The Alphabet of U and I

Consider the notion of making sense of things. The notion of making sense of objects, events, places, actions, people, even notions. Et cetera. And others. 

Humans found it necessary to create order. We came up with numbers and letters and other symbols. In the case of letters, we sequenced them, not infinitely like numbers, but finitely. Numbers are only infinite in how you use them, how you use the mathematical "alphabet," such as the digits 0 through 9. An alphabet theoretically could be infinite, if one's imagination were infinite. If the sequence of letters were not repeated, you would have to stop somewhere, or else it wouldn't be an alphabet. It would be something else. If the letters weren't culled, used as an original building block, the whole purpose would be lost. You'd be back to where you started: an inexhaustible ocean of random letters floating and bobbing, or sinking, or coming at you as waves, receding as waves, forever, ad infinitum -- crying out to be ordered and sequenced into an alphabet.

Where would we be without alphabets? Would there be world peace and harmony if one universal alphabet existed, and was adopted universally? In the post-digital world, will alphabets go the way of telegraph wires?

Forget, if you will, about the grand, universal notion of an alphabet. What about me? What about you? How do we order the capillaried, flickering drama of endlessly repeating nows?

I can only speak for myself, of course.

What is my alpha + beta and eventually + omega?

It's such a searingly personal question, even invasive.

Where should I begin? 

This is hard. I don't understand the question, or the topic, if there is one.

I imagined this would make for a whimsically profound, or profoundly whimsical, exercise.

Now I'm lost.

I might say my alphabet starts with watching, reading, and writing. But that sounds boring. I don't even know what it means.

You might say your alphabet starts with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But that sounds clichéd. You don't even know what it means, you decide, with an LOL, or a nearly silent chuckle (NSC).

Money, food, comfort, fame, fortune.

Again, I'm not getting a picture, certainly not a clear one.

Decades ago, I discovered a wonderful book title: The Alphabet of Grace, by Frederick Buechner. I never read the book. Perhaps it's time. (Or maybe I read it long ago and have forgotten.)

Love, mercy, rejection, acceptance, pain, surrender, truth, lies, arrogance, acceptance. 

At least our "alphabet" seems to be gaining some traction, heft, momentum. 

Sex, sin, oblivion, ecstasy, sobriety, silence, solitude, union, obsession, compulsion, love, mercy, rejection, acceptance, pain, surrender, truth, lies, arrogance, acceptance. 

Alphabet soup.

How many alphabet noodles (what else can you call them?)?

Who holds the spoon?

What kind of broth?

What kind of bowl?

What if, as you are almost finished, you find one U and one I at the bottom of the bowl?
 

A Simple Twist of Fate

This will be hard to explain, but I'll try. I solipsistically did a Yahoo search of my real name (not my nom de plumage). Results? 2,000 hits, most inaccurate in their attribution, which I find amusing. Around hit number 700, there was a link for a poetry magazine I had long ago forgotten. The link apparently provides digital archives (or maybe just an index) of all the issues of the magazine, going back over 40 years. My name shows up, on an endlessly long and unreadable litany of names, many of them literary lights, right next to a former poet laureate of the United States, side by side, as if we are rubbing elbows, literarily and metaphorically speaking. (I actually met the guy about 18 months ago at an event, and he signed a book of his poems that a friend had sent me as a gift. You already know I am a shameless name-dropper, but not as bad as my brother, methinks. Isn't it a sign of neurotic low self-esteem?) I had something published in the magazine in 1967, the datastream tells me. A poem. A vague memory tells me that contributors had to pay to get into this poetry press's anthology. I would probably cringe now at what I wrote, but I'm still curious. Then, after my name, the website reports that the celebrated poet published something in the magazine in 2006, if I'm reading the streaming run-on river of data correctly. Earlier in the stream is the maiden name of my son's new bride. Sheeeesh! What next? The date, hour, and minute of my death? On the surface, none of this is the least bit noteworthy or remarkable. It is so obvious: We all have K at the outset of our last names. A simple-enough explanation. So what? you say. Big deal. But it all struck me as eerily coincidental, even providential. It creeped me out, as if it was fore-ordained that these connections should occur. It reminded me of the saying "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." But if I allow that the connections and their discovery may've been providential, why did it scare me? Is my faith that shallow? And, after all, are the connections more alphabetical than coincidental? Are they more alphanumerical than providential? Or is it all a modern personal message of the Alpha and the Omega? And, if so, how do I decode it?

Photo by Matej "Dedek" Batha; at least, I surmise as much.