Wednesday, December 18, 2024

in which Alt and Stan discuss the atomic nature of things

 

It’s an interface.

 

Ok, then what’s the problem?

 

No problem at all. The interface does what interfaces do, but that’s all.

 

You mean...

 

Yes, it can only give you access to what you’ve already got. It can’t generate anything that doesn’t yet exist.

 

But surely everything exists in some shape or form.

 

Yes, but what’s that to you? You can’t just access anything you like unless you’ve established yourself in university.

 

University? Like the universal form of whatever i be?

 

Yep.

 

And once done what do i get? What do i have?

 

You get this...

 

Alt flicks a switch – the atoms in his body realign and hey presto...

 

Hey... Your non-atomic!

 

Correct. Neither are you when you engage infinity drive.

 

But, that doesn’t make sense

 

And atoms do?

 

Of course they do. They have mass and energy.

 

Yep, but what are they based on? What holds them together?

 

Forces.

 

Yep, and those forces?

 

They just are. They simply exit.

 

Is that so?

 

Well what else can be the explanation?

 

i hate to disappoint you Stan but “they simply exist” is not an explanation.

 

No?

 

It’s a bland statement of fact which has reached the limit of what physical matter can possibly describe.

 

So you think you can do better?

 

Well i can’t possibly do any worse, can i?

 

Look, do you have anything constructive to say?

 

I might, if you’re willing to examine the basis.

 

What basis?

 

The basis of anything: physical or otherwise.

 

Er...

 

What’s holding me together?

 

No idea. You’re opaque.

 

Correct. I’m zero summed.

 

Nope. You lost me there.

 

You are the counterweight to everything in existence, the entire universe.

 

I am? That sounds like an awful lot of weight.

 

Which is why you’re always part of what you’re observing.

 

Ok.

 

Unless you decide to base out.

 

And then what?

 

And then you’re mortal.

 

What?!

 

When you base out you’re finally mortal.

 

How is that possible?

 

Because you and the universe are now in direct play

 

Ah! Without full stops?

 

Yep

 

So, at any moment you can meet your totality and cancel out.

 

Yes, that’s what happens when you base out. You return to the basis which is...

 

Nothing?

 

In a manner of speaking, yes. Nothing, however, is itself a thing which is not baseless.

 

Then what?

 

The base pair, neither chalk nor cheese, that kind of thing.

 

Nice experience?

 

You could say.

 

Could? But you don’t want to?

 

Things being things, how can i? Do you want see what your “nice experience” feels like from the perspective of base pair?

 

Er... Is it going to hurt?

 

Does an atomic ripple hurt?

 

No idea.

 

Put your hand on my left shoulder. Ok. Now here we are. Try to relax... Here’s your “nice experience” as a direct input.

 

I...

 

Every atom in the vast field of star dust constituting Stan is suddenly sorted into opposing camps – sheep and goats. This is not in any way a “good” or “bad” division – not in the least – more a sudden realisation that the base pairs are not, in fact, remotely connected. The very idea that there is or could be any commonality between them at this moment is painfully and patently absurd. Chalk and cheese are infinitely closer related, which begs the question, how we ever assumed or presumed to be human forms bearing some kind of coherent, intrinsic unity? How this could ever have been pulled off? What was the fudging agent that papered over the ever-expanding Mandelbrot cracks in the base pair-ology of existence.

 

My god!

 

Yep!

 

No really... dear god! how? how?

 

Miracle, isn’t it!

 

Miracle is more than an understatement of fact. It’s like assembling bits and pieces from a bric-a-brac sale and  somehow persuading them to assume a living breathing identity on the one hand, while on the other...

 

On the other becoming a series of atomic reconfigurations such as an aeroplane that actually flies, a mobile phone with complete functionality, an iron, a mahogany wardrobe in Edwardian Britain, somewhere in the vicinity of Earl’s Court Station and a typewriter with a faulty misaligned “p”, just waiting to be detected in a crime novel.

 

Ah, you but scratch the surface, yet already you see and feel the appalling, extraordinary interconnectedness of things and being-ness.

 

But...

 

Yep. There’s the rub as Billy puts it.

 

The rub?

 

The very same... for who would bear the whips and scorns of time

 

th'oppressor's wrong

 

the proud man's contumely

 

the pangs of dispriz'd love

 

the law's delay

 

the insolence of office

 

and the spurns that patient merit of th'unworthy takes

 

when he himself might his quietus make

 

with a bare bodkin?

 

In other words, we are willing to endure hell because somewhere deep within we’re aware of something else

 

Uh huh

 

Something so outlandish, so impossible yet irrefutable...

 

Uh huh

 

That we’re willing to accept almost anything that life throws at us because...

 

Yes?

 

Because we are deep within utterly gobsmacked, utterly blown away, utterly confounded by the fact that life itself

 

And things

 

And things, whatever they might be – life’s companionable corollary, its alter-id – that things in no lesser measure enable us to continue experiencing this utterly life-like experience of being part of an all-encompassing unity

 

a Field?

 

a oneness of pleasure and pain, of love and its dismal opposite; of journey, story, waking dream and broken dreary functionality...

 

Ah yes... wondrous to experience as long as breath there be in this our living frame of bio-thing-y-ness.

 

Indeed.

 

So all the world’s a stage

 

And every word a bitter-sweet indulgent fond n’ foolish means to skip o’er the base pairology of things

 

n' being

 

the neither here nor there

 

and never twain shall meet...

 

Break

 

So how do you, a non-atomic reconcile the irreconcilable?

 

How does life itself well up from the cracks in the pavement, or through the heavy thingedness of asphalt?

 

No, but seriously... Me thinks i’d go out of my mind feeling the base pairs constantly, your university.

 

Ah... Until a god steps into the breach

 

A god?

 

Or god, if you prefer, and does as only god can and does

 

aweaving life

 

alluring her

 

who?

 

Her

 

you mean love?

 

who else?!

 

Luring love herself into his bric-a-brac world of neither random nor haphazard things

 

As a poet lures beauty or truth into his pro forma fabric of words

 

Ah me – tis indeed so

 

And thus ever and anon

 

we ride upon the comet’s trail

 

the coat tail of infinity

 

And meaning, mean a lesser expression of all we would be ineffably

 

were not we stuck between

 

the base pairs of sigh

 

a rock

 

a dream

 

a refusal to oh

 

to... indeed

 

 

0=1

enuffity

 

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