The Immeasurable World

My only job on this planet, from dawn to dusk, is so simple it often eludes me. A busy and fussy part of me does not trust such simplicity. This is Bill The Engineer, who must construct his entire world from all its disparate pieces. Bill The Engineer is keenly aware of the complex integrity of stable structures, and Bill The Engineer must live in a solid house where all his doors close firmly against the wind he can neither summon nor dismiss. Yet it has never been my job to build my home, my only job is to return to it. Within the home I cannot make exists not the comfort of the hearth or the bed, but the knowing of value that surpasses measurement. Bill The Engineer must measure before he knows. He finds comfort only in the precision of his instruments and the formulas to which those measurements can be ritualistically applied. The immeasurable is but a fairy tale to him; within his knowing nothing can be made from that which cannot be measured, and so that which is immeasurable is unreal and does not exist.

There is no arguing with Bill The Engineer; argument is his favorite means of communication. All that can be done is to return home, to cross the threshold that is the actual boundary between the real and the unreal. Once home, Bill The Engineer vanishes like a thought. Once home, I feel again the comfort of the immeasurable: for that whose value cannot be measured cannot be compared; that whose value which cannot be measured cannot be lost or broken; that whose value cannot be measured is a well with no bottom.

To dwell here is to stand at the river’s mouth from which all creation flows. Here is where the world is actually made. Here is the only reality, where the lies of loss, brokenness, and comparison are dispelled. To write a story from such a place is to offer a way home to yourself and another. This is my only job – to awaken again and again from the fantasy of the measured world and find my way back to the reality that imagined it.