First is the nature of method. Selecting the method to share your anomalous experience is shaped in part by the medium itself. The medium is, after all, the message. How we deliver a message, any message, shapes and determines the form and scale of human connection, cramming the actual content of the message itself into a small conceptual corner. For example, a short simple story, when told three ways, is no longer a single story but three that, once told, escape the confines of the witness, the teller, and the lived experience itself.

When we speak of an experience to a single listener from the comfort of a living room or coffee shop, the account stays rather soft as it can be corrected mid-sentence, laughed away, or even denied by the speaker the next day. When we write it down, the experience then hardens into narrative and message. The ink, whether physical or digital, solidifies that which memory held fluid and amorphous. Once written, the experience becomes a non-negotiable record. And when shared publicly, either online or in print, it is completely surrendered by the author, metabolized into the body of the internet, where it becomes indexed, searchable, logged, and permanent—passed to readers the author-witness never imagined, including the indifferent and malicious ones, to be interpreted and manipulated in whatever way the receiver chooses. Meaning is, after all, subjective and meaning-making is quentessentially human. In this way, the method isn’t just a container or mode of conveyance, it is also the dice roll that decides the experience-turned-narrative’s fate.

The method may provide some degree of shelter, such as the anonymity of a pen name or the veil of fiction, which try to screen the witness from exposure and likely ridicule or censure, particularly online. But this kind of shelter isn’t free, and usually costs the author-witness a degree of credibility and immediacy, forfeiting the raw power of direct testimony. Most witnesses, I suspect, once they’ve decided to share their anomalous experience, never consciously think through these costs and the chain of consequences resulting from them.

There is also the matter of closure. A journal, for example, is to some degree always unfinished as it is an ongoing record that follows the witness until their passing and never quite completes their integration. A published book, however, demands an ending that the experience likely never provided. Thus, choosing the method is also choosing which truth is told and the degree of completeness that truth embodies. It presents a paradox where the story goes on through the author-witness even as it has ended with publication. And neither is ever totally true.

Second is the nature of narrative. Selecting the narrative model is really a choice of form which, in turn, helps decide what claims the narrative makes about itself. Point of view, for example, shapes whether the narrative says “this happened to me” versus “this happened to someone else” versus “I’m just sharing what I heard.” None of these are correct or incorrect, but each has different weights and impacts on the receiver that the author-witness may or may not be aware of. This goes beyond simply stylistic choices since each one hides an epistemology without the author-witness’s knowledge or consent. So no matter the choice of POV, fact or fiction, diary or drama, the lived experience is always left incomplete and inexact in its telling.

One of the main reasons the question of how is the hardest of the three is that narrative models force the author-witness to commit to a particular truth among several possible truths that are each and all not wholly true. For example, first-person non-fiction must make a declaration of what the events actually were insofar as the author-witness understands them at the time of telling. Fiction lacks this obligation by holding the uncanny experience as both psychological and spiritual without collapsing one into the other. It can, I hope, honor the possibility that the truth is enigmatic and elusive beyond the witness, and perhaps even to the witness himself. Whether the witness is diarist, memoirist, or novelist, he is trapped in the reality of having to choose how to tell his lived experience knowing that his way of telling is itself an ontology inherent to the method. Three different narratives then become three different ontologies from the very same experience — a dynamic, I feel, that is far stranger than the anomalous experience itself.

Finally comes the cumulative domino effect. Having already answered questions one and two doesn’t mean that there aren’t impacts on the way one shares their experience. In fact, the way one answers questions one and two, and the underlying motivations behind them, have a direct impact on the way one will share their experience, and leave an indelible mark on the final output one shares. This is in many ways unavoidable and, in turn, can be viewed as a feature, a flaw, or both of the decision to share the anomalous experience fully or in part.

Though I’ve presented the three questions in a sequence, the reality is that all three are interconnected, creating a loop where any change to one has a domino effect on the others, and, as a result, the final output. The sequence is subjective and once undertaken becomes unimportant.

Because of this, I find myself frequently getting lost in the labyrinth of my responses to each of these questions and the dynamic it creates among them. And I’ll admit that I’m continually struggling with my responses. I recently answered questions one and two completely, only to get mired in question three, falling deep into a rabbit hole I still can find no way out of.

And I’m certain that the more complex one’s anomalous experience, the more difficult each of these questions becomes. But for those who have integrated their experiences, even somewhat, they’ve come to realize in their own individual way that none of this is simple or straightforward, and I would doubt the testimony of anyone who presents their story as such. Not because the narrative of their experience isn’t simple, it may very well be, but any contact with the anomalous is far from simple both in terms of its substance and its effects on the witness, both short and long term.

I’m uncertain how long I’ll remain lost in the labyrinth of my own reasoning, but I hope that there is an end soon. The cognitive overhead is already overwhelming, only making the challenges of living between worlds all the more difficult.

But I also know that buried deep inside these coveats and cautions are my deepest self-doubts and fears of failing to manifest my own experiences in a world that might likely mock and reject them. I guess that is why there is courage, though I do not know how I shall find it.

#Intermundia #Excultio

By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

The more obvious motivators are those that people will likely gravitate towards first, including fame, fortune, or some form of filling a deep sense of personal inadequacy or lack of self-esteem, which, interestingly, mirrors Jung’s warnings about ego inflation when confronting psychic³ phenomena which, no doubt, intersects spiritual experience for the mind cannot be so easily separated from the soul, or vise versa.

Indeed, losing perspective and humility after an anomalous event is a real possibility for a witness, however well they may believe themselves to be capable of fully integrated the encounter. To compound the risk, much of our media celebrates so-called heroes who succumb to ego inflation—while conveniently omitting the spiritual consequences they suffer. There may be more cautionary tales out there than I can remember off hand, but I suspect that there are far more stories about protagonists feeding the egos of audiences than otherwise⁴.

And this is not an easy road to navigate, for our current society at the time of this writing encourages and entices people to crave and seek the attention of others and great sums of wealth. But fantasies are tempting because they seemingly offer us prizes without costs, and material prizes always have a price. I myself do not pretend to be immune to these temptations and I work vigilantly to avoid and defend against them. Attention and wealth themselves are not evil, but the inflation of the ego and the corruption of the soul they can produce is.

So, what then is one to make of a good reason and motivation for sharing their anomalous experiences?

I can think of several, including 1.) helping others who may have similar experiences, 2.) helping others who have not had such experiences realize they happen with insight into what they might mean, and 3.) processing overwhelming experiences through language. We easily forget that the same langauge we use in our everyday thoughts is the same one we use to communicate with others. By using our synchronous and asynchronous communications with others, we can help ourselves better understand the meaning and implications of our experiences without becoming buried beneath the weight of their memory or dismissing them outright and unjustly.

I do not pretend that these are the only possible reasons one might decide to share their anomalous experiences openly. The real focus here is on encouraging other witnesses to be disciplined in their decision making, and to honestly consider the real reason or reasons behind their sharing and the implications to their own integrity as a result. All else is but lazy insincerity. What then does integrity demand of us? If not our own dignity, then the dignity of the experience that has forever changed us.

#Intermundia #Excultio

Notes:

1. I had considered coercion a possible motivator until I realized that without either need or want, coercion is powerless as a motivator.

2. I do not presume that motivation in this context is limited to the intrinsic. That is a decision best left to the decider.

3. Psyche, ψυχή: breath, life, soul.

4. My suggestion to the witness who truly seeks to integrate their anomalous experience puts great effort into avoiding such actions that might lead to ego inflation or any loss of humility as this may have lasting consequences far beyond the immediate sight of the individual.

By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

For example, one's reputation is probably the most immediate personal aspect at risk. By exposing deeply personal experiences, such as those involving the anomalous, one will certainly be judged by society at large, including by family, friends, employers, coworkers, acquaintances, strangers, and so forth. Different people have different thresholds for how much or how little they value their privacy and their social reputation and capital. This is not a protest against sharing the anomalous, but a caution to pause and consider what it might mean for the reaction of others who encounter an inner truth and, in turn, for the person who shares it. For in the eyes of others, especially those who cannot relate, these two things are one and the same.

Another example is the potential harm the sharing may cause the people close to them, such as spouses, best friends, parents, children, and so forth. Even if one doesn't care or worry about how the sharing might affect them directly, it's still wise to pause and consider the possible effects on the people they care about. Our modern, highly toxic society is filled with piranhas scanning the web for prey—fodder for their subscribers and views—and the personal story becomes blood in the water.

One more risk is that of digital permanence. The internet does not forget, meaning that when the potential chaos and social media feeding frenzy has finished, that personal exposure never really goes away. Years, even decades, may pass, and the story once shared, and the names and words associated with it, will forever be enshrined in the growing digital footprint of humankind.

As I mentioned, I'm not encouraging others who have anomalous experiences they wish to share to remain silent, but I am suggesting that some pause and deep thought be given to it—for themselves and the people they care about.

The question of “Should I?” is the important first question, but it certainly isn't the only question, because any question about should must also ask why.

#Intermundia #Excultio

By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

Attraction — the pull that draws one in as if recognizing a deep chasm and falling into it all at once, where the power of gravity prevails before reason can respond. It is unconscious, erupting overhead like a cloudburst. It carries delight and electricity to the one whom it has befallen, even if unrequited. When shared, it flickers before either party has consciously acknowledged their choice. It can initially appear as fascination, desire, or lust, confounding the most mature of us.

Care and affection — the subtle dimension of small but powerful acts. The healing hand that appears suddenly to soothe the suffering. The pleasure that feels selfish but is always reciprocal. The attention that remains when all other eyes have withdrawn. The hand that meets one’s own when the journey seemed solitary. The kiss on the forehead and warm embrace when the pain has nowhere else to go. Its beauty lies in its endless manifestations.

Respect and devotion — attention held steady long after the novelty is spent, and the initial spark of electricity has transformed into a new kind of energy that tightens and stabilizes the entangled orbits of two bodies. It is neither vow nor worship per se, but the integration of vows into routine, and seeing through the eyes of another as predisposition. It is satisfaction by another — and only that other — where all other doors remain open — unforbidden to both — and yet both always choose their same-shared door. Exclusivity that is neither confinement nor imprisonment, but a unique realm known only to two, co-created and cohabited.

Unconditionality — giving that expects nothing in return, where the fundamental connection between two cannot be transacted or commodified. This facet holds nothing back, showing up without pretense or mask, to be wholly known without fear of judgment, ridicule, or rejection. Two people, their bodies and souls stripped naked, standing before one another, both saying to the other, “I accept all of you.” A beautiful and unparalleled dynamic only of partners who are able and willing to see connection as effort may live to experience.

Sacrifice — spending oneself never seen as loss. The give of surrender that is never extracted or exploited by the other, paid out in presence and in absence alike through the grief and longing only love can create, across unimaginable distances and extraordinary circumstances. Of all the facets, this is the one where both parties willingly give of themselves in ways the outer world never sees, where joy and sorrow, togetherness and loneliness, contentment and longing are all one and the same.

Love may or may not be universally experienceable, but each experience of love is unique to the those involved — a special and specific dynamic they create by the nature of who they are and the energy born between them — appearing differently between what others outwardly see and what the partners experience inwardly, inside and in-between. The world sees two people sitting across a cafe table from one another, but hidden from sight is the realm shared between them, a whole universe only the two of them can enter. A place called love.

#Intermundia #Excultio

Notes:

1. This post may not look it, but its writing took nine months of patience and discipline. Love must be lived before it can be written.

2. Love is itself a bond, but not bondage — one that frees rather than shackles. Not two halves forming completion, but two wholes choosing something more in each other — interdependence rather than dependence, domestication rather than adventure, contentment rather than euphoria.

By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

I'm neither a nihilist nor a pessimist, but there are days when my resilience thins, days when the protections slacken and patience and endurance fall into retrograde, all beneath the weight of caring too much for a world that seems to care only for the heartless and soulless. Caring, sensitivity, and experience yield wisdom and solace — a gift, most days. But there are moments like tonight, when life feels radically heavier, as if the world's gravity had tripled without warning and I alone am struggling to keep my balance.

Fatigue, n. Weariness with bodily labor or mental exertion; lassitude or exhaustion of strength. We suffer fatigue of the mind as well as of the body. — Webster’s (1891).

She had warned me of cynicism, and I do try to avoid it, but my cynicism isn’t the loss of caring. Rather, it is my caring gone empty, depleted by a world that takes without giving. The armor guarding a heart narrowly pierced between the plates. Yet, I choose not to succumb to the gathering storms this night. The fire still burns within me. The bond between us grows stronger.

And so, I’ll let my pen and my mind rest for today, crawling into bed early, ready to dream of that place I cannot yet go, and the warmth of those who await there.

This is not fantasy,¹ but faith. And faith is both light² and flame that defy the dark³.

Goodnight, world. Sweet dreams.

#Excultio

Notes:

1. I distinguish fantasy (desire without ground) from faith (ground without sight). Faith, then, is not optimism or self-deception. One can hold the second while flat on one's back under tripled gravity, where it is, indeed, best tested.

2. A shadow is light, blocked. Perhaps cynicism is caring, blocked — a trick of the light more than the dark. How the mortal eye misleads.

3. If faith defies the dark, why does it grow heaviest precisely in the hours before sleep, where it is shouldered rather than worn? Perplexing thing, spirit.

By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

“Crimson with raking Rubies from the Hill, And clattering his Spurs—'Wherewith the Ground I stab,' said he, 'for Rubies, that, when found I swallow; which, as soon as swallow'd, turn To Sparks which though my beak and eyes do burn. Gold, as you say, is but dull Metal dead, And hanging on the Hoarder's Soul like Lead: But Rubies that have Blood within, and grown And nourisht in the Mountain Heart of Stone, Burn with an inward Light, which they inspire,

And make their Owners Lords of their Desire.'“ ¹

— Farid Ud-Din Attar

The bird’s reasoning is quite clever, sophisticated even. It distinguishes between gold, calling it a “dull Metal dead” that weighs on the soul “like Lead,” and rubies, which carry blood, which grew in living stone, and which burn with inward light. The bird sees that what matters is the vitality of substance rather than its material value. The ruby has blood — life — and it was nourished, so much so that it burns. This is the excuse he gives for not making the journey.

Mulling this over, I wonder which is more harmful? The bird who hoards gold, or the bird who chases rubies, given that both are clearly lost, but the bird who chases gold pursues but dead weight, and the bird who chases rubies has mistaken genuine perception of vitality for the thing itself, falsely thinking that one can become something else — achieve transcendence — through consumption and absorption. This gives the illusion of transformation with consumption dressed as illumination. The bird then calls itself “Lord of its Desire,” an irony when you consider that a lord of desire cannot also be a servant of truth. Thus, not a pilgrim, but a Lord.

On the first few readings of this passage, I can make out that the world is full of gold-chasers, people whose heartlessness — through selfishness, self-centeredness, and willful ignorance — is weighed down by dead metal, whose souls have turned to lead. But what I find interesting is that, though that is more commonly true, it isn’t the primary concern here, and it's quickly dismissed in two lines. But the ruby bird gets a full speech, my full attention, filled with genuine beauty and insight despite a fatal flaw via a seductive conflation of outer and inner truth, and the bird’s self-deception haplessly follows.

The ruby bird’s mistake is truly profound for it illustrates a more frightening version of heartlessness, one where people who have correctly identified that accumulation is dead, who speak passionately about vitality and meaning and authenticity, whose mouths and eyes burn with borrowed — no, stolen — fire, and have thus, fatally, made the perception of aliveness into an outcome in itself. They swallow the living, falsely believing they can convert it into personal radiance — inner light. They have weaponized the language of soul, heart, and authenticity into another form of consumption, not as transcendence but as theft. The ruby bird may be very different from the gold bird, but neither is making the necessary journey. Both have traded truth and wisdom for its illusion.

And when I stop to consider that the rubies are “nourisht in the Mountain Heart of Stone,” I can see that they grew in stone that has a heart, in a mountain that is inert, geological, and inhuman, and has a heart that nourishes a vitality of blood-red fire. And despite the implication that even the inanimate world carries a profound interiority, the heartlessness isn’t in the stone. It’s in the bird that thoughtlessly tears the ruby out of the mountain’s very heart and swallows it whole.

#Philology #Excultio

Notes:

1. A passage from my copy of The Conference of The Birds by Farid Ud-Din Attar, translated by Edward FItzgerald (1889).

By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

None of this, however, is really new. Only this flavor is new, and perhaps the depth of significance in terms of the consequences of such things. What is true now of our politicians was true of Cicero’s time. What is true now of the general public was true of the Athenian public in 560 BCE. Funny how, regardless of historical era, the intellectual and emotional immaturity of some leads to the unnecessary suffering of many. All the while, exploitation rather than cooperation tends to be the modus operandi that devours nations and societies, with hubris sprinkled throughout.

Contrary to late-20th-century optimism here in America, human technological progress, including statecraft, has not led to moral progress. Nor does it, I imagine. The passage of time itself does not improve society and civilization. The human condition has not evolved. The human experience, though dotted with joy and goodness, is generally cruel and harsh. The struggles I have faced in my life are no better or worse than the struggles others have faced, past, present, and future. What is unique are the specific circumstances I find myself in, my own nature, my own knowledge and experience, and how I respond to the existential crises and moral dilemmas I may face.

Which brings me to this term:

“Integrity, n. The entire, unimpaired state of any thing, particularly of the mind; moral soundness of purity; incorruptness; uprightness; honesty. Integrity comprehends the whole moral character, but has a special reference to uprightness in mutual dealings, transfers of property, and agencies for others.” — Webster’s (1891).

As I read the definition more slowly, I can see two conceptual layers, laid down at different times. The older one is wholeness: the entire, unimpaired state of a thing, especially the mind. The word shares a root with integer, something that can't be divided without ceasing to be itself. The newer layer is about uprightness in dealings with others: property, contracts, acting on someone's behalf. Somewhere between the two, the emphasis shifted from the quality of the person to the quality of the agreement — the business contract — with the person across the table. It stopped describing what a soul is and started describing what a merchant can be trusted to deliver. In other words, it developed a business ontology as an add-on to the moral one. Or perhaps the transactional aspect was always there, and the definition simply made it salient. I cannot tell which from the reading alone.

The lexicographer may have been aware of this, but I doubt they noticed or paid particular attention to its philosophical implications. Words, like fossils, rarely explain themselves in profoundly revelatory ways. But it’s all here in this dictionary entry. A word that once described the unbroken inner life had, by the golden age of American mercantilism and industrialization, come to mean the reliability of the outer one.

What the definition still keeps, maybe in spite of itself, is the order and its inherent logic. How we treat people depends on what we're like inside. Quality of character determines the quality of human relationships and interactions once you remove commercial exploitation and transactions. A cracked vessel pours crooked no matter how steady the hand. A cracked soul sounds corrupt to the ear, no matter how suave the conversation.

By soul I mean the whole of who someone is, as opposed to what they have or do: the self that persists when the body, the résumé, and the material possessions all change. Integrity is that inner state showing up as observable conduct. When the inside is sound, dealings tend to be upright. When it's fractured by compromise, by deliberate choice, by coercion, by a thousand small surrenders, the dealings inherit the fracture. Not right away, but eventually. Inevitably. And that fracture leaves a mark not just on the body, but also on the soul.

I think integrity matters greatly because it may be the one thing that both connects us and protects us from one another. Every contract honored and every promise kept assumes the person on the other side is whole enough to keep faith. That same assumption is nearly all that stands between us and the darker sides of our nature, which are hardly new. The Romans knew them, and so did the Athenians. Every generation has had about the same mix of maturity and immaturity, and the quality of life in any era or region depends on this. I can't think of anything sturdier. Religion gets recruited to justify exploiters as often as to restrain them. Technology amplifies whatever part of us is running it. Time improves nothing just by passing. And what gets recorded in history is more about who does the recording than what actually happened. When combined with a social memory span of less than a generation, a vicious circle begins to emerge, and we are doomed to repeat the worst of our ancestors’ struggles.

Some people say integrity is a luxury, that sometimes you have to accept a smaller evil now to prevent a larger one later. However many times I've thought about this, and I don't trust it. How does the degree of harm between two horrific options automatically make the seemingly less horrific one somehow good? How does one make the better moral choice when the very definition of a moral dilemma is that there is no good choice? Moral dilemmas are, by nature, no-win scenarios. And no-win scenarios are solvable, but there’s always a price to be paid. The loss is built into the term no-win. So the question isn’t “if I pay” but “how do I pay” and “how much.” In other words, what is the cost to my soul? And integrity plays a critical role in that determination, not as a cold calculation, but as a means for deciding what is the better choice for me rather than what is the better choice in the eyes of others, real or imagined.

Moral dilemmas are real. They are dilemmas because they exact a toll. And the cost is paid in an immaterial currency. Invisible to the naked eye, yet indelible to the conscience and whole being. Giving up something of the inner life for the outer one costs something even if nobody else notices or cares. Maybe especially then. And only the person facing it can judge that cost. Not the imagined masses, who don't exist and will never speak, and not the instigators and whatever system stands behind them. If I'm ever in a situation where harm is coming, whatever choice I make, it’ll be a decision my conscience can live with, however fragile that peace.

This matters to me now, especially, because I feel surrounded by leaders and institutions that lack accountability, consistency, and any real concern for other people. Care is now performative and only meaningful in the context of providing services to people where both service and people are commodifiable. You can't count on them in the old commercial sense, let alone the much older sense of wholeness. They preach the second layer of the definition while hollowing out the first. Even “integrity” has become a brand, a transfer of property and an agency for others, minus the uprightness or transparency. You often see the term in the taglines and marketing materials for certain commercial industries, but how is usery, for example, also integrity? Or, is the consistency of admitted wrongdoing itself a form of integrity? Questions for another day, perhaps.

I'm not sure whether things are morally worse now than in Cicero's Rome or Solon's Athens, but I'm very certain they're not better.

We're fragile creatures in a deeply flawed world that may never see real moral progress, or a balance between our inner and outer lives. I suspect the forces that pull us away from ourselves, which our integrity helps resist, will always be there. And what I'm finding more and more as I get older is that resisting is what matters most.

#Excultio

Notes:

1. Business ontology is a term I’ve borrowed from Mark Fisher, though I admit I’m extending his term here slightly beyond his original framing.

By D. Bowman  Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

I also believe that despite however much talking people do in general, there are multitudes more left unsaid. Unspoken.

I’ve been fascinated with the unspoken and, from time to time, I get caught in obsessing over tiny moments engaged with others — friends, colleagues, strangers— it doesn’t matter who, and I wonder despite our interaction what they may have wanted to say or ask but didn’t.

There are many reasons people bite their tongues and guard their words. Fear, mostly. Sometimes shame, or embarrassment. And sometimes calculation — the guarded word held back for advantage. For most it is a mixture of all of these, subtle and intuitive rather than strategic and deliberate. Though I admit to some exceptions on my own part, and I can only ever speak for myself.

We shouldn’t underestimate the power of the unspoken, however. Words can be harmful as well as helpful. To me, care is the better part of virtue — weighing the need to share against the likely consequences of sharing. I have found that only a small fraction of what I actually think ever passes my lips.

Is that deception? Perhaps. But such deceptions are necessary between people and among society. Like thoughts and ideas, not all words are welcome by others. And the gauging of another’s reactions to our own can sometimes mean the difference between joy and sorrow, success and suffering.

And the sharing of anomalous experiences is no different. The odd dreams that go unmentioned. The gut feelings that go acted upon without credit. The certain knowledge one obtains seemingly out of nowhere that suddenly proves accurate or true. The realization that on rare occasions the impossible overtakes the improbable.

So I've come to the conclusion that, however imprecise the counting, the words we read and say in a lifetime are finite. What is left unspoken is limitless and innumerable.

This may be for the best. In a civilization that prizes materiality, entropy, and artificial scarcity, notions of the infinite and innumerable must be at least heresy, if not criminal.

#Intermundia #Excultio

By D. Bowman Nomina Numina is a journal of reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

I do this also knowing that the appearance of my words here in this vast digital void is also in itself a strangeness. However, I must argue against the assumption that voids are emptiness, filled with a vast nothing. What if these vast spaces of open darkness are not empty at all? What if they too are filled with all of the things we cannot see or have yet to see? What if, deep in the darkness, there were an infinite library of the unspoken, whose writing only appears to the accidental reader who stumbles upon the pages, not by random chance, but for reasons that have yet to reveal themselves?

There are some actions that defy any illusion of futility because what lies beneath is far greater and denser than the material most will ever witness above. For, however incomplete our cosmology, the failure is in the viewing rather than the landscape.

There are also certain things that cannot be written, or at least written as they are. The sacred remains sacred because it is held in the closest of confidences and consulted at every step — trusting that the illusion of absence most see as a void is in fact both mask and medium.

I would also be remiss in not noting that the naming of the unnamed is central to my writing compulsion. This, too, is an inadequate expression partly due to my limited comprehension of what truly is, and my many deficiencies as a writer. An extremely committed amateur in both attendance and participation.

And as is true in life as it is in the act of writing it, I am left with more questions than answers: What if writing is more than just the scrawlings of an ordinary fool writing into the void? And what if the void is more than merely a perceived vacancy of cosmos?

#Intermundia #Excultio

By D. Bowman Nomina Numina is a journal of reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

And I wonder: what is his relationship here that gives him the confidence that his possessions are safe from theft or abuse?

Trust is a mysterious and remarkable thing to me, akin to faith. I see it all the time when I travel. And travel is something I love and loathe simultaneously, making the whole equation that much more complicated and confounding.

I’m amazed at the number of people who will leave their belongings temporarily at cafes, lounges, airports, etc., with apparent ease. Perhaps to get a coffee. Perhaps to use the restroom. Perhaps for no obvious reason at all.

And I often contemplate, no matter wherever or how often I see this, what is the source of such trust? Is it that they feel their possessions valuable only to them and therefore no one would casually walk away with them? Is it that they the security cameras, real or imagined, serve as a strong enough deterrent or as evidence after the event of theft to keep their items safe? Is it a kind of ignorance, willful or otherwise, that makes them oblivious to the darker, more corrupt side of human nature?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines trust as a belief that someone or something is good, sincere, honest, safe, or dependable—and will not harm, deceive, or let you down.

Honest. Safe. Dependable.

These are priceless qualities. Some people seem to treat them with almost frivolous abandon. I hold them dear as they are very difficult to find and once found even rarer to remain stable over time and across environments and circumstances.

But I pretend neither omniscience nor wisdom. Perhaps those people possess some knowledge or foresight about the safety of their items that I do not. Perhaps good fortune has long been by their side so as not to diminish their confidence in their fellow humans. Perhaps I’m overly protective or paranoid, always assuming the presence of risk or danger when there is none.

Perhaps just I’m overthinking, which I’m prone to doing. A function that I can be guilty of at times of uncertainty or anxiety, though I’m unaware of such feelings at the moment.

The man returned to his seat. His items untouched.

Was it luck? Coincidence? Fate? Was it just random causality? Was it some unseen connection between things we cannot perceive or the absence of it?

I realize it is rather absurd or irrational to be thinking of these things when nothing harmful has happened. But that is why I pay attention to them. What is it that made this occasion safe when another might not have been? What is it that I read in this space as risk that he either didn’t recognize or ignored?

Add to this my fascination with the tedious and mundane, the subtleness of peoples decisions, actions, and body language are more about how I see the things that on the surface appear trivial but may or may not be. Small things I notice throughout my day that may or may not be of consequence in a world where interdependence strongly suggests that everything is significant, though we may not see the progression or perceive an event as an endless web of events.

The man closed his laptop, gathered his things, and left without looking back. Whatever his trust was built on, he didn’t seem to pay it any mind. I sat a while longer, keeping half an eye on my own bag, wondering what it would take for me to leave mine so completely to the trust of things both seen and unseen.

#Excultio

By D. Bowman Nomina Numina is a journal of reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.