A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings

AFTERWORD

AFTERWORD Not knowing exactly what day a year from Monday—the day eight of us had arranged to meet in Mexico—would be, I decided it was early in June 1967. When people wrote or called asking me to do something in that month, I said No. (Exception: the benefit for the Cunningham Dance Company sponsored by John de Menil to be held at Philip Johnson's home in Connecticut on Saturday, the 3rd of June; Judith Blinken, the Company's and my representative, argued that the first Monday of that month was the 5th: I'd have time to fly.) Then it occurred to me—see the last paragraph of the Foreword—that I was the only one taking the trip to Mexico seriously. I sent a note to Octavio and MarieJose in India—see the last lines of the second text on world improvement—asking whether they'd meet me on the 5th in Mexico City: "Will that be convenient for you? . . . What a marvelous time we will have!" Paz's reply was two pages long. The first three paragraphs had nothing to do with our rendezvous. The fourth began: "Now about our trip to Mexico. We would not be able to go in June." Farther along: "Our plans are to be in Europe until the 25th of July. . . . Perhaps we can meet afterward in Mexico or in New York. Let me know about your plans. We really want to see you." There were two more paragraphs and a postscript, all to do with other subjects. Now I have other plans—for the rest of the year and also for June. In that month there'll be the annual beach banquet of the New York Mycological Society with Joe Hyde cooking on the beach the wild food members gather along the shore. Also I'll go to Montreal to see the Fuller dome and Jasper Johns'zyx Map of the World According to Buckminster Fuller which is to be in it. The rest of June and perhaps the summer will be spent working with Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles on Notations, a book to be published by the Something Else Press which will illustrate the work of some two hundred and sixty composers who have contributed manuscripts to a collection I've been over two years forming to benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. 163 What we have to do, then, is not to say Yes or to say No, but simply to go straight on illiterately, updating the way of life Meister Eckhart proposed (just following the general outlines of the Christian life, "not wondering am I right or doing something wrong"), following, that is, the general outlines of Buckminster Fuller's comprehensive design science. There are now six volumes prepared by Fuller in collaboration with John McHale:zyxwvu Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs; The Design Initiative; Comprehensive Thinking; The Ten Year Program; World Design Strategy; The Ecological Context: Energy and Materials. These volumes are published by the World Resources Inventory, Box 909, Carbondale, Illinois. Fuller's other books are available too: Nine Chains to the Moon, No More Secondhand God, Education Automation, Untitled Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization (all these are published by the Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois); Ideas and Integrities (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey). Paz is right. Whether we see one another in Cadaques, Stony Point, Fairport, Toronto, or New Delhi is of little consequence. We don't have to make plans to be together. (Last July, Merce Cunningham and I ran into Bucky Fuller in the airport outside of Madrid.) Circumstances do it for us. Changing the world so it works for "livingry" is another matter. Success is essential. The goal, to quote Fuller as he stated it in '63, is: ". . . to render the total chemical and energy resources of the world, which are now exclusively preoccupied in serving only 44% of humanity, adequate to the service of 100% of humanity at higher standards of living and total enjoyment than any man has yet experienced." How will the change take place? (Susan McAllester, referring to my proposal —see the third text on world improvement—of a Summit Lecture Series on War, said, "I thought you were joking.") The change is taking place 'spiritually,' Marshall McLuhan tells us, without our conscious participation: the media we use are effecting the metamorphosis of our minds and bringing us to our senses. It will be made "definite," Fuller...