to realise the idealism of 1880
that the writer learnt from his father
who was born 123 years ago today
and before that from Walt Whitman
and indirectly from Plato and all utopians
acknowledging but refusing the dystopias
in and of the present culture
including this writing as an operative part
and freed of the unrealisms
of both top-down and bottom-up
via the present possibilities
of post-mechanical technology
and of interactive social forms
and this, writes Utopia, is our formula, for the story that we are writing as we live!
Now at last I see what we are doing, writes Numeroso, we are reliving and advancing the previous notions of Utopia, resaying and reforming the previous visions in this formulaic new doing of what was thought but never done - and in particular by such notable thinking ghosts of our inheritance as those of Plato or even of Jesus or of the European Renaissance and of Thomas More, or Karl Marx, or Adam Smith, or William Morris, or John Cage and many others... and of course by the thinking ghost of James Clark Maxwell and his connective and still inspiring theories of electric fields and quanta!
Yes you've guessed it, murmers Utopia, they were all versions, or previous presences, of me!
Unesco is silent. He recognises that the writing's beyond limits. There's no realism in it yet.
Confronted with reality, with the absence of hope in many people, Utopia sings a song of words the same as other words a tune as other tunes - the music's in the rhythms more than in the sounds or words or meanings...
Is that enough asks Unesco. We are responsible for the rescue of the world from itself, from its too many people, from selfishness of progress at the expense of those who only suffer... is a song all you have to put against the unbearable reality of the many forced to labour and to suffer for the few?... And what of the unbearable culture that will dismiss your song as a nothingness?
Numeroso gets up and comes to sit next to Unesco. He holds Unesco's hands and looks him in the eye while saying nothing. Don't speak, don't speak, he whispers, just look at me and think and wait until you've stopped thinking of your responsibilities. Let them drop on the floor...
Just think of your breathing. Just feel the coldness of fresh air flowing inwards through your nose, and then of warmer gases flowing out. Just attend to each breath, as you inhale and exhale... and now pause between breaths, with lungs full and then pause with lungs empty.
If you can do this, and it's not that easy, you are attending to the link between mind and body, the basic unity for a breathing animal as for a thinking mind... Inward, long pause, and outward, shorter pause... inward, long pause, outward, shorter pause... and on and on, this is your life, the one you share with all who breathe and are.
Numeroso lets go of Unesco's hands and tells him now he's on his own with the only secret there is, the only mysticism.
Utopia is silent. Unesco continues to attend to his breathing, and for a moment all the people in the world breathe a simultaneous breath - but no one knows it.
Is this the unspeakable utopia, Utopia, asks the spirit, asks the mind, asks the collective intelligence...
...Unesco is too busy breathing to listen and Numeroso smiles as he too begins to breathe as he has taught and he has learnt.
They continue all day and the question is not answered for Utopia remains silent and the experimental city now exists...
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