time back

 

 I’ve been...

 

Oh, you’re back, are you?

 

I...

 

Thought you’d just check in again, did you?

 

I...

 

Yeah, yeah, we know all about you – what you think, what you feel, what you want – officially and secretly

 

You...

 

Yeah, we’re one step ahead, in case you hadn’t noticed

 

In case...

 

In case you hadn’t caught on. But don’t think you can just waltz in after all that’s happened – two, three months later – and start out where you left off.

 

But...

 

Don’t think we’re going to treat your absence as routine

 

Er... but who

 

are we? Who do you think?

 

Er...

 

Who indeed.

 

You’re not?

 

And why wouldn’t we be? Why shouldn’t we? Why are you in such a hurry to deny our very existence even before you’ve given it careful thought.

 

But I didn’t  actually say who you are!

 

Like we said, we’re one step ahead. What you were about to say was already said on our side of the time gradient.

 

Time gradient?

 

Well, it was hardly going to be a straight line, was it, not if you believe Einstein’s nonsense.

 

Einstein’s?

 

Nonsense. He had to add curvature to space and time. Long story. We won’t go into that now.

 

But you seem to agree that time has a gradient.

 

Of course it does. Wheels are not flat unless you lay them on their side.

 

So time is a wheel?

 

More or less.

 

With gradient.

 

Not the sharpest tool in the box, are you?

 

And you happen to be several degrees

 

 

ahead of you.

 

In my future?

 

Ker-ching! The penny hath dropped.

 

Ah, but it’s so

 

Strange, isn’t it. But not half as strange as a multi-dimensional being assuming that reality is flat and that what you see is all that is.

 

Oh, so that’s where you’re coming from.

 

I’m bored. It’s a waste of time expending time on one so dumb. You’re never going to accept or approach the speed of

 

The speed of what?

 

Precisely. Whatever it is that eludes any sentient being treading the wheel of

 

You’re not going to finish that sentence, are you? You assume that just because you know what I’m going to say, that I must be able to read your mind.

 

Do we?

 

We? Why the plural form?

 

Why not?

 

Because

 

The Dao is formless, like all absolute truth.

 

The Dao?

 

Yes. Do you have a problem with this?

 

So you’re the Dao?

 

You see how desperate you are to tick the boxes, to fix, categorise, place the indescribable, almost unknowable truth into thing-form, rather than allowing yourself to experience the direct as-is

 

The direct as-is? And this can actually be experienced, I mean apprehended as is?

 

You’ll never know unless you try.

 

And if I do, will I be any the wiser?

 

You’ll never know unless

 

I try. It’s all so vague and unreadable.

 

Isn’t it so

 

And you’re happy with that?

 

With what?

 

With tenuousity. With the edge of infinity?

 

Shouldn’t we be? Would we be any the happier, any the wiser trying to shove square eggs into round egg cups?

 

Oh, I see.

 

Beautiful. Now be

 

Be wha...

 

at peace

 

Oh

 

Be 

 

Oh

 

Comfortably

 

 

0=1

the wheel turneth as-when

things

are no longer thought-known