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Ventilating the House of Knowing

To Know or To Flow?

by Alan Harris


House Knowing in stowing;
unknowing is flowing.

Building a house requires intricate knowing;
living in it will tap a rich, dangerous stream not charted in the blueprints.

To study someone's horoscope numerically builds up a house of concepts;
to cry with someone is to surrender to an indescribable flowing.

Financial expertise is a product of keen attention and experience;
heartfully allocating resources can be done by a three-year-old giving his dog a biscuit.

To gather straight A's in college is an obedient harvesting of the known;
later upheavings may lead to sleepless, fathomless nights that drain away diplomas but open one's heart to a fresh humility.

Knowing is a keen memory of all the chess openings, over a neatly squared chess board, with well-behaved pieces;
unknowing brings one to a bewilderment in midgame from which a victory may spring.

Knowing within a religion can spawn rickety beliefs, defensive fears, or exclusive duality;
to avoid naming the nameless, or believing in the heard, or excluding the "other" can admit a universe into the mind, and release the mind into a universe.

Experience leads to knowing; knowing leads to more intense experience;
then perhaps to a shambles; from which may emanate a steadying awe of the flowing.

The known manifests as forward motion;
the unknown as a gentle, inscrutable smile.

The knower has developed a system for success, having created a perfect tinker toy windmill;
his fragile fabrication already tosses precariously on an unseen boundless sea.

Many know their appetites, preferring a certain spice or sugar;
the mysterious source of all flavors is unknown to them but controls their dining.

Professors in universities want to increase and perpetuate the known;
the Perpetual winks.

Knowing is to have a well-kept lawn;
flowing is to have nothing but everything, to leave it right where it is, and perhaps to care for the lawn too.

A brilliant nation converts a billion dollars worth of knowing into a Stealth Bomber;
to sit at one's dinner table is to fly imperceptibly fast on a planet, free of charge, without need of a target.

Knowers worry about dying, which might destroy their tinker toy windmill;
the imponderable is immense and welcomes windmills of all designs.

A violinist knows his part; a conductor knows his score; a composer knows how to notate his emotions;
in concert all of them yield their knowings to the fountain source of music, with exquisite results.

The known is of great price;
the unknown is priceless.

Assertions have been made herein as if known;
a puff of wind from no direction will soon scatter them without loss.