the green room

 

Professor Etheldween? You're pulling my leg right?

 

No Morg, I'm absolutely not.

 

Hey cut that out. I’m emphatically not Morg.

 

Sorry Ghana, it was a typo.

 

Nor am I Ghana. Would you quit fooling around. It's bad enough that you’ve Morgan’d me, without the added indignity of being reduced to a third world African state.

 

Third world African state? You should be honoured by an association with Mighty Ghana, but if you don't get it, if you're lost in a world of division and spite, we’ll just have to hold our nose and leave it at that.

 

Kindly do so, and while you’re at it, a little basic respect would do wonders for your likeability and success at communicating your crucial message.

 

Crucial message? Er...

 

Just sayin. You can twit around all you like, if you so need, but you seem to be a master at shooting yourself in the proverbial foot.

 

Well, Greeta, you certainly have a lot to say for yourself today. It looks like Professor Etheldween isn't going to get a word in edgeways.

 

Frankly, Jimmy, I don't really believe in this Engledweeb of yours.

 

More’s the pity Morgan but, be that as it may, he’s speaking today in G-nome’s Green Room.

 

No way! In the Green Room?

 

You heard.

 

And unless you want to miss the opportunity of visiting what has often been described as the Holy of Holies at G-nomeportal, you’re going to have to swallow your anger and pride and meekly attend on his Eminence.

 

His Eminence?

 

Well yes, he’s one of the seven, isn't he.

 

One of the seven portal mage’s? You're kidding. I thought they all bore tree titles.

 

As, indeed they do. Professor Etheldween is Ash, but today he’s appearing in a different capacity, as a master of thought, not a mage of the Rood.

 

Oh... I see. Why is this always so...

 

Complicated?

 

Yes.

 

It's only complicated to the rational mind. Infinity is actually incredibly simple once you’re ready to accept its basic nature.

 

Nature? I thought it was a number, or something that can’t be quantified.

 

As it is on the left or right side of things, but elsewhere it's more a mood, an essence or, in some respects, an entity.

 

Yikes. An entity?

 

Well isn't that what you are?

 

Er, I guess so.

 

You could hardly expect it to be any less than you, could you?

 

I suppose not.

 

So, it’s only as complicated as the extent to which you seek or need to box or label it, thereby reducing it to something manageable for your pretty little rational mind. The minute you're willing to as-is it...

 

?

 

To take it as it is, that's when it becomes, or starts to become childishly simple.

 

Er... Very interesting Jamaiz, but shouldn't we be on our way if we’re due to attend this lecture. It starts at sundown, doesn’t it?

 

Don’t worry, I took the liberty.

 

Huh?

 

I took the liberty of attending us already.

 

?

 

We’ve been there ever since it starts, an hour ago.

 

Starts?

 

It’s a timey-wimey feature, Gorgon.

 

M not G, you swine!

 

Do excuse me, Organ-M! Names have the habit of dephasing and squirling as we approach infinity.

 

Ok, if that's what it is. So if we've been there at the lecture for an hour already how do we tune into our other ness?

 

Good question. Try this.

 

A fish?

 

Put it in your mouth.

 

Do I have to?

 

No, not if you know a better way, but this will certainly work, and fast.

 

Oh, but it looks so...

 

It’s a narka. That's what they look like until you've plugged in.

 

Here goes.

 

Morgan le Fay places the narka in her mouth which instantly silver-lines her insides, top to bottom, tipping the balance of things onto the infinitely slippery, zero friction side of Um. The reality she was occupying is instantly reassigned to a narka colony of the Pink Dolphin Nebula, leaving Morgan free to slide into another spiral branch of infinity.

 

***********************************************************

 

 

 

Ah Morgana, there you are. We were expecting you.

 

Professor Engledweeb.

 

Ah hem, it’s actually Etheldween, but don't worry, we shall overlook your solecism.

 

My apologies grand master.

 

“Your Eminence” will do, or here in the Green Room, among friends you may call me Jock.

 

Jock?! Giggling

 

Yes, but be sure to readjust your dweeb transducer – you’re still in stuff-n-bother 3D phase, aren't you?

 

Morgana makes this adjustment and immediately sees Jock in his true light, sensing the numerical significance of his unassuming name, evidently a play on the relationship between Pi and the golden ratio, evidently a shout out to Scottish ancestry, a name that subtly wrong-foots the intransigent self-importance of reality.

 

My apologies Jock, I made a rather foolish entrée.

 

Not to worry Morgana. Le Fays are known for their gaffs yet remain, nonetheless, highly valued members of the G-nome community. In fact, infinity, as all of you know, thrives upon occasional indiscretions, or apparent...

 

Cock ups!

 

Well thank you, Master Travers.

 

Squiddly bloops!

 

Indeed, Hannah Quey.

 

Er... Er... 27s

 

Indeed, Lord Lookfoot.

 

Morgana glances round and now, in Phurry phase, sees the large crowd assembled to hear Etheldween talk. Far from being daunted she feels entirely at home in this setting, after all, le Fays have always taken such matters in their stride, have they not?

 

“So without further ado, I’d like to call this assembly to iffly-ness,” announces Stellar Swine, Mistress of the moment, and warmly welcome our speaker today, a man who needs no introduction, our very own, utterly incomprehensible yet always highly entertaining Edwin Etheldween of the Ash grove.

 

Polite tapping of feet and hear-hear-ing.

 

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to... Etheldween begins speaking in a murmerous voice, weaving a web of words which, like sea snakes, coil and move in the air above the heads of the audience. This is an experience beyond the rationality of flat-screen comprehension. It unravels the basic assumptions of who or what each of the attendees is or might be. One by one they dis-en-me/ are dis-en-me-ed by Jock’s meek and unassuming speech until the entire assembly shifts into the wavy line, snakey phase of Essy-ness, leaving only a token aspect of self sitting on the chair, a place marker, nothing more. The real lecture is more a dance, a murmur of starlings flying round, a snakey swarm in the air, a meeting of kindred souls in qufie’s endless here-y-now. Le Fay, at first, resists the lure, wanting to observe all from her body-mind but she too allows Jock, the Green Room and iffly-nuff to work their magic, slipping into the not-whatness of Is. The snakey dragons are now a fully-fledged singularity, even as Jock drones on...

 

The quantum field, as you all know, is not a here or there. It cannot be pinned down or controlled any more than infinity itself. Simply stated – it is i am...

 

Huh?

 

It is i am...

 

But...

 

It is i... the dancing dragon ring is frozen in expectancy, awaiting completion, its culmination still unvoiced, unresolved, the pregnant um of am.

Indeed – the am will not be suppressed, will not be denied, the am that rises up from the depths of infinity as am-ma the mother force, the very same amma that births all that is living, all that is...

In another quadrant of infinity Etheldween continues as a walrus perched on an ice floe.

In your body, in 3D, you gaze at a rock, inert, a thing, and your rationality tells you what it is – a rock – you think automatically, a rock, a thing, a rock, before you can prevent yourself. Thus is 3D reality – a constant assertion of what is what, without which things would cease to matter, things would cease, believe it or not, to be things. Qufie, on the other hand, neither denies nor affirms the rock as rock, neither ignores nor fixates the 3D version that rock be-eth rock, otherly. Qufie it is i am’s to infinity, beyond speed of thought, beyond doubt, beyond belief, accepting, exploring, evaluating the isness of be, the totality of rock is if i am, as equally i am if rock is, for anything less, anything else would be to deny the totality, deny the basic ness, the fundamental relationship between one thing and is as opposed to an other, to take as proof of pudding the fig leaf scarcely concealing infinity, thereby ignoring, disingenuously, the Shiva to your Brahma, the absence to your certitude, the is to your what.

 

A rock?

 

“But I’m not a thing” you may be thinking, you may indeed, and that too is part of the totality, a mildly disconcerting discombobulation, an awareness of separateness, which howsoever true does not, cannot preclude an other, an underlying unity, the oneness, an isness of be...

 

Observe the words – their cymatics dancing through iterations of is, geometries leaping unexpectedly from disorder while the collective unconsciousness of our audience dances at the very edge of matter, the coal face of meaning itself, chiselling away, feeling the rock yielding to the axe of is-fulness (for want of a better expression), revealing blow by blow the tortuously slow emergence of a David, the genius of a Michelangelo, from a formless lump.

 

Yes indeed, the power of creation, a new master spark, star in a jar, a new universe in the offing, is a consummation devoutly to be wished, readily to be achieved, as soon as I is willing to engage, to roll or flow with the totality of am, releasing the matter of time-bound-thing, an endless quest for verification, to nought, without presuming, forbearing relying on the conveniently linear contrivance of absurdly uni-directional time. Here, observe our dragon ring spinning both ways simultaneously – it is evolving into i am – i am decaying to it is; big bang and entropy: matter, spirit, passion and an age of Kali where the beast consumes itself, thus clearing the board, thus releasing the tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nought.

 

Observe, here in our hallowed halls of G-nomeportal, the simplest relationship, the Petra on which the Church of State, the state of matter is founded. Each of us a trillion rocks, maybe more, each of us atoms, tiny things, mere carriers, an infinitesimal packet of space-matter-time, and yet, at the other end a me, confused, without a doubt, bedraggled perhaps, but a me nonetheless. And now, star in the jar these two data points – allow the basic light of awareness to connect the dots, and reveal the infinite paradox that each of us comprises, the double helix, the mobius strip that we be, and what have you?

 

Chaos!

 

Insanity!

 

Music!

 

Light!

 

Death!

 

Ave Maria!

 

Magic!

 

Pain!

 

These, dear dragons awakening, wave-forms y’making... these and words without end, words, and worlds nestling in the folds of almost-matter and all be meaning, rocks waiting, looking for spirited beings, awaiting Spirit worthy to tame its heavy-ness with fire and light, to temper its gloom with joy and incandescent gaiety.

 

Ah, matter! The mother awaiting a child, awaiting time’s turning tide, as life flows back and round her headland, into the bay, washing up on a beach, reaching into the furthest rock pools teeming with life, separated from All until the tide, until the ocean returns, to drown once again in her isness.

 

As Etheldween’s pitter patter flow of words reaches an undisclosed bend in the road, the Green Room itself seems to take over, while our gentle speaker allows infinity to subsume even himself into its all-full-ness... till nought remains – a slither infinitely thin, the narrowest disk, humming silently in the darkness, shimmering blackly, hovering, a ufo, hinting of light at the blackest gates of dawn, as all the attendees coalesce into the grandeur of nought, the worm itself, ouroboros, spinning at the very speed it would consume itself, unable to more or less its utter absence of deviations or differences...

 

A b b a

 

?

 

A b b a

 

?

 

A b b a

 

A voiceless voice, a wordless word, and before you can say dawns-a-new-day a pulsating, syncopated b  b-b  b, or else the more Beethovian d d-d d, if you prefer, soundeth through the vast echo chamber of iffly-nuff, and by that primal beat, drum unseen, the power of things unleashed, once more into the electromagnetic mothery-ness of a new day.

 

Etheldween, at this particular moment looking suspiciously like Morgan le Fay’s crimped hair with a few stars tossed in concludes:

 

And thus, dear All and One, we celebrate our unique role in the be and end all, as keepers, as guardians of the twelfth, the end and beginning again, through  darkness of the soul’s retreat into Petra, the very rock itself, upon which our venerable g-nomeportal in fact rests, as thus it is, as thus evidently i a...

 

Here! Here! Here... All present and correct, all fully restored to that physicality we so dutifully wear, a skin or body of things fully integrated with our very beingness, it is i am, until we see fit to dis-en-finite, to finally call matter’s bluff in the Green Room with Etheldween, or on the biblical mountaintop, or in a moment of sublime...

 

Stop pulling my hair!

 

****************************************************************************

 

Can't for the life of me imagine why he ended with a b flat.

 

B flat? It was C sharp.

 

Guys, what's wrong with you, it was a Pythagorean zeta quan.

 

Er...

 

It’s the narka, Gorman, you'd better remove it. Here, drink this. Hands her a vial.

 

Euw! That’s gross!

 

But the narka fish disentangles itself from Romanag’s body-mind and slips silently back into iffly-nuff.

 

The end? Things are back to normal again?

 

I guess so, Morgie.

 

Oh for Pete’s sake James – isn’t it time you…

 

Morgan stares in horror as James appears to be frozen on screen – only there’s no apparent screen – they’re walking towards the local park – or were.

 

God, what am I supposed to do? This can’t be real… It’s er…

 

Morgie feels it before it reaches her – in the pit of her stomach – as this lurching sensation, as Time definitely fails to provide the unidirectionality it was hitherto always wont to do.

 

Help – I can’t move! Is her first thought.

 

Fun isn’t it – she hears James’ thought as clear as day.

 

Fun? You’ve gotta be kidding. It’s the final straw.

 

Absolutely. Time to quit yabbering and act, instead.

 

Act? When everything appears to be frozen on screen.

 

Absolutely. It is I am – poetry in motion – a living word – a disk of irreducible isness… and suddenly James is free, released from the bondage of Time – fully reconciled with the world around.

 

Hey – how are you doing that, James?

 

I dunno. How are we communicating voicelessly? We just are. I guess you’ve gotta accept the simple truth – the Petra – the rock that is I am. That seems to be the linchpin.

 

The rock? But rocks can’t move.

 

I know. It’s bizarre isn’t it – but watch me go…

 

James whizzes around – like an energy field in motion, a ufo, an...

 

I wanna wake up. This is horrible.

 

And you call yourself a le Fay, Morgana?

 

I… her eyes spark, fire in the soul erupts like lava – and there you have it, there you are – system integration now complete flashes on a screen somewhere in iffly-nuff while Morgana finds herself inundated with data released, memories and a horrendous in-tray, jobs half-done urgently requiring attention. She’s bewildered by the scale of this enterprise, this undertaking.

 

Morgana, peace. Leave it to them.

 

To who?

 

m

 

Huh?

 

To whom?

 

Ok, ok… to whom?

 

Well, they have many names.

 

Try me.

 

Angels.

 

Oh God.

 

Gnomiki.

 

No.

 

Tachyons.

 

Now you’re talking! Suddenly she feels them moving in – these Tachyons – buzzing around, if buzzing’s the right word – which it ain’t – and through her All, bringing some semblance of relief and order to her raggedy ness, her gaps as yet unfilled..

Come on, system integration’s a big deal. They’ll be wanting to welcome you back.

 

They?

 

Who else – the seven mages – Oak, Ash, Thorn…

 

Oh my God, this is… redacted Please don’t tell me I’ll need to insert another narka. I’m not sure I can face it. Not now. Not today.

 

No... System integration means you’re now rock solid. Feel your Petra. Take it from there.

 

I won’t say what happens next, dear reader. Each of you has access codes – if and when you’re ready to reintegrate, at which point we’ll have something further to discuss. Until that happens, until then-y-now, adios, confreres, consoeurs. There’s simple truth, no more than a rock or a stone, that just happens to house all the code needed to complete the universe, 0=1, or your connection to it – waiting to be discovered, waiting to be stumbled upon, rejected at first, perhaps, resisted vehemently, and finally, sooner or later, when the game is up and nothing remains, by the grace of God – embraced with tears of joy, with gratitude and a thumbs up from old Englehump – or Etheldween himself – if I be not greatly mistaken.

 

 

if 0=1
it is i am
tachyons n’all