KEEP OUT OF THE PARK

Everybody vanishes in the park. People still go into the park but these people know that they will never return. The people who still go into the park have lost all interest in life but they are still curious about what happens when you enter the park, so they go into the park. What becomes of them, no one knows. They are never heard from again.

The park can be seen beyond its perimeter railings and through the gate at its entrance. It is tended to, but by who? No one knows that either. Some believe the park is maintained by the people it retains. Their souls are trapped in the confines of the park and they are forever its slaves, mowing its grass and pruning its hedges. That's one of the legends anyway, but that's all it is, a story. No one knows the truth. All anyone knows is that if you go into the park you don't come out of the park. 'Gone to the park', is even a euphemistic term for death for those who live near the park, like me and you and everyone else.

The government sent the army out to see what was going on in the park. This was a few years ago. Tethered troops entered the park, communicating by radio with other troops who were stationed outside the park. They went in, walked up the lane, turned the corner and then the transmission crackled, hissed and went dead and the cable the troops were attached to slackened. Seven soldiers were sent in but they left it at that. Then they sent a robot in, a kind of little remote control thing on wheels with a camera attached. There are stories about the footage it sent back. Again, these are only stories. No one knows what it broadcast before it disappeared. Those who saw what the camera picked up were left without reason and babbling word salad. They then attempted to bomb the park from above but when they sent the planes up the pilots forgot what they were supposed to be doing and returned to base with their missiles still loaded.

The park is a quiet place. It has a strange draw to it. It seems so tranquil in there. Not remotely foreboding. You'd have to remind yourself not to go in if it wasn't cordoned off with police ribbon and signs that say 'keep out of the park'. When you see the signs that say 'keep out of the park', you say to yourself, 'oh yes, I really must keep out of the park' and you keep out of the park, but a part of you wonders what it would be like to go into the park.

Another odd thing about the park is that no one knows who put it there or when. No municipal records refer to it and there are no accounts of what was there before it. Some think that it has always been there. Others think that it only seems to be there but isn't there at all. I don't know what to think so I don't think about it that much. Most of us don't like to think about the park. We all know its there and sometimes, as I've said already, a lonely or desperate soul will discretely duck under the police cordon and wander off into it, but no one dwells on the park. No one discusses the park at any length and those that bring it up quickly find the subject changed. No one ever says, 'don't talk about the park,' they just start talking about things other than the park. The park is taboo.

No one speaks of the park. No one understands the park. No one knows what to do about the park. The park is rarely at the forefront of anyone's thoughts but we all know it's there, at the back of our minds. Just outside of our doors. The warm gentle wind of a permanent early autumn. The honey glow of an everlasting twilight, spreading through its branches. Beckoning.

SWEETHEART COME

If you look at things close up, really close up, they cease to be what they seem to be. A person stops being a person with arms and legs and a torso and a head and becomes a vast epidermal surface instead. Look even closer and even this understanding is lost. Closer up than close up, everything becomes an indivisible hubbub of subatomic particles. We might see a room but really there is no furniture, no ceiling, no floor, no window and no door. At the most micro of micro levels the room is all just trashing static but on our macro level it takes on the illusion of separate objects. It's like a Monet painting, it's an incomprehensible mess close up and only makes sense at a distance. This distance from real reality is the range we operate on. We all know it but we put the knowledge of the eternal fuzz out of our heads. We operate under a required interpretation of 'reality' that is actually an illusion. We pretend that the world is an arrangement of things with contexts. To approach existence in any other way would drive us crazy.

Are you with me? Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you agree? You kind of have to agree. You've no choice. It's the truth. It's reality, really.

The above image is an extract from a letter written by a German woman called Emma Hauck. Considered insane, Emma was committed to a mental institution where she lived out what remained of her life. Emma had lost the ability to see things on our macro range. All context had broken down for her. She was being swallowed by the subatomic hiss, the eternal fuzz of what reality really is. It must have been like sinking in quicksand and she was calling out to be rescued. She was calling out to the memory of the thing that gave her life meaning. That thing was love.

On proper examination, you can make out that Emma wrote the same two words over and over and over again; a simple phrase in her native language, 'herzensschatzi komm'. It means 'sweetheart come'. Emma's letter was to the father of her two children. Emma sat and wrote 'sweetheart come' over and over and over again. The words, the punctuation and the letters merge and end up looking like the static snow on an old television screen. Did you know that the snow on old televisions is leftover radiation from the Big Bang, the Big Bang that created all reality? It is. I'm not sure if that's relevant but I thought I'd mention it in case it is relevant. Very relevant. Anyway, Emma wrote a great many letters like the one pictured above. She sat and wrote them all day. All day, every day. None Of Emma's letters were ever sent.

Now, I want you to imagine that you're sitting and listening to static emitting from a receiver of some sort. I want you to imagine that you are listening out for the voices of those trapped in Limbo. Imagine you hear the words 'sweetheart come' repeated over and over, lost amongst the hiss. Imagine you hear this pleading from a ghost. A ghost trying to communicate to a memory, a memory of a meaning, a meaning called love.

'Sweetheart come, sweetheart come, sweetheart come, sweetheart come', over and over in the eternal fuzz. Oh my. My oh my. Tell me now about this reality. Has it broken your heart yet?

MY DE BRUIJN LIFE

Mathematical De Bruijn sequences are sequences that seem to have no sequence but actually do. They look like chaos but have hidden order. De Bruijn sequences have been discovered in the assembly of genomes, revealing a comprehensible system within a life causing mess.  

Yes, life is messy and being someone who wishes to live life correctly, I have found it correct to make a mess of my life. I am living in accordance with De Bruijn principles. I tidy my flat in a De Bruijn way. My dress sense could be described as Haute De Bruijn. My every act is De Bruijn, seeming insane and random but with a hidden rationale. What that rationale may be is beyond me as I have never been good at maths but I am content in the knowledge that there is a rationale there, …somewhere.

My philosophy is the De Bruijn philosophy. You may think it makes no sense but that is because you are missing the hidden sense, as am I, that is the point. If I could see ‘reason’ in how I live my life then I wouldn’t be living it in a De Bruijn way.

As approaches to existence go, I think mine trumps yours. Your way of life is the opposite of De Bruijn. You live a life that looks rational and perhaps feels rational but really, underneath the ostensible order, there is nothing but chaos. In reality, your actions are motivated by petty egoistic needs and random brain chemicals and are neither systematic nor logical. In fact, your actions can often be self-destructive. In short, your algorithm is banjaxed and it’s you that is the disordered one, not me.

Anyway, that’s pretty much word for word what I said in my defence to the judge before I jumped up onto his bench, took a shit in his wig and fled from the courthouse shouting: 

‘Jimmy had a micky that was ten foot long 

and he showed it to the lady next door. 

She thought it was a snake 

so she cut it with a rake 

and now it’s only five foot four.’

That is all. Happy Christmas Fuggers!

ORDER!

Did you see the moon up there last night? It was like a discarded dirty plate and the stars were scattered about it like shiny white crumbs. I was looking up and I found it very messy. I found the sight slightly obscene. We'll put order on it one day. We'll line up the stars in neat rows, like the ones on the flag of the United States of America. We will look up and see a regimented, disciplined, and comprehensible night sky. We have brought order to our world and we will bring order to what lies beyond it. We cut the grass and trim the hedges. It's what we're all about. It's how we roll.

We even put time in order. We made it a series of numbers on a dial. When the pointer on the dial is at a certain number you know that it's time to get out of bed. When it points to the next number you know that it's time to leave for work. When it points to the number after that you know that you are late for work. A few numbers later and you know that it's OK to go home and watch the telly. Before us time was a sprawling mess, an intangible nuisance, but we captured time on a dial and when we put time in order we put ourselves in order.

Before time, humans were a messy. They just did things, all willy nilly and whenever. They would eat when their belly grumbled, sleep when they were tired, plant stuff when it was getting sunny and reap it when it was getting cold. Nothing really got done when it should be done and when it should be done is when we say it should be done. Proper order!

When we put time in order we put work in order and when we put work in order we put money in order. Yes, money. We gave designated times to the earning of money and with money we designated objective value to things. Before money value was messy and subjective and sentimental. Now it is certain.

We have order and we, ourselves, are defined by order. We ordered reality so it would order us. Without order there is only disorder. Have you ever felt disordered? Not nice is it? Scary isn't it? Did you know that there are those amongst us that hanker for the disorder that lies beneath order? Yes, it's true. Some actually feel an aversion to the numbers on the dial and to designated toil and objective values. These people are feeling the atavistic longing for a world before order. These people are subversives and seek to reinstate mess. These people are inhuman because to be human is to be ordered. These people must be put back in order so that they once again appreciate and obey order. You see, to stay ordered we must obey our orders otherwise we'd be a mess like the dirty plate and crumbs scattered throughout last night's sky. Without order we'd be an obscenity. An insult to human cognition. An anachronism. We'd be mad people or even criminals. Without order, well, we might not even exist!

There is no alternative. There is only order. We decide order and we impose order. We are order and we must have order and to have order we must obey order. So quit messing. That's an order!

This message was brought to you by the Society for the Maintenance of Chronological and Spatial Ontology, Kinnegad Main Street, County Westmeath.

1 + 1 = ?

One and one do not make two. One and one make one. You can’t add something to itself to make it something else. For example, there is only one me (‘thankfully’, says you) and I can’t be added to myself to make someone else. I and I do not make you. Got it? Good.

Now, to add one with another one is a different matter. One plus another (different) one is not the same equation as one and one, which is adding one to itself. However, the answer is still not two. One plus another one makes two ones, not two. Two is something else entirely. The idea that two ones make a two is absurd. Two number ones don’t even look like a number two. They’re not even the same shape. In fact, two number ones look like an eleven and it would make as much sense to say that one and one makes eleven than to say they make two. In fact, it would probably make more sense.

Now, I’m not denying that one and another one share some mathematical/numerical notional value with a two. I’m just saying that one and another one are not the same thing as a two. They are just two ones. Let me put it this way, imagine that I am a fruit seller and I have two oranges. Combined, these two oranges weigh the same as a grapefruit. When I put the items on sale I charge the same for the two oranges as I would for a grapefruit. So, the two oranges are the same value as a grapefruit but that does not make the two oranges an actual grapefruit. A grapefruit is larger, tastes different, is a different colour and there is only one of it. If you thought that the two oranges became a grapefruit just because they weighed and cost the same you’d be insane. So why is it acceptable to think that two ones somehow become a two? It doesn’t make any sense.

What disturbs me is that we actually teach this shite in schools. We fill the heads of kids with this rubbish and then expect them to be able to deal with the bubbling, popping, fizzing, stretching, bending and wriggling contents of reality. We teach kids that one and one makes two not because it’s true but because it just seems true. It’s like everything else we teach kids in school, it hasn’t much to do with the real world at all. It’s just enough to get along with in what we’ve decided to pretend is the real world. It’s unreal, anyone who can add one and one knows that.