Thomas Wright: A Finite View of Infinity (1750)
"I feel reasonably confident that a fresh infinity hides in there, ready to spring itself upon me."

Both packing and unpacking fall into a unique class of human activity in that they seem to have no concluding point. A naive packer might look at a house and quite reasonably presume that packing should simply entail putting every thing within that place into a box, though that notion will prove impossible to satisfy in practice. Some items seem to have been specifically designed to not fit into any box, for instance, and others turn infinite, filling just as many boxes as one throws at them, with always a few more outstanding, ad infinitum. Flower pots pack like this. So do the contents of any typical garage. One must eventually come to some sort of accommodation with these items and acknowledge a state nestled somewhere between Done&Done-r. Insanity seems the only reasonable alternative.

Unpacking reverses while amplifying these conditions. A naive unpacker might reasonably presume that a box would necessarily contain a finite set, but a few reliably produce the opposite, seemingly infinite sets from within an obviously definite space. These prominently include the so-called Mixed Box, a box who could not quite figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up and so never chose an identity. It might hold items destined for every room in the house, in different proportions, of course, so emptying it requires lengthy forays into furthest reaches from which an unpacker will very likely never return, yielding a box unlikely to ever achieve empty. As unpacking unfolds, these unfinishable boxes accumulate to produce an authentic conundrum the mind of any individual will very likely never untangle. Leftovers will remain, essentially unclassifiable, until the place you're moving into burns to the ground in a suspicious spontaneous combustion fire typically caused by infinities rubbing together in crowded closet space.

So SettlingInto falls outside what might be labeled Normal, Rational Experience. It's flooded with subtle paradoxes, the effects of which can only ever be blunted by the injection of blessed distraction. I'm finding that I just need to flee a couple of times each day as I'm supposed to be unpacking. An urgent errant comes to mind which is, of course, not really urgent at all. I jinn up these excuses in vain attempts to preserve what's left of my objectivity. I ceded my sanity long ago. My lower back conspires with my gratefully shrinking attention span to produce a genuine outbursting. Since nobody's looking, I disappear. The Muse works five layers into some transnational Zoom gathering. I can hear her squeaking from her upstairs corner office overlooking the entire sweep of The Blue Mountains. I slip The Schooner into gear and disappear from there, off to urgently buy some unneeded kitty treats or to make that overly long-delayed pen purchase. I convince myself that SettlingInto this place demands that I head down to Pontarolo's place and buy myself a pen. It's a long-standing tradition and it successfully distracts me from another in an infinite set of infinite unpacking. There will never be an end to it.

Encountering the everyday infinite has been the bane of many throughout history. Heraclutus perhaps understood best but his contemporaries thought him crazy, but only because he probably was. One does not unpack the same box twice and one does not always unpack the same box once. Some arrows never reach their target but get tangled up in some philosophical disagreement along the way. Some tortoises eventually win the jack rabbit race but never by conventional means. The SettlingInto world, punctuated with much packing and unpacking, includes a few confusing cues. One should properly wonder just what they've gotten themselves into. The one box The Muse cleverly packed with the delicate glass shelves was so unbalanced that it rolled off the hand truck into a decent front roll onto its opened top. I have not found the courage to peek inside since setting it back up on its base again. I feel reasonably confident that a fresh infinity hides in there, ready to spring itself upon me.

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Even nested infinities apparently include Fridays and this one's no exception. A week ago we were conquering Wyoming. Today, we're infinitely SettlingInto; the more things change … . My writing week continued despite first world privations common to modern transitions. I tell myself that my pioneer ancestors went without a washing machine for considerably longer than we had to and that a six inch square cutting board serves just fine and leaves one feeling clever besides. I'm noticing the effects of gravity finally working right again and the moister climate has my voice working again. My writing has also been benefitting from the effects of higher ceilings or something. So far, I seem to be suffering from a bout of genuine delight. I feel in grave danger of turning into a hale fellow well met, trying to remember not to forget just how fortunate this vatta Schmaltz future seems.

I began my writing week CopingAgain. "My story about whacking myself with that hammer won't heal my thumb, but it might heal my pride going forward."

I described our latest refrigeratoricide in Untethering. " …the promise of different lures us forward without, for once, that familiar haunting ignorance that comes from not even caring anymore what's lurking behind that door."

I was taken by just how different the prospect of SettlingInto seemed without the accustomed anticipation of a return trip back into exile again in OneWayRoad. "Returning seemed a long-around way of leaving again."

I next attempted to describe the difference I experience while SettlingInto God's Own Time Zone again in TimelightZone, my most popular posting of the period. "Exile provided not a single similar experience, but here in the Timelight Zone, it's a frequent occurrence."

I experienced another bout of unpreparedness in ReadinessOrNot. It seems the nature of this universe that "We will accept delivery even though we're clearly not yet ready, then make up what we might become not ready for next."

I noticed how little I understand about how my stuff works in TransPlantings. "I seem to be planting orange trees. We'll have to see whether they freeze or thrive and whether I'll be sent to Siberia for sabotaging our revolution."

I ended my writing week with a heartfelt reflection on those wise enough to engage in a Fool'sMission. "I believe that no one can aspire to greater purpose than to passionately pursue a Fool'sMission. It's outcome simply should be unlikely from the outset, it's potential influence bordering upon delusional. It must be yours and no others' and it should attract derision much more easily than praise. Some days should seem hopeless, others merely feckless, yet persistence continues."

That constitutes my finite view of infinity for this week. Time continued moving in its infinitely irregular way. I deeply appreciate you following along with me on this SettlingInto with no obvious ending. Moving proved confounding yet surprisingly survivable. Unpacking's another matter altogether. It'll be a week before an electrician can even stop by to offer an opinion on connecting the drier. If rewiring's needed, they're scheduling into late May. Line drying's an attractive alternative. Backwards to move onward. Thanks for watching.

©2021 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SettlingInto, #PureSchmaltz