HUMOR: And Other Unexpected Essays
WHEN ASKED about the origin of the universe, how time began, or how life originated, the Buddha maintained Noble Silence. What use pondering ineffable, time-chewing questions when the most pressing, important question was how to deal with the problem of suffering in the present moment? But Dr. James "Jim" Geronimo, I.S.O.C., is more than willing to wade into such territory.

By Dr. James "Jim" Geronimo, I.S.O.C.
Illustrations by D. Imbrogno

IN THE BEGINNING there were lines.

Mr. Who checks inAnd the lines intersected. And so, there was created in the voidness a division. It was a division between this void and that void. Nothing more. Yet it began the beginning.

In due course, one half of the void became “up,” the other, “down.” The distinction was entirely arbitrary. One might well have been the other, and, in fact, might well be the other. (Like twins — when life later activated the void with perceptual motion — like twins interchanged right after birth, who could tell which was Billy and which Willy? What did it matter?)

As the lines receded into “up” and departed into “down,” they grew fainter and fainter. Thus, the perception of light(ness) and dark(ness) was born. But as there was yet no vehicle or force to perceive these distinctions, they remained static, one-dimensional manifestations of the articulated void.

Yet, with the onset of gradations of lines, mathematics ensued, which ensured that in all probability different hues of lights and darks would combine into a full palette of colors once there was some vehicle to perceive this.


THE MATHEMATICS of lines also positively decreed that should enough lines
converge at one locus, a point would be created — the first tangible coordinate in the void.
The requirement was that this be the locus at which all the lines which formed the void (the “hypervoid”) converged. As the void was a perfectly continuous space of nothing, it doubled upon itself (tripling, quadrupling, quintupling… ad infinitum upon itself). A perfect helix of emptiness.

The point at which the doubling (to use the simplest of terms) occurred was the point at which all the lines converged. This was the point at which the void became tangible. (Only, it should be emphasized, after perception had manifested itself could such acknowledgements of the void’s status even take place. Indeed, it is perhaps the onset of perception — the void looking at itself, studying itself — which it is believed may have been concurrent with the tangible void. In short, that the void created itself in the act of considering its existence.)

IN ANY CASE, how did the void achieve perceptual motion, as opposed to simple motion? First, the simpler question of simple motion — that is, a movement across a fixed point in the void, to another fixed point. Mr. Who is befuddledOnce there existed a tangibility in the void, it engendered one of these fixed points. The division by lines of this fixed point — an infinite splicing by an infinite number of lines — created an infinite number of points.

Thus, from a single fixed point the void exploded into infinite tangibility. Animation — a form of simple motion — was achieved by the different vantages afforded by different fixed points. Again, this is retrospective as animation and its derivation, simple motion, perhaps could simply not have existed without perception,

BUT, LOGICALLY, if logic can applied to the illogic of the void’s beginnings, simple motion must have been necessary as a precursor to perceptual motion. Or not? Perhaps the fact of the possibility of perceiving motion both created motion and its perception.
Mr. Who looks for divine guidance-- finds noneIn any case, the perception of motion — or, more to the point, the void’s perception of itself — is what we, with our primitive labels and yet overdefined science, call “life.”

To have achieved the status of “life,” must have taken multiple forevers in the void. From that first flutter of perceptual motion, to the onset of unicellular organisms and on through to homo sapiens, by contrast, is hardly worth discussing.

By us cosmologists, that is to say.

Dr. James "Jim" Geronimo is a member in good standing of
the International Society of Cosmologists.
E-mail him at: hundred@newwave.net


PREVIOUSLY in Humor:

"The I-Ching Golf Swing," Issue 2:
By Mitch Vingle.

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PAGE ONE
Fall, 2001 Issue:
Spirit & Crisis

EDITOR'S NOTE
When Buddhists
Meet a bin-Laden

BUDDHASCOPE
Spiritual Spuds
& Alien Buddhas

DHARMATALK
On Revulsion
& Anger-Eating

FOUNDOBJECTS
Mohammed Never
Said be a Bomb

GUESTCOLUMN
Mental Muck-ups in
Post-Sept. 11 life

QUOTES
Words to the Wise
From the Wise

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Poetic Irreverence
from the Kitchen

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Useful Information
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Zen Pop by
Leonard Cohen

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