September 2007's Re-dated In A Rib Epoch

In A Rib spans an epoch in my life that began with a precise moment of consciousness ² and came to an equally precise ending with the dramatic onset of the remarkable epoch which followed, The Brick Stops Here . In A Rib takes its name from the piece most reflective of the rich contemplative fruits Realized during those years. If not the most difficult era I have, so far, lived, then it cedes that position —barely— to the indescribably difficult next one.

Until today all titles written between black hole and The Brick Stops Here were assigned to In A Rib . Back when I was first determining writing epochs, I knew that one of them had been instantly slammed shut in midsummer 1994 when everything in my universe was permanently changed: Overnight in my sleep, a medically inexplicable injury to my spine had permanently restricted most physical abilities. For a variety of secondary reasons, this had also permanently altered all non-physical experience. That was the end of black hole , and I didn't write again for months. Since the chronologically next hallmark event I recalled had been the onset of what became The Brick Stops Here , those two dates became bookends defining ³ the In A Rib epoch.

It wasn't until I had lived a full seven months beyond the hurly-burly of The Brick Stops Here , and could more tranquilly reflect upon everything that had happened to me in that bizarre period ⁴ , that I suddenly recognized a signature life-event shortly after the date I had originally assigned to the beginning of In A Rib ("assigned" more or less by default, as explained above). The event I was belatedly acknowledging for the monumental transformation it had accomplished within me was the true beginning of In A Rib , my most significant life-passage [at the time I lived it] after end of a spring.



Creating a New Epoch, a sound , from the Old In A Rib

Rearranging my brain's life-map by moving In A Rib to begin with a specific watershed —replacing the "default" beginning-date it had before— somehow suddenly enabled me to see that all the work done as a result of the In A Rib onset-experience could not have occurred without a particular preceding experience ⁵ which had made possible the In A Rib "onset-experience" itself, two years and some months later. ⁶ I had, in pondering my work with insight expanded by The Brick Stops Here experiences, for the first time seen as a bonafide epoch a well-defined passage in my first life ⁷ so important to my spiritual journey that, without it , most of the writings which follow could not have been conceived.

This discovery meant, by definition, that this newly-identified singular event rightfully belonged in a distinct epoch preceding In A Rib , rather than in a [unique] brief, "non-epoch" interlude between two epochs. Since, at the same time, there was no denying that the injury Summer 1994 was equally significant in denoting the final moment of its epoch, black hole , the previously unrecognized epoch's span was identified not by its own singular event, which fell into its middle, but by both the earlier end of black hole and the now-clearly dated beginning of In A Rib . This had to be an epoch which began with Autumn 1994, following black hole , and ended immediately before In A Rib .

That previously overlooked epoch became a sound ⁸ and was inserted between black hole and In A Rib .

Sugarpie Rabbit
27 September 2007

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¹ Prefaces to both epochs, a sound and In A Rib , will each be far better understood if read contiguously, as one. Click here to go directly to the other preface now.

<sup>2 That "precise moment of consciousness" in 1997 would have been recorded —if at all— on the [probably sole] hard-copy of this epoch's first title which was written as description soon after that "precise moment", possibly even on the same day. Two years later when that piece was manually typed into HTML format on my first computer, I had not yet realized the personal utility of copyright by calendar date (as opposed to year alone). However, by combining with memories known dates of subsequent titles, I can know it was written before that Father's Day. [This preface and, if applicable, other content at SPR , will be revised accordingly when/if additional or forgotten information regarding that "precise date" is reacquired.]

3 The fact that In A Rib overlaps the entire lifetime of SPR prior to The Brick Stops Here has nothing to do with the life-passages used to define my writing-epochs. [Important events in the evolution of SPR, including non-epoch-defining —for example, its first appearance as a website in 1999— are described in SPR Timeline & First Copyrights .]
Although first-access to the "World Wide Web" is truly a transformative event for anybody, in my case it occurred during a life-passage that has been defined by spiritual events that bore no relation to that circumstance. While it is true that some of those very events would not have occurred in the way they did absent the internet, it is impossible to say that without it they would not have occurred at all. No matter how the body of events across the In A Rib epoch are weighed, the internet —as significant to my writing as it has been— seems to have played a role far less formative than the other events which, as a body, share the theme from which this epoch takes its name.
(By that last statement I do not trivialize internet-dependent dynamics that did, in fact, actually define at least three major aspects of my spiritual formation —two of which came to fruition during this epoch and in many ways literally directed much of SPR in that period, and the third of which sowed the single seed for the entire epoch which was to follow. Nevertheless, in reflection upon each of those three, I must maintain that their dynamics could have been replicated in non - internet-dependent manifestation —although, admittedly, unlikely. However, the basis for the spiritual theme symbolized by the piece for which this epoch is named remains altogether unaffected by manifest form.)

4 "that bizarre period" (eight and one-half months straddling 2006 and 2007)

5 It was almost impossible to believe I had never before recognized this earlier event for what it patently had been, but there was no way to otherwise understand my life.

6 I had to accept that some types of events simply cannot be understood as what they actually are until the mind has fully digested specific additional events. This was an important spiritual truth I grasped for the first time as a result of this pesky reorganization of epochs.

7 "my first life" refers to all life-experience prior to the extraordinary event which kicked off the epoch The Brick Stops Here . Read about that event in the Author's Preface to The Brick Stops Here .

8 It is due to that entire body of reasoning that the correcting epoch, a sound , owns so few titles. In summary: It follows an unquestionable end of one epoch, abuts the unquestionable beginning of another, and despite its brevity demands recognition as Epoch due to its own singular spiritual event.
( a sound is unique in that it is the sole SPR epoch —or "one spiritual matrix reflected in a linear body of its author's work"— which appears to have come into existence solely for the purpose of one spiritually defining event upon which the following epoch's onset-event was to wholly depend.)</sup>