The Bockscar Children

I was in third or fourth grade. when one of the best teachers I ever had the joy of knowing, Ms Hungerford, read this book to our class. I think this is probably when my obsession with reading and everything that comes with it started.

Here is a bit from Dennis Stillings about the theology of the atom bomb-I will explain why I am connecting these two disparate points of the line of my personal reality after it: The Trinity test was scheduled for 4:00 a.m. Monday, July 16, 1945, near Alamagordo, N.M., on the bleak desert plain known as the Journada del Muerto-the Journey of Death. On Sunday the 15th, toward mid-afternoon, thunder was heard. Wind and rain collapsed tents in the base camp, ten miles from ground zero. Mist enveloped the test tower, and storms were reported heading for it. Rumors were circulating about the possibility of the Bomb setting the atmosphere on fire. At 2:30 a.m. the storm reached ground zero and knocked out the principle searchlight, leaving the test area in pitch darkness. With the very tiniest tendency towards superstition, one might suspect that something miraculous was in the air. An ancient reader of signs and portents would have cancelled the whole operation on the basis of such events, clearly announcing the birth of forces hitherto unknown on earth. Participants noted a zombie-like alteration of consciousness at this point, as though ruled by a force demanding that they continue. Oppenheimer himself evinced this state quite clearly. The test was rescheduled for 5:30 a.m. Oppenheimer waited for the hour of the Trinity test, his face "white and lifeless" thinking, "I must remain conscious."

At the time of the explosion, 5:29:45 a.m., July 16, 1945, William L. Laurence of the New York Times, prone on his belly, thought of the Lord's command, "Let there be light!"...Kwiatkowsky, another of the Los Alamose self-admitted "science slaves," remarked, "I am sure that at the end of the world, in the last millisecond of the earth's existence, the last human will see what we saw."

Thus the Bomb imagery encompasses the light of the beginning and the fire at the end of the world. This "Death Light" represented one aspect of the Bomb phenomenon "where theoretical calculations had been off by a big factor. Much more light was produced than anticipated."

Again that was from "Theology of the Atom Bomb" by Dennis Stillings. I have read an enormous amount of material in the last few weeks that makes me wonder if some of humanity's inventions change the very nature of time and the fabric of reality itself even. Things must have seemed rather spooky indeed to even the most hard-boiled scientists on that morning at the Trinity site. Of course, it could have been just a normal little 'ole storm combined with the enormity of what was about to be undertaken that produced some 'intense' psychological effects.

Two ideas came to mind when I read of the Trinity test. One-entertain for just a moment, that somehow, someone was trying to send a message back in time and it didn't quite get through so all that happened was the 'storm' at the site. The reason for the 'message' would have been that people in the future were trying to avert the catastrophe of the Bomb ever being used--ever! Two- perhaps the 'supernatural' feeling at the site was a 'real' Super-natural feeling that implanted both in the physical reality at the site and in the very minds of the scientists as they were about to initiate for lack of a better word a "God Sequence" of events that ultimately leads to transcendence of three-dimensional physical reality for any species in the Universe that reaches the "nuclear" level.

Or-is the Bomb still the ultimate question mark of this day and age? A 'cipher-Buddha' posing a question for the world collective-the world Soviet if you will. Do you want to live or don't you? Lately I have been having some feelings-don't know if they mean anything or not -but when I have them they do indeed have a soul-reaching level of meaning for me.

Some of them seem to be intuitions hopefully 'Rigorous' Intuitions (wink) about subjects I have always been fascinated by-the biggy of these- the very nature of reality itself. Many times these feelings seem to be about a small, but significant fractal part of reality. Out of the 'blue' the other day, while looking over some old and new articles and my own notes, about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I remembered the sweetness of Ms H reading the tale of "The Boxcar Children" to us and how rapt/wrapped/en'raptured' up several of us kids had become as she expertly (she was one of these people that could turn the smallest thing into a song) told us the tale of a story told long ago. A lightning-flash shudder went through me when I thought of the name of the plane that dropped the last (and hopefully truly last -like in forever!) atom bomb (the "Fat Man") used in anger-"Bockscar." This was a pun on the nickname of the B-29 itself and the commander Captain Frederick C. Bock (although he wasn't on the Nagasaki mission itself) of the plane. It hit me right in the gut with a flood of meanings and associations- We Really Are The Bockscar Children! Even the 'nose art' of the airplane (this wasn't on at the time of the Nagasaki mission) suggests another flood of associations to me -one of them strangely enough being the 'LoGo' of a recent PreziDent-very recent actually! How about you? More to come! Links Bockscar Boxcar Children Trinity Dennis Stillings Tooth Marks Apple