Notebook:
Hoyt, Robert G.
Koreans have been making that our nuclear weapons represent Then I began to reflect not on the phenomenon itself but on a threat to them" (Arms Control Today, July/August...
...Don't worry, I didn't say the words: Saint Paul I'm not...
...As a lived experience this revelation, or whatever it was, lastreport here a couple of experiences that more or less fit ed maybe twenty seconds...
...Nuclear testing ought to be a thing of the past...
...Since the U.S...
...There aren't great reaches of sky availWestern manufacturers...
...you could connium, and eventually some breakthrough in developing a truly template your checkbook, for example, or a bayonet, or toilet common security...
...It was not crushing or threatening...
...it was a repackaging But even this happy development would not protect the world rather than a discovery...
...I sat on a dock projecting from an island off Portland, Maine, flating blimp (these things happen...
...The need for Not the ideal place or moment for an epiphany, but it hapnuclear vigilance will never be...
...I didn't really see "the tide," of prove, even to me, that the universe really is friendly, or full course...
...ful, and this came uninvited...
...But there was something pleasant from the nuclear genie...
...I looked through the sky, or so it seemed...
...nuclear test ($100 million...
...I still like Aquinas's now unfashionin the mud...
...paper (the technology...
...It's something one can do deliberately...
...Seeing the tide, I thought It is true that by refraining from nuclear testing the United about the first human being who recognized its existence and States does not guarantee that other countries will not gain ac- predictability...
...how interesting...
...or Roget's Thesaurus...
...knowledge, or even of my knowledge...
...I was conscious of the universe...
...It was pale blue, with enough agency has been strengthened...
...More financing would help...
...nant") or griping ("you wouldn't believe what he said to me...
...I saw the water slowly cover a flat white rock sitting of meaning...
...As a result, however, the Montana...
...but, it seems, enough...
...Not an experience to make the heart race, but some- able five proofs, but I like my epiphany (theophany...
...the history of our understanding of it...
...The weaknesses of the IAEA were ex- able at that point-more than in midtown, yes, a lot less than in posed, almost gleefully, by its critics...
...I doubt that anyone eyeing me at the moment would have seen any sign that anything worthy of remark was going on in my head...
...And, by promis- the movement of the waters...
...better...
...So my epiphany doesn't and watched the tide move in...
...These pled with walkers of all ages and conditions, dressed for the ratrace need further strengthening...
...I don't care...
...The experience put itself BRIEF BUT NICE into words: "We should all be worshiping...
...Its recent role in revealing the streaks of wispy clouds to be interesting...
...The earth below wasn't state of nuclear weapons' development in North Korea, as well earth but sidewalk and pavement, familiarly dotted with oddas its success in forcing Iraq to allow intrusive monitoring, both ments of trash (newspapers, flyers, Chinese menus), well peoindicate the IAEA's growing stature and competency...
...Immensity came to NOTEBOOK Columbus Avenue...
...But the Clinton de- tion of the tide, without knowing or caring what caused it...
...skills of observation and modes of thinking developed that made and Russia have agreed to do in 1996, the possibility is height- it possible to group the tides with other regularities of nature ened that countries such as India and Pakistan-nations that as examples of a "law," as effects of a "force" that could be have refused to sign on to the Nonproliferation Treaty because named: Gravity...
...It's lasted some weeks as a live memone of the definitions of "epiphany" in the American ory...
...Since the end of the Gulf War it has become clear that Iraq The second epiphany was not of my doing and I don't think not only came close to developing a bomb, but that it skillful- it can be practiced, exactly...
...I'm writing this now partly because I want it to stay in Heritage Dictionary: "A comprehension or perception memory, so that I can pay it a visit from time to time...
...about cision raises the moral ante against resuming testing, both for the slow accumulation of knowledge and the leaps of insight ourselves and for others...
...It is the price of human free- pened...
...of course, that five seconds after it happened I might have stepped The first such experience happened maybe fifteen years on an exploding manhole, or been conked from above by a deago...
...then about the hundreds of generations during cess to nuclear weapons...
...That will take untiring vigilance, a re- about it and maybe useful, adding a smidgen to my state of awareduction in the world's store of processed uranium and pluto- ness...
...The or the jogging track, scurrying for the bus stop, ambling back IAEA's entire yearly budget remains a paltry $60 million, far from shopping, alone or in pairs, gossiping ("I think she's pregbelow the cost of a single U.S...
...I know, of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization...
...it discriminates against nuclear have-nots-might agree to sign Nothing about this experience added to the sum of human a comprehensive test ban...
...Happened" is right...
...I'm not notably meditative or prayerdom and survival in a post-Hiroshima age...
...and the further period during which ing to enter into a comprehensive test ban treaty, as the U.S...
...Koreans have been making that our nuclear weapons represent Then I began to reflect not on the phenomenon itself but on a threat to them" (Arms Control Today, July/August 1993...
...It happened as I was walking down ly evaded the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's mon- Columbus Avenue in Manhattan toward a deli, when I chanced itoring strictures, buying whatever parts it needed from willing to look up at the sky...
...ROBERT G. HOYT 4: 13 August 1993 Commonweal...
...moratorium went into necessary before anyone connected the motion of the moon with effect last year, no other country has tested...
...I was a little sorry for all of us, so tied to the street and the sidewalk, so A VISIT BY THE UNIVERSE occupied with getting and spending...
...rather, reassuring, making me feel at home and befriended...
...nor does its unilateral action prevent which men and women accommodated themselves to the acother countries from testing in the future...
Vol. 120 • August 1993 • No. 14
