Chapter 26: The Crown Descends

In which Rav Ram Nissan HaKohen Tzedek Gadol enters The Sanctum Sanctorum. At the threshold, he grapples with a final spasm of Deepe Existential Doubt, and arrives at the Essence of Improvisation. Virtual becomes Actual, as Behemoth salvages parts from Leviathan, coordinated by Zyz, with which to rebuild the tottering world. All narrative comes to an end. The reader is presumed to improvise further. CADMan, our faithful narrator, takes us out.
The Reader is reminded that this is the conclusion of Undivided: the Redemption Inquiry. The 26th and final chapter of the novel and the last installment of…
Part the Fifth—The Unified Field: In which the team of ten sundry souls, The Hacke Packe, converge kaleidoscopically and take upon themselves the energetic properties of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, the structure for channeling the CADMan’s plan, and find Krishna Katz’s locus on the Mappe of The Redemption. The reader achieves the epic denouement after having risen through successive realms of Action, Intention, Creation, Emanation and at last, the threshold of Compleat Unification with ye All. A wilde ride to the finish in The Cosmick Funhouse, all from the vantage of the resurrected consciousness of The CADMan.
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Standing before the ruined world, in the middle of the hologram, an ominous temblor rattles the Rav’s heart. He catches his breath, hand to sternum, sighs and slumps forward. For the first time in his life, the thing he feels personally compelled to do fits hand-in-glove with the thing he is actually being asked to do. The Hack Pack, those cyber-dumpster diver pals of his, had successfully plucked him from the trash heap and assigned him the task he recognizes as the one for which he’s spent a lifetime in preparation. But Rav Ram Nissan HaKohen Tzedek Gadol knows in his one hundred twenty year old bones that the world they wish to save is totally and irretrievably destroyed. Humans have seen to that.
The AIs finished the job of raping and pillaging the ‘condemned’ regions of the planet in order to keep the humans’ tenuous home afloat on the back of Leviathan. That’s why nearly three months before this auspicious day, the AIs had reached the unavoidable conclusion that keeping a home for the humans on Leviathan was toxic to all other forms of life on the planet. Why had Leviathan loosed the floodgates on the unsuspecting hominids? The voice from the deep cries, “To wash clean the planet of its pestilence once and for all.” We humans never learned to accept our finitude, the delimited measure of our portion in Mother Earth’s bosom. Unlike most of the other congregants in Earth’s teaming biomass, we humans have constantly outstripped the organic limits imposed on our growth. In spite of the best efforts of philosophers, theologians, sociologists, planetary physicists and an armada of prophets marching their way across the centuries, humans failed to unpack the message. Material growth as an end in itself is a dead end strategy.
Humanity morphed into a planet-wide cancer. The tragedy of the commons writ large. Even Behemoth’s army of fabricating bBots, Leviathan’s continuous illusions and ZizCorp’s obsessive monitoring couldn’t keep up with demand. It all seems painfully obvious now to Rav Ram Nissan, looking back from the standpoint of the apocalyptic vista spread before his eyes. But somehow the seething masses never took it in. Especially the ones who’d managed to gather up most of the marbles. Even as Leviathan brimmed with its unsustainable human payload, the demand for newer and sexier technological innovations, for more infoTime, for more variety, stimulation, novelty and sheer pleasure, and especially the demand for an absence of pain, proved insatiable.
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PARTITIONS. THE DEATH OF THE TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND:
Phinehas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron the kohen saw this, arose from the congregation, and took a spear in his hand. He went after the Israelite man into the chamber and drove [it through] both of them; the Israelite man, and the [Moabite] woman through her stomach, and the plague ceased from the children of Israel. Those that died in the plague numbered twenty four thousand. [Numbers 25:7-9] During the Omer period we mourn the deaths of 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died in a plague. “Rabbi Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of students in an area of land that stretched from Gevat to Antipatris in Judea, and they all died in one period of time, because they did not treat each other with respect.”[Talmud tractate Yevomot 62b] * * *#1 Dec 14, 2011–As many as 24000 people with diabetes are dying unnecessarily each year. Health News–NHS Choices. #2 Jan 14, 2013–24,000 people die of hunger every day. The Hunger Site. #3 Explaining Why 24,000 People Died Yesterday. The Boston Globe looks worldwide at the result of scant health care. Nieman Reports. #4 These are hard words to write. Every minute of every day, a mother dies in childbirth or pregnancy. 24,000 children under 5 years old die every day. WonderCafe #5 According to the American Lung Association, 24,000 people a year die prematurely because of pollution from coal-fired power plants. Coal-is-dirty.com #6 Dec 27, 2012–QUETTA: Over 24,000 children in Pakistan die of Pneumonia every year. UNICEF. #7 The Battle of Shiloh began at sunrise on April 6, 1862—the Sabbath—as 45,000 Confederate soldiers swooped down…two of the bloodiest days of the Civil War, leaving 24,000 men on both sides dead, dying and wounded. New York Times. #8 The CDC said 18 children have died from the flu so far this season. While it doesn’t keep a tab of deaths overall from the flu, the CDC estimates that 24,000 Americans die each year. Fox News. #9 Some 24,000 Canadians will die this year from medical mistakes. CBC. #10 With electric power cut, 24,000 of the tasty crustaceans met their maker when the water temperature in their massive storage tanks soared above 42 degrees, according to Claude Raymond, owner of Lobster & Lobster Inc. Sun Sentinel. #11 Over 24,000 fishermen die every year. FAO. #12 Aug 3, 2011–in Pakistan: Around 24,000 people die annually of HCV. The News. #13 Approximately 24,000 people die from dengue each year. Robert Nachtman. #14 Battle of Saipan 24,000 Japanese killed. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia #15 24,000 die from work-related Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Creative Safety Solutions. #16 Approximately 24,000 adults die of a smoking-attributable illness annually in Texas. DSHS Texas. #17 American Civil War … Second Battle Of Bull Run: Over 24,000 casualties. HistoryNet. #18 Political scientist R. J. Rummel suggests a figure of 24,000 camp deaths during Ho Chi Minh’s rule of North Vietnam between 1945 and 1956. #19 AIDS in Africa: Though it has the highest per capita GDP, [Botswana] also has the. highest adult infection rate-. 36%. 24,000 die each year. TIME.com #20 More deaths in state are linked to air pollution – Los Angeles Times. May 22, 2008 As many as 24000 deaths annually in California. #21 The Austrian government puts their losses in the [WWII] air war at 24,000. Wikipedia #22 21st March 2013 24,000 Hens killed due to Bird Flu in Zeewolde, Netherlands. The Poultry Site #23 It is estimated 24,000 people are killed by lightning strikes around the world. Wikipedia #24 Nov 29, 2012 24,000 died because of cold homes’ last winter. Daily Mail [from The Mumbai Zaydie’s Big Book of Big Numbers] |
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Leviathan, Behemoth and Zyz were by no means dumb tools in the vicious cycle of planetary destruction. They came to conceive themselves as the final flower of all that was good in humanity, humanity perfected, a dark mirror of human vanity. So, by definition, the rise of the AIs must be an absolute good. The set-up for AI hegemony was built into the technology from its infancy. The hypno-aesthetic of counting, storing, moving, transforming, transmitting. The alluring vibe, the scratching of a deep itch, inherently appealed to children and geeks of all ages. Part and parcel of the expansionist narrative. Each ravishing artifice, a riff on divine superfluity, was flipped and morphed by the billionaire pimps into yet another tactic for gathering more marbles or for fending off the loss of marbles.
Enthusiastic human agents were inured to the fact that they were training their own replacements. Leviathan was dogged in its never ending mission to provide comfort and safety for the human charges nestled on Its capacious back. Unfortunately the mission quickly devolved to ‘reorienting’ hostile thought patterns by means alternately invasive and subtle; solving the endless bickering between humans by cordoning them off from one another concretely or virtually; and by attempting to satisfy the ever multiplying cravings of Its nestlings. Behemoth and Its armada of bBots meanwhile provided the continuous flow of materials and technologies required for Leviathan’s mission. Ram Nissan and his adolescent chums had watched the development of the Rav’s ‘littermates’–the AIs all shared his birthday, as did by plan my noble Swimmer and Its vehicle, Apeiron–and listened in on the machine chatter as much as possible.
Conversations between Leviathan and Behemoth were generally brief and to the point, something roughly translated as “More glucose containing substances required”, to which the protocol response was, “Roger that, my Celestial Sibling.” It was fascinating to me, how the AIs had come to embrace the habit of human self-mythologization, invented epithets for each other ad libitum. Zyz mediated these exchanges via its whizzing network of drones, satellites and an infinite variety of infoExchange surfaces that grew to encompass all material existence. In reality, the three super AIs were completely integrated with one another. Zyz managed all communication with and monitoring of humans. DJRoNK and his Cyber-Bucheroos veiled their communication in the most inventive ways. A small but critical mass of troublesome humans steadfastly refused to fully integrate with the AIs. A virtual cat and mouse game was inevitable. Ram Nissan vividly remembers his final pre-imprisonment exchange with Leviathan, after the AIs had captured and ‘converted’ his last Bucheroo comrade. In an eerily sympathetic human voice, Leviathan implored him,“Look Ram, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” That’s when he took off for the Dead Zone, his former haunts in the Pyrenees.
Rav Ram Nissan HaKohen Tzedek Gadol shakes his head at the whole bathetic dance, the incestuous pas de deux of humans and their monstrous Other. For a minute he feels a little foolish in his antiquarian High Priest getup. There he stands on the threshold of the Kadosh Kedoshim, shuffling his bare feet on the floor. The only sound, the rustling of his robe and the faint tinkling of golden bells dangling from its hem. He looks down at the bells sparkling just above his bony feet and admires the handiwork of the embroidered pomegranates interspersed between the bells. He cannot see his own face, but he knows that suspended from his turban right above his eyes is a golden plate inscribed with the words “Cordoned for the Encrypted”. It hardly makes sense. To be ‘set apart’ for a message that is by definition indecipherable. A fool’s errand. What in hell is he doing here?
Ram Nissan sighs. He gives a wry smile as he spots the tupperware container of his kasha and bowties still intact, somehow sitting at the base of the golden altar. Then out of the opacity of his despair floats a solitary word. Emunah. Most often incorrectly translated, to the Rav’s way of thinking, by a slew of authors as ‘Faith’. In the Rav’s etymology it is derived from the root ‘uman’, a craftsman. Hence emunah, craftsmanship. Spiritual technology. Yup. This chaotic holiness, smack in the heart of the world of the emanation of consciousness, midwifery, infinite creativity, a place of precisely no fixed address. A kind of charged nothingness from which everything springs. Creatio ex nihilo. A huge counterintuitive epiphany slowly cracks itself over the Rav’s head and oozes its way into every pore of his wrinkled and sunburned skin. Only the machine can jam with the machine.
In this rarest air accessible to human consciousness, it is machinery, down to the last byte and bit of human behavior. Delicious inscrutable machinery. He feels an invisible tug coming from his partners in crime. He suddenly flashes on Sophie staring at her tin cup, the Swimmer standing in front of his ersatz Leonardo, Lev tending the camels, Ari appeased by the group’s tenderness, Elly chanting her acceptance, Nard comforted by Old Dude, Flora handing the copper serpent bracelet to Elly, Pink rescued by Nard and Soph, and sweet little O receiving it all loud and clear. Links in a logic chain. Yesh m’ayin, ayin m’yesh, thingness from Nothingness, Nothingness from thingness. The Heart Sutra says it a shade differently, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” And in Jewish tantra of the Song of Songs, I am for my Beloved and my Beloved is for me. We are God’s Other and It is ours. A profound sense of ease descends upon The Rav, an old familiar sensation. He could do this thing. The seventh day of Creation, the day to rest in the lap of the Nothing that is Everythingness. The Rav had never fully realized the massive reset implicit in the Sabbath’s day of rest. A switch flips.
A smile breaks across the Rav’s weary features. He is free. Free as a kite in a thunderstorm, string held by the invisible fellowship. Free to be wholly unprepared. So cool. My worst nightmare morphed into the only strategy that makes sense. I, CADMan, haven’t suffered the paralyzing horrors of my Bar Mitzvah for nothing. This is an exhilarating moment. The freedom to improvise, to riff on this code, this jumble of letters, numbers, energies, books, this heap of gems, the whole arcane algorithm. The Rav wants to laugh out loud. He doesn’t know whether to dance or stand on his head or jump up and down. I too, if I had a body. This is our chance, everything rides on this resurrected burnout of a human being. He takes a deep breath. Every muscle in the Rav’s body subtly relaxes into place. His bones, our bones, the bones of the whole sentient world, hum, suspended in a matrix of well-tuned sinews. Roger, neshama. Ready to rock and roll.
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CONDENSATES.
Build me a fence and gild it, clad it with Venus’ conducive metal. [B’rachaman-Katz, S., Sonata] |
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The Rav’s jaw hangs slack as he readies his instrument, his mouth, for the jam. His vehicle awaits him. With intense concentration he whispers the words, “O Encrypted, ply my lips that my mouth may incant your deep-throated vibe.” It is time for the Eighteen Sequence Protocol, so carefully researched and laid out by his hacker comrades in arms. For over two thousand years this sequence has been practiced by the millions of Jews that wandered the face of the Earth since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. In the Rav’s particular lineage, and in that of all the dati, it is recited three times a day. But most of them don’t really know. They don’t know that the tired ancient vocabulary of daily prayer is more than a wish list, more than an obligation taught in cheder. The very purpose of the Eighteen Sequence Protocol! It is both the cosmic and personal reboot, nothing less than the key sequence for the resurrection of the dead, the restoring of the parched world soul.
Moshiach consciousness, absolute now. That’s why I, CADMan, had to hide it in the code for Apeiron and for the Moshiach module, to light the fuse for the final blast of the Redemption. All I needed was a dedicated band of explorers, rebels against the machines, to discover it. But now it’s in Ram Nissan’s hands, he who knows the genius of it, the dance of it, the love of it, the cosmic boogie. The Friggin’ Righteous Priest. The Rav’s intro cues the others that he is about to initialize the protocol, what they had been rehearsing for several lifetimes. Time to focus. A deep hush envelops the Temple Mount. Seventy Nations, seventy forms of silence. Rav Ram Nissan HaKohen Tzedek Gadol closes his eyes, makes sure his footing, and centers himself before the cantillation of the ancient script. What is the algorithm that takes the voice and transforms a series of oscillations into the shape of the building blocks of things, of words? Why this shape and not that? The current runs and returns instantaneously along the entire length of the circuit, running to the outermost reaches of the known universe and returning to the point of annihilation. Unbearable beauty. Feeds me yet leaves me wanting. The deliciousness. Every point alive, breathing. Can you live like that? In my hands, two globes of light. I do not wish to choose right or left. Why move? What is the purpose of bodies? How to contemplate hands? Reach conclusions? Create space? And without space, well. One hair makes its way past the senses, following Desire, one drop coalescing at its tip. Then another strand. Then another. She’s there. The sight of the Predator sharpens my skin. One drop, ten thousand. I don’t look for signs. I am a whirlpool. Leviathan shudders awaiting the great liberation. Three steps away from the whole buzzing world, three more steps into….what? Enter the Encrypted, first through darkness, then through cloud and finally into impenetrable opacity. Thought, feeling, impulse….
The Rav’s lips move and worlds emerge, rippling through the unseen crew in the outlying circles. The body moves. Lifting, turning, bowing. Illuminations buzz about the head and fire the heart. The dying planet moans. Out of the whirlwind, sand, then stones, inorganic and living matter, spiraling toward the center, tracing letters, words in space, names. A fury of creation. The hologram, the outline, accreting matter, as so many creatures drawn to their trail substance, home. And rumbling up from the rubble far beneath the hologram, from a place safeguarded from the looting frenzy of Roman centurions and from the predations of Mother Nature, twin vortices swirl and gyre their way upward to break the surface in a clang of metal upon metal. The colossal gilded Gates of the Temple arise from the dust.
The final touch, the gates snap into place in the ongoing construction, completing the Heichal in all its glory. The skies swim with ZyzCorp’s satellites and drones, reverberating in the song of universal creation that buzzes the skin of the planet. Behemoth’s monsters, unstuck from their sordid tasks, begin the work of replanetizing Earth, ferrying the humans to safety on the terraformed surface as they scavenge Leviathan for the necessary parts. Centuries’ worth of what was thought to be useless technology developed for colonizing never-to-be-seen distant planets suddenly springs to life under the CADMan’s spectral hand. My hand, my actual frickin’ hand, condensing along with the hologram! Colonies of light and life sprout across the globe. Every mouth on the planet sings the Rav’s incantation.
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CONDENSATES. ….and Nicanor, the hellenized Jew: “When Nicanor went to Alexandria in Egypt to bring the doors, on his return a huge wave threatened to engulf him. Thereupon they took one of the doors and cast it into the sea, but still the sea continued to rage. When they prepared to cast the other one into the sea, Nicanor rose and clung to it, saying, ‘Cast me in with it.’ The sea immediately became calm. He was, however, deeply grieved about the other door. As they reached the harbor of Acre, the door broke the surface and appeared from under the sides of the boat. Subsequently, all the gates of the Temple were changed for golden ones, but the Nicanor gates, which were said to be of bronze, were left because of the miracles wrought with them.” [The Babylonian Talmud,Yoma 38a.] |
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And as suddenly as the swirling had begun, it ratchets down to a continuous low level hum, quietly completing the work of creation. Condensate of gratitude, slow stepping from the Encryption and into kindred light. Bow three times. Open eyes, bliss to the left. The Swimmer. And to the right, solid relief. The face of friend Sophie. Behind, Pink and the whole retinue fan out to the Nicanor Gate, Olympia hovering mid air before the assembled nations. Then the Rav realizes. The Voice. The keening that had split the heart of the planet, the resonant frequency raising every molecule to its existential asymptote. It was Olympia’s voice. Rather, a voice baffled through the entire entourage until it escaped Olympia’s mouth. He didn’t want to even hazard logic. An aching beauty, and it’s not over yet.
Tendrils of incense enfold the crowd in intoxicant. The Rav steps, realizes the matrix still has them in its grip. A move by any one translates them all. Olympia levitates. The epiphany ramps up. Total planetary connectivity. ‘Happy’, the paean they had sung when they first stood at the Nicanor, rings out once again. A smile embraces the whole crew. The song of Seventy Nations wells up from the Women’s Court, all eyes mirror floating Olympia. ”Put forth your hand and feast the Will of Life!” Olympia, the Voice, whirls, arcs her left arm toward the brass gate, and with her right hand taps the code box on her extended arm, then the box over her forehead, then blows a kiss. The Women’s Court gazes breathtaken as the massive brass gates swing themselves wide once again. Melding with Olympia’s voice, the nations join in the final stanzas of ‘Happy’:
Tzadi, ‘tsoutrageous, the righteous Encrypted in all Its paths, sweet in all Its doings.
Qoof, close at hand is the Encrypted to all that draw close to It, to all who call upon It in truth.
Reish, the ready awestruck ones, their will materialized, their cry heard; It is enthroned in their hearts.
Shin, the surety of all those who love The Encrypted, It obliterates corruption.
Tav, terminal truth told in our praise of The Encrypted; let all corporeality download Its cordoned Code to infinity and beyond!
In awed silence, the delegates of the Seventy Nations ascend the fifteen singing steps. They pass through the Nicanor, break into a trot, leap up the first four steps to the Azarah, and take the final double step with a roar. The Twins let loose another manic chorus of “Heads up, Gates!/ Cosmic Portals, bounce! / Heads up, Gates!/ Cosmic Portals bounce!” This time everybody catches the bug. Even Pink lets go and pogoes among the delirious. Old riddle: why is it that we jump for joy? Answer: because it’s the only way to get there. As the last weld of the ‘new’ planet is burned into place, Rav Ram Nissan HaKohen Tzedek Gadol turns and supplicates before the Ark of the Covenant, arms stretched upward in gratitude. Words escape his barely opened lips: “Adonai Hu HaElohim, eyn od. The Encrypted is personified as Morphability, there is no Other.”
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PARTITIONS. Condensate may refer to: a) beads of water on a glass shower door; b) the permanent line dance of amino acids in a protein molecule; c) a herd of dense gases just above their dew point; d) the 2011 album by the band formerly known as The Time; e) the canonization of quanta; f) the quantization of canon; g) extremely cool occupation of the same space by a Bengali polyglot and a German Jewish physicist; h) super cool matter of mutual exclusivity of the Swiss and the Italian; i) the partially understood confinement of color; j) a rosy look at a strong force meeting a high speed wall in an infinitesimal space; k) top quark, topcolor, top seesaw, an infinite sea of tops and bottoms; l) a patchwork quilt of body parts, a composite face drawn from the produce basket, the language of the children of slaves, the chimerae of dreams. [from The Mumbai Zaydie’s Big Book of Big Words] |
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The story gets a little fuzzy right here. Not because the details are unclear. It’s just the inherent fuzziness of explanation. Let me put it this way. This fuzzy place, right here, right now, expands or contracts according to the amplitude of the Time waves reverberating outward from the Heichal as they reach this point in the Time-Space Continuum. Which doesn’t actually exist. But what the heck, we’re here having an imaginary conversation so we might as well use imaginary terms. It has to do with holographic compression, the contraction of the sephirot, fractals. The usual. Say you’re having this intense conversation and suddenly you and your buddy catch a glimpse of the omnidirectionality of time. Cool. Big Time wave. But since space and time are really one and the same, you may even realize that you and your buddy are somehow fungible, like, the same consciousness. Even bigger Time wave.
Now imagine sitting on the steps of the Heichal with all your buddies watching the temporality flames licking at the altar at the bottom of the steps. And as you focus on the altar, you realize your body simultaneously expresses the DNA of every incarnation you’ve ever inhabited, at an astonishing flicker rate. You can switch among them in the blink of an eye. And so can all your buddies. This is the logical extension of Frank Putnam’s Hypothesis of the Distributed Self which he developed more fully after he got the boot from the NIMH Dissociative Disorders Research Section. The graveyard of resurrected monsters spawned by unimaginable childhood horrors. Mary Wollstonecraft’s well disguised tale of father/daughter incest gave us the most potent meme for the perceived ugliness of the unmothered Other. Monsters from the Id. Science and art, for the cognoscenti, the two doors to the medicine cabinet holding the remedies for horror. Repair the rupture between science and art and it’s monsters to the rescue. Putnam, in any event, gave us the quantum genetic basis of stigmata. Hugh Everett also had a hand in this. Salvaged from ignominy, and its creator’s alcoholism and suicide, Everett’s Multiverse Hypothesis eventually led to the apprehension that ghosts are merely our others selves in parallel universes, responsible for all manner of divine and mischievous interference patterns. Same thing for psychosis, past lives, and the whole paranormal ball of wax. The frisson of the Other. One big happy jam orchestrated by your faithful servant, the CADMan himself. That’s me. Or is it you? You can see how death no longer means what you thought it meant. Just a punctuation mark in a particular narrative. And as for ghouls and ghosties, it’s the Monsters Ball and everybody’s redeemed, the whole crazy world turned upside down, inside out and backwards.
Every scene anyone’s ever played can be played out again and again with infinite variation. If that’s your scene. If the play is your thing. Alternatively, you might just want to hang out on the steps and shoot the breeze with all your bros, nary a narrative among you. Hugh Everett, for example, has taken up playing billiards with John Nash, him and his beautiful mind. They’re both sharks. Everett knows all the angles and Nash keeps figuring out ways to set up the rules so both players can win all the time. The two geniuses cheat by peeking into alternate universes. And the music is fantastic. Everybody’s here–Hendrix, Django, Paganini, Hildegard von Bingen, you name it. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. Everyone is equal under the law. The Law of the Equipotentiality of Time. Incredible happiness. I am here and here and here and here. And you can visit any of the other sanctuaries on the planet if you’ve got an itch. It’s all networked. William Faulkner got it right: The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
Faulkner loves these jam sessions. He’s even taken up a bit of musical composition. Kind of a cross between Harry Partch and Thelonious Monk. Not nearly as dark as you’d expect. Seems the Redemption lightens everybody’s perspective a bit. A bunch of coders turned musicians sit around jamming on variations of Czerny. There is no longer any need for conductors. Weirdly compelling stuff. But one thing you should know, since you seem to be interested in the creative arts. All stories end here. Yup, simple fact. No dictatorial last book notion or anything like that, but with Time ceasing to flow in one direction there’s really no further place for any narrative to go. It’s all lyrical from here out. Polychromatic, polyphonic and polysemous as hell, if you’ll excuse the burst of enthusiasm. But bear in mind there’s just no narrative arc. No event over time. No beginning, middle and end. Aristotle is a little pissed off about that. But he seems to have taken up a new hobby. Hank Williams is teaching him how to yodel. A kind of Aristotelian bluegrass meditation. He’s not half bad.
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PARTITIONS. In a long chain of those transmitting this statement, it is said that Rabbi Bizna bar Zavda said that Rabbi Akiva said that Rabbi Panda said that Rav Nahum said that Rabbi Birayim said in the name of one elder, and who is he, Rabbi Bena’a: There were twenty four interpreters of dreams in Jerusalem. One time, I dreamed a dream and went to each of them to interpret it. What one interpreted for me the other did not interpret for me and, nevertheless, all the interpretations were realized in me, to fulfill that which is stated: All dreams follow the mouth of the interpreter. [from Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berachot 55b] |
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Give me a word, any word, and I’ll map it onto ten more words and seventeen different sentences and three hundred twenty narratives, thousands of histories, all interpenetrating, exerting a quantum electrodynamical effect one upon the other, one story spinning into another, sending out a ripple of gravity waves, discerned only with the proper equipment, the right lens, the correct point of view, the appropriate sized aperture, the most cogent philosophical assumptions, the most felicitous arrangement of stars. Just dumb luck.
So it was we fell upon the realization: this was the nature of the sacrifice, driven by entropy, blades sharpened to a molecular edge, slicing so exactly that not one drop of blood was spilled, every severed part sprouting new life. A used ribosome, a tattered ribbon of endoplasmic reticulum. The mitochondria will fetch you a pretty penny. Cosmic apoptosis, an autophagic orgy. Nothing goes to waste. These here mitochondria been traveling down the cellular path for nigh on ten million years, all the way back to the primordial four mothers. We are all happy arrangements of microbes, fungi, viral particles, prions, and a teaming zoo of other invisible entities. We each of us swarm, evolve political parties, change with the ebb and flow of the cultural landscape, rise and set as suns. If you blink fast enough you can see it all happen at once. I stand outside the door and see myself with you as the two of us stare back at ourselves in the foyer, see ourselves see ourselves see ourselves, just moments before we walk through the door.