Introduction

THE FORMAT OF THIS MANUSCRIPT makes it possible to fling
out a large array of thoughts, ideas, concepts on
pertinent areas of human endeavor.
It seeks to abbreviate basic thought and
to avoid at all costs useless rhetoric.
It seeks to awaken, inform, and inspire every
individual. It challenges much of our existing values.

This is one of the passages with which Ray Bomba described his book.  Yet it didn’t come in any conventional place at the beginning of his manuscript.  Indeed, it came at the very end, in the last of 28 “chapters” entitled THIS BOOK, ITS PURPOSE.  This was the thing about my father.  He was determined to do everything differently, even when that violated common sense.

As for the “chapters,” those weren’t orthodox either.  Nor was anything else about the book’s concept.  As Ray wanted to free the reader from what he felt was the tyranny of order, none of the pages were numbered.   The only nod to organization was a header listing the name of the chapter to which that page belonged, along with the chapter’s assigned number.  However, Ray had no intention of the pages actually being organized by chapter.  He intended to present them in random order.  So, while one page might deal with Aspects of religion, the heart, the spirit (13), the next one would be about Conflict, invasion, violence, horror (23).   Indeed, the copy of the manuscript that ended up with me after his death (my sister Mary has the other) was arranged (or unarranged) in exactly this manner.  Of course, when I started thinking about this blog and sat down to scan the pages into my computer, the first thing I did was put the pages of each chapter together… and the chapters in numerical order.  (Some people have to organize.)

It’s possible that, in the envisioned published version, Ray intended to lose even the chapter header, which perhaps existed only because even he needed some way to track his voluminous material.

Ray clearly wanted each of his “thoughts, ideas, concepts” to be read and absorbed totally on its own, independent of what came before or after and removed from any context that might lead to preconception or misinterpretation.   Whether this radical approach would have succeeded in a physical book – the only medium available in the pre-Internet dark ages – we’ll never know.   Yet, in what was prescience on my father’s part, it is what makes FAR BEYOND WORDS ideally suited for a blog.  Passages can be indiscriminately posted just as Ray intended (yet neatly archived and categorized for future reference).

I intend to honor my father’s randomness not just for aesthetic purposes, but practical ones.  While a dutiful son, I have yet to sit down and actually read FAR BEYOND WORDS from proverbial cover-to-cover.   Why?  With 280 pages and something like 600-700 “thoughts,” that’s a very intimidating proposition.   And so, in the process of bringing the book to you with a post a week over what could be 2-3 years, I’ll be slowly working my way through it, jumping around as Ray intended, trying to find the gems and cull the turkeys, and perhaps discovering there’s a logic to the material of which even my father wasn’t aware.

Because he didn’t know how, typing was executed by a series of hired typists who came over to our house and pounded away at either his bedroom desk or the outdoor office crafted in the half-acre vegetable garden of our home in Encino, California.  Ray was very specific about the way his writing was to be formatted.  The title of a passage was indicated by the capitalization of the first line. (See above.)  Indenting was strategic.  While I keep Ray’s lines as originally delineated, the limitations of blog formatting means losing the indents.   For organization, I created bona fide titles and de-capitalized the first line.   While imagining my father fighting me tooth and nail on every decision, I have begun to actually “edit” (eliminating extraneous/redundant words) to give each passage maximum impact.

If you “follow” this blog, you’ll receive an email notifying you of every new post.  The email includes both photo and text and saves you from having to actually go to the web page.  I hope you’ll not only follow, but also comment, in the process assisting me in the editing.   It will be extremely helpful to learn what passages genuinely speak to you and which do not.  Who knows, this long process just might lead to an actual book like Ray originally envisioned.   If so, it will include only the “best of.”

At the bottom of each page, menus allow you look at posts sorted either by chapter or date.

As for the photographs, unless otherwise credited, all are mine.  My father bought me my first camera – a Minolta SRT-101 — before I went off on a 2-month trip to visit East Coast Bomba relatives in 1969.  It is thus appropriate that I attempt to illustrate his words in the manner he intended.    If you click on a photo in either the blog page or in the email, a larger image will open up.  Feel free to visit my Flickr page at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bomba828/

Thanks to cousin Chris Gee for taking the photo of Ray which graces the “Welcome” page and which serves as the blog’s “gravitar.”  Shot in Ray’s garden, it captures the contemplation that produced this work.

Christopher Bomba
October 2013

ANY BOOK HAS TO BE PROMOTED,
pushed, given some kind of
image that excites, awakens,
promises necessary sensation and
necessary message.
This book seeks to initiate the creation of
extraordinary disciplines
that will invite
new and exciting
realities.