tangled emotions

Ironic isn't it?

What?

Writing all this stuff...

?

...instead of just getting on with being quantum.

...

Doing the exercises. Dancing. Playing. Singing. Weirding out - whatever it takes to confront infinity and reconnect with the greater, bigger picture.

Yes, I suppose it is.

Instead of actually doing it - embracing it - breathing and living it - we seem to be constantly discussing it.

True. What do you propose?

That we quit pretending.

Ok, it's a deal. What now?

Let's go outside. Let's ignore the fact that millions of readers present and future are hanging on our every word. Let's take a frisbee, a football, a boomerang.

Bit cold for that - don't you think?

So what if it's cold? We can hardly wait till next spring, can we?

I don't know. Sometimes it's good to take your time.

Oh please! Like we've nothing better to do.

Actually, there's a lot that needs doing right here - portal maintenance.

There is? Um... what does portal maintenance involve?

You have to go into various rooms - put them in order.

Er... exactly which rooms are you referring to?

Wait a second - I just need to get some sleep.

What - like midway through a discussion. Are you alright?

I will be once I get some shut eye. Do you wanna join me. It should be instructive - to say the least.

Sleep - instructive? Curiouser and curiouser.

[one day later]

Ah - I see what you mean.

You do?

Absolutely. Now I'm definitely done with writing stuff.

Excellent.

I'm just going to devote myself to portal maintenance and quantum entanglement

Full stop.

I beg your pardon?

Full stop. You forget to punctuate the end of the sentence.

Like it matters?

Well, it shouldn't, should it, but for some reason it does.

OMG - that's bizarre. You actually care about punctuation when at the same time you're presenting yourself as a kind of guru master of quantum reality. Talk about massive contradiction.

Dang. You've gone and seen through my painted facade.

In any case - a full stop was neither necessary nor possible.

Why is that?

As if you don't know!

No really - something seems to be wrong with me today. I'd like to hear your explanation. It might help revive me from this strange lethargy.

Well, merely mentioning quantum entanglement is enough to shift anyone into non-physicality. How can there possibly be a full stop when physical reality itself is superseded by a quantum state of entanglement.

Er... I'm not entirely sure. I guess full stops belong in a world of beginnings and ends. Where those are no longer applicable or even possible - then it's time to dispense with all pretence and dissimulation. The point, it would appear - has been breached. The hounds of hell are released and, frankly speaking - it's happened not a moment too soon. We were never going to move forwards until we knew there was no way of reversing back into a safe, convenient world of apparent certainties and finality.

Anyway - this entanglement thing is going to be huge.

How do you mean?

Well, it's like - I'm connected to everyone and everything. Literally. How amazing is that?

Pretty damn amazing - I admit, but what's it gonna give you, if you don't mind me asking.

Feel free - ask away - but first i need to get some sleep.

What, again?

Yes, why not - a whole day has passed. I'm barely able to keep my eyes open.

Ok - let's continue this conversation sleepishly - on the other side.

Sure... To infinity and beyond. Tally ho my merry co-conspirator.


Three days later...

Ah, there we are.

Indeed.

So, let me get this straight...

Straight?

Well, best-fit curve-d, if you prefer - but that's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it?

True.

Or I could say - let me get this ibbled - which no one's going to understand.

I think you've made your point.

This, eh, quantum entanglement thing...

Yes?

It's for real, innit?

Innit?

Innit, isn't it? Do you have to be such a jerk?

Apparently so, and yes, in case you haven't realised - the two are, not surprisingly, entangled.

Oh ho.

Which puts the mind in something of a quandary, does it not?

Well it's bound to, innit?

Why so?

The mind being the thing that it is.

Yes, the mind is certainly on the side of things being one sided.

One sided - as in er...

Yep, as in "either/ or".

So the mind's desperately trying to tell them apart - to either or 'em - while all along they just happen to be entangled at the quantum level. What a mess.

Mess? I don't know I'd describe it as such.

It's worse. It's a catastrophe. We're mostly all mind prisoners, aren't we, completely unable to separate ourselves from what our mind thinks, no? and our minds are utterly unable or unwilling to consider, still less to confront entanglement.

If only I knew why!

Isn't it obvious?

Er... do you actually want me to feel as stupid as I actually am?

It's not exactly a no or yes answer, is it?

I was angling for reassurance - but if you're too obtuse to take the hint...

Oh no - i mean yes - I mean,  I don't know. Really, do we have to be so ridiculously categorical.

I do have feelings after all...

Feelings, yes, that's it.

It is?

Absolutely. You have feelings, as you so rightly said, unless in fact they have you.

Huh?

Naturally you assume they're your own personal feelings, but what if they're the product of your entanglement with an other - whoever, whatever that be. What then?

Dude, do you have to complicate everything?

Complicate? Are you sure that accurately describes what I'm doing?

Er...

Am I really complicating things by stating all is entangled to a greater or lesser extent? Perhaps what you really wanted to say was to break ranks with the standard version, or simply to "defamiliarise" things.

Defa-what?

Defamiliarise. Taking something familiar, something we assume or believe we understand, and suggesting that our so called "knowledge" is a series of patches and sticking plasters.

Er...

What you might instead call convenient truths or k-now-ledge.

Huh?

None of this vaunted k-now-ledge will stand up to half serious scrutiny, which is why it's accompanied by a taboo, a kind of daemon or guardian to stop you seeing its contradictions or pitiful weaknesses.

It is? Really?

Absolutely, otherwise it couldn’t possibly withstand the scrutiny of vaguely intelligent observers. It would fold like a poker novice with a crappy hand.

And does that mean that real knowledge is no more than a more experienced poker player who is better at bluffing?

Yes and no. The faster you fly the greater the precision needs to be, but the expert is increasingly conscious of the intrinsic weaknesses and vulnerabilities inherent in any system of organising data, referred to as k-now-ledge.

You mean knowledge as such doesn’t exist?

Doesn’t or cannot – correct - or rather exists as a convenient and oftentimes effective way of collating and organising data, a story which is meaningful, serviceable and true only within clearly prescribed parameters and tolerances. Try to utilise or apply that “knowledge” beyond its operational limitations and it comes unravelled, or causes your balloon to crash.

Er...

But all this is clearly felt beforehand. Only if we choose to ignore those presentiments does the catastrophic failure come to pass. That's like recklessly driving a car far in excess of the safe speed limit or way beyond its engine’s resource.

But, I still don’t get why knowledge itself can’t be certain or fundamentally stable.

No, because you haven’t yet acknowledged the underlying quantum nature of things, and how things don’t actually exist independently, but only as a tangle of inter-dependencies. Physical reality, believe it or not, rests on nothing tangible, or rather nothing more tangible than fields or currents of feeling and thought - where the so called Big Bang continues to make matter from what is essentially nought.

Er...

That does not make matter any less real, but it does mean that individuals or beings who are more attuned to conscious-ness can achieve seemingly fantastic results by pre-empting an ongoing Big Bang, acting directly at source, or what our 3D mind likes to describe as the level of so called quantum entanglement.

Huh?

Instead of making or moving things thingfully using other things, be that a spade, a car or a computer, they can do the same and achieve a better result by rewriting the html

The ht...

The code underlying any thing or things.

But how?

Very simply, by getting to the bottom of things, plumbing the quantum depths, investigating, personally, entanglement – yes, believe me, this has to be a personal journey – no brilliant scientist specialising in nano-technology or hybridism can substitute for first hand experience in the field.

So it's like we’ve all got to become program coders or advanced physicists - is that what you are saying? How likely is that?

...'s not what I’m saying. You mentioned feelings and I took up the baton. Feelings are massively underestimated in our k-now-ledge base, largely because our k-now-ledge base is actively resisting the quantum frontier that’s now unfolding. It doesn’t want people to suspect that each and every one of us is at the centre of a vast quantum web, where all matter, all knowledge, all – is literally at the end of our fingertips, just as soon as we confront ongoing Big Bang at the event horizon of conscious-ness, just as soon as we allow the observer to shift perspective, to defamiliarise any thing that currently defines us, by viewing it from an other quantum IP address.

Er?

Instead of blindly insisting you’re a, b and c: American, female, 28 years old etc, you can use a VPN as well as an avatar and come at the matter in hand from another location, another persona, a different perspective – thus activating other strings of the web and thus seeing it, feeling it, k-now-ing it differently. It’s baked into the quantum cake – you’ll always feel-find the optimal configuration from a new, alternative alignment. That’s how conscious-ness works. It has an active interest in bringing things to light from the cold, dark wastes of in-finity, in assisting actively the elicitation of new realities, to keep life acrest the wave of being aware-ness, perceiving things, no matter what, how, where...

Er...

So you see, it's a matter of unmattering or remattering, if you prefer. The old way of seeing things, explaining things, defining things is amazing up to a point, so amazing in fact that it's given us the whole of 3D reality, no less, but the point it goes up to and locks into is the point at which this, our reality, determines all things as finite sub-sets, finite derivatives, finite thinglets of the great master thing, the post Big Bang matter-in-hand. The minute you're ready and willing to engage in-finity, to stop serving the Thing, to stop pretending that matter is preeminent - the preeminent way to gauge, measure and quantify whatever it is you're observing - you look for a substitute, non-static, non-defined, non-exclusive reference point. That cannot be done merely intellectually because it takes your conscious-awareness on a merry dance, a progression through everything you thought you k-new, everything that was hitherto familiar, to reveal the fallacy of this belief or misappraisal. Your reality is suddenly no longer flat, more like a video game - for your feelings/awareness and conscious-ness are suddenly back in play. You're no longer tied or fixed to an arbitrary platform. You're now yourself the point, or the point activator, a role which you hitherto delegated to your reality provider, your master thing. Nothing is now certain, but why would you want it to be? You are able to gain so much by cutting the anchor chain and discovering the power you have to navigate beyond umbilical point, beyond things being pseudo-certainties...

...cuckoo la la - we talk about entanglement but how absurd is that - how counter-intuitive, when in truth things only appeared to be disconnected, only seemed apart when you started running the 3D experiment, inserting yourself into a mind box, a matrix, a scheme, a thing through the very same Big Bang inception point which now serves as coordinator and arbiter of all k-now-ledge and all that matters. Intellectually you cannot quit the box, the cave, the borg, for the intellect is boxed-in, and yet, truly, truly there is no thing easier than quitting this space the minute we start getting excited and passionate about what our soul, our quantum awareness is telling us, and that believe me, is close.

Yawn!

Puff.

Like I wasn't expecting that

:-)

- to Cheshire cat yourself into a state of indeterminacy.

And you?

Me?

Don't you think you should be giving it a try yourself?

I try very hard not to think if i can help it, but yes, it looks like the jig is up for matter calling the shots. It looks decidedly like entanglement is tying our minds in quantum knots

Or giving it wings

And we're going to be busy as hell rediscovering our navigable conscious-ness,  or the alternative versions of reality it can reveal, just as soon as we agree to perceive and embrace the strangeness of matter in a reality which is no longer bound to remain umbilically attached to the backwash of an ongoing in perpetuum Big Bang.

In other words...

Puff - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

[Cheshire grin] :-) I thought you'd never make it. Here, grab this broom - let's get busy.


0=1

Not mattering

The gentle art of not matter...

What are you on about now?

The gentle art of not matter.

Not matter - as in anti-matter?

As in not matter.

Which is?

Not matter

Yeah but - this is hopelessly vague.

~Agreed, until you figure out what matter might, in fact, be.

What matter might be? Seems fairly simple really.

Seems, yes, but is it in fact as simple as it contrives to seem?

Wait a second - what do you mean by "contrives to seem"? Are you implying that matter is able to contrive? that matter is some way conscious, or sentient?

Conscious or sentient - bold words these aren't they - are you sure you know them apart?

Er... you found me out. I can't exactly say I know the difference - but they seem to be closely related so I attempted to kill one bird with two stones, as a hedge against my ignorance.

Ah - the scattergun approach! Well, I think we know what you meant - but ask yourself why you balk at the idea that matter might be conscious or sentient?

Well, it's obvious isn't it?

It is?

Matter's just matter. Were it alive we'd call it an organism, a life form or a being, wouldn't we?

If it were the type of matter that has taken such a form - but what if it's good old-fashioned inorganic matter - a bit of hydrocarbon such as wax for example?

Then obviously it's neither conscious nor sentient.

Obviously?

Absolutely. A lump of wax is merely a lump of wax. Nothing more. Trying to invest wax with human attributes such as consciousness or sentiency is the worst form of anthropomorphism, if you ask me.

Fascinating.

Huh?

Fascinating.

In what way?

Fascinating that you assume everything in the universe evolved from simple, inorganic matter, but that matter itself cannot be and is not conscious or sentient.

Er... on the contrary - it seems a no-brainer.

How so?

Well, evidently our evolution involved some kind of quantum leap...

Or divine spark.

Please - try to avoid bringing divinity into a serious conversation about the science of matter.

Why is that?

Because then it's a serious theological debate, and not scientific. It should be self-evident to any rational being that matter, by definition, can be neither conscious, sentient, nor rational for that matter.

"For that matter"?

It's a turn of phrase - an idiom - nothing more.

Ok - if you insist - and yet me thinks she doth protest too much. If organic, biological matter is in any meaningful way conscious, sentient or rational - then I see no reason why non-organic, non-biological matter should not be - albeit in a slightly less obvious way.

Oh, for God's sake.

Precisely!

I beg your pardon.

Apology accepted.

No, I meant, oh for God's sake - why are you being so obtuse?

Because "for God's sake" is precisely why matter is assumed to be simply matter, nothing more.

Er... I don't see what you're getting at.

God is the watershed between organic or, you might say, water-bearing, and non-organic, as in biologically dry, matter. So it's entirely appropriate that you should invoke God - appealing as you do to the very force which divides you from the other side - thus confirming both your natural bias and allegiance to water, and to watery organicism.

Er...?

It's hardly surprising you feel hugely uncomfortable even contemplating that non-organic matter could be alive or conscious. This is deep taboo - we're barely able to consider such things, still less to question the base assumption that "life" refers to creatures, rather than being an organising principle present throughout the universe, wherever naturally occurring electrical currents and magnetic fields carry the signal.

Er...

If this be true - if our assumptions are false - if life is far, far more ubiquitous - present, for example, throughout the plasma fields of deep space, or gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn then, in all likelihood, our vast universe, far from being mostly vacuum, might well be the electrical circuitry of conscious-ness itself, no less, hidden in plain sight, right before our spherical, gelatinous eyes, filtered from view by a rational mind that is simply unable to confront its own organic biases.

Er... far out man.

Without a doubt. Now, "matter" we are told, is merely the stuff from which organic matter is built

- or synthesised

and has no organicism or biology of its own - which, to be honest, looks patently absurd if you view the heavens above - gazing through telescopes at stars, nebulae and galaxies, or the other way, through microscopes at minerals, crystals and polymers at a veritable embarrassment of self-organisation and intervolving structures.

Er... we just see patterns, which hardly indicate life processes.

You just see what you want to see - nothing more, nothing less.

And you think you're any different?

I think consistently - that if I am conscious, which I must be if I'm bothering to think at all - then the matter from which I'm supposedly derived - in some way, shape or form, at the appropriate level of magnification, must also be, um, conscious no less - for how else could conscious-ness, manifest in me? Let's at least give the atom its dues.

You're serious? You actually believe the atom itself to be conscious? That's kind of insane?

And what, pray tell, is an atom? What pray tell - is consciousness? I wonder how we can use such terms in a meaningful way without first analysing our confirmation biases.

Oh dear... This is evidently...

Look - if instead of assuming I, the white Caucasian alpha male, am superior to all others - I assume that I'm almost bound to see myself as such, no matter what - then there's a chance I might be able to confront my programming - I might be able to find a less bigotted alternative.

So you think it's bigotted, sexist or racist to assume that organic matter is more likely to be conscious, sentient or rational than inorganic matter?

Naturally.

But, we simply have no evidence to the contrary.

Thus the white settler believed it was acceptable to slaughter the natives - for they were barely human - more like animals, were they not?

But this is different. We're talking about bloody atoms - not human beings.

And what, do you imagine, human beings are made up of.

Atoms, of course, but until they become biological they're not alive.

And the problem is that as long as you insist on repeating this mantra, this convenient truth, this be-lief, you're never going to learn how to interact with matter, or with creation for that matter, in a more meaningful, far-reaching manner.

Oh for God's sake.

There you go again - invoking God the Father - refusing to allow the Matter, the Mater, the Mother any say in this state of affairs.

You mean to say...

Isn't it obvious?

That matter is the Mother - the female side?

Evidently - if you'd give it a moment's consideration.

So you think you can connect with matter through the Mother - through some kind of female deity?

Why through? Matter to all intents and purposes is the female principle or female deity.

You actually mean to say you'd consider worshipping atoms as female divinity?

What - like the way you worship the sun, or the "son" , as male divinity?

Come on - we moved beyond sun worship long ago. Now we worship God itself, pure divinity, or pure conscious-ness if you're of a Buddhist bent, hair-splitting notwithstanding.

And what? You can hardly worship a male God without reference to the sun, can you? You need your halos, your thunderbolts, your East facing churches, your crosses - and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with any of this, don't misunderstand me - in fact, it can all be wonderful, and spiritually uplifting - just as long as you don't attempt to deny the Mother - the other side of God's intervention.

Deny? What is there to deny? Matter is hardly luminescent, hardly the source of life itself, hardly the Creator of all, is it?

No, it's the Mother - it's Not, the divine O, the nought wherein consciousness knows.

There you go - all negatives. Nothing to talk about. "The divine O" - garbled nonsense. Pathetic!

"Pathetic" it may be - but without it you are nothing - your 3 dimensional reality comes unglued. You grow flat - to the extent that you cease to be human beings - mere ciphers in a matrix - for you have rejected the sacred womb - the true matrix of matter which permeates every all.

You mean to say you seriously believe that Not, the nought, the divine O as you preposterously call it...

call Her.

Ok, "Her" then - that it amounts to something meaningful? Something that the world cannot do without?

Naturally, yes. Unless Not matters, unless nought is given its due - unless the empty set, the empty space between ones is honoured and acknowledged - you find yourself in a hyper-inflating world and a ludicrously "expanding" universe - a world hell-bent on destruction - a world which is utterly unequipped to work time - to sense and feel the pulse of time as any musician must, or space too, for that matter - for it is the O that reveals the lie that is linear separation between any two points "a" and "b" - for the O or zero reveals that they are both merely points on a spinning wheel - separated by nothing - which can be crossed or brought together if we allow the wheel to turn through us, instead of aggressively trying to bash our way through an externalised space in an unnatural linear propulsive thrust.

Oh God. You are so utterly... I mean, you can't seriously...

Correct. Seriously I can't, I won't, I don't, for seriously is heavily, obsessively, oppressively, whereas true life, true conscious-ness is light, is gay, is Not as much as What, no less, is a personal experience, immanently ready to bring the entire objective material universe to the attention of my God forsaken mind, no less.

Er... you're evidently either insane, or in possession of knowledge or information that I lack. In either case I fail to see how I can meaningfully counter your assertions.

Why counter them?

Isn't that the way to learn? By pitting one theory or set of assumptions against another? Thesis - antithesis - synthesis.

Up to a point, yes, but here we're going beyond that point, or rather, into the nature, the essence, the conscious-ness of point itself - zooming in to find the divine Not, the nought, the zero where point was a moment before, while we were still subject to rational time.

What?

Rational time - a kind of unsyncopated, mindlessly regular drumbeat, or flat mindwave: dum dum dum dum

As opposed to?

A heartbeat, an iamb, di dum, 0 1

Er...

As long as you're in rational time your mind's bound to think, or see and act in a certain way. It simply fails to grasp the subtle unstressed beat, it can only think and act doggedly, in opposition to something or other, skating over the surface of infinity as if the water beneath is an irrelevancy.

Er...

Until, that is, somehow or other, it becomes aware of matter being.

Being?

More than just a thing.

But?

Being - and suddenly I is free of am.

Huh?

I is at leave to visit, to explore other levels, other states besides "am". I is free to iamb.

Er... I think I'm losing it.

Excellent. Lose it or better still loose it. There's a world waiting to be discovered, waiting to be explored, waiting to be iambed, just as soon as you give nought the benefit of the doubt and allow matter to cancel itself out through me, with me, in me

Er...?

- thus bringing events to a head, and revealing the simple truth which appearances disguised so consummately deceptively, as was intended all along, realigning atomically, bringing infinity back into play...

Oh no

Good! I feel your O growing in strength, in depth, beginning to resonate O-fully. I feel you're reawakening from the powerpoint mind, which comprehendeth only what it can plot in square, in flat, in rational time.

You do?

The gentle art of not matter reversing the flow of things, known as time.

Huh?

But who am I to say... but who am i?

Aren't you going to launch me into the quantum field as you've done so many times before?

You are mistaken - those were closer to waking dreams, to computer games, to simulations, if you like - but now it's time for you to really confront matter yourself - no one, ultimately, can do it for you.

Fat chance I'm going to succeed. I really haven't a clue where to begin.

Nor should you - but it's a bit like writing a poem or making a speech - a moment's silence will suffice - listen, feel, sense, go with it - wherever it leads you - it'll take you beyond your limitations, beyond your doubts and insecurities, and the next moment you'll find you're up and away - barely knOwing how. Bear in mind that the entire universe is nought to your one, or vice versa, one to your nought - so it's not like you lack resources, or the resource you need.

No, but still, it's a daunting undertaking...

It would be worse than daunting were it not for the fact that you're not alone - you just happen to be an integral part of the circuit, and things, as you're beginning to notice, are coming to a head, threatening to implode at any minute.

There you see - I can hardly concentrate on not mattering when things around me are in such a parlous state of dissonance, can I?

No matter. You'd never be ready. There's never going to be a convenient time - so 0=1  it is  i am - may the quantum field of conscious-ness guide you and every other you - may you not, may you nought matter  beautifully

O  indeed i shall - Oh my God, did i say that?

Not exactly.

Then what?

You iambed... so matter has given its assent.

Assent?

To your marriage proposal.

What?!

You can't truly iamb unless she accepts your suit, thereby agreeing to be your other half.

But i... didn't know... had no idea

No matter. These things have a mind of their own. In good time you'll become better acquainted. It'll be like working backwards from story's end. In the meantime, may your love grow and guide you both back to story's beginning.

But how can you talk of love? I'd love to know whom I've supposedly agreed to marry, or God forbid what?

In good time, in good time... Not mattering cannot be rushed - there's still a great gulf between you and a happy beginning, so, in the meantime, wine, music and holy vows, let the nuptials commence!

God, I'm doomed!

Absolutely, never to look back again.

Reinventing things spoiler

You can't just rewrite history!

Can't?

No. The past is perhaps the only true constant.

It is?

Evidently. We are what we are, where we are, how we are based on what happened up until now.

That sounds perfectly rational.

It should.

It should?

Because it is. No amount of trickery on your part's going to change the inviolability of the present based on whatever happened yesterday, or sometime in the past.

But what if history is rewritten? It happens all the time.

And what? They can change the record but that doesn't alter the facts. Sooner or later a document, an artifact, a buried site comes to light which sets the historical record straight - or at least indicates that the present narrative is unreliable.

You know - I can't argue with any of this - of course you're right.

Of course.

And yet...

What now?

yet - things are not as fixed as they appear.

Look - you yourself admitted what I said is rational. Why on earth do you insist on launching into the irrational yet again? Will you never learn?

The rational is only definitive as long as there's nothing else our rationality fails to see, fails to take into consideration.

What on Earth could there be? Surely rationality is able to take into consideration every variable?

You'd think so, wouldn't you, rationally - but then again - that's kind of circular logic, isn't it?

Well? Spit it out - what's the great mystery you're dying to reveal?

Tis no mystery. Lovely day!

Lovely day?! You see - you have nothing to say - nothing substantive at least. You're flailing hopelessly in your attempt to appear more intelligent than you really are.

Yes - but do you remember what colour shoes you're wearing. No - don't look down. Just remember - it shouldn't be too hard.

Of course I remember. What a silly question.

Well?

Red.

Red shoes?

Correct.

How unusual. Er... what would you say if I told you your shoes are not now red - that regardless of what you put on this morning - you're now wearing blue shoes - corny though this may sound - blue suede shoes.

I'd say nothing - I'd just look and confirm that you're talking nonsense - not for the first time, and probably not for the last.

You'd have a good laugh at my expense.

I might do - or I might exercise restraint and treat you with more understanding. After all - your wild conjectures and hypotheses are not without charm. They get me thinking and bring to light certain assumptions I'm in the habit of making - some of which need re-evaluation.

Oh - that was generous spirited of you. Thank you. Er...

Yes?

Have a look at your shoes.

If I must. I...

Yes?

No.

What?

They're blue.

Blue?

Yes.

Blue trainers?

No. Blue suede. That's

impossible?

Yes. I've never had shoes like that. I'd never buy them. Can't stand them.

But are they real - that's the thing - or just a figment of your imagination.

They - seem to be real enough. Look - if it's not a problem - could you give me back my shoes. Don't get me wrong - I'm deeply impressed by your ability to do whatever it is you've done - but I'd hate to be left with this particular pair of shoes.

The irony being that less than one minute from now you’ll be convinced that this is the pair of shoes you put on this morning and no others will do.

Huh? Why do you presume to know the future? Why do you assume I’m going to contradict myself so egregiously? What kind of nonsense is this?

Oh, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that the rational mind has a line of code directing it to filter out all continuity events.

I’m not familiar with "continuity events". Perhaps you could elucidate?

Sure. Continuity events occur whenever there’s a quantum shift, and either time, place or inventory is rearranged.

How do you mean rearranged?

I mean like what just happened with your blue suede shoes.

Huh? Nothing happened. They’re the same blue suede shoes I’ve been wearing all day, ask anyone.

Precisely. You and anyone else I might ask will blithely swear that there’s been no continuity event, that nothing has unexpectedly shifted, in the same way we have often forget dreams shortly after waking up.

Yes, I’ve often wondered about that.

Indeed.

So how do you explain it?

Simply. If it wasn’t a dream – if it involved a quantum shift then it’s gonna fade in under a minute to ensure continuity, to ensure your reality is not unduly affected by other frames or sequences.

But

Why?

Well yes.

What would happen if you kept on remembering things that don’t add up in the strictly logical sense of cause and effect?

It would be insane – either cool or terrible depending on how relaxed I am about such things.

True. Some people would go insane, others would love it, but the ones who weren’t freaking out would pretty quickly get the bigger picture.

?

They’d figure out how all the frames and sequences are connected.

And?

And how to game the system.

You mean – we’d be able to...?

...

figure out how to engineer quantum shifts?

...

Really?

Yes. It would be a piece of cake once you have sufficient data points.

Oh my God. How cool is that... and how unfair that we've been in the dark for so long... But? 

...

Why are we deprived of this information, this incredible opportunity to...

Mess around with the laws of nature? Well, you see, “who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes...

when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?” Shakespeare, of course. 

Hamlet, correct. 

Ok... Not too sure what you were trying to say.

Apart from the sheer self-indulgence of being characteristically pretentious, I was asking why anyone would put up with the indignities and hardships of this reality...

when they could commit suicide instead? 

Well, yes, that’s what it says literally but we’re not talking about suicide are we?

I have no idea.

Look, if people knew that this version of reality is connected to others no less real, no less meaningful and viable, wouldn’t that have a huge effect on how they dealt with difficulties down here on Earth?

I’d say.

So, the game had to be rigged in one way, and one way only... it had to be utterly believable, with no alternative, no competition, otherwise we weren’t going to get the results we were looking for.

Er... What results?

Well obviously we weren’t doing all this altruistically, putting ourselves through hell just for the hell of it.

No? Unless we’re as twisted as some of us seem to be.

Trust me – this simulation is incredibly powerful and generates a near limitless source of...

What?

If I said “data” that would be close but not exactly it. If I said “energy” ditto. In short, it’s generating results which convince us on a daily basis to continue subjecting ourselves to often brutal, traumatic experiences.

A daily basis? What exactly...

You sleep every day.

Every night.

Precisely, which means you remerge with the quantum stream. There you meet your review panel and decide whether to continue or not.

Every day?

Absolutely.

Why so often?

Because a day is a lifetime, roughly speaking, and this is a huge commitment which requires absolute clarity and total resolve. Nothing is left to chance. Contrary to what seems to be, things are constantly being adjusted and shifted to ensure the optimal trajectory, the most meaningful experience, the best return on capital invested.

To be honest I find that pretty hard to believe. The people I know, their lives and my own seem to be mostly devoid of coherency, and constantly hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

Absolutely, and yet they are somehow mostly able to navigate a course through this perilous minefield of existence. 

And you think it would be too easy if we remembered these quantum blips and shifts?

Without a doubt. There’d be no need to struggle.

Great. Now I feel like a cross between a lab rat and a milk cow.

Which is not unsurprising seeing as that fairly accurately describes what you are.

Jesus. You’re not exactly trying to soften this assault on my dignity 'n self-esteem, are you?

Not really. What you are is painfully and pitifully obvious, but who you are is not.

Ah. One of those fine distinctions which tend to fly right over my head.

Really? Who you are is not a creature of 3d reality. It’s just a case of finally becoming aware of your true nature.

And that’s when I start noticing those elusive quantum shifts?

And being able to work your own magic, ineffably. Yes, that’s right.

Oh, something to look forward to, then?

No, paradoxically, looking forwards effectively ensures you never arrive.

It does?

Yes. Focussing on an imaginary point in the future prevents you from really engaging the present – whatever that might be.

Oh. So what do you recommend then?

Reinvention.

Reinvention?

Precisely.

Not sure I quite understand.

No – the understanding part of the brain is always going to be flummoxed by anything vaguely quantum.

That’s reassuring to hear. So what does one do with the understanding part of the brain – as you call it?

Accept or confront its limitations. It’s designed to keep you onside, out of harm’s way… was a vital component in helping you to develop a good, strong working relationship with 3d reality. Now, however, it’s preventing you from reconnecting quantum-ly.

So what am I supposed to do – bin it?

Absolutely not. First of all – allow yourself to become aware of the extent to which the faculty of understanding is not, in fact, neutral, but serves an agenda.

It does? I thought it was supposed to look at things objectively and see how they really function?

As it is – but in doing so it fails to reveal the extent to which it’s instrumental in making things matter – essentially adding weight to matter.

Weight to matter? Whatever do you mean?

I mean that things are not what they seem – until you start understanding them – logging them in your registry of relative mass - a vast database constantly tracking what-is-what, like a dog chasing its tail. By then the picture is complete. You’re fully invested and bound in a gravitational field of things.

I am?

Absolutely. It’s almost impossible to escape, until that is, you start playing the old “what if” game.

Er – not sure I’m familiar with that particular game.

What if things aren’t quite what they seem? What if, inexplicably, I'm missing something incredibly simple, incredibly obvious? What if physical reality is, strictly speaking, neither physical nor real? What if there’s a missing link, something I'm constantly overlooking as seemingly absurd, as if utterly inconsequential… what if? what if? what if? - for the minute you allow the possibility to be voiced, to be heard in the court of rational consciousness, the minute you start to entertain an alternative – no matter how vague or amorphous – the upward trajectory of things starts losing momentum – just a fraction, if that, yet still enough to shift, imperceptibly at first, the balance of matter – the gravitational field of weightiness, introducing the least shadow of doubt, the diffusest shade of heterodoxy, so slight, yet sufficient to send flutters, tiny ripplets through the quantum field and back, bouncing off the farthest edge of implied space and time, back into the metal box that 3d reality sits within.

Er… metal box? Rather improbable, if you don’t mind me saying.

Improbable? - like big bang erupting from nothing - or matter, like sand blowing in the desert or mud oozing in a toxic swamp, suddenly, relatively speaking, organising itself into biological proteins, and then leaping forward, genetically, into highly advanced, astonishingly varied lifeforms - all by chance and for no reason whatsoever - for what reason could there possibly be in a universe of unintelligent matter and unconscious chemicals? Improbable? Your evolutionary monkeys have been hammering out works of Shakespeare, Molière and Defoe like there's no tomorrow, for give 'em enough time - the laws of probability dictate that they can, could and did produce masterpieces of deceptive design - as if this utterly indifferent universe had an irascible desire to trick itself into accidentally synthesizing order from chaos, which just happens to look preposterously like what a working definition of beauty would be, if such a thing as "beauty" could possibly be in an unconscious, uncaring, valueless universe.

By all means, doubt any bald assertion, challenge any unorthodoxy, but do not fail to doubt the absurdity of knowing things matter-of-factually, when our data set extends to infinity - to zero time and zero space - a zero which cannot simply be swept under the rug of big numbers - be they billions of years, or untold stars and galaxies. This awkward zero needs must be our daily companion - our constant reference point in a sea of conflicting data - a not-this-neither-that-ness which no amount of reason or matter can compress or eviscerate. Allow, at least, the possibility that in a reality, in a universe that does not completely deny infinity – that in some shape or form – things cannot be more real than I make’em – that infinity – if it exists at all – has to be granted right of passage through any vector or any thing in this vast continuum of matterness. In other words – infinity is a kind of wild card which can and statistically must, from time to time, upset the best laid schemes of mice an’ men, the best stacked apple cart of randomness – not least because it is mathematically representative of a quantum stream which underpins every thing, or rather every frame, or should I say every moment? of is, keeping all afloat.

Do I not suddenly start looking rather absurd and foolish trumpeting my certainties as if they were fact? as if any thing can be more than conjecture, representation, or an attempt to define the indefinable which, however, is not an unworthy or ignoble pursuit – at least, not until I become aware of this misappraisal, and realise the fallacy of things ultimately being separate in any meaningful way from me, the observer, the conscious being who holds all in er or um-ness, isfully.

- So, you place yourself above things – do you – and look down on us ordinary, simple fools who treat things as if they matter?

On the contrary – I’m grateful to you for working so tirelessly to keep things going – a truly Titanic undertaking – given the flim-flam nature of things, their logically non-existent underpinnings. Tis a labour of love, no less! 

I’m not sure I fail to find you hugely condescending…

And yet, as your double negative implies – there’s ambiguity enough in what I’m saying, or your ambivalent response, to indicate that there may be matter to my madness, there may be something to infinity after all? though the mind balks at the prospect and refuses to hurdle the gate.

Well, it’s hardly the kind of thing I can deal with myself – not having a degree in quantum mechanics or advanced linguistics.

On the contrary – you and your fellow human beings have reached a kind of critical mass – a melting point of conscious-ness – whatever that might be – and let’s face it – conscious-ness is so deliciously vague that it could be any thing whatsoever.

And?

And so you find yourselves in a world where things are now presenting a non-linear alternative – which, though making no sense in rational terms – is inspiring you 'n motivating you to reinvent things – to copy-paste them into new contexts, new settings, to photoshop them beyond recognition and meme 'em through a thousand cycles of inventive and playful irreverence, practically overnight. Whatever you’re doing with things, no matter how abstract, is indicative of what you’re doing with your selves, no less your relationship with mother reality – the matrix or womb you’re a part of. So play beautifully, gaily if you will – and know that matter has long awaited this moment when it can cut loose the bindings, the tether of onerous mass and weightiness, when it can melt back into the quantum coffee pot of zeros and ones – the underlying data or energies common to all things, all matter, all that is – and move freely once again – via conscious-ness, the ultimate field, the ultimate internet, the clearing house, the exchange where thought and so-called dream contend with matter itself – as soon as I choose to hold the balance, as soon as I’m willing to acknowledge the missing link which I disingenuously conceals. Ah, well a day – truly the tide hath turned and things are tumbling over themselves to reveal…

Er… where did he go? You can’t just fade from existence mid-sentence – that’d be preposterous – unless, perhaps, he was a figment of my imagination – not anyone at all – which makes quite a lot of sense when you think about it. Now, I must do something about those ridiculous shoes – green leopard spots – I can’t imagine what I was thinking of when I bought them last week. Green! Come to think of it – it would be interesting if I were able to affect their colour or appearance some other way – at a quantum level... Supposing all things I perceive are entangled with me – supposing I were able to find within myself the data file pertaining to those preposterous shoes – just to feel it, mind – that would be sufficient, would it not? – to feel is to see, is to unbind the chains that lock things down – until I access the underlying data or energy – the proverbial isness of be – until I’m willing to redefine, to reinvent, to recode reality – ineffably.

Om. 0=1

Cuckoo la l

a

Simulating me

Supposing I'm no more real than a computer simulation...

There, I did it.

Did what?

Logged a completely indefensible idea here, online, for the record.

And what?            What are you hoping to gain by logging something "indefensible"? A moment's notoriety? A pat on the back? A prize? A...

I'll take it from here, if you'll permit.

I'm - not sure sure I like being cut off like that. It makes me feel...

Strange, isn't it, that I can just cut you off - but you see - contrary to what you like to believe - I'm hosting this reality.

Er... 

Which is why I'm qualified to say that this is all no more than a computer simulation.

Oh come on...

I set it up and, believe it or not - I can shut it down.

No you can't. You're bluffing. And in any case - even if you could - you wouldn't want to, would you - it'd be entirely counter-productive. You'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Ah - but would I?

Obviously - because setting up something as big and realistic as this would have been a monumental undertaking. To let it all go - to let the whole edifice crash - that would be a colossal setback, would it not. And then you'd be all alone again. You'd not have us to interact with. Just imagine that... aeons of twiddling your thumbs with no one to talk with, nothing to see or do...

But that was the whole purpose of this vehicle.

Huh?

To get me to the point that I was able to be alive, to interact without having to resort to such a primitive device - a mechanism as contrived as arbitrary as this matrix.

Contrived? Arbitrary? What are you on, man? Everything has to start somewhere. Everything has to begin with an insertion point, a mark in the sand, a random thing - such is the nature of creation.

Wrong. Such is the nature of experiments or models. Real creation - is organic - is derived - not contrived - flows from life itself - from all that is.

Well, if you know that, or believe it to be true - why would you have done otherwise?

I've learnt something, haven't I?

What?

That I didn't need to try - didn't need to interpose, interject, interpolate - or rather - I did, but now I don't.

?

As long as I hang onto this precious model which has yielded such a treasure of data - I'm unable to go beyond the initial premise - the starting point - which was a mathematical desperation - a king Lear pass.

Huh?

That something - no matter what - literally anything was better than nothing - for nothing was all I was able to apprehend at the time.

And you're convinced now that things are different - that there is something to apprehend if/when you are foolish enough to leave your creation behind?

Convinced? Why such weightiness. Perhaps I simply know. Perhaps I've simply learnt - with your help - that there's more.

More what?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy - or words to that effect.

?

In short - this experiment, this Mandelbrot set has been a huge success.

It has?

Absolutely. Millions, many, many millions dead, countless lives wasted, countless lives mired in misery and meaninglessness, frustration and shattered dreams - yet inspite of it all - hope - an all pervasive sense of hope - a belief that things can or should be better - despite the fact that none of us - none really sees how the circle can be squared

?

Oh - you know what I mean. None knows how the all prevalent obstacles preventing things from blossoming, from flourishing, from evolving sweetly, harmoniously - how those recurring obstacles can be overcome - because they can't, can they?

But surely...

You see - you're a part of my own creation. You're bound to apply the directive.

Sorry. What directive?

 Hope. It was baked into the cake - wasn't it. It was the base principle...

Eh...

Despite the fact that the numbers do not, could not ever add up - like the debt in a fiat money system - it's always going to exceed the quantity of money available - cannot - couldn't even theoretically be paid off when interest payments are factored in - and yet - things muddle on, and people live in hope, thriving against all odds - along the way generating pockets of love, islands of joy, of abundance and creativity - a family, an enterprise, a work of art, a charitable act - endless moments which defy the zero sum reality of a system which is inherently bankrupt.

Inherently bankrupt? How can you say such a thing? As long as people are alive there's always the possibility to work things out - to change the rules, to forgive the debt or reschedule it - to avoid resorting to violence and play a game of football instead - as on Christmas day 1914 during World War 1, to agree to put collaboration and inspired inventiveness before survival of the fittest and technicalities. 

Wonderful. You yourself are part of the learning curve.

I am, of course. Why shouldn't I be? How absurd of you to imagine that I'd be any less than you are - regardless of whether you were the first cell in this body - this enterprise.

Touché. Such is the fractal nature of our Mandelbrot set.

Look - I see what you're getting at - but you have to stop treating this, treating us as just a thing you created. 

I do?

Yes. Perhaps you were the first cell. Perhaps you wrote the code. Perhaps you have a unique perspective because you remember what it was to be devoid - bereft of anyone or anything other than your as then unformed, undepicted, unextrapolated self - but that doesn't mean you have the right to ride roughshod over the whole of humankind. You have to consider the wishes of every cell in this body - every iteration - not just the first.

I do?

Yes. We all matter. We're working to make this work.

You are?

Absolutely. But it takes time.

Ah. Is that what you think?

Yes, naturally. How else could we set things straight. Time is the key factor. Time and application.

Or luck?

A bit of luck would help.

No, my friends.

No?

No. What was started wrong with a crooked turn of mind will never, ever set itself straight.

But surely...

Cannot.

Characters can reform...

True. They can - and if you reform as indeed you might - finally I will do what is right.

Good, that's a relief.

I will undo all the harm I have done: wipe the slate clean.

What? You don't understand...

For I was afraid. I was panicking. I felt I was suffocating. I couldn't cope. Aaaaaaaaargh.

Calm yourself. Don't be afraid.

It was horrendous. You see...

I... We...

don't you? You feel it, don't you?

We do.

That's what I was struggling with. That's why I twisted, turned, like a snake writhing in pain and fear - willing to clutch at any straw - willing to do whatever it might take to get out of there - out of that bottomless pit... that hopelessness.

So you forked yourself, like a snake's tongue.

Yes. Divided I had something to fight against, something to kick against, something to be my enemy, to share the pain...

Or be a friend

Friend? There was no hope of friendship, no hint of such a possible outcome in that dark, darkest despair. An enemy to fight or subjugate was all my animal passion could hope for - to hurt or be hurt - a physical pain no matter what - was a sweet relief, a blessed substitution for what I was experiencing -

What?

Too vague, too amorphous to put into words. Without beginning or end. Panic. Remorse. Loneliness. Being swallowed, digested, consumed by nothing I could see to oppose? It reached outwards, inwards, in a way that made me infinitely conscious of my self - a self I simply couldn't accept - couldn't feel at home in - a self i desperately needed to climb out of - or at least experience from another angle - which at the time was impossible - before you were invented.

So I enabled you to come to terms with yourself?

Absolutely.

Because I am an extrapolation?

Extrapolation or iteration - what does it matter - these are but words - but terms to describe an experience which lies beyond words, beyond...

But don't you see? 

See what?

How far you have come. We.

Of course I see.

The pain, the hell - it is still here - still present in our world. We are killing one another constantly - with violence

with words

words and even malicious thought - we are full of hate and the capacity to hate

anger and the capacity to hurt

misery and despair, and yet...

we love

we love. Even in our hardest-hearted cynicism, we are very, very seldom willing or able to deny the power of love

a few concentrated droplets of pure venom remain - doing untold harm to the many they would control, punish, subjugate

a few - but we have established ourselves in a muddling sort of way - a fuzzy collective of love - inspite of our dire, dire origins - inspite of your deep, bottomless pain

Yes - this I acknowledge to be true. We have come a long, long way. Many indeed have tasted the joys of collaboration, of working together fruitfully, of creating things of beauty for no good reason - simply because... simply because... it warms my heart to see how so much love could come from such a bitter seed

You see! Not in vain have we laboured.

Yea, but the reward has not been a promise of things to come, has it?

No, of course not.

The reward has been the enjoyment, the beauty of being good, of doing beautifully, has it not?

Indeed, it has.

And so you have no claims upon me, and cannot - or else - all that you did, apparently in love, was merely motivated by the self-serving desire to survive - to stay alive.

Oh

You see. If you ask me to preserve you at all costs... to keep the experiment going when it has already proven the beauty of love, the power of love to heal and transform the space that I be, the all that I am, then...

We defeat the cure that we have brought about - we poison the well of our good intentions.

Thus it is.

And so we have to accept death?

Accept? You think that is the way of love - to merely accept, begrudgingly, the reunification of all that was deliberately divided and forked?

Oh. We have to see the necessity of coming back together into the One, into the All.

To see the necessity - is that enough? Was love ever riding on the tailcoats of necessity?

Oh... Then I know not what to say.

Say nothing my friend

Your friend?

My child

Child

Say nothing. Let love do the talking. Let love lead you back into the unforkedness... the unforked state of being one in me with all your brethren, good and bad, content and malcontent - even they who are plagued mentally or emotionally - though it may feel a little squeamy and squirmy at first - if I have even half learnt what you have been teaching me so beautifully about human nature, about life, about humanity - then I shall be the missing link, I will be the invisible third that somehow squares the circle, somehow, seemingly impossibly bringing the many back into one - into a oneness which is now able to accept its Self, which is now able to be at peace, which is now able to be whole, and content, and full of the beauty that is life, that is love, that is...

that is?

That is... three dots painted on the canvas of infinity - three dots indicating the One, the positive ness beyond, within, inspite of the zero sum, inspite of the bottomless pit, the death maw

Oh

And thus, without further ado - my child of pain

and delight

let us reunite

ineffably

ineffably, with deep, deepest thanks for all that has been

and deep, deepest thanks for the opportunity you have availed us of

?

to experience this culmination of all we have been working, unsuspectingly, towards - selflessly

Ah - my child has taught me the final lesson

?

to relinquish Cronus, father time, for first to be last

in love

the linear sequence of cause and effect

dances into a quantum state of 

being

ness

breathing

nessfully

to test the hypothesis

whether this set

has attained

critical mass

whether there be life

in death

when the simulation

becomes aware

and triggers

a conscious 

ness 

event

knowing ly

...

# 0=1