​“Is this some magic, some trick with levitation? How is that building’s section suspended without any noticeable support? It looks as though it defies gravity.”

​It doesn’t, of course. Architects are adept at supporting parts of bridges and buildings that project horizontally. They simply put the support where it cannot be seen. Want to build a cantilevered deck on your new house? Get 18-foot lengths of 2’X12’ lumber and place two thirds of them on edge under the weight of the house: Twelve feet of these joists will have tons of downward force, and the remaining six feet will extend into space, easily capable of holding a deck party.
 
In a sense we are all cantilevers. The support that keeps us from failing (or falling) is hidden in all those who helped us get where we are. For strangers, we seem to levitate, to project unsupported in space and time. In reality, that hidden support is the reason for the integrity of our life’s structure.
 
You, too, have probably been the hidden support for human cantilevers. You do your work in secret. No one sees you, the underlying joist mostly hidden from view. There you are, under massive pressure, bearing the weight so that another can project himself or herself freely into space and time. Feels good, doesn’t it?

In 1917 Grenville Kleiser published a communication guide called Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases. This guy had time on his hands. The phrases range from alpha to omega, that is, all across the alphabet from “abandoned hope” to “zealous in the cause he affected to serve.”
 
Hmm. Where did I see the first of those phrases? Oh! I remember. It’s written over the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” And the second? F. Evan Nooe, a nineteenth-century Southerner used a version (zealous in the cause) of the phrase in describing the formation of a “Southern Identity.” Is there any tie between the two phrases separated by 14,998 other phrases in Kleiser’s compendium?
 
Is there a place where you abandon hope? I’m not asking about the Afterworld. I mean here, on Earth, in the present, and specific. Why is that? Maybe the second phrase has something to do with the first. Why did Nooe feel the need to define the identity of a Southerner? What is it about place that establishes identity? How is it that place defines character? Today, there is a new kind of place where zeal for a cause quashes hope. It’s called the Web.
 
Well, I guess we could make an argument. In the Afterworld, bad guys, we say, go to Hell. They are bad guys, so that’s where they go. Right? But what about the Nooe’s South in the nineteenth century? One could argue that it, like the Afterworld for bad guys, was a place without hope for a large portion of the population, for slaves. And among those who would have maintained the status quo of hopelessness for some before and even after the Emanciapation Proclamation were those zealous in their actions.
 
Whereas it is true that character can transcend place—except in Hell—it is also true that place does define identity for many people. In his introduction to Kleiser’s book of phrases, Frank H. Vizetelly writes “foreigners sometimes reproach us for the asperity and discordance of our speech….” That might be as true today as it was in nineteenth century America. There’s a certain asperity that is widespread on the Web and in daily speech. And that asperity seems to originate whenever we limit ourselves and our perspectives, as though we come from a limiting place and are zealous in spreading hopelessness through asperity.
 
If we have acquired a crudity of thought, is it the product of place, particularly a cyberplace? Have we allowed place to shape our identities negatively? How do we surmount this influence of, to use some of those 15,000 phrases, bellicose humanity expressing its calumnious suspicions in caustic remarks?
 
Cosmopolitanism is my answer. Think every place. Think of transcending the influence of any single place. Think of acquiring an identity shaped by all places, not a special zealous identity derived from values that include hopelessness for some. Rather, identify with the continuity of life. We don’t have to be creatures of circumstance without a personal code of morals. We can change the babel of tongues and avalanches of scorn produced on the Web in a laxity of mind. Dante did give us an image of a place without hope, but he also gave us another image, the image of Paradise. Be zealous in the cause of tearing down the sign that identifies the Web as a place of hopelessness and asperity. 
 
  

With Heaven’s approval, you can rule. You need only exhibit virtue above reproach.
 
During the Zhou Dynasty about 3,000 years ago, the Chinese developed a religious-political principle called the Mandate of Heaven. Heaven alone, according to the principle, grants the right of rule to an emperor who serves legitimately only as long as he exhibits exemplary virtue.
 
For 3,000 years Chinese dynasties rose and fell on the principle of the Mandate of Heaven. The lesson of those millennia seems to be that the loss of virtue eventually leads to rebellion. Seems that people just don’t want to be under the influence of those without virtue.  
 
Think you have the mandate? No, not for ruling China. Can you rule virtuously your own sphere of influence? “What’s virtuous?” you ask.
 
First, do no harm to yourself. Second, do no harm to others except in self-defense. Third, be patient. Fourth, be compassionate. Fifth…
 
Do I really have to explain virtue to you? I know you have some idea what makes one virtuous. Have you ever tried to explain it in detail? Try now.

We take nothing for granted. Let’s try that again. We take nothing for granted. We like explanations, comprehensible explanations. Yet, we accept nothing without much ado. In math we call it “zero.” Nothing. Let’s provide a synonym: Emptiness. How many cupcakes are on the empty dish? Zero.
 
It seems easy for us to accept both the concept and the symbol 0, so we really do take nothing for granted unlike the Greeks and other ancients who argued over the existence of nothing. The concept must have been difficult for them. It wasn’t until 1,500 years ago in India that śūnyatā, the concept of emptiness, became a useful symbol among mathematical symbols.
 
Imagine all those centuries of struggling with nothing for nothing, that is, with nothing to represent nothing. It’s really a telling tale. We steep like a teabag in something, a world of somethings. Even in relatively empty outer space, we imagine a containing universe, not a containing nothing. Why should we, then, bother with a representation of nothing?
 
Quick, remember the number line? How do you get from 1 to -1. You have to count the mark where the zero lies. So, 1-2=-1. For you that is an easy subtraction problem, but think of explaining it to the ancients. They had no zero. They were befuddled by the concept of nothing. You take it for granted.
 
Now, look at the void in your thought. Place is what you know. Place is something. Picture no place. That’s what the ancients went through.
 
Why am I making a big deal about nothing? It’s more about conceptualizing than it is about nothing. You take for granted that nothing is something you can deal with, at least mathematically. Look around. There are those who can’t conceive the importance of your special somethings because they can’t accept the principle of their existence. Similarly, you might think others are overly concerned about “nothing” because you, like the ancients trying to understand the concept of zero, can’t understand the importance of “nothing” from another’s perspective. Where you see emptiness, another might see a useful concept or an actual something. 

​Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary isn’t written in the form of a modern cut-to-the-chase-synonym-brief-meaning style of modern dictionaries. He goes on and on. In his extended definition of contradictions, for example, he covers diverse topics, including brief overviews of men: Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Cromwell. His rambling definition ends with statements about order in the world and disorder in people: “It would be…mad to ask perfect wisdom of men; it would be wishing to give wings to dogs or horns to eagles.”
 
One wonders whether or not Voltaire, who challenged the thinking of his contemporaries, deemed himself a winged dog or horned eagle. He certainly wasn’t afraid of controversy, and his writings point to numerous contradictions in society. He challenged a number of “important” people, and off and on suffered their wrath, including being both imprisoned and exiled from more than one land. Nevertheless, he became relatively wealthy, and not long before he died he was praised by the audience at the performance of his play Irene. In 1791, thirteen years after his death, he was buried in the Panthéon in Paris with a procession of probably hundreds of thousands of Parisians.
 
Voltaire was both brilliant and shrewd, showing characteristics of both dogs and eagles. Like a dog on the hunt, he followed philosophies to their ultimate conclusion, taking, for example, the optimism of Leibnitz to its silly contradictions in Candide. And like an eagle dropping unexpectedly on its prey, he attacked thought from the heights of reason and logic.
 
A winged dog would have the advantage of its great stamina, speed, and intelligence plus the ability of an eagle to drop unexpectedly on a prey. A horned eagle with its great vision and perspective from above would have an extra "talon" to use in an attack. “What are you trying to say?” you ask.
 
You don’t have to be a controversial polemicist like Voltaire. Maybe that’s not your way. But there are contradictions all around you, and you shouldn’t be afraid of pointing them out. Why should you conform? You don’t have to be an “old grudge,” a complainer, or a loner to correct contradictions. Contradictions are probably unavoidable in all thought-systems, but those contradictions that negatively affect the quality of life are worth your effort to identify. You might not change the minds of those who live contradictions, but you might, like a winged dog or horned eagle, be able to change those whose contradictions affect others. Attack the contradictions in unexpected ways.

As winds blow from east to west across the Sahara, they pick up great quantities of clay, silt, and sand. Let’s call these particles “dust.” The strongest winds then carry the dust across the Atlantic to the Lesser Antilles and to South America. The ocean floor has detectable amounts of Saharan dust, and the tropical rainforests grow in soils revitalized by the dust.
 
Sedimentologists recognize sediment by both its composition and by the size of its individual particles, called clasts. Boulders are the biggest clasts. Cobbles are smaller. There are pebbles, of course, and three sizes of sands: coarse, medium, and fine. Smaller yet are the silts, and even smaller are clays. The smallest are colloidal particles.
 
These clasts move by gravity and fluid flow, such as the fluid movement of air and water. They move until there’s no more energy to move them, and then they settle out of the fluid, they drop; they become sediments. As you read above, Saharan winds can carry sediments thousands of miles. Streams like the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Amazon also carry sediments great distances. As long as the flowing medium has sufficient energy, the sediments move. As energy ebbs, sediments drop.
 
The biggest clasts are very difficult to move because of their mass. They require a great deal of energy. Smaller clasts are generally easier to move. You can’t blow on a boulder to move it, but you can move small pebbles with your breath, and sands and silts are easy to blow off your picnic table at the beach.
 
Like the winds of the Sahara, you also spread your influence, making an impact sometimes so far that it occurs over the horizon. Typically, the distant influence you effect is rather small, generated by the tiniest of your scattered thoughts and behaviors. Big influences are usually more local. If you want to move the boulders of your influence farther from their source, you have to be more energetic. Breezes do nothing to a boulder. 

Where do you find wonder? Is it on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon? From the upper observation deck of the Empire State Building? Inside a cathedral? Beneath a redwood? On top Jockey Ridge between sound and ocean? On rough seas? “Keep going,” you say, “you haven’t named it yet.”
 
Of course, I haven’t. I cannot know where you experience wonder, but I have an idea. Your sense of wonder comes upon you unexpectedly, even when you think you have a “favorite” place of wonder. One of the reasons for the unexpectedness is that familiarity dulls us, takes off the edge, so to speak.
 
Meditating monks speak of “spiritual dryness,” and ask whether or not they have been abandoned or lost their faith. Sameness does that to us. Want to open the door to wonder? Stare.
 
You are familiar with your hands. You use them without thinking. Want a pencil? See it; pick it up. Not much wonder in that, right? Try something that might change the most ordinary of experiences into the occasional, unexpected and unpredictable wonder. Stare at one of your hands. Do nothing else. Merely stare, and do so away from distraction and the attention of others. Stare in quiet. No music. No traffic. No running dishwasher. Merely stare.
 
When your hand seems “strange,” you are on the verge of discovering the secret to unlocking more wonder. Almost any place, even the most familiar, can become a source of wonder. 

​Reginald the Knave in the Nave
 
I don’t know whether or not anyone really knows the identities of the other “knights” that thought they were doing King Henry a favor by killing Thomas Becket. I know from an eyewitness report that Reginald was one of them. Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury had once been a close friend of the king, but his consecration as bishop put the “unruly” priest at odds with His Majesty. Becket sided with the Church and against the king in matters of jurisdiction His Royal Highness took seriously. So, one day, Henry said aloud something like, “Will no one rid me of this unruly priest?” Reginald and the other knights took him literally, went to Canterbury Cathedral, and killed Becket.
 
It is possible that Henry was just frustrated, just upset enough to mouth words without specifically meaning to foreshadow or request a murder. It is possible he actually meant “kill”? Many people say words like kill without implying an actual murder. It’s figurative language, usually spoken in times of frustration or anger, but, of course, it can also be prelude to an actual murder.
 
Henry’s knights were obviously not tuned to nuance if Henry was just throwing out the words of his frustration. They road to the cathedral, met Becket inside, began an argument, and then killed him. Right there in the cathedral, armed knights against a robed, unarmed priest. These guys were obviously not too concerned about the nature of the place or the status of the victim. Reginald, whom Becket calls by name according to the eyewitness report of a monk named Edward Grim, tells Becket he owes fealty to his king only, not to Becket or the Church. Sure, why not. Think of Reginald’s name. It derives from rex, the Latin for “king,” and is related to regina (“queen”) and regal (“kinglike”). The guy was born a king’s knave.
 
The tale of Becket has been told and retold in essay, biography, book, and film. I’m positive almost every moral lesson, dramatic theme, or philosophical point on the subject has been made since the twelfth century. Oh! Okay. Possibly one more: If you don’t want to chance being a knave like those knaves in the nave of Canterbury, learn to interpret nuance.
 
The words of frustration might not have literal meanings, but their misinterpretation can have dire consequences.

Lathes have been around for a long time, at least 3,200 years and probably much longer. Evidence? There’s a bowl from Mycenae. My guess is that that surviving bowl was not the only one made and probably not the first. Maybe someone way back then said, “What are we going to do with Grandma Hippodamia’s avgolemono to keep it from running over the sides of the dish?”
 
“Here’s an idea,” Agamemnon said to his brother Menelaus. “Why don’t we find some way to carve a curve? I was thinkin’ about this, and I think I have an idea for a machine that will do the trick. I’m going to call it a lathe. Not only can we keep the soup from running out of the dish, but I think I can make a utensil that we can use like a little shovel.” The rest, as they say, is the history of a bowl of avgolemono and a spoon.
 
Humans are the lathes of lathes. And among the curved surfaces that we have shaped is one called Earth. We’ve reshaped much of the planet, mostly because we shape tools like lathes. But before we take pride in our products, we should recognize that we, too, have been put on the lathe of place.
 
When a blast of Arctic air covers the northern landmasses, people change their daily lives to survive the cold. From the populations of large cities to individuals in  houses, the lathe of winter shapes how northerners live. And summer does the same. So do the tropics, or drought, or food source. Place is a lathe, and we are its products.
 
Place is more than weather, of course. Place is both culture and environment. We’re part of a reciprocating process. Move into a new place. You’ll work your lathe to reshape it, but in the process you will be reshaped. Yes, you are clever enough to make a curved dish to hold avgolemono and to make a spoon to eat it. But while you dine, realize that like that bowl, you have been shaped by the lathe of place.
 
Time for some self-examination: How and to what extent has the lathe of place shaped you? To what extent have you been the lathe of place? And now the big question: Having used your lathe, have you since stopped its turning? Have you given up on reshaping?
 
Keep your lathe spinning 24/7. It doesn’t even have to stop when you die. What you produce might be useful for centuries like some bowl from Mycenae.

We—I write we, but I really mean they (They, the astronomers)—have found 19 black holes in the Milky Way. Probably, the galaxy has more. Probably, we will find them, measure their mass and rotation, and discover more about their nature. We, Earthbound Homo sapiens, the observers.

We’re not all interested in black holes. That’s true. No doubt most of us don’t even know what a black hole is. With regard to these strange celestial phenomena, millions of humans have more pressing matters on their mind, matters like food, water, shelter, and maybe relationships. Nevertheless, we—the astronomers—keep  searching and studying these distant phenomena.

We, to continue, have also detected fast radio bursts. Again, a bit of a mystery. No one really knows what causes them. Could they be emissions from intelligent beings spread throughout the galaxy? Are they just natural burps in the electromagnetic spectrum caused by fidgety stars that might have swallowed a planet? Are they the product of some as yet un-thought-of brief process?

Feel a bit ignorant about the stuff that encompasses you? Getting signals that aren‘t clear messages? Trying to figure out what this life is all about? It’s time to just observe, to look around at the wonders that also encompass you.

We seem to be surrounded by unknown numbers of black holes and fast radio bursts that befuddle us. Sure, we can pretend to know it all. We can say we live in a world without mystery, but then every so often we find something unexpected, inexplicable, maybe a bit frightening, and once in awhile beautiful.

Let me take you to a place with a wide vista. Let’s stand on a mountain and survey a wide swath of the planet, the sky, and beyond. Let’s watch a sunset of oranges, pinks, and purples. Watch the light spread beneath some clouds on the western horizon. Pretty glorious sight, eh? Of course, it’s a fleeting display. Let’s call it a fast solar show. The light fades as the sun sets; the pink and orange turn more gray. Then the blackness swallows it all.

Those distant mysteries of fast radio bursts and black holes are fascinating for those interested in celestial matters. For the rest of us, there are closer ones that require no special radio or optical telescopes. Just a pair of curious eyes facing west in the evening. Every evening a different sunset, changing colors fading into blackness. Sure, there are spectacular phenomena “out there” in the far reaches of the galaxy and in other galaxies. But we don’t have a dearth of such phenomena on Earth. This is, when we think about it, not a bad place to live. Aren’t you glad you chose this planet?