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The rub.
The what?
Rub... the rub.
Not sure i follow what you’re
trying to say.
Oh, you follow alright Zanzi-bar.
I do?
Oh yes.
I...
Zanzibar’s
lip starts to tremble, ever so slightly.
Oh, you follow alright, Zanussi... always did, despite
your protestations to the contrary.
I...
Zanzibar dabs
his face with a handkerchief – wiping beads of perspiration.
I...
Ay, there's the rub... Hamlet pronounces
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have
shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause...
Correct. You know.
But what came over me, Merry?
Merry?
eM. What came over me? Why did i break out in a cold
sweat. Why did my face start convulsing like...
Infinity, Zan, is no laughing matter.
But – I’m confused. The rub is not the same as infinity,
is it?
No two things are never exactly the same, are they.
Er... I guess not.
The rub is where the passive side of infinity comes into
the action zone, comes online, so to speak.
Oh.
“The rub” is the point of contention – like the strand
where the sea and the land meet in a long line of active contact; friction.
Oh.
The vast preponderance of infinity, or rather all that
is, simply is, upsetting no apple carts, existing undramatically as a left or
right leg does, self-contained and largely complete.
Er...
But somewhere the left and right side have to come
together. Have to, i repeat, for they could never ultimately grow or
exist in isolation.
No?
No, of course not.
But...
One is curving slightly away ad infinitum on one side,
the other, ever so slightly on the other side, complementing, counteracting each
other.
But why?
Why?
Yes, why?
Because infinity is, ultimately, neither.
Huh?
Lacking form or substance.
What?
Not being finite... but just removed, in the zone alongside
you have form and substance which sandwich what might perhaps be infinity, apparently
containing that which can’t really be contained... Enabling the rub.
It sounds like plate tectonics, you know. You have a
subduction zone like the west coast of America where the Pacific plate goes
beneath the continental plate.
Or so they say.
And then you have mid-ocean an upwelling where the ocean
plate expands east and west, 3D printing itself with rising magma on both sides
of the mid-ocean ridge.
Yes, the theory is illuminating even if it isn’t
necessarily correct.
So there’s the rub, is it eM?
Yes, pick your analogy. It’s where the two sides come
together in some kind of contact to reconcile or balance their differences except,
of course, that they’re never really going to succeed.
No? Why not? Why so pessimistic?
Pessimistic? I wouldn’t say that.
But you said they’ll never succeed.
Well, these are words you know. The rub is a process,
like a game or a business enterprise. It isn’t necessarily supposed to achieve
a final outcome.
No?
No. It’s more a point or line of contact between opposing
forces, which exist, as all things do, in opposition to one another.
But why?
Why what?
Why opposition? Why not harmony?
The harmony is there if you want it.
It is?
Yes. But not in the things per se.
No, then where?
In you.
In me?
You, your mind, your heart or your soul. Somewhere in
you.
But why me?
Why? Do you imagine things can exist independently of
you?
Well yes. They do, don’t they? This chair, that table,
the ground beneath us – they’re just there.
Yes, they are, as long as you’re holding the other end of
reality, as long as you’re closing the loop.
Loop? What loop?
Things can’t just exist in a vacuum, can they?
What vacuum? Physical reality is nothing like a vacuum unless
you’re up in space.
Correct, Zanzi-bub. Physical reality is nothing like a vacuum
as long as it is enclosed or contained.
Contained? What need is there for containment? There’s an
entire Earth that seems to do the job well enough.
Yes, it does, I agree, yet that’s only as long as you’re
taking things at face value.
How else would I take them if not at face value?
That’s a good question, Zanzi-bop. You can take them
however you like but there’s still the rub to consider, like it or not.
What bloody rub?! I don’t see any effing rub other than
in your frankly unhinged philosophical speculations.
Yes, that’s understandable. We all have our limitations,
you know. There’s no shame in that, but a concept that was simple and obvious
to William Shakespeare can’t just vanish without a trace. In Shakespeare’s day
they still felt, still saw, still knew that things out there in so called
“objective reality” have to be part of a living system – a biology, so to
speak.
How do you mean?
The same way your physical body, including external parts
of it such as your hair, teeth, nails or skin, also needs to be part of a
living system, a biology. Somewhere in all that congealed stuff there has to be
a spirit or intelligence, or if you prefer we can call it a “conscious-ness”
holding it all together.
Yes, eM, but it doesn’t have to be floating amorphously
in the stuff of various body parts.
No?
No, it can be in the brain which is a kind of law unto
itself, a separate seat of consciousness, or a connection to the cosmic ethereal
consciousness, if you prefer that theory.
Yep. It can be the brain if you like.
In which case the skin and hair, teeth and nails – the
whole body, bar the brain – are merely things or connected components which
neither generate nor experience directly consciousness.
Yep, that’s how the mind prefers to describe it.
And you don’t?
There’s the rub, Zanzi-san. Beyond whatever I think is
something else which can’t really be thought, can’t really be described.
Er...
A pure conscious-ness.
And?
And the rub is the interface between the two.
It is?
Yep. You can deny it. You can ignore it. You can do
whatever you like, but then you end up squashing things into or onto a
conveniently flat or conveniently static plain. You end up positioning yourself
on one side and turning your mind’s back to the rub, which has to be felt as a
friction between opposing states rather than thought into this or that form.
Felt?
Inside you.
In my brain?
Not exactly.
No?
Nope, though the brain can participate, for sure.
Phew, that’s a relief.
Just as long as it doesn’t attempt to control, to
dominate the proceedings.
So, I have to feel the rub with all my body?
Body, heart, soul, energy field, that kind of thing.
How?
The same way you feel a mood.
A mood?
Or a sensation... a vibration... even a pain.
Something vague and unintelligent, you mean.
Yes, that’s right, though it can be specific like a
toothache, or more vague like a depression.
Oh.
But first you need to feel it, to become aware. Otherwise
you’ll spend your entire life trapped in phenomenonity.
Phenomenony-tea?
Nearly, Zanz, nearly. Phenomenon-ity which is focusing on
what materialises just “downstream” on either side of the mid-ocean ridge.
On something real.
Yes, something real, and something you can get your mental
teeth into, so to speak, with a definite shape and form.
Sounds eminently practical, eM.
As indeed it is... eminently.
But?
The phenomena we prefer to experience and study are,
ultimately, no substitute for the rub itself.
No? Why not?
In the same way sex is no substitute for love.
Er...
Actually, the two are supposed to exist or function in
tandem.
In tandem?
Or in parallel.
Hey, make up your mind!
That’s the rub, Zanzi-man.
It is?
Yes, at the rub, at the coalface of conscious-ness, so you
speak, there’s no mind to be made up.
No mind?! Are you insane.
Do I detect resistance to the infinite, Zanzi-took? No
surprise there, is there!
But you can’t always have it both ways, eM: either it’s
fish or foul, either tandem or parallel.
Correct. Either your on the east side of the mid-ocean
ridge heading eastwards towards California and bust, or you’re on t’other side
etc, unless you decide to consciously cultivate your awareness of the ridge
itself, or the place deep below the ridge from whence...
“From whence” eM – surely it should be simply whence they
come?
Or whence they originate?
Yes.
Yes, it should, it phenomenonity such things matter, as
things congealed, things hard boiled, but at the subduction or expansion zone,
or even on the beachy strand, such things are yet ill-decided, ill-determined,
up for grabs, as long as your at the, in the, of the rub.
Well, I personally disagree.
As well you should, your “person” belonging to the jurisdiction,
the realm of phenomenonity. Obliged you are to identify it, to take sides, to emperson.
Yet consider the following as food for rub...
Let them be whipp'd through every market town till they
come to Berwick, from whence they came. — Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 2, 1592
… Sittingbourne, from whence we had a famous pair of
horses … — Jane
Austen, letter, 24 Oct. 1798
… addressed to this place, from whence it will be
forwarded to me … —
Lord Byron, letter, 31 Aug. 1809
Er...
Even Samuel Johnson himself, the renowned lexicographer
who referred to the practice of from-whencing as, I quote, a vitious
mode of speech, himself wrote, if you dare trust his biographer:
There is nothing served about there; neither tea, nor
coffee, nor lemonade, nor anything whatever; and depend upon it, Sir, a man
does not love to go to a place from whence he comes out exactly as he went in — Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell’s
“The Life of Samuel Johnson”, 1791. (merriam-webster.com)
And if I don’t? If I think it was Boswell’s error?
Then you’re doing what any thinking person does and, in
truth, should do...
Namely?
Thinking. Phenomenonning.
Double n?
British English yes. American English one should suffice.
Damn you eM!
Yes, it’s bound to happen on one side, but at least I
know that on t’other side I’ll be redeemed, or understood.
There’s the rub, but at the core you’ll just be a dull
sensation like a toothache.
Touché, Zanzi-wen, very droll.
Droll, but what do you mean by this? Are you saying that
we need to reject phenomena and rest in a constant samadhi state of enlightened
is-ness, where all things are equal?
If you like.
And if I don’t?
Then don’t... Do as you will.
Then to what end is all this endless deliberation on this
rub of yours.
To no end.
Then... I know not what to say
Or think
Exactly. It all seems rather desolate.
As an absence of thought, a lack of phenomena for the
phenomena-mill, yes, I’d agree.
You would? Or you do?
About to
reply
No, don’t say “both”.
I said nothing.
But you were going to.
Was I?
Yes, I think you were.
Ah.
Ah?
There’s the rub.
Damn!
Beep-y-ness,
sensed rather than heard explicitly.
Et tu, Brutus?
Brute.
Ok, Beep, big deal, quit picking hairs.
Actually Suetonius
says Brutus spoke in Greek ‘Kai su, teknon?’ (You too, my son) whereas Plutarch,
says that Caesar died in silence, pulling his toga over his head.
I don’t care. It isn’t important Beep.
I agree, Zanzi-can,
but it's important to recognise that he was not asking 'You too, my son?'
The words 'Kai su' – found in Greek comedy and on mosaics – mean 'Screw you!'
and the 'teknon' ('kid') just makes it fiercer.
Greg
Rowe, The Queen's College, Oxford.
Leave me alone...
As we all
know, the old Greek language doesn’t have anything to do with a modern Greek
language and no Greeks can understand the old one. The only people who do
understand it are Albanians. The etymology of the word KAI SU TEKNON (Kai s’u
te knon)means Cry like you are singing. Kai -Cray SU- like you Te`knon- singing
Shakespeare was in Albania a few times and he maybe understood the Albanian
language.
Lamun
Dardanian, Kosova Albania (https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1156,00.html)
Tell him to go away, eM.
Tell him yourself.
Go away Beep. Avaunt, foul fiend of the nether world.
Beep exits
stage right to the sound of frogs croaking/ stage left to the sound of waves
breaking on a suitably desolate and romantic shore.
Would you all just shut up and leave me be?!
Cries
Zanzibar in despair, tearing his hair and pounding his breast in soul-wracked
anguish.
What is happening?
What is
happening? Reverberating endlessly through the collapsing field of
conscious-ness that hitherto identified itself as Zanzi-bar-none.
Not true. Liar! I never, never identified myself as
Zanzi-bar-none. And I know exactly what you’re trying to do Beep.
You do? Oops.
I’m not here. You sent me hence.
Caught you! I wasn’t born yesterday, Beep.
Zanussi-bar, is everything ok?
Huh?
Is everything ok? You seem to be talking to someone.
I... er. Yes, I mean no. eM, I’m not sure, really.
Well, I don’t wish to intrude if you’re having a moment
all to yourself.
Myself? I’m not talking to my self, eM. I’m not insane, you know.
No one said you are, Zanussi-max. Be not afeard; the
isle is full of noises.
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again. (The Tempest, Act III, Scene II.)
Beautiful. Well done, Zanzi-me.
Epilogue
As Zanzi-not enters a blissful
state of Samadhi; as Rob, the rub,
a splendid cricket somewhere unseen
chirrup-chirrups to his heart’s content
in the summer sun, and you,
best beloved reader and subscriber
to g-nomeportal.ity cease to make things matter inexorably, allowing me, your poet and guide, a brief respite, the opportunity to converse directly without words, anon
0=1
merry a day
2355
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