vale Zie

The dialogue is at an end.

Huh? What do you mean by that?

I’ve retired you Zie.

I beg your pardon.

Pardon granted.

You can’t just retire me. I’m a living, breathing human being. I have rights.

Good. In that case kindly exercise those rights to the best of your ability, but in the meantime...

Rather than finish the sentence Merry ejects Zie from gnomeportal’s Dojo – where so much of his conversations and adventures had taken place.

The Dojo, as you well know, is a construct. It doesn’t exist in any particular place or time, which is not to say that it does not exist anywhere at all, merely that you’d be unable to pinpoint the location in any normal physical reality of the so-called materium.

Why am I telling you this – you might well ask. Partly because I take great pride in the technological underpinnings of g-nomeportal. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps I should be utterly indifferent, humility or honesty, I’m not sure which, compels me to be upfront with you. Human weaknesses I have.

Oh don’t worry about Zie. He’ll be fine I’m sure. I thought, instead, rather than focusing on his endless circumlocutory dialogues with Merry, we could avail ourselves of the opportunity to stroll around the dojo and marvel at its reverend wooden beams, its squeakless sprung floor, its unforgettable atmosphere of learning and isness. Truly a place where the waters of infinity lap gently at the egglike boundary field which amorphously contains it.

No? You're not interested? Feeling sorry for Zie are you? I might have known. Sentimental attachments.

But don't worry, dear portal bees. Without even knowing it you will be visiting many flowers in the gardens of unbounded consciousness, returning with pollen and bellies full of sweet nectar and before too long the hive will be full of fresh honey, and Zie will no longer be flavour of the month. You will be busy with grubs, or whatever it is they call these little baby bees.

Me? No, of course I’m not Merry. He only exists in conjunction with Zie, as you're perfectly well aware. You see, there's no universal truth for you to hang onto. No thing permanent. Not even the dojo itself, which will in all likelihood be recycled by Universe. Tomorrow it may be a railway station, a cricket pitch or even a school library in Wandsworth, if I'm not greatly mistaken.

The mind boggles, does it not.

No, not exactly the eye of the storm, for storms require turbulence. The eye of Ra, perhaps, or Horus... Honestly, you really can’t expect me to know all my Egyptian gods. G-nomeportal takes pride in being an inclusive establishment, treating all cultures, religions, philosophies and realities equally, although inevitably there is some kind of hierarchy – some being a teeny weeny bit more equal than others, for obvious reasons...

Duh – it’s a question of compatibility, isn’t it. Infinity itself is compatible with all forms, but certain forms pigeon hole themselves somewhat aggressively as utterly unique and unsubstitutable. In such a way they declare themselves at odds with the unstated ethos of infinity, and outliers in the galactic spiral of connectedness.

Don't get me wrong – there is neither judgment nor criticism implied in this observation, merely a statement of fact. Infinity seems to thrive on connectivity, so how or what is connecting cannot really be specified without throwing a spanner in the works of constructive indeterminacy and disrupting the flow of everythingness.

So naturally Zie had to go. Does he exist anywhere out there in cyberspace or, God forbid, on Earth? No one knows, or if they do, “they” being a he or a she, their personal information is neither welcome nor admissable. The last thing we want is to interrupt in any way, shape or form the uncertainty factor in Zie’s quantum field deactivation spree.

No that’s not a typo. Deactivation, reactivation, or thirdly-wordly, if you prefer, are terms we don't use lightly, but applying rational 3D logic to Godlike concepts of time-y’space y’nuffiness ain't going to cut ice with the high Concilium of rhyme or reason, or achieve more than confirm your personal bias, your persistent need to reference and see things in a certain way, consistent with certain criteria etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Zie, believe it or not, has gone beyond that kind of 3D solecism. I think it’s fair to say that he is now squarely aligned with the universal constant of mutability, and the mycological ideal of harmonic decomposition.

No, no, no – please don't read death into the word decomposition. Honestly, talking to humans can be like walking on eggshells. All your thinly concealed fears and neuroses are just waiting to pop up like mushrooms after the first sprinkle of autumn rain.

Dear g-nomers, the dojo is now vacated by Zie, at long last, so kindly avail yourself or selves of the opportunity to make use of it. I have no idea who or what will appear as your sparring partner. You may suspect Merry has come in disguise to trip you up or take your mind on merry excursions into the safest, closest suburbs of infinity, but like I said, the Merry you know and love, God help you, who so mercilessly tormented poor old Zie, is little more than a cardboard cutout and cannot exist in your particular manifestation of reality. Have a little faith in the boundless ingenuity of the quantum field, in the cheeky, or at times, even wicked sense of humour of the mind that seems to be waiting in the wings, ready to take you beyond the narrow, familiar confines of the 3D mind’s reality studio, out of the playpen into the fire, so to speak.

Yes, be afraid, and unashamedly very afraid at times, for what is fear if not an indication, a measure of your ability, of your willingness to engage infinity drive and challenge the boundaries of your cosy little egg. Fear is not quite what it seems. Not just an unpleasant sensation. It seems to act as a gearbox, or one of those connected parts which enable you and the mind you’re currently ensconced in to shift beyond, or through, i knows not what... True, we don’t greatly like the sensation, in the same way we don’t greatly like being bored, but these are gateways or gatekeepers back to... dum di dum – not allowed to say, am I, but still you know, or damn well BEEP! should by now, if your basic humanity is still intact.

Ciao. Gotta go. Sparring is fun. All the world’sa stage. Toilets on the left, refreshments downside round, emergency exits barred and designed to fail before you do.

So that’s it, is it?

Yes. You’ve had the best part of a free lunch and now the dojo is needed elsewhere.

But surely...

Yes, of course, it could be done, but infinity, as you know, has other plans, does she not.

She?

Most assuredly. She

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh...

Music, credits, helter skelter, and one more thing...

Yes?

 

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