Barry Adams Notes on Infinity

Infinity creates tension

2009-09-29T17:21:00.001-07:00

Infinity presents problems. The major problem with exploring Infinity is the immense tension it can cause within lives, and between lives. The tension arises with the knowledge that everything that is possible will not happen. And many of the things we wish would happen are among those that we sense will not happen. This is barely tolerable for one person at a time, but it is totally unacceptable to human beings as a group. Bringing possible things into practice requires several deeply disturbing actions: recognizing that there is something possible that doesn’t exist; facing the personal scrutiny of personal resources and abilities in light of what it would take to bring something into being; choosing what possible thing to devote attention to and invest in; and competing or convincing others what should be built or done, and how it should be built or done. These problems split people within themselves, split individuals against other individuals, and split groups or nations against others.

Infinity in the Micro

2009-03-13T13:08:00.001-07:00

Infinity is often discovered more in the context of today, than in the context of eternity. What happens in life doesn't remain intact as it carries over from one wake/sleep cycle to the next. Each day redefines each reality. Infinity would not look like a million wall calendars, rather like a wall calendar in which each day’s block was an endless, bottomless unit.

People who explore for infinity tend to direct their attention to the potential within each day’s activities and seek to stretch the day’s possibilities rather than to add days or years to their lives. What doesn’t happen today, simply doesn’t happen. Infinity makes all things possible – it doesn’t make everything possible happen.

Infinity

2008-11-28T15:38:00.000-08:00

Infinity makes everything possible. It doesn't make every possible thing happen.

Stories are Born in the Specific

2008-11-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

All stories are born in the specificity of circumstances and locations. A whole city taken as a whole, or a whole war, taken as a whole does not make a story.

I am bombarded with exotic people, villages, haunting hills, and both bucolic and raw natural vegetation in my three-hour ride from Sasebo to Tokyo. My mind is numb and it bothers me. Is my childhood wanderlust, or maybe my imagination, failing me? Or am I overwhelmed or just exhausted? Adding caffeine doesn't help.

My train, which I have dubbed "City of New Orleans" because the song keeps running through my head, screeches to a tremulous halt on an inner city street. No longer witless, I am suddenly this voyeur trying to see inside the window of the one lit house in the row next to the tracks.

Something exotic is happening inside. That specific empty window, bleeding yellow light through the pungent fish and vegetable dinners clinging to my air tells more than all Japan taken as a whole can invoke.

It matters more why the nubile young woman just out of my view inside that window is biting her nails, waiting for someone - maybe me? - to step off this very train than it matters about any sweeping fact about this country.

All stories are born in the specific.