On the Philosophy of a Möbius

       I've been knitting various möbiuses for some time now, and noticing a lot of curious phenomena. You use one long cable doubled up, cast on (using a method that produces what feels like weaker stitches, weaker links) a number of stitches, say 60, and end up with twice that number, 120. You have 60 stitches above and 60 below, and it looks rather like the stitches that you are most immediately working with (those on what appears to be the top) are the positive stitches, and the ones below are inverted (negative). The half twist of the möbius is almost never where the needles meet as it can get in the way as you knit, which makes it even more difficult to wrap your mind around it at first---you'll probably end up knitting 60 (the circumference of the loop, if it wasn't a strange one) and realize that the marker for the beginning of the row is on the cable below and that suddenly one row is all 120 stitches. And as you work with the first row, every other stitch is facing the opposite direction. It gets even better: the stitches grow between the needles/cable; you started knitting in the middle instead of at one end and it's growing out! (But actually between.) Moreover, by knitting every stitch, which naturally appears as a purl stitch on the back (think positive and negative again), your resulting möbius is a strip that's half knit and half purl on one "side" (and inverted on the other "side"), despite your using only the one type of stitch, and despite there being only one side. It would be the same creature if you purled the whole thing; without even turning it inside out. The only thing that would make it different would be that it was constructed with a different orientation.
       You'll certainly have gone loopy by the beginning of this, and you won't know it if you think you're at the beginning. The stitches you knit are the edge of the möbius. They're the first stitches you knit, the last stitches you'll knit, and every stitch you knit between-in. You start in the middle and grow from there, though it's growing between and not out. The beginning and the end are one and the same, despite that you can make it bigger and bigger, adding more stitches "between" the two.
      The topological definition of a möbius is a surface on/in which there is no point at which to orient oneself. Objectively, ultimately. Every point is relative. And yet as you knit the möbius, each stitch you make is unique and individual, separate and identifiable, made of the same never the same material, flow of material, varying in dimensions, mass, consistency, time of creation, etc. Similar to beings in our world, and to particles in general, right? So we can chose a point to orient from, and we do as we beings live life. Everything becomes relative; every measure, every separation, every individualization of anything is relative and yet is what it is, completely and as if relativity never factored in. 
        I like the möbius because for me it symbolizes existence in a way, making one coin out of all 'many' things, even half twists and not. It transforms an either/or, a polarization that can be a deception (in the way that dichotomies can be) and yet still be totally necessary to life, into a both/and. It even makes both/and and either/or one thing . I like the möbius because it reminds me of the middleway, of all ways and no ways, and even if we can't totally pick it apart or wrap ourselves around the paradox, we can still make one to hold and touch and live. And we can gradually become familiar with its nature.
       I'm currently underway with a new knitting near-fiasco to see what comes of a hyperbolic möbius. My dad shared with me a devastatingly awesome project, movement, and eventually foundation started by these twin sisters from Australia, who, combined, have a background in mathematics, art, creative and science writing, women's studies and more, and (to boot!) like to crochet while they watch Battlestar Galactica and Xena: Warrior Princess. They defied Euclidian geometry and lots of stuffy old mathematicians by crocheting hyperbolic surfaces (previously thought to be unproducible) in the image of sea cucumbers and corals and such to draw attention to the world's suffering coral reefs, while at the same time empowering women through a handicraft that's traditionally been 'theirs' and empowering the people by putting this previously inaccessible theory of math, geometry, and physics into their hands, with a crochet needle. They are sock-knocker-offers who continue to inspire the communities of the world on the topics of environmentalism, math and geometry, physics and the sciences, feminism, education, evolution, fiber arts and more as their project continues. Look them up at:
http://www.theiff.org/

And also watch this terrific 15 minute lecture:

http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_wertheim_crochets_the_coral_reef.html

      I'm in thought right now about the meaning of this growing hyperbolic möbius. I haven't found that anyone else out there has tried this, but that might be the fault of internet search engines. It's working out, though the increase is slow. I'm particularly interested in the kind of... Uh, reframable amplification that's going on. Lots of seemings. The exponential growth looks strange in a möbius. It makes me think about lasers and mirrors and the conversion of matter into energy and the relationship between matter and energy, matter and anti-matter, and also egos and selfs and consciousness. And space. And the geometry of the cosmos. And also, the dimensions. (My theory is that there's a half-twist uniting the dimensions, as in a twist that folds, for example, the 3rd through the 4th dimension, and that life emerges at the intersection, interjunction of the two, if not from all of them... Still workin' on that!) More to come later. I'll be entering into a retreat in engaged Buddhism, and I'm sure that more will emerge.

(halfway house)

XX.

         Any Where is a real halfway house. It's a halfway house for surrealism, more than it is for surrealists, although everything's welcome. I'm only halfway sure if the door is always wide open; some days it seems halfway closed, although you never can tell for sure. Like the pieces in a dream, in the dream, have you ever-sometimes truly been uncertain, of the identity, of an Anybody? Of anything, of some one? In a dream. If everything is like blood, the door at Any Where is the living heart of an animal: In Out In Out In. Out In Out. In Out In Out. If sentences could never start and never end, the sentence I would write here would contain both words, only two words, maybe a million different two words. The door at Any Where is a threshold, is time, of time. The Experience.

         I did not go through one side to get to the other. The living heart of an animal is always beating: never the same beat, never the same blood, always the same, always beating. For all of being living, the heart is the same never the same. The animal is the animal always different, because a moment makes a difference, different moment. I have done things, I was somebody, lots and lots of somebodies, one for every moment who I was, was who I was. And now it's still the same, still different, even now, even now. Even you. Even words, even ever. Even never. It's all real, it's all separate all together all the way all all just one. Just many. More than one. I travel all around, I'm always going to new places, it never changes, even when "never changes" changes, because what never changes is "always changes." Halfway is the only suitable compromise here. Any Where is a halfway stop on the Real Express route, the Expressive Rail trail, the Train Of Thought express, and even the Halfway Railway way.

         It's not really a place that you find, but you can lose it when you travel. I travel all around, and I don't; I spend my life on one train or another, Halfway, and halfway true things seem to be the truest. Halfway thinking feels confusing, halfway feeling feels halfway. Who knows, who knows: halfway is for living. Living is for who knows, and so is death. And so is halfway. All for the other, never to get to the other side. For not for. Half-way-door.

         I am a string, stretched taught between-in No two Points, between-in one strange loop, and plucked; life the measure of vibrations if time the measure of change. Movement, movement. The parts composing me came together, moved me, as though I were plucked, and I resonated with other strings that came near me. Maybe with the collective hum of all strings, each string so quiet, collectively too huge to not be a part of. Now, now, the string moves back and forth between black and white, and every time I get to black it could be white, the frequency so high, the amplitude decreased, no time to orient. Black or white, neither/either. I’m not in either, I’m in both. I’m in both/and/either/or. I’m not moving between black and white, I am movement and between-in. Confusion is gray, but so is clarity; when you hit the middle, it is only living, and there are no words, no words for black or white or gray, except direct experience of Anything, contained in single words and not, not for others, not for always. Fools look at fingers that point to the sky. But there are no single points for everything, for direct experiences, except itselves that can’t be somethings, that can only be living, and dying. Not eithers, Everything boths. The fool who looks at the finger and does not think and sees everything doesn’t need to look at the sky. The sky is in the finger, the finger in the sky, the point doesn’t exist. Only halfway.

(questions)

XVI.

         I never run out of things to write. It’s like the act of living is an act of witching thoughts, into existence; an almost unequivalence to the loss of things in the universe. Unless to think, itself, is to lose; in itself, thinking, perhaps, may be nothing. In a person, perhaps creation; in time, perhaps transition. Questions at Any Where are always lost, always dying. Questions, these lonesome thoughts, halfway and full of life, are not over for as long as they are questions. So full of life and with time. With time, questions render death and loss---they are dying all the time. Always moving closer, to an answer, to a death, whether the answer is right or not. Because truth does not really lie in anything, is like a potential energy in all things, and arises between things, so that Truth can really stand alone and eternal, by itself, and still be Not to others. Questions, too, can be eternal, perhaps may never die; the answer that tries to bring a question to its end may not be right, or answer enough. From another perspective; perhaps from another world. It’s an emergent phenomenon, this business of living and death, questions and Truth.

Some days I can feel the balance and the paradox, although usually it happens chronologically. I see one side of the coin, and not long after I discover the other, and rarely I feel both at once and nothing changes. And everything does, because something does and it affects everything. And there is no question. 

         One always conceives itself then quickly dies, of its own. As though my mind were the parent; yet it's always the child.

Is to be this way, to be alive, to falsely deem the Experience a continuous line, and discover, at a consecutive point, that it is not a line? Why do I never need an answer? Do I continue to live this unquestionable Experience the way I am? Could more insight change anything? I never ask these things, I conceive them and never give them life. But then, what is life? I abort this question too. All my answers lie in continuity, even when I see death die. Anything goes, Everything.