Tag Archives: discovery

This is not a Post it is a Note:

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Dear Everyone who has posted on this site:

You may have noticed that this website has grown a bit in the last month or so.  It takes nearly full-time now for me to keep up with the forum, let alone the comments to the posts.

I read your words and I’m floored with the quality of your thinking, the depth of your understanding, and the skill with which you put your lives on a page.

Compelling as you are, yet I need to walk the dogs, more rarely have a crumb to eat, and last of all to sleep.

Please know that I treasure what you say and how you say it, and that in my mind I read and answer just about everything you write.  At the keyboard it’s a different story, I answer only a few.  I spent half an hour assaying poetry after seeing your excellent work, then deleted it for lack of quality…I won’t upload what I don’t myself enjoy.

Point is this: please don’t think I’ve lost interest because I’m not posting or commenting save now and then.  I feel the life-form that is this little family: it’s a current I’ve never felt before.  It’s a script from _Star Trek…_ my old acquaintance Gene Roddenberry would have delighted to visit this place, flickerings of his hope for Humanity coming true.

I take a breath and whisper, _”Who are these people?”_

Does anybody know?  Did you realize that there are others like you in the world?  If this is a teensy-tinesy brand-new website and it already has a cadre of powerhouse souls aboard, can you imagine how many like spirits there must be on the planet today?

– Richard

 

 

Got Plans?

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I’VE ALWAYS KNOWN that I’ve been guided, this lifetime.  Nothing overt, a force from without jerking me left and right against my will, but as far back as I can remember I’ve had a deep calm sense that some dear Something was looking after me, caring for me, and that Something saw further than my eyes could begin to see.

Not a force, not lines on a cosmic blueprint, not an Akashic Driver chauffeuring me place to place.  More that when I looked back at the disconnected choices I’ve made my life long, I saw a harmony wasn’t disconnected at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My Rorschach World

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SOMETIMES ON A DOG WALK, I wonder what’s happened to my dogs.  We walk in a wilderness place that they know well, so they take off for while and I’m all alone on the path.  When I stand outside myself, or float a few hundred feet in the air, I look down at me and ask, “What’s that guy doing, the only soul in sight?”  And then I smile at the answer, “He’s walking his dogs.”

Yesterday after they abandoned me, I had a chance to notice the last of the snow on the ground, scattered patterns here and there.  This patch looked like a lion, that like a spaceship, that like an angel with three wings.

I laughed when I noticed that I was using the snow for my personal Rorschach test.

Then I wondered; instead of ink-blots or snow-blots, what if I use the world around me for my test?  This stack of massive logs, I saw it first as a barrier, an obstacle, “Don’t Go Here!”  then shifted it to be a ladder, easy to climb for a clearer view of my landscape.

The path itself, does it represent my own path, I wondered, hard going up hillsides sometimes, curving later around peaceful glades?  Why of course it does…that path is my life!  I’d been walking the same physical road for years, unaware that it stands for my destiny, whenever I choose to see it that way.  Rocks, trees, sky, city, cars, people — the physical expressions, they’re pictures of my mental and spiritual surroundings, as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time the pups came dashing back to join me, I saw them as travelers with me along our way, not talking but setting an example: what’s wrong with running your path sometimes instead of walking, what’s wrong with letting the destination take care of itself and simply _being,_ for a while?

Pretend every so-called external thing stands for something internal, and what all of a sudden do we understand about ourselves and about our spiritual choice to visit this planet?

If the pups could talk, I’d ask them.  Yet if they could talk, they’d probably say nothing and let me figure it out for myself.

 

The Lasting Benefit of Early Starvings

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I DISCOVERED THIS in the days when Kraft Dinner was fifteen cents the box and there weren’t many boxes in the pantry.

No I am not here complaining I am celebrating.  Because one day back then, as I was surveying the last of the ice cream and it looked as if I wouldn’t be seeing any such thing for the next decade, I thought,

I wonder if I can extend this a bit, before they turn off the electricity.

It was in such a mood of scientific experimentation, willing to lose everything, that I moved as though in trance, set the ice cream container under the water faucet and ran a little hydrogen hydroxide directly over what was left in the container — chocolate, as I recall.

I was cautious, so allowed much less water than ice cream.  For a few seconds after I did this, it looked as though someone had poured water on the ice cream.  Which wasn’t all that successful looking, so I reached down with a spoon and squashed it together, liquid and solid, stirred it, tentatively.  Then I added just a bit more water, stirring, not shaking.

I’ll bet you’re thinking it looked like melted ice cream, but…  Well, it did look like melted ice cream, but listen to this:  It wasn’t!

When ice cream melts it does one thing: it melts.

But when ice cream is thinned with water it does something else, it freezes the dihydrogen monoxide into tiny crystals which are then stirred into a non-melted result which I call, “Water in Ice Cream,” or, “Water in Sherbet.”

Waitresses, when I order this dish today, or ask for a milk shake made with water, do not believe about the crystals, but they bring me the result if I pay them to do it..

Even now, you’re curious about this, aren’t you?  You don’t believe me, or can’t imagine that common hydroxic acid behaves in such a delicious way when stirred coldly into a dish of I.C. or India Charlie as we say in aviation.

Yes, it stretches the basic supply by some fifteen percent, but more, it tastes really cool.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you?

Meet Ebb Demont

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1968, I’M SURE IT WAS, late summer of 1968.

I had been flying my Parks P-2A biplane around the midwest, hopping passengers from farm fields, when I got a call from Billy Howe.   He lived in Pennsylvania, an airplane pilot, a dealer in antiques, and he owned the only other flying P-2A in the world.

So began a fine friendship.  I flew to meet Billy and his wife at a small grass-strip airport not far from Wilkes-Barre.  They took me to their home, the Howes leading the way as we entered.

From the front door a hallway led to the living quarters, a hallway mounted with antiques that Billy had collected: a Kentucky Standard rifle, a kitchen artifact, a painting or two.

“…and in this room,” Billy was saying from the end of the hall, “is this quilt, which as best I can tell was made in 1720, maybe 17-… Richard?”

He had noticed that he was talking to himself.  For I had stopped halfway down the corridor, transfixed at the sight of a painting, eye-level on the wall.

He retraced his steps.  ”Richard?”

His voice sounded as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well, a hundred feet down.

The face in the painting!  I know that man!

“Billy,” I whispered.  ”Who is this person?”

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Interview: Iran

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THIS INTERVIEW is still in the midst, I’m still thinking and editing even after answering the questions, treating a quick talk as though it were a chapter in a book.  Here it is, mid-process, still changing.  For some reason the edit feature has gone a little squirrely, so please forgive the strange formatting, misalignments, etc.

With Alireza Bahrami, www.thinkplus.ir

Dear Mr. Bach, this is my first question:  Use three sentences to introduce yourself.

>> 1)  Hi.
     2) Please call me Richard. 
      3) You’ll recognize me as a mirror of yourself, having made different choices in the belief of time and space to express the shared truth of our spirit and of the love that binds us beyond space-time as indestructible Life.
Question #2:
Which one do you like more to be known as, and why:  Richard Bach, the writer, or Richard Bach, the pilot?

>> I’ll pick Number Three. please: Richard Bach, temporary mortal, permanent spirit.

Paraglide! (Simulated; you may try this at home.)

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THIS IS A FLIGHT I would like to make, and I would if I had the courage to do it, off the deck.  Courage, because there’s no landing zone below, and once launched, it’s either top-land back on the deck where I took off or (gulp) land in the trees.

Paraglide launch from deck

Of course this is a piece of cake for me.  Although calling the wind in knots when it was miles per hour just shows you that old cool habits die hard.

If your computer’s the same as mine, at the end of the video you’ll see a bunch of real paragliding videos from around the world.  Try the Sydney Paragliding.mov first, flying on the updrafts from the cliffs.  (Their other video, the instructions for the reverse launch, that comes a little later in the program. : )

It’s a grand sport for anyone yearning to be a sort of cautious eagle.  (No swooping for rabbits, high-speed dives or landing on narrow branches.)

(Note: To remain a safe, uninjured paraglider pilot requires more careful judgment than it does to fly a Boeing 747.  Like, don’t launch off your back deck over the cliff and expect your video to survive.)

On Writing:

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IT SEEMS WE find our own “style” of writing|

>> Hold on, Richard!!  What do you mean, those quotation marks around “style?”  Why did you put those there?  Do you mean the word style or do you mean some sub-set of the word of which a reader is not aware and you’re not either?

And what about “It seems?”  Richard, do we find our own style of writing or don’t we?  What’s your reader supposed to do with seems?  You write to communicate, and then you pour a bag of ashes in the water, muddy it up with seems?  Look at your muse – she’s in the corner, sobbing!

Welcome to my mind, as I write.

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Zsa-Zsa, on Her Walk

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EVERY MORNING, every afternoon, Zsa-Zsa the Sheltie and I go for our walk.  If it weren’t for that little sheepdog, I’d probably drive.

But she takes her job as Personal Trainer seriously, and now that Lucky is researching his different dimensions, it’s ZZ’s bark that tells me it’s time to close the computer and get a few miles under our paws!

She’s convinced that a walk’s our cure for every physical ill, for loneliness, for thinking too much, which is not dog-friendly activity.

She’s had an up-hill battle on that subject with me: thinking too much.  Actually not an up-hill battle, today, but a down-hill one.  She caught me lost in thought on our walk this afternoon, so when she barked to say what a beautiful day! I realized I had come to a stop, looking at the ground.  Here’s what I saw at my feet:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you notice anything revealing about that photo?  I didn’t, and then the ZZ barked again, “Look!” so I blinked, and saw this:

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Rarely Asked Questions: Did _Illusions_ Really Happen?

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Yes, it happened.  No, it didn’t.

The book Nothing by Chance is a straightforward non-fiction account of a summer in the biplane (with photographs), flying through the midwest, hopping passengers from small-town hayfields, three dollars the ride.  A few years later we flew the adventure again (with more biplanes) for a documentary film of the same title.  All of that “happened,” that is, we can find records here and there to confirm that others noticed, were changed and affected by the flying machines and the cameras and the crowds coming to watch.  There are photos in newspaper archives, pictures in scrapbooks through Nebraska and Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin and Missouri.  Land in those fields today, you’ll see the scrapbooks for yourself.

Into such events flew Donald Shimoda, nominated Savior of the World, who found the work not so satisfying as he had been led to believe.  Turned in his keys, quit the job.

To the best of my knowledge Shimoda has never had a body in our space-time.  That will make him, to many, someone who never really lived.

He really lived to me!  Anyone’s real who changes and affects the way we think and act and run our lives.  No one can prove that Jesus the Christ had a body in space-time, or King Arthur…are these two dismissed as unreal?

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