In a universe in which everything is connected to everything else, in which everything is relative to everything else, in which nothing can be considered more or less relevant than anything else, which operates with indifference to our many impositions upon it, which then again provides us with infinite preoccupations within it, it becomes impossible to decide upon, to reflect upon, to concentrate upon, one particular web. And so, with this in mind, (whatever that may be), let us agree that there are opposite and linear realities wherein the nature of things is conically reflected back in upon itself and everything is bound up within the notion that time is but an arbitrary sectioning of reality. Post-modern nomad druids came to the glade in the woods and were ambushed by the realisation that what we have thus far come to realise is that what we realise we already knew in the first place. I wanted to assimilate all the world’s countries in harmony and peace, but peace is a part of something, as in a piece of pie, and pie is the circumference of a circle to a circle’s diameter, and a circle is a ring, and a phone rings, so how was I to resolve the relationship between the ringing of a phone and the assimilation of harmony and peace?
Realisation came crashing through the window like the shock in the passing of the sage extract, neatly packed in a compact chillum, reality becomes an infinite tunnel of luminous cubes and circuits, and ah, yes, we live in a magical universe…as above so below, as in so out, as there, so here. Time shoots past laughing from inside the muddy windows of a speeding train, where an old man sits plucking insects from the webs of dogmatism. The animal makes dew-trails in the grass, spelling out its name in the movements of a morning’s activity. There is no good, there is no evil, there is simply existence.
A spirit met a spirit in the tying of elusive sensations, in a brief and pounding instant that slipped from the progressive falsehood of the stream of events and became a universe unto itself. Hummingbirds danced in the empty house of the staring in at us…danced the religion of the heretics in empathetic love for the experience of the ever circling love that was the prefix, the suffix, and the charcoal of the concept.
Enthusiasm straggles through the floorboards of the inspired eye contact erratic happenings short fuse in the nevermind clock bound to the fix spliff in the once remembered hills come together in the dark wood in the middle of the journey that brought them together, emancipated, free, and I said what about the twenty-first century and how do we address these modern concerns of ours? But the country was brought backstage during the interval and when it reemerged in a cloud of smoke it was a mess of universal themes and McChicken burgers. Can we see God in a happy meal? What are the great issues of our day? Why do flocks of birds appear to move and function so much like shoals of fish? Who teaches a bird how to build a nest? Did Jif change to Cif because Ulay changed to Olay? If you ate yourself, would you double in size, or disappear? So many possibilities all churned up together in one ever-moving and incomprehensible jungle of contradiction. My Reason screamed for something salutary and after a time came to the great wall of a city. Columns towered up before me, great black ravens soared overhead. Dust swirled and blustered in the dry heat. Gargoyles emerged from sequences in the masonry, petrified prisoners clawed their way across intricate reliefs, curling around pillars and gateways. Great feet of sandstone conquering monoliths stamping down in tubular formation rigid blocks staunch in the completeness of their presence.
I had come to a door.
Towers rose and rose then came down with incredible pressure on streets hewn out of the bedrock. My eyes moved to obelisks and hexagons. The echoes of every movement, of my feet on the gritty surface and my breath and my heart reverberated ceaselessly from allies and long sharp precise incisions in the stone, cut smooth. I thought yes, one and one make two. One and two make three.
Architects conceive massive pyramidal structures emanating from the crags of quarries and cliff faces. Priests stood in awe at the glory of God in the evidence of man’s creation. The taste of stone bores its way down the throats of initiated masons. Crystals form perfect patterns in scattering on the table we call salt segmented octagons sliding in and out of pentagons, and an architect realises that in a cathedral music can seize control in golden mean harmonies that could be used to please the eye with marble notes realised.
A man, sitting in the sun, notices the line of the horizon, the symmetry in a leaf, how two of one thing can also be one half of another, take his first step out on a spider’s web, draws a line in the dust and beholds a triangle.
Everything has a frequency at which it will dissolve.
The sun and moon can be used to divide our lives.
One and one make two. One and three make four. Two and three make five. Everything seemed solid and easy. Tangible; palpable, concrete; logical; objective. There is a definite order to things on which we can rely.
I was drawn to this system, lured by the simple order of progression that made everything related to everything else by virtue of a certain set of rules. One thing was also everything else to everything and all came together in a beautifully constructed grid, each section of which held up in its own way the faultless, detailed, design.
Sense of my place as a definite being came upon me. And I thought, there are passages down the nature of things through which one can travel, via the comprehension and utilisation of this system, mathematics. I walked for two hours around the monuments and pillars, secure in every observation I made. The three-dimensional form of the pyramid took shape on the edge of buildings, dense perfection at the confluence of Wall. I could see how the patterns in my hand, and the ripples in sand, all pointed to messages of a sort, telling of this wonderful yet so simple perspective on things. The movements of people could be predicted. The form of a snowflake was a mathematical design. The pebble and the egg were but spheres and ellipses. The pitch of a whistle a notch in a scale. But I heard a laughing. No, that is not it at all. Marble eyes quivered stony pebbles formed circles, which at some point became triangles, microchips, subtraction, and the idea of spaghetti junction. The laughter was getting louder. Diamonds and straight lines in graphs illustrate as scientific fact indisputable evidence to prove that yes, one and one make two.
But my Reason struggled like a fish on a hook and I was pulled out again, screaming, by the force of this laughter and the pebble said you don’t know it yet my boy, but one and one do not make two, one and one make once upon a philosopher’s stone I wandered lonely as a pig in shite and heard a tapping, tap, tap-tapping and the resounding peal of many bells. No man is an omnivore so it’s not even about whether we should eat something with a face or not to be. Scandalous rabble spewing forth – the nonsensical drivellings and ramblings of as Above so Below. Do unto thy neighbour. The sum of the squares of any two sides of a right-angled triangle has three sides, no more, no less, you don’t have to guess which cup of the blood of our Lord hear us, Lord graciously hear us. Crystal minutes of black and white and all the colours of the empty pint flowing down the succulent terminal, as we all are, I suppose, never suppose, suppose you never supposed? Tiny specks of sense and the senses make sense to the sense itself as a man does a thing for himself and no one else…. spiraling inwards, downwards, any way but out, floating around just beyond what we know but don’t accept that we know. That the sense is drawn to the material as an addict to a drug. There is good, there is evil, all in all existence. The swish of the blade is the burning of the wandering, wandering in hopeless night.