"Doing Bucky"

In honor of our production of R. Buckminster Fuller: the history (and mystery) of the universe, we've been asking people to send in their stories of Bucky - encounters with the man and with his ideas.  This one just came in from Joo Hock, a member of the Bucky Group Singapore.  If you have your own story to share, send it to bucky@arenastage.org

"In 1992, on one of my day-off from work, a Tuesday, while I was at home, my wife came down from the staircase carrying an old slightly rusty dark colored tin soap box. She asked me, do I want it? or she'll throw it away. On the spur of the moment, I said, "Okay, give it to me", It looked a bit of an antique, a bit mysterious.

What happened then was that I did something quite uncharacteristic of me. I took a piece of paper and wrote a short note. "Dear God, need help, please help. Not communicating well with my brother. (whom I work with)"

I folded the note put it in the box, and went to hide it under my bed mattress, and subsequently forgot about it.

As it happened, one of my client, a Mr. Taylor, an American, whom I had good conversations with, and I share my work-woes with, when he comes to see me, and known some of my predicaments at work, suggested that I should go and attend a seminar.

Me? Attend a 3 and a half day seminar from Thursday evening to Sunday? No way. I work on weekends.

However he arranged for me to attend a preview. Okay. After much cajoling, I reluctantly dragged myself to the preview. I ran into one of my customers and ended signing up together for the seminar.

Admittedly it was an interesting, emotional roller-coaster seminar. In it they shared about Buckminster Fuller, his moving story of standing on the shore of Lake Michigan contemplating suicide and finally about his committing ego-cide, instead.

During the break they were selling his book Critical Path. I flipped through the pages and decided that it looked intimidating for me. Nope, it seemed too daunting a task for me to try and read it, forget it, I'll give it a miss.

 

However perhaps as it was meant to be, a friend came to me and said, "Joo Hock, would you like to read this book, you can keep it with you, until I need it back, I ask you for it." Being one who never refuse a good offer, I said "okay" Thanks

I read the first paragraph of the introduction..............hmmm........I reread it again and again,.......wow.............Humanity is moving into unprecedented crisis......I managed somehow to figure out what Bucky was saying.......this sounds interesting, I said to myself. Then I browsed the contents...........hmmm.....the Self-disciplines of Buckminster Fuller (I recall that there was something called the Self-disciplines of Benjamin Franklin.......................... Buckminster Fuller?..........I turned to the pages to check that out..........

Hey! Ever-Rethinking the Lord's Prayer?

Couldn't quite make sense of it.

......I looked at the preceding paragraphs.....Hey.....Bucky talked about his having direct experiential evidence of God! Wow, here's someone whom I consider a first rate scientist, absolutely meticulous in the way he describes things, and here he is talking about his direct experiential evidence of God! No I didn't do a double take, I did a triple take.

Wow, suddenly, I was so excited, and I went about telling my friends, "hey look, look, here's a guys who's a first rate scientist and he talks about God. Most scientist do not state upfront about their belief in God.

This was most unlike me. Normally when friends talked about God, I tend to shy away. Suddenly here was I going around telling my friends, look........look, here's this guy talking about God.

I decided to really check Bucky out in our Library, and I found 14 titles of books to his name.

 

I began to read, no not just read, I began to study Bucky's books, Critical Path, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, etc, whatever I could lay my hands on.

Why? Simply because somehow Bucky made sense to me. Before Bucky I was a very skeptical person, I never quite trusted or believed in anything. Here was a person whom I intuitively felt had no personal agenda, who was sharing his truth. Bucky opened my mind.

Soon I went about talking about Bucky, suddenly people began to tell others who attended the seminar, that if you want to know more about Bucky go and see JooHock.

One day I developed a Game, " How do you make One Triangle + One Triangle = 4 Triangle?" That began my "Bucky workshop" where I began to share what I've studied about Bucky. And I learned the most by "teaching" and sharing.

In June 1994, I started, with a couple of friends, the Bucky Group. We met on every Sunday morning at our MacRitchie Reservoir Park to walk jog or run and read his Critical Path. We also invited fellow attendees of the seminar to join us. Come thunderstorms or whatever, without fail, we would turn-out to read Bucky's Critical Path, unless we're traveling.

 

Why read as a group? Because many complained that it was very difficult to understand him. Btw, we had lot's of fun too. Words began to go around about our Bucky Grp.

 

Precessional?

 

Lot's of interesting things began to happen.

 

A Singapore friend of mine, who move to San Francisco, invited me to visit him,and it paved the way for me to visit BFI in Santa Barbara, around 1997. My air-ticket from SF to Santa Barbara was courtesy of my host.

 

I visited San Diego in 2001 to attend The History and Mystery of the Universe, courtesy of Peter Meisen, President of GENI.

It has always been an unsaid dream of mine to visit the US to attend a course on 'Bucky".

I checked around and hadn't found one. In 2006, Datuk Lim Chong Keat, a personal friend of Bucky was organizing an Event in Penang Hill, Malaysia, billed as a "Tribute to Buckminster Fuller". 14 members of the Bucky Group and friends from Singapore went. I remember trying to persuade my members to go, telling them that Medard Gabel would be there, he is somebody who had worked with Bucky, the man himself, for about 12 years. It would be worth our while to be there. That meeting with Medard paved the way for him to come to Singapore, to conduct for us one of his workshops. What's most interesting, was that one of my younger Bucky Group members, came to me and said to me, Joo Hock, I'd like to pay for your fees to attend Medard's program. I accepted. Reason? I have another story on Precession to tell.

Bucky had lived his life as an experiment, and tested out the Generalized Principle of Precession. An experiment is repeatable. I always wondered if I could repeat Bucky's experiment, though acknowledging that if anything, I could only do 1% of what he has done.

 

Perhaps his experiment has been repeated and confirmed.

Then one day I realized what I've forgotten hidden under my mattress, Hey, I've written a note to God; and He sent me Bucky??!!

 

Btw "Doing Bucky" has opened doors for me. I joke about it, I have the license to gate-crash other peoples "party". My life has certainly been more fulfilling."

 

JooHock
Bucky Group Singapore