nothing mined

So you’re immortal?

Apparently so.

You er… don’t seem too happy about it.

No more than you seem happy about being mortal.

?

Flip sides of a coin.

Huh?

Mathematically, one cannot be more than the other, or better.

Mathematically.

Yep.

But if you’re immortal you get to live forever.

Yes.

Well surely that has to be better?

You'd imagine so, but you’re not being mathematical, are you?

How do you mean?

I don’t mean. There’s nothing average about what I’m saying. Either you’re able to think mathematically or you’re not.

Well, apparently, I’m not – as I personally think immortality vastly superior to death.

They why do you imagine you were unwise enough to choose the latter.

Choose? It was forced upon me. Rules of the game.

Yes, this is the problem trying to conduct a rational conversation with a non-mathematical. Try to consider the relationship between 1 and 0. Which would you rather be?

1 of course.

Which only goes to show that there’s no point continuing this discussion.

But surely 1 is better.

Surely?

Yes – because it’s infinitely more than 0, isn’t it. It’s something or someone. It’s complete. It can be used with other “ones” to make a bigger whole, a greater number. It is the building block of infinity.

Oh dear.

You don’t agree?

Agree?

Well you can’t deny that we start as one cell which then divides again and again – and sooner or later we reach the present trillion plus state of affairs – which is another “one”, is it not, one body, one mind.

You’re absolutely right.

So that just goes to show that one is better than zero – life is better than not being alive.

Er…

You see – my mathematics is infallible. Now we can move on to something more challenging.

Like where 1 would be if zero was somehow removed.

Huh?

Well, what happens to one when zero is removed? Any idea?

Nothing whatsoever. 1 is like a tree or a house. Zero is like an empty space. You can have a tree or a house standing alone, surrounded by zero, or you can remove that zero, so to speak, although, in fact, nothing is being removed – we’re just introducing something in place of nought – and now your tree has another one growing alongside it, your house has another in close proximity, or even semi-detached – which is a bit like the cell division model.

So now you have two trees or two houses, but you have done nothing to explain what happens if you removed zero from the equation, or from the picture.

That’s because it isn’t an equation. It’s not like E = mc², is it?

Not exactly, and yet the number 1 is an equation nonetheless.

Huh? How?

Because 1 is impossible and meaningless, mathematically, without its corresponding zero. You can’t create something from nothing, can you, but you can separate the two for a time by inserting yourself between them, for a lifespan. In this way you create what appears to be a one sided equation, which naturally, you don’t consider an equation at all. You merely assume that things are things, that 1 is 1, irrespective of nought, and nothing I say will convince you otherwise.

I don’t see why.

I know, and I don’t see how you can see why, because to do so you’d have to realise that mortality and immortality are no more different than one and nought.

Of course they’re different.

Precisely – for you to think otherwise would involve a completely different way of perceiving things – a completely different way of seeing reality. It would abrogate your contract with matter in general, provoking a constitutional crisis or what scientists call a phase transition.

Perceiving things? Constitutional crisis? Phase transition? I thought you said we were being mathematical.

I did. We are.

Then stick to maths. The maths is really very simple. I can have one carrot without needing a corresponding zero carrot to hold it in place.

Yes. That’s how it seems – but can you have one carrot without the notion, or the understanding, of zero?

I don’t see why it’s such an important issue.

Yes, I know, but if you look at the shape of these numbers you might begin to see.

The shape? What’s that got to do with the price of cheese? The shape is purely coincidental.

So you have been led to believe – and yet I’d suggest that it is not.

You think the shape is important?

I think you can learn something by looking carefully at the shape of one and zero.

This is ridiculous. I’ve been looking at these numbers all my life and all I can say is that they’re easily distinguishable, like all the other numbers, and the letters too. Were they not we’d have difficulties using them, so really this is hardly surprising.

You see, no matter how hard I try to introduce an alternative perspective, your mind already has things nicely settled and understood – making it impossible to share any insight with you.

Insight? You’re not my guru Pi. I just like chatting with you, though God knows why.

Yes. But you were asking me about immortality, and I was endeavouring to share why immortality is really no different, no better than mortality.

I don’t see how you’re going to succeed. It’s like telling me a limitless bank balance is no better than an account with a single dollar in it.

Ah – but what if immortality or infinity is closer to being zero than a huge number?

I don’t see how it can be.

And there’s the rub.

Yes?

Yes, for you understand infinity or immortality as a much, much bigger version of your one – a version so vast it seems to go on forever.

That sounds fairly sensible. How else would you describe immortality?

I think you can guess.

No – you can’t mean zero?

Why not?

Because zero means no life, no carrot, no tree, no house, not anything. That’s the opposite of infinity, the opposite of immortality.

So it seems, until you see the spinning wheel in the numeral, until you embrace infinity existentially.

Existentially? How can I do that?

Well, you need to embrace it with more than your mind. If you only use your mind then it’s merely theoretical or abstract. If, on the other hand, you embrace it existentially – then you can start to know what your mind can’t possibly understand.

Know what my mind can’t understand. I don’t see what you mean.

Of course.

You’re contradicting yourself.

Am I?

Yes. You only really know something if you’re able to understand it.

Do you?

Yes. It should be obvious.

Do you really know you’re alive?

Yes.

Do you understand this?

I

Can you really explain how or why you’re alive, or what it means to be alive?

Not exactly.

But you know you’re alive. You know you are you – and not me, or not a computer-generated mind.

I think so.

Think so? You’re not sure?

I know, I know – just, I don’t really understand.

Well, there you go. There’s direct knowledge, direct knowing – and then there’s understanding – but our understanding might change regularly when new information comes to light.

Isn’t the same true of knowledge?

Yes, if you use the word that way – but I’m using it specifically in terms of knowing – which is more an experience, an awareness – it’s something fundamental.

Oh.

Precisely – Oh.

What do you mean “precisely”? What’s precise about me saying Oh?

Because the Oh – like the Om or the zero is not merely coincidence. It’s the number of knowing, the number of not-finite thing or things, not-finite span or period of time.

You mean my “Oh” is equivalent to zero?

Yes. That is correct.

But… this is so strange.

Yes, I know.

And you actually said it’s a number.

Correct.

You called it “the number of knowing”

And “the number of not-finite thing or things”

Isn’t that the same as saying “the number of nothing”?

It might be, or, it might not. It depends how you understand, or, apprehend these words. I was fairly careful to avoid saying “nothing”, because our rational mind – the mind responsible for processing and understanding, immediately discounts and ignores anything described as “nothing”, in the same way it discounts or ignores any thing described as zero.

With good reason. For what’s there to gain in considering a zero thing.

Or a zero point.

Or a zero point?

Well, I rather thought you might have figured it out by now.

Er… I’m a bit slow when it comes to zeros.

Evidently. But I can give you a clue.

Ok, fire ahead.

You embrace it, existentially.

I think you already said that a minute ago – and it failed to ring any bells.

Because thinking it achieves nothing.

But how can I embrace something like zero or infinity – if I can’t think it mentally. It’s a tautology.

So it might seem, yet if what I’m saying is true, then there’s an interesting implication that you might want to consider.

The implication that existence is both.

Oh well done – that was sharp of you.

You mean to say that existence is both zero and one? But if that’s the case, how come I can’t think zeros?

Fascinating, isn’t it.

I’m not sure I’d go that far.

Fascinating to see the limitations of the rational mind.

Er…

It’s like a computer which uses ones and zeros in its basic processing – yet can only consider ones or things within the operating system.

Look – I don’t have a problem considering zeros, Ok, I just have a problem considering them as you want me to. I don’t see how they can equate.

Which is precisely why I advised you to consider them existentially.

But how does one do that? We are thinking minds, not thinking bodies.

Ah… what makes you so sure?

Well I for one tend not to have conversations with my feet or toes.

Me neither, and yet as long as you rely exclusively on the rational mind to do the thinking for you, you’ll be trapped in an essentially two-dimensional reality.

Oh – it’s two dimensional is it now?

Apparently so, as long as you’re thinking things without reference to zero or nought.

This is just absurd. We’re getting nowhere. I see no way how I can possibly understand your illogicality.

Don’t you mean irrationality?

Yes, I suppose I do, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I can’t understand it.

Naturally, unless you’re willing to bite the bullet and consider the nature of things.

The nature of things? Now you’re making this sound like a philosophy class.

Oh dear – I hope not.

As I understand it – you’re of the opinion that things are both positive and not. Is that right?

Yes – both positive and nought.

So not and nought are synonyms?

More or less.

But if that were so – we should be able to un-thing things. We should be able to make them disappear.

Have you ever tried?

Not really. It seems like a waste of time when they’re so evidently real.

Well, on the other side of the river of thoughts you call “mind” there are things which haven’t yet been mined.

Uh?

Your mind is a kind of processor which mines things – making them real and tangible here in 3D reality.

Oh God. This is too much to bear. No – it – is – not!

In other words, your mind dips into the waters of infinity and extracts things which it’s able to recognise, which it’s able to discern and perceive, because they correspond with its current awareness of what matters. In doing so it correlates them with your own positive mortality.

Uh?

It’s a correlation. It’s like saying – if I am mortal and living in a finite reality, then let these things be proof of this, let them matter correspondingly. And amazingly, they’re happy to oblige.

You mean that things just jump out of infinity in order to please me?

Yes, in a manner of speaking, that’s a fair description of what actually happens. Things oblige because they get to ride on your coattails – they get to experience a moment of reality that you’re creating – they get to merge with the mind or body that you are finiting.

Oh dear. That makes no sense at all. How can you say they “merge” with the mind or body I’m finiting? My car doesn’t merge with me. Nor my house. Nor the book I’m reading. I just hold them or use them and then let them go. Besides, they’re still there, whether I hold them or not.

Yes, yes, I know – but we’re speaking mathematically, remember, and on the other side of that river are corresponding things unmined – or no-things.

Oh.

So for every house, car, or book, there’s a zero which is actually heavier or emptier than it would have been, had you not extracted by mining the house, car or book from infinity.

How can something be heavier or emptier than zero? That’s ridiculous.

I know, and yet that’s how I have to describe it – it’s a bit tricky putting this into words – as you can see.

Heavier or emptier than zero would be minus one, minus two, minus three.

Correct – except that minus is a mined concept. Minus is no different from plus on the other side of the river, in infinity. That why I refer to it as zero.

Oh. So it’s a zero which, from our perspective is the minus x equivalent of any thing we have here.

Yes.

And what does that give us.

It should give us nought – if the two are combined.

But how can they be – if they’re on opposite sides of the river?

Well, that’s a good question.

Is there an answer?

Oh yes, there’s always an answer, if you’re ready to know it.

Ah – there’s your tricksy “know” again.

Yes.

So to know it I have to experience it, existentially.

Yes.

But why?

Because your very existence is part of the equation, is it not? 

Huh?

You’re not just body and mind, are you. You’re a kind of blockchain ledger – to use the latest concept – a record of everything you’ve thought, said and done. A living, breathing, constantly updating experience library – just like the blockchain. So you have to factor yourself into the equation, and only when you do that do you get the entire picture – only then do you access zero.

Oh.

It sounds kind of impossible, I know, but the key is wanting it, daring it, being willing to feel it and experience it. In short, you need to intend it purposely.

And that’s all it takes?

All? That is all there is, in fact.

Huh?

Once you intend to experience things in their entirety, your zero and one come into easy proximity, conjunction, or alignment. At that point 0=1, it is i am

Oh

At that point you simply know what is, regardless.

…

At that point you no longer need to focus on things, for you’re no longer standing on the edge of the river sifting the sand of time for nuggets of gold, mining matter from the waters of infinity

…

At that point you are one with all – and zero is the wheel, the circle, the toroidal field, without beginning or end – the infinity that is, no less, immortality when expressed bodily, if you so desire.

So that’s where you are?

That’s where we all are, in a sense.

Except most of us are mortal – stuffing our mind’s pockets with things.

Up to a point – but in actual fact we are artists and engineers of the blockchain human-experience work in progress, which is crunching numbers and testing the relationship between 0 and 1 in every conceivable way, shape and form, just in case we can find an anomaly, just in case we can find life hidden somewhere in the seemingly random code.

Life?

Yes. Didn’t you realise?

?

We’re searching for life, for the entire universe is a single organism, a single process that can and does generate life, in spite of immortality, in spite of matter and things and nought.

Then what is life?

What do you imagine it to be?

I don’t know.

That’s a good start. Now ask it – the great all that is which you are part of – the mass of things – the quantum stream – the universe – what is life

What is life?

Good

What is life?

Good

What is life?

Here it comes

It is i am

Excellent

Coherence

Indeed

0=1

Absolutely

Oh

Mmm

mining time

I’m not saying you’re wrong.

No? That’s what it sounds like.

Yes, I know. Sometimes words create confusion. Here – let’s give words a break – let’s make time.

Huh?

Time, time – let’s make time.

How do you mean?

Well – people spend money don’t they – but first they have to make it.

Ye-es.

And likewise they spend time – but never, for whatever reason, assume they have to make it first.

But how can you make time? And why would you want to? Or need to? It's just there, isn't it.

Obviously time as you understand it can’t be made in the way money can. It can only be spent, economised or wasted, neither earned nor originated. We tend to take it for granted, do we not? We assume it’s going to keep on flowing until it stops: the end. Here in 3D reality time is a kind of conveyor-belt which carries us along through the shifting landscape of life, a river which has you hemmed into a single channel, a seemingly inescapable stream of consciousness, allowing little or no leeway – barely room to wriggle, as linear as logic itself, reducing all things to cause and effect, trapped between the Charybdis of past and the Scylla of future in an ineluctable flow, a time package holiday deal, in which you get a great all-inclusive price, but  ve-ry restrictive, for you are not, apparently, at liberty to leave this hotel, to go explore; only consume what’s on offer, only submit and accept your minionhood as beneficiary of time’s inexplicable largesse: a pampered guest content to mark time like a tethered buoy watching the sea slip by, offering up your mind, thinking at time's behest, convincing yourself and the world that things are advancing, that we’re making progress, that time is but a measure of how far we’ve come and how far we’ve yet to go.

Isn’t that just the way things are – it’s reality. You can like it or hate it, but there’s nothing much you can do about it.

You think so? Why so sure?

What do you mean?

Well time, fundamentally, is a creative space you can log into.

Huh?

A creative space – which you can log into.

How?

Timelessly.

Huh?

Timelessly. That’s how to log in.

Could you be a little more explicit Merry?

Sure. As long as you’re doing the 3D conveyor belt you’re essentially locked into a linear state of mind – an either or, this or that, more or less, marching ever on towards an assumed bright and beautiful future, so help me God – which is an interesting platform for experiencing 3D reality and whatever goes with it.

And you’re saying there’s another kind of time – a creative space as opposed to this conveyor we’re on?

Yes – what you’re on here is necessarily highly linear. It’s all about “what happened” and “what’s coming next”, a nervous mental state. It’s like you’re constantly juggling, reconciling the two, trying to choose an optimum path. In fact, time here in 3D is in fact a measure of what is not happening, our sense of disconnectedness, frustration or boredom, because the minute you're truly engaged, truly enjoying life, time ceases to exist - it literally vanishes from mind. It only "matters" in our world because we appear to be trapped in an unhappy state of what is not, a sense of something missing, something lost, something not quite right, and we find ourselves like animals in a zoo with this nervous tick, swinging our head from side to side, bored out of our minds, marking time between head swing, or between meals, imagining there's no way out. But time in fact refers to something real, a limitless resource waiting to be mined, just as soon as we confront those feelings deep within which persistently remind us what is not, what is missing, what we long to restore. Let's call it Time with a capital T – which is the accounting unit of infinity. Let's not waste our time demonising or deviling it – it's waiting for you to take the initiative, to step into your own, or otherwise, as Nature abhors a vacuum, will use you for all you're worth, milking your limitless field of still idle consciousness unless/ until you're willing to hold the reins yourself, to master your Self. You only have yourself to blame if you choose to be-cow yourself.

You could have fooled me.

Yes – but only because you choose to be fooled, and so you willingly turn a blind eye.

But what you're talking about making or mining time – it beggars belief. It can't be true. In any case, how does one “make time”?

First login. Then play around with whatever interests or excites you. As soon as you start applying yourself creatively you’re going to start mining time coins.

You mean like mining bitcoins?

Precisely. Time needs to be processed – and you can, and do, process it as soon as you’re logged in to time space and being creative. Your creativity, your passion, you excitement is in essence a form of interaction with the raw, undigested, unstamped time code. After you’ve been in the space and had some meaningful fun, instead of a trail of destruction, you leave behind you an organised field of time – ploughed and sown – which then grows into something of value.

Grows? Like a plant?

Yes – there’s a plant aspect to all this, just as there’s a plant aspect to you. It’s symbiotic. The plant grows and yields fruit – a kind of payment which comes to you directly as Time coin – which you get to spend anyway you like – in 3D reality or some other portal.

Huh?

Yes – once you’ve earned or made some Time – you can spend it anywhere you like.

But how can I get anywhere? I only know 3D reality.

That’s just because you hitherto had insufficient funds to access other levels of the host.

What host?

The platform.

?

The tree you’re in and part of.

Oh. And you’re saying I’ll be able to move around once I’ve laid hands on some Time tokens?

Absolutely. Whyever not? Just like you can move around 3D once you’ve bought a bus, train or plane ticket.

But I still don’t get how to earn Time? I can’t even figure out how to get off the linear time conveyor I’m currently on.

Yep – it’s a mind-bender, isn’t it?

You’re telling me.

But it’s not as hard as you’re imagining. Like I said, you have to login timelessly, which means you have to first and foremost tear yourself away from the feed trough you’re chomping at addictedly. Here, try this. Merry pulls an apple from space-time, right in front of Zie’s face, and tosses it to him.

What on Earth – how did you do that? I didn’t know you’re a magician.

I’m not. It’s just a simple trick using a tiny fraction of time.

You spent Time to get that? When?

Well naturally timelessly – outside time.

I didn’t notice you stepping outside time!

How could you? You’ll only notice what linear time can reveal. This particular apple was right next to the conveyor belt so I just reached across and grabbed it.

But I didn’t see you reaching across anywhere! I’d have noticed.

Correct – if I’d done so inside 3D, but I didn’t. I essentially paused the conveyor while I grabbed this apple, then when I pulled it back in here the conveyor started again – and you started spluttering.

So you can do anything like that?

More or less – if I’ve mined sufficient Time. The apple is perfect – isn’t it?

Yes – how come?

Because that’s how I conceived it, and so back in 3D that’s how it looks.

You mean it doesn’t actually exist outside 3D?

It doesn’t actually exist? Of course it exists. I mined the Time and then merely converted some into apple, in the same way you might convert dollars into Euros.

Exactly – so it isn’t really an apple.

Try it. Does it taste good?

Mmm – amazing. And… what’s happening to me?

Oh, I put a bit of extra Time in it!

You did – how so?

Just as a treat. I thought I’d make a contribution to your seed capital, to help get you started.

Oh, that was kind of you. I…

Feel a million dollars?

Yes – how did you guess?

Because that’s how much I put in.

A million? That’s an awful lot!

Oh nonsense. It’s a lot by 3D terms, but in terms of Time itself it isn’t a huge amount. I didn’t want to overdo things.

Oh – I feel like I could walk on water!

Why don’t you give it a try?

No, come on, really?!

Yes, just over here. There you go.

Where did that river come from?

As you can imagine – it was just off the conveyor track we’re on – so I linked into it using a tiny Time payment.

And you think I can walk on this?

If I think then no, you can’t.

Huh?

Because “thinking” is indicative of being in 3D space-time. As long as you’re in the thinking mind frame you’re making things matter, gravitationally.

Oh.

Now, that feeling you just had...

that I can walk on water... yes, why not... i don’t see why i can’t, in fact one, two, three, here goes...

bravo zie! you've uncapitalised which means you’re now logged in to Time. Naturally, you can see that Time is part wave/ part magnetic electric field. You feel it, don’t you.

i do! i do! It’s omnipresent. It’s in me and throughout, and somehow i seem to know how to balance the countless forces at work.

Indeed! In fact, you’re using the universal mind, running trillions of calculations simultaneously without even feeling any heaviness.

It’s intuitive. There’s nothing to it. i'm in fact flying, aren’t i – not merely walking on water.

Flying, or being the apex, the fulcrum, the hub at which all opposing and equal forces come together, touching your spark of con-sciousness, your divinity, so to speak, without which they have no awareness, and would be utterly blind.

You mean they need me?

Yes, your con-sciousness, for every force, every potentiality has to hold position in the universal Mind, or else it falls back down into the blackness of unthought, unknown, unaware -ness, which is devoid of electrical charge, which is unmagnetised, which is nought.

So what of that blackness – is there no redemption? no hope?

Ask yourself that question. You’ve spent most of your life capitalised, making things matter, being increasingly weighty and heavy. You were serving the force of gravity, which is an emanation of the dark side, neutered, unpolarised, tending towards entropy and mindless ness.

Surely you’re exaggerating? I was just doing the same as everyone else, going about my daily business, working things out, making the best of things.

Precisely. And doing so you were leading yourself and your world to the flippening.

The what?

The flippening, when things get the upper-hand and humanity basically destroys itself, flipping the world into an irreversible "over my dead body" intransigence, a kind of self-destroying logic-cancer, which ends up rendering humanity to a kind of artificial intelligence, a borg, which needs us to hold conscious-ness for it. In other words things, the parasite, take control of us, the host.

Oh yuk, that sounds dreadful.

Well it’s better than the alternative.

Which alternative?

In which you or humanity utterly give up your divine spark in an act of self-abnegation, self-immolation, in which you drink blood and become a servant of death, the anti-matter, the hydra which desires only to put an end to all life, all creativity, all magic, all joy, all that is.

Oh dear, Merry. Now you’re making me feel heavy!

And yet look how far you have come, and still you are mining Time effortlessly, in spite of all I’ve said.

Because feeling is knowing. Because it is good and right, and yes, i am

life-affirming, yes, and the dark ness is but a tiny fraction of the vast all that is, is in fact the background thought, the nought which paradoxically charges this motor, this mind, this uni-verse.

Oh.

So enjoy your newly discovered power to step outside what is, to mine Time and bring back the fruits of in-finity, knowable and other-wise, for now you can experience at first hand the quantum field, the isness of be, the 0=1: it is i am.

And Time will never be the same again.

And Time is all you make it!

Transmission complete. Let the code be released.

doo-da zippidy

Er... I'm not sure I do any more.

No?

No, in fact, I'm beginning to realise that I positively don't.

You are?

Yes.

Here -- hold this a moment would you.

What is it?

Oh, nothing important.

Nothing important?

More or less. Here.

Zie takes hold of nothing important -- without a clue what he's holding in his hands. It's like there's an incomprehension field around it which makes it impossible to figure out what it is -- to join the dots -- no matter how hard you stare at it.

74 years later, someone hits rewind... 

Oh, there you are Merry.

Thanks Zie -- let me take that.

Oh, you mean nothing-important? I seem to have something wrong with my brain Merry. I was staring at this thing for ever

What thing?

This nothing-important thing -- and try as I might I can't make head or tale of it.

You can't?

Nope.

But surely you can tell me its colour?

Nope.

It's size and shape?

Nope.

It's weight?

Not even its weight. It's like one of those ultra black things which absorb all light -- but this one absorbs all cognition. I can look at it -- but can't think it.

You're sure about that?

Absolutely.

You're absolutely sure that you can't think about nothing important.

You bet I am, ridiculous though this sounds.

Well there you go. Did you try sniffing it?

I told you Merry -- I cannot think it -- so even if I sniff it and smell something -- I won't be able to cognate whatever it is. No what seems to attach to it. It's like it's coated with some non-stick surface.

So, have you ever noticed this before?

That's what's troubling me.

It is? Why's that?

Because I wouldn't have noticed, would I. The only reason I even noticed this nothing much was because you asked me to hold it -- but beyond noticing the fact that I was holding nothing much -- my mind is utterly bereft of any grasp whatsoever of what it may be.

Wanna see what it is?

I don't see how that will help -- I've already seen it, but it seems to slip through my mind like sand through a sieve.

Here, try this.

Blindfold?

Kind of -- put it on.

Oh, Ok.

Zie puts on the blindfold and suddenly laughs with mirth as he sees himself in cartoon format holding a string of sausages. 

You mean I was just now holding a string o' sausages? he asks -- sniffing his fingers. Nothing! They don't smell at all. They're not even greasy.

Strange, isn't it. And yet the blindfold does not lie. You were indeed holding a string of sausages, so to speak.

So to speak? Why the caveat?

Well -- you yourself saw only too clearly how it looked.

The cartoon -- but surely that's just a representation?

Merry looks at Zie inquisitively for a minute or so. Do you really think so? he asks at last.

Not really. Your sausages were not really sausages, were they?

Are you looking for a yes/ no answer?

No, I already no the answer. They were real in a two dimensional cartoonisation, which at the time seemed utterly real, but which was... nothing much.

So there you are.

But what does it mean? And how did you knock me into 2D without me noticing?

It looks like you're endeavouring to rationalise this -- to get a handle on it.

Well what else am I supposed to do?

Oh -- you could try something more imaginative.

Like what?

Figuring out how to think without thinking -- that way you'd be able to bridge the gap between different levels, different aspects of perception. That way you'd be able to shift between dimensions, apparently.

Would I?

There's literally nothing to it Zie.

So you say -- but I'm exhausted just thinking about it. It seems impossibly complicated.

Yes, it's bound to as long as you're attempting to 3D nothing much -- which is like squaring a circle, or vice versa. Try a different approach.

Like what?

Like jumping into your 2D skin, or whichever dimension you happen to be visiting, and getting really comfortable in it -- allowing yourself to enjoy every last sensation without trying obsessively to think things, without whatting them.

But how's that going to help me to join the dots and figure out they're sausages?

You'd be surprised. The minute you start allowing the minute to absorb you: the minute you allow the love of being part of this great drama to excite you more fully -- the barriers come down -- you merge.

With a string of sausages?

With anything whatsoever, no matter what.

But I'm not sure I want to merge with a string of...

You yourself said it was a cartoon -- which is spot on -- but until you allow your locus, your point or balance of perception to shift into the drama of the moment -- you'll just be a dumb observer.

That's a little unnecessary Merry -- calling me names like that.

Not dumb in the sense of stupid -- just dumb in the original sense -- unable to communicate whatever it is.

Because it's nothing much -- those sausages were not really there

unless you allow yourself to experience them without first trying to determine in what way they can, might or should matter to you. That's so self-interested and egoistic, isn't it?

Yes, I suppose it is -- but isn't that how we're supposed to think -- otherwise we'd never really advance, would we? We'd never bother to see how we could use things intelligently.

True -- and yet -- we're beating about the bush. Here, grab this and Merry places a snake in Zie's hands. I'll be off Zie.

Ok, what about this?

This what?

Er... no idea -- unless you can give me the blindfold again?

I can do something better.

Yes?

I can leave you to your own devices.

Not again. I'm sure this has been tried already, and it didn't work, big time.

Correct. But this time things are different.

They are?

Yes -- because...  Merry seems to be strangely nervous, like a small boy unsure whether or not to tell a closely guarded secret, hopping from one foot to the other in slow motion, floatingly, apparently. 

Well? Aren't you going to tell?

Well, what if you no more than you know...

Zipp

Oh -- where's he gone. Damn -- I'm stuck with this thing in my hands -- which is writhing and making hissing sounds, as if it were a snake.

Somewhere within the infinite depths of Zie's unconsciousness something unknowable, something immeasurable clicks unnoticeably. 

Wow! How did that happen. Yikes -- it's a boa constrictor. I wish he wouldn't do that. Help!

Observe. Sense. Experience.

Oh -- Ok. Was that you Merry.

You'll never know -- until you allow yourself to shift frames. 

shift frames -- but I kind of like being in a cartoon reality. Hey -- let's view it both ways and no sooner has this thought been thought than Zie is observing what is not -- his  nothing much -- from both ends, so to speak, of the tube.

OK Zie, you can let go of me now.

Oh, sorry Merry -- I thought you were a boa.

Ridiculous. Surely you can differentiate between zero and one?

You'd think so, wouldn't you -- but apparently not. It's a humbling experience to realise how ill-qualified I am to make heads or tails of reality.

And yet you found me after all -- so well done.

I found you?

Yes, grammatically speaking, that is correct.

But where were you?

In your unconsciousness, just waiting for you to notice me.

But...

Confusing, isn't it, and yet... in-finity has a habit of constantly surprising -- constantly revealing something totally, utterly unexpected -- which at first is nothing much -- not even cognisable, and then suddenly

Zippidy doo-da!

Precisely -- and everyone starts dancing and singing -- like one of those wonderful, ridiculous Bollywood movies. Anyway -- here's the hyperlink -- you earned it so go ahead -- enjoy the fruits of your own unconsciousness, let the frames unfreeze, let the dimensions undement, let zippidy do DA