No Matter Except As a Matter of Interest

For Bishop Berkeley

1.

Those who are not blind
have raised a cloud of dust:
colorless dreaming,
extensions of waking,
a transition made without the aid of motion.

In one dream:
a plane seperates itself from all others
and is lost in a triangle too abstract to exist
anywhere but in the dream.

In another:
Ideas gather around the idea of a center until a great mass is formed
which goes unpercieved.

2.

We dream on a pillow of a distant place,
call to someone on the street outside, years ago,
without making a sound.

It is volition we amuse ourselves with in dreaming.
In daylight we find a will whose stones make a stronger impression on our feet.
An idea of perceiving is one idea, perception itself quite another.

3.

Those coming in from the blind suddenly realize that great distances,
of which they have arduous experience, are no further than the eyes in
their head and that those lines and angles by which distance is
measured are themselves invisible.

Distant galaxies can be explained as occassions of the mind wandering
through the scientific principles of nature until it reaches a ladder
which extends in logic to the realm of someone else's thinking.
Meanwhile, the sun still sets and rises, Copernicus notwithstanding.

4.

For ease of reference, the mind thinks of itself as located.
affords itself the utility of reaching into a glovebox.

Say it. No things but ideas in the category of ideas called matter. The
metaphysician is in the dark.

It turns out that the root of the brain which branches into the body is
responsible for some skepticism, but there is only spirit. The ghost is
the machine.

The body, scattered as ashes, resurrects as easily as remembrance occurs,
and may reoccur as one thought is said to 'follow' another.

When we agree that this world has passed away for all of us
you will know what I am thinking.