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 Something that surfaced briefly a few times during our last discussion was the notion that there are more complex kinds of narratives than the ones many scientists consider when they reject "story" and "narrative" as mechanisms by means of which we can apprehend some aspects of our experience of the world. I'm glad to have an acquaintance with the OOO, in part because it gives one name to the kind of time that I clamored for below, but also because, I think, it registers a connection between a new story in science and some kinds of new (within the past century) storytelling devices in the arts. The big sweep of Thinking that stretched from early mythmaking through Modernism seems to have been founded on Man as the center of our Understanding (with a significant pivot when we came to know that Man was not the Center of the Universe, but our Understanding was still from the point of view of being humans.

What's emerging in consciousness, perhaps, is an impulse towards an understanding of the universe as able to exist separate or independent of us. Language as, one the one hand, and amazing tool but, on the other, an obstacle. Ourselves as, yes of course, the center of our Existential drama, but also: ourselves as Other, as temporary, as stewards of a mere moment more than Princes of dominions. This new consciousness cannot, in my flickerish experience of it, replace the old knowing, but it doubles it; it cast a shadow that casts a pall on our notions of Permanence. An apprehension of deep time, of an objective understanding of our place in the Flow of It All, provides a glimpsing consciousness of what little we can perceive of the larger context.

I remember when I was studying Buddhism, we were given a book called WHAT THE BUDDHA TAUGHT (which was largely useless, at least to me). But on its paper back, heading a paragraph of description was this sentence: "The vastness of Buddhism is surprisingly immense." Inside its front cover, after the title page, was a leaf which was also so inscribed: "The vastness of Buddhism is surprisingly immense." And, turning to the first page of chapter one, a student was greeted with this first sentence: "The vastness of Buddhism is surprisingly immense." I never got past that sentence.