A disaster in abstraction: Two covered heads I’m staring at: Quantum part (1)
While I sit here and wait yet for another plane, I wonder what to do and how to do it. What to say, and how to say it. No, a crisis is not a joke. Yet, literally speaking, a crisis should push one forward. Yes, forward.
I’m staring at two religious radicals (both heads covered (maybe a fear of showing their baldness or simply a fear of falling objects from the universe), of opposite cleric convictions – while each sits with in full garment as if to make a statement about their “gods”. “Mine is better than yours”, one of the two must be thinking. “I hate your guts and want to blow you up”, is probably hovering around the head of the other.
So much for history. Yes, history. I’ve always claimed (in workshops, lectures, interviews, whatever) that one ought to know everything (and I mean or meant EVERYTHING).
But today, Wednesday, reality hits me in the face. It takes my skull and shakes it as does a Beckett conundrum “For to end, yet again, skull alone in a dark place pent bowed to begin”. For to. Non existing combinations. Joycean and Beckettian language: “for to” is meant to sound as 4 – 2 and then…. Pent. Oh yes: pent stands for the number five. 4-2-5. Was that the number of a train or tram line or does it stand for the unsolvable enigma that Churchill used to illustrate Russia (article below). 425 may well be a cabalistic number which, in reverse order or maybe summed up in cadences of (….) add up to some significance. One of the radical religious persons I am staring at has studied. Probably studied profoundly.
And why? What do we need to know about ourselves that hasn’t already been told in a better shape and form????? Please tell me.
According to Nathan Lane (starring in the Broadway show “The Adams Family” which was trashed, panned by the critics), it’s simply GREAT that Americans don’t read. So he says: ignorance is great.
Adams Family is a success, regardless of the negative reviews. In the past, a play or musical on Broadway would close within 3 days of its opening if panned by the critics, In fact, a parody of this ‘ritual’ starred Nathan himself in Mel Brook’s fantastic “The Producers”. However, now, he claims victory for illiteracy.
Well, there is something to be said about this. I’m looking at two radicals in full garment who study (daily) their commandments, their protocol of manners and behaviors according to their “god”.
Nathan Lane claims that the best thing now – in this age of info bombardment – is simply to be illiterate and not keep a memory alive or, even, remember what ‘specialized opinion’ has to say.
Where do you stand, beloved reader????
If it weren’t for curiosity (and this is to be read as an anti-Lane statement), I would never have come across such names as Isaac Newton, for instance, or
James Maxwell, James Prescott Joule, Kelvin, Milton, Dante, Bruno or Max Planck.
I confess to be a frivolous reader when it comes to Quantum Physics, astrophysics and/or any other riddle which Churchill….No, forget Churchill for a moment and concentrate on the following formula
h = 6.626068 × 10-34m2kg/s
Yes, take your time: read it again:
h = 6.626068 × 10-34m2kg/s
Lots of people know what this stands for. But billions of others like myself do not. And here I fall into Nathan Lane’s category of the ‘glorious illiterate’.
Yes, illiterate and indignant. Why? Because I see the world in the light of a constant catastrophe. One happening and one about to happen. Why? Because I see our lives as worthless specks of nothingness and …a curious desire to counterbalance this “important self within us” with the immenseness of the Universe. Or, should I say, “our curiosity in measuring our size in relation to the galaxies”. C’est un joke.
Yes, today at this airport lounge I’m staring at these two religious radicals of opposite cleric convictions and I am incredibly nervous about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A newspaper’s headline on the adjacent seat reads: A disaster in abstraction. For weeks, a threat floating somewhere out there.
“Really?”, I ask. “A disaster in abstraction?” Will we ever learn? Or are we on stage? An oil rigged stage?
“ATTACK THE WELL”
A well. The name says it all. So does the verb follow? Attack? Not being able to understand WELL and to spell to verb means to spill the verb.
Some people worry about the whereabouts of Lord Mandelson who was seen in a 250.000 GB sterling pounds Ferrari being driven to a dinner with Russian oligarchs who were closing a deal worth 500 million GB pounds. Yes, I guess it is rather worrying when he writes in a disclaimer “not have known it to be a business dinner”. Ha. C’est un joke.
Why? Why do I worry about things like that? Human nature, human species, the species as a whole and the size of what’s above our covered or uncovered heads. It’s all dark. All completely dark and solvable via riddles and….
And nothing, since, in the end, or at our last breath we are, as we’ve always been nothing but a “for to end yet again skull alone in a dark place pent bowed to begin.”
Gerald Thomas
25 May 2010
Thank you, Jorge and Sandra Futoshi Yamamoto for the inspiration.
AND PLEASE WATCH JOHN PAUL JONES IN “Them Crooked Vultures”
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