Bucky Fuller Tea & Pee

One method of achieving enlightenment is through an overload of information, 
constant study of the new - this is where I envision R. Buckminster Fuller, 
the man who beheld the Universe. His being was ignited by a desire to 
comprehend the whole. I attended one of his lectures, sitting up close as I 
like to do, it was three or four hours in length, he never stopped talking, 
waving his arms and dancing around, a locus of energy. I have no conscious 
memory of anything he said, but it was impressive. I am sure that it has 
since bothered me in ways of general comprehension that I have not as yet 
recovered from. How can anyone comprehend a man who wants to comprehend 
everything? 

His co-conspirator on _Synergetics_, E. J. Applewhite, did not even presume 
to understand all of what Bucky said, relating to the text as ciphers, 
science, poetry, and madness. 

I have always had a bias against gurus and heroes whose thoughts are too far 
removed from their grosser bodies, the contrast of levitation with a polite 
lack of reference to elimination. As with Bucky, I am often compelled by a 
natural urgency, without quite the mess, to get thee quickly to the final 
destination.

"RBF: You know how I have so often described the thinking process as a 
dismissal of irrelevancies… a parting of the strands. But there is also an 
element of conscious input to thinking. Certain thoughts have to be held in 
suspense in momentary irrelevancy like the airport holding patterns of planes 
coming in for a landing.

Something like this happens when I am concentrating so hard that I put off 
going to the bathroom. Anne often says to me, Bucky, for heaven's sake why 
don't you go to the bathroom ?- you've been jumping up and down for half an 
hour… And I do… I just keep postponing the input of the tea and the output 
of the pee.

Science and the physical world give you deliberate stresses with the results 
of forcing you to do your best work. It's like rushing to catch a train… Or 
the way a drowning man sees all the events in his life going by… I get so 
preoccupied with my thoughts that I cannot find where my fly is and I make a 
mess in the bathroom… When the rest of life is pushing in on me it forces you 
to make a comprehensive review… instead of waiting for your life to go by 
while you're jumping out of the building. I just build up so much overload 
and that's how I do my best thinking."

_Cosmic Fishing, An account of writing Synergetics with Buckminster Fuller_, 
E. J. Applewhite, Macmillan, 1977.

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