been terribly remiss!

You must ask for forgiveness.

Volaré!

In other words:

Welcome home!

Welcome to small particles Zen masters warn

to Stay Centered on.

Welcome to chaos. Welcome to particle mayhem.

The chaos is WHY the door has a bolt on it.

It's to avoid all avoidance.

Look there! Catch red-handed bits of the fractal now

kicking your door in

by letting them pass you. Battering ram through opposite wall

waltzed fast through the house.

All shards of fractal are suspect. They are envoys of ONE.

They disregard Hubris, wake deer enough to flee

an inbred narrow slot of deep valley floors.

They talk scary things, answer difficult questions, and think unnamable realities

we just may have seen, somewhere in dreams.

Looking at its pieces, no matter how teensy, makes us uneasy.

Are you one of them; and,

who is that "them" in front of

your point of view?

(Why? Is why a damaging question.)

What do Slmitifions think? The X-act things you don't? That's the hell of it. You can't imagine, and afraid to even try. You're in the valley, surrounded by dangerous high peaks, and you're pretty safe. You can wonder which starch to buy for morning shirt, eat greasy hamburger, and swear the three-day X hangover, wasn't worth its fun in . . .

You are exhibiting typical Earth-thought.

You are deer hubris, in a thoroughly human body.

Your hangover says:

Wake up!

We (humans animals-everything in under suns) are fractal bits of ONE.

All beings, are in this life together, dancing separately to comic sym-phony. You feel bad, because war with truth is painful.

Why do you think we're stuck here? To watch this symmetry of life?

Or to Live it? We dance quarks, planets, and galaxies of fallacy we exhibit

as normal, every day life. Unassailable facts-our stalwart captains, on the confused sinking ship.

We are ONE, of uncountable versions one, whose largest thing we'd ever want to imagine is so small to large-particle perception, it wouldn't ever take things this seriously.

We're insects crawling around for a few precious seconds.

BEEP!

Life's over.

(Hope you had fun.)

10.

The Outer Smalitrons think differently than the Slmitifions, although they're less than one parceptyuctainious halv-regioû from each other. They practically envisage the same galactic founding race, and yet they hardly recognize the other's vie for "higher intelligence". As the Planetary Spectator Yearly Fables and Foibles column goes, one RACE was a mutieway (approximate translation : tree), and around its other way-the way nobody bothers looks-a ghrestyie (: bear) is trying to scrape its itchy backs on a tyØ (: ceramic bush). It is barely being satisfied, and yet-a mutieway in same dimension-mere kitty-corner to normal ghrestyie perception, is bristling with its deep craggy fissures of sharp skin-scintillating silicate bark.

It's practically begging for ghrestyie to see it.

Because the Mutieway's itchy too.

Look up.

It's the same thing as looking down.