I am subscribed to a humor mailing list. They send me funny stories which happened to somebody -- ten stories per day. Today somebody told a story, how they went to the opposition demonstration in Kiev. They had 6 year old daughter with them. Along the way, there was police, and people decorated them with orange ribbons¹ that said "Police is with its people" or something like this. Police guys didn't look too happy, but did not protest either. 6 year old girl asks her Mom: Can I put a ribbon on dyadya? (not sure what the English equivalent of this form of addressing is, literally it means "uncle", this is the way kids often address adults they don't know) Mom explains: "well, look, this is police... Now they are all in orange ribbons, but the next moment, they can.. SHOOT!". The kid runs to the police and asks seriously: "Dyadya, you won't kill my Mom?"

Why Ukrainians think this is funny I am not sure, but I wanted to share this.

Wonder has nothing to do with knowledge. It is a first response to the intuitive, the intuitive being the odyssey, or the record of the odyssey, of our making through untold billions of years of making...

Wonder is the same feeling that the astronauts must have felt when they saw the earth at a great distance... Somehow all of the things on it, even the great achievements like, let us say, Paris, a great achievement, or London, all disappeared and became circumstantial works. But the Toccata and the Fugue did not disappear, because it was the most unmeasurable and therefore the closest to that which cannot disappear. The more deeply something is engaged in the unmeasurable, the more deeply it has this lasting value. So you cannot deny the Toccata and the Fugue. You cannot deny the great works of art because they are born out of the unmeasurable.

I think what you felt was just Wonder, not knowledge or knowing. You felt that knowledge was not as important as your sense of Wonder, which was a greater feeling without reservation, without obligation, without accounting for yourself. Wonder is the closest intouchness with your intuitive. From Wonder must come realization, because in your making you have gone through every law of nature. It is part of you. In the intuitive are recorded all of the great steps of the making in which momentous decisions were made. Your intuition is your most exacting sense, it is your most reliable sense. It is the most personal sense that a singularity has, and intuition, not knowledge, must be considered your greatest gift. Knowledge is valuable because knowing can come from it, and knowing can give you intouchness with your intuition. Knowledge can be imparted, but knowing can never be imparted because it is very singular, very impure. It has to do with you. The life of knowing is very real, but it is personal.

In everything that nature makes, nature records how it was made. In the rock is the record of how the rock was made. In man is the record of how man was made. When we are conscious of this, we have a sense of the laws of the universe. Some can reconstruct the laws of the universe from knowing just one blade of grass. Others have to learn many, many things before they can sense what is necessary to discover that Order which is the universe. We must learn to honor the mind of one within whom lodges the spirit. It doesn't lodge in the brain, which is simply a mechanism. So the mind is different from the brain. The mind is the seat of the intuitive and the brain is an instrument which you get potluck from nature; that is why each one is a singularity. If it is a good instrument; it brings out the spirit within you.

Louis I. Kahn, Between Silence and Light, John Lobell (Shambala, Boulder, 1977)

In his work as an architect, Kahn searched for beginnings: the origin of joy and wonder, of intelligence, and intuition. He sought the basic principles of being, which he called Silence and Light

I am an old woman. This means I lost a lot of important people in my life. I did, I don't want to recite the martirolog.