By Emily - San Francisco 2007

Sometimes I feel that my grip on reality is tenuous at best. Like the slightest nudge could send me spiraling. Employment seems increasingly impossible for my fragile psyche. Europop lyrics are enough to tap my underlying existential anguish. And I quote, "This is not enough."

I'm frightened anymore. It's the unknown, as always, as ever, but different now. In this age of instant access, what is knowledge? Compiled, curated and cached, the whole of humanity's progress glows at all hours from countless consoles.

So what is there to do? If I read every book, tour every city, sing every song, I will be back at square one. Always at square one. Like Alice, the faster I run, the firmer my stance.

At least I can imagine. Imagine that Buenos Aires or a Tibetan village is different, is special, is the answer. Imagine that someone, somewhere is wiser. That if I learned to speak Farsi, I'd feel full. Imagining keeps me going.

But going doesn't pass the time. Even in motion I am restless. I tell myself, try this, try that, something will stick. Every creature has it's niche and we're only animals, after all. Bakers bake and dancers dance. And so it should be. But if my calling is yet undiscovered not only am I without a verb, but nounless too. Though I do exist. Perhaps I am an exister. Existers exist.

And in my existence I am less than satisfied. True, I am without hardship or pain. Free of great responsibility and worry. So lucky. So safe. So dull.

Where is progress? What comes next? Our activities are ever harder, better, faster, stronger, but never new. I communicate with another much as my greatest of grandparents did, just more quickly and over greater distance. We manipulate matter and data in different, fancier ways than before. How fancy we are! How impressive!

This is why I am afraid. I am afraid that now that it is possible to know everything, go everywhere, contact everyone, the truth may show itself. The aggregation of it all will create a picture. And that picture may be as blank as the slate we started with. Everything will turn out to be nothing.

Infinity is our only hope. If there is no everything, if it keeps going, if the possibilities really are endless, we have a chance. I do anyway. How could I exist in a finite universe? The finish line would have to be death.

This may be it: God is infinity. Creation unbound. Creation not as the product, but as the process, the act, Creating. Not the dance, but the dancing. Not the lover, but the love.

And isn't that what separates man from mouse? A fish is a fish, playing an endless loop of birth, procreation, death. Looping and looping generations and generations of animals eating and pooping. Only one tried to escape.

Though we are still subject to our status of animal, we are no longer beasts. Beauty is not only something for us to observe, but to create. Realize this! A mountain, a novel, a bear, a concerto, a sunrise, a skyscraper. All are beautiful. All are fixtures of our existence and shape our experience. Is the author or composer divine? The architect? Maybe the building itself? No. Then why the mountain? Why the Creator? Neither Creator nor Creation, but Creating. The verb is the truth that links subject and object. The act is the divine, the infinite, the dynamic.

Again, a dancer. See her standing there, pretty as you like, but divine? Surely not. The steps then, skillfully choreographed, written on paper, still lifeless. But put them together and you have truth, you have life, you can see God.

This is true of anything. As I type here, the computer glows and hums, just plastic and metal, circuits and synapses. The programmer somewhere sits, coding away, unlike the dancer, not so very pretty. What is special here? Not the wires, not the geek, the act. The series of acts over so many years to put this computer in my lap and my words, glowing there on yours.