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THERE'S NO CAVES LIKE SNOW CAVES, THERE'S NO CAVES I KNOW
Ed Barna
I've
been thinking lately about emergency snow shelters, sleep, possible government
surveillance of Internet activity, and the meaning of existence.
A
recent news story pointed out that the major Internet portals, such as Yahoo
and and MSN and Google, keep their total activity on record for as long as six
months (Yahoo) or longer (the others). Government snoops could detect patterns
in someone's activity by tracing those records, the author said.
Okay:
so why do I have on my screen, in a separate window, a picture from Maine of a
cave someone's kid dug in a big pile of snow plowed off their driveway?
Partly
because I'm considering mailing the picture-taker (which you can do at Weather
Underground-WEATHER UNDERGROUND!-the federal online gumshoe's suspicions rise)
to say that they needn't worry about that cave collapsing unless the kids start
sliding down the pile. The way you build an emergency shelter if lost in the
woods in the winter is, you heap snow together, mixing in tossing the lower and
upper layers, then dig a cave. Inside the snow dome, the warmer and colder
areas will exchange heat, and in the process, the heat will cause bits of snow
to interconnect. The result is a stable igloo-like shelter, not strong enough
for long-term use, but enough to meet the temporary need. In the cave, around a
corner, you make a platform inside a little higher than the entrance level, to
keep cold air from creating a draft, and you hunker down for the night.
Which
led me to consider how effective it can be to lie down while still hot and
tired, and not move from that position, and fall sleep to recover (we're inside
the house now). If anything disturbs you, or you fidget a lot, you won't fall
asleep nearly as well.
I
think that in the process of transitioning from waking to sleep, the body and
mind create a lot of temporary bonds that are the equivalent of the snow
linking as the heat transfers. Dreaming, at least in its initial stages,
continues this process, and helps you to stay asleep while your bodily recovery
begins.
Every
day is like that. We patch together things we know, things we have,
expectations we and others have placed upon us, and create enough "meaning"
to get through the day. It's not a big meaning, like those of the great
religions and philosophies, but it's sufficient unto the day.
I
suppose I could bring in Plato and his cave here, but this time let's let him
enjoy his sleep.
I'm
a Zen Buddhist, as much as I'm anything, because I don't expect any permanent
structure or meaning. The "meaning," if you want to use that word,
must dwell equally in the completely unstructured "ground of being"
that allows us to perceive "order," and in the truest sense
originates them. We should be as aware of our daily way, messy as its
structures may be, because that's all the heaven we're going to get-and rightly
understood, it's enough.
Words
try to communicate this, but if there is anything Zen Buddhists and others from
traditions based on realization rather than belief agreed upon, it is that they
always have failed and always will. The rest, my dear government interlocutor
(this will soon be transferred to an Internet blog), is experience-and silence.