Love is the Seventh Wave (Flatland)

Flatland , by Edwin Abbott - is a romance of many dimensions. The basic idea of the book is that it is possible to traverse dimensions and talk of them in the context of your own. For example, we are using electrons glowing on a screen to simulate three and four dimensional audio waves that would reach your ear, hit electronic synapses against 3 dimensional waves in the fluid of your inner ear, and fire into a pattern of three dimensional spread within the holographic network of your brain to acquire cognitive assembly. Sometimes they will stay locked in a cell. But not quite in prison. There is a great difference. ..between being in a prison cell and being in a cell. >:)

Being that we have imagination, we can reference symbolic representations of three dimensional objects (apples, bears, peaches, hot tubs, baseballs, things like that) simply by re arranging essentially 55 million utterances into finite patterns that represent the real thing within your mind. Now, to save some space and time you're probably only going to deal with the ones that you really think are neat. So you might have a disposition to deal with the ones that sound tonal (like Chinese) or atonal (like American English) or music to my ears (Australian). In fact, you're probably going to be forever looking for that nice little feeling you had when you were nursing and your mother was caring for you. Mama might be a decent enough reflection of the movement of a persons lips for a womans breast.. so perhaps you have some built in feelings about what these sounds mean to you. You can interpret the sound anyway you like. The tone, however, will give you away. You can't hide those lyin eyes, son. Don't even try. >:)

So, if Flatland makes this huge assumption that we can think in three dimensional terms about pointland, lineland. etc. Its amazing to read, because the assumptions are so deeply embedded. For example, in pointlad (an entire location in a single point), you can ... go there. Going, means from point a. to point b. Well. so much for pointland concepts. Pointland would be alot like a place I used to live (Oakland Ca. ). There would be no there, .. there.

One of the first features of Flatlands story is that there is a bill to be passed which would allow people add color to their lives. Its called the 'color' bill. Now, its important because women, if they had the power to use color - would use it and could possibly color themselves to look like priests (the circles, which are very high up on the food chain).

They anticipate with delight the confusion that would ensue. At home they might hear political and ecclesiastical secrets intended not for them but for their husbands and brothers, and might even issue commands in the name of a priestly circle; out of doors the striking combination of red and green, without the addition of any colors, would be sure to lead the common people into endless mistakes, and the Women would gain whatever the Circles lost, in deference of the passers by.

Needless to say, the females (I think they were triangles) were all in favor of the color bill. But sort of to keep par for the course with the victorians, they usually failed to conserve energy (they were just discovering it). I believe the whole idea of keeping things neat and clean between the sexes wrests in some part on conservation of energy.

The firing and communication of light messaging on retina to brain tissue would also require electronic medium (electrons flowing in a 3 dimensional field, similiar to the cloud of electrons in a copper wire). So again, three dimensions would be required.

Easily enough, given all the suppression - the subject of love was not introduced. It makes you wonder, can molecules fall in love.

In order to fall in love, a molecule should be able to traverse the dimension it finds itself within. But we have to be very careful about the assumptions we make, or the game falls apart. Flatland was supposed to be hard science fiction, and a send-up of victorian england. And in this it succeeds. Females, for instance, have the power to color themselves as they please and in so doing break from their rigid place in the world. So there's a chromatic revolution to restore social order. And so all we read , in this romance of many dimensions - is the standard posturing of a male mathematician.

How would a molecule, go out of its way to dance around ideas of love, passion and connection between two forms. Perhaps in the same way that energy would fly out of the vaccuum.

For me , at least, the first step in falling in love is believing that you can. That means believing in love that gives without asking. All of life is meaningless except for this way. And this truth. And the life in that love.

The specific character of despair is precisely this: its not knowing its being despair. - Soren Kierkegaard

I don't always open up my posts to discussion. I try to write them so they are tight, kind of a sort of exercise in keeping a journal. But just this once, I am curious to know if you really ever fell in love with anyone with every part of you. I want to know if you feel that you could do that with more than one person? I never really trusted the crush. But man it can make you creative.

I know someone who really is the sunrise. To my night. And I also know that if the world had three suns, and only once ever 1,000 years, there was a night. It would be chaos. Just as I know that every time I see another sunrise I feel good inside. When I say good morning to my friends. I mean it - kind of like, "And now that I've found you. I could never turn my back on you. So I trust in Love. (So I trust in Love)" - POD

And I believe that there are more dimensions to this world than we can see. I think I have caught a glimpse of them somewhere out in the line up. Somewhere where you can almost sense that the sevent wave of a set will be the largest. Sometimes being able to just feel which wave happens next. Sometimes just by feeling relaxed. Its about Time and Rhythm. Expression. And Tone. >:)

Comments

Emilly Orr said…
Few hearts are capable of having more than one great love. I've been blessed, I truly believe--I have someone who is the joy of my existence in the analog, and someone who is the light for all my shadows in the digital. When I say I love them with all my heart, I mean just that--all of me resonates to them, they enrich me, my soul is on its knees and I adore.

But it's far from easy, loving two people (and in truth I love more than just those two). Analog or digital, it requires focus, honesty, willingness to compromise, acknowledgement that communication is key. Or all relationships fall apart.
I generally feel like "Doc" from Steinbeck's Cannery Row / most of the time. I remember Doc wanted to learn sanskrit so he could read "Black Marigolds" in the original language.

I think there is a timeless character to almost every human being and I think honestly thats the part of us that drives us to care for another person.

I think you're right emily. :)
Mallory Matson said…
In order to fall in love, a molecule should be able to traverse the dimension it finds itself within.

i love this line
you have a great perspective on things
amazing blog :)
Emily said...

"But it's far from easy, loving two people (and in truth I love more than just those two). Analog or digital, it requires focus, honesty, willingness to compromise, acknowledgement that communication is key. Or all relationships fall apart."

Turner said...

"I think there is a timeless character to almost every human being and I think honestly thats the part of us that drives us to care for another person.

Both used the H word, and I agree with both. For it is honest communication that galvanises and makes authentic any relationship no matter how deep or new or what media of communication is used to explore and develop it....and memories of past and the creative imagination to reach for an unexpected tomorrow.

I am blessed as well, for I know someone who reminds me of these things and allows me to be me and to love as I can and to express these things through my fingers.