GETTING IN TUNE WITH MY UNIVERSE
by Andrew Williams

This title was suggested by my father. It was the result of a
communication from beyond the grave. No, I haven't been in contact with
any mystics or any palm or Tarot card readers, much less the Psychic
Friends Network. This communiqué was received in a less stereotypical and,
therefore, much more interesting manner.

My family has bought every Whole Earth Catalog from the Last (published in
1971) to the First (to be published in 20??). My brother briefly held a
subscription to the Whole Earth Review, a quarterly publication for those
Gaia lovers who need their Whole Earth fix more than once every
half-decade. In our house, Stewart Brand is as revered and important a
name as Bucky Fuller, Henry Miller, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Heinlein,
Hunter S. Thompson, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Timothy Leary and
Count Alfred Korzybski. The Catalog's winning combination of uncommon
sense and equally uncommon good humor--with healthy doses of extropy and
skepticism in equal measures--has been a tonic in times best and worst,
especially during my most recent Year of Hell (November 2002-present). In
sum, they don't believe in throwing out the baby or the bathwater.

Late one night a couple weeks ago, I was permitting myself one of my most
recent favorite non-sexual activities: flipping through the Next Whole
Earth Catalog (pub. date: 1980). Although ostensibly perusing at liberty,
I was primarily focused on an old favorite: the recurring segments of The
Rising Sun Neighborhood Newsletter. TRSNN appears in the bottom right-hand
corner of every facing page in the NWEC. It is a compendium of local
wisdom and insights: some profound, some hilarious, some sobering, some
annoying, some combinations of some or all of the above. But never, ever
prosaic.

As I neared the mid-section of the NWEC, I started noticing notations on
TRSNN entries in a very familiar handwriting. Sometime between 1980 and
1996, my father had made observations and notes next to the newsletter
installments that he found stimulating. The note that supplied the title
for this essay appears next to a story about a Frank Zappa concert where
some ?@*! threw a bottle at Zappa. Zappa refused to play another note
until "that motherfucker" was arrested. He was. Zappa did. Dad's response
in full: "If you are in tune with your universe, many things can happen."
Followed by his inimitable mark.

I eagerly flipped through the succeeding pages, looking for more appended
remarks. Next to a story about a woman who always hesitates when spelling
"balloon" because she got it wrong in a spelling bee, Dad wrote:
"Dave--this is the dilemma of perfectionism." (Note: Both my brother Dave
and I are excellent spellers, but not perfect, as Constant Readers of my
essays will attest.)

I also discovered that Dad was not a fan of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).
As part of conducting a government survey on public transit, he went out
to California in the 1970s and checked out every part of the system, from
the farecard machines to the trains. His assessment: "you still have to
ask the attendant for the key" to the bathroom (hello, Metro?) and "Muni
(the bus system) is even less reliable than BART."

Getting in touch with my universe has been my goal for the past year. I've
had intermittent success: the only reason I haven't had total success is
me. So these messages appear as long-delayed bottle telegrams that
patiently waited between the covers for me to uncover their secrets in
order to move forward in life. Would I have understood them before?
Perhaps. What matters more is that I now grok them in fullness.

I just turned 40. According to one of our culture's key memes, this is
stereotypically a time when people get in tune with their universe, or a
new Corvette and a trophy wife. Some get it and keep it together. Some get
it together in fits and starts. Some don't get it together at all. And
some get it and spread it all around. A lot seems to depend on whether you
view the universe--your universe, according to quantum physics, since your
perceptions model its attributes in your mind--as welcoming or hostile.

I think Bill Withers nailed it in his lyrics to his song, "Let Us Love,"
where he exhorts us to act as if every day is Christmas and to treat
everyone we meet accordingly. This does not exclude agnostics, atheists
and secular humanists, who tend to be more principled in this area of life
than many religious folk and without the Damoclean sword of Jehovah-1
hanging over their heads, ready to smash them like overripe coconuts for
the least little infractions.

I miss my mother and father. Some nights, I find myself aching to talk
with them, to share a new anecdote or the simmering details of an amusing
or bewildering incident. But I know they gave me what I need to be strong,
proud and happy--to not just survive, but thrive. I know that whatever
footsteps fall in my life, I will be able to deal with the consequences.
And, one day, I will be in tune with my universe and my life will become
what I want it to be. I wish the same for all my Constant Readers--all
three of you, including the one with no epidermis.

Copyright 2004 by Andrew Williams. Free to forward with attribution.