BUBBLES

Which reality do I choose?

1. The blue bubble that is the near future of painting the mudroom?

Or

2. The red bubble that is the near future of sitting here connected to this cyber-dimension of time and space letting my stream-of-consciousness ramble on about the meanings of bubbles and stuff?


I'm reaching for the red bubble and hear a whispering echo, "Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more."

And then, "Come on in...the water's nice."

Okay, I'm taking a dive. And it doesn't involve a paint bucket.

Our understanding of our universe is comparable to a child's. (not that this is necessarily a bad thing because children can be quite wise) Children love BUBBLES. They seem to intuitively know that a bubble is such a basic structure. Their fascination connects them with some undefined truth.

Imagine that you are a bubble. All you know is yourself (provided you are self-aware) and your immediate surroundings that you can sense with whatever senses you have. Most bubbles never 'know' the water (or whatever substance they come from) somewhere below/around them. They might never even 'know' that there is some thing that 'created' them and 'sustains' them. And they probably don't even know that they are bubbles at all but think that they are solid balls.

Sometimes there are bubbles that are 'connected' to their source and intuitively know that there is more to the universe than just bubbles. These bubbles spend their entire lives trying to define this thing and trying to make the other bubbles aware of it. Some do this through science, some through philosophy and religion, and some just pop. Just as in some theoretical physics, which longs to unify all things known and unknown, so do prophets and philosophers seek to define all things known and unknown. They all construct their own particular understandings and sometimes try to impose theirs as the only way. But rarely comes a bubble who can unify all views of the current time. We are approaching that time. Soon. (And no, I'm not that bubble because I'm too prone to popping under pressure.)

See, I'm stuck with this vision of bubbles. Somehow looking at bubbles connects me to some undefined (to my limited knowledge) truth, just like a child. I don't have the language to explain this vision, just like I can't explain in words, or even pictures, what God looked like when I saw 'It' one day last summer while taking a shower. (Yes, I'm totally serious about that, and if that makes me crazy then I'll just go get the pink hair dye.) Anyway, some current theories in science and some corresponding ideas in spirituality seem to keep bringing the bubbles to the surface. I'm trying to read about these things in search of that missing language I can use to define my 'visions.'

But then I begin to wonder if there will ever be an end to that search because every time we define our 'container' there's still the question of 'what contains that container?' I feel my bubble thinning and getting very close to that critical popping point. What is Infinity? Is it truly infinite? Or is it only infinite because we haven't found the end yet? My oldest son asked me a couple of years ago, "Does space have walls (meaning an ending)?" Well, does it? If it's a bubble it does. I told him that his question was one that has puzzled people endlessly and that I just don't know. I told him that somehow I 'intuitively' know that if Infinity is 'real' then it ultimately has no walls (and I tried to explain that what we know as space is probably not all that there is in the universe). Isn't pi an infinite number? If there is pi that is truly infinite then Infinity must exist. Or am I dumb, and a very thin and fragile bubble, to be having trouble reconciling infinity and defining our 'container' whether that container is a bubble or what?

Now I'm getting flashbacks to an old Star Trek episode, "I, Mudd", in which a robot race controls a planet until their human 'leader,' Harcourt Fenton Mudd, fries the circuits of the robot leader, Norman, by telling him, "Everything I say is a lie."

*POP*




(Apologies for the lame Matrix and Star Trek references. I should have chosen the blue bubble.)